Analysis

‘Labelled terrorists’: How France is using anti-terror powers to deter protests

The French government has been accused of weaponising an anti-terror law adopted in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks to keep dozens of people away from massive protests sweeping the country. Lawyers and rights groups denounce an abuse of power with potentially dangerous repercussions for individual liberties and the right to protest.


Issued on: 12/11/2026 
FRANCE24
By: Benjamin DODMAN

A protester uses an umbrella as a shield against a water cannon at a protest in Paris on October 24, 2026. © Aris Messinis, AFP


The protests roiling France over the past two months have seen hundreds of thousands of demonstrators march in towns and cities across the country, exercising a cherished right to voice discontent over underfunded schools, the cost of living and police brutality.

Some, however, have been stripped of that right, in the name of the fight against terror.

After peaceful rallies gave way to widespread rioting and looting on October 17, the government began using special anti-terror powers to bar several dozen people from attending further demonstrations – without prior approval from judges. They included students, trade unionists, far-left activists and environmental campaigners with no criminal record, most of whom had never been investigated for terrorism.

It marked the largest use of such discretionary powers since the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, when more than 500 people were ordered to stay home or barred from getting anywhere near the venues, leading several to lose their jobs.

For lawyers, unions and rights groups, it also marked a turning point in the policing of protest movements.

“It’s the first time such measures are taken against political activists, by attempting to put a ‘terrorist’ label on them,” said Aïnoha Pascual, a lawyer representing several people barred from attending nationwide protests on October 24 and 31. She denounced “a complete perversion of counterterrorism laws”, part of a growing list of government measures aimed at stifling protests.

Emergency powers

The power used to restrict people’s movement is called an “individual measure of administrative control and surveillance”, known by the French acronym, MICAS. It is a legacy of the sweeping house arrest orders issued under a state of emergency declared in the early hours of November 14, 2015, in the wake of France’s deadliest ever terrorist attacks.

Certain emergency powers were enshrined in French law under a Counter-Terrorism Act adopted two years later, allowing the Interior Ministry to restrict people’s movements when there are “serious reasons” to believe they constitute a grave security threat and have terrorist ties.

People hit by MICAS orders are required to report at the local police station on a weekly or daily basis, and sometimes twice a day. Failure to abide by the restrictions can result in a three-year prison sentence and a €45,000 fine.

A protester dressed as the superhero Deadpool rides a toy unicorn during a rally in Lyon, France's third-largest city, on November 5, 2026. © Laurent Cipriani, AP

The law states that such powers are intended “solely for the purpose of preventing acts of terrorism from being committed” – which lawyers say is clearly not the case with the current MICAS orders.

Instead, “they are being used in situations where there is absolutely no terrorist threat whatsoever, against people who are not terrorists,” said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, a lawyer and member of the Association for the Defence of Constitutional Liberties (Adelico).

“They’re not even aimed at rioters,” Soufron added. “They clearly target political activists, barring them from attending demonstrations in the hope that this will weaken the protest movement.”

Terror threats – or ‘small fry’?

The decision to issue a MICAS order is based on intelligence reports and can target individuals with no criminal record. It does not require prior approval by a judge, though it can be challenged afterwards in court.

Souffron noted that the recent orders barring people from attending protests were often issued at the last minute, “effectively making it impossible for a judge to examine them in time”.

The ability to bypass judicial supervision, at least for a short time, hands the government considerable discretionary powers, said Nicolas Klausser, a researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch whose work specialises in the legal ramifications of state surveillance.

“The measure effectively allows the Interior Ministry to determine for itself who constitutes a terrorist threat, whereas normally, in criminal matters, it is up to a judge to rule,” he explained. “In this case, we can see that the authorities are trying to establish a direct link between taking part in protests and terrorist acts.”

When lawmakers grilled Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez on the matter on November 3, he said he had signed “more than a hundred” MICAS orders related to the protests.

He added that they targeted “the upper end of the spectrum”, implying they involved people high up on the radar of French counterterrorism.

Cover image: People attend a demonstration, as part of a new day of protests against the cost of living and rising fuel prices organised by the "Yellow Vests" movement and labour unions and joined by high school and university students, in Paris, France, November 7, 2026. © Stephanie Lecocq, Reuters
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Sources contacted by newspaper Le Canard enchaîné told a different story.

According to the investigative and satirical weekly, “only a handful” of those targeted are actually being monitored by counterterrorism services. It described the rest as “small fry linked to far-left groups”.

In its latest edition on Wednesday, Le Canard enchaîné said the idea to deploy MICAS measures against protesters had come from Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who ordered their mass use when serving as interior minister during the Paris Olympics. The report, which cited “several senior civil servants”, said the government has since decided to suspend their use against protesters following public outcry.

The alleged direct involvement of senior ministers underscores the potential to weaponise such anti-terror powers for political purposes, said Klausser.

“While Micas would normally emerge from the bottom up, based on intelligence warnings that climb up the chain of command, in this case it appears the order came from above,” he explained. “Critics of the 2017 law had warned that it left ample scope for abuse of power. They’ve been proven right.”

‘Ecoterrorists’

Klausser said the use of MICAS orders is part of ongoing government efforts to “legitimise” the notion that certain far-left activists present a grave threat to public order. Darmanin has repeatedly flagged the threat from so-called “ecoterrorists”, a term he first used in 2022 in the wake of violent clashes between police and demonstrators opposed to the construction of giant reservoirs for agricultural irrigation.

Following the violent unrest on October 17, ministers were quick to pin the blame on “ultra-left” groups. At subsequent fast-tracked trials, however, most of the people convicted turned out to be opportunistic looters with no political leaning.

“Terms such as ‘ecoterrorism’, ‘insurrection’ and ‘sabotage’ are routinely brandished as bogeymen to instil fear and then justify labelling political activists as terrorists,” said Pascual, who has defended several activists branded as “ecoterrorists” over the years.

“Either the government is pretending they’re terrorists because they have no other way of barring them from protests, or they genuinely believe that what happened on October 17 was terrorism – or perhaps a bit of both,” she added. “Either way, it takes some nerve to claim that political violence and looting shops constitutes terrorism, particularly on the eve of commemorations for victims of the November 13 attacks.”

In statements defending its use of MICAS orders, the Interior Ministry has argued that the “insurrectionary” nature of the protests constitutes a terror threat. It has pointed to the fire that ravaged the town hall of Limoges on October 17, and online calls to target symbols of capitalism and the state, as evidence of an intent to “seriously disrupt public order by intimidating the population and the public authorities”.

Protesters stand amid tear gas during a demonstration in Lyon on November 5, 2026. © Laurent Cipriani, AP

The ministry’s arguments were broadly rejected at a court hearing in Paris on Tuesday, including by the public rapporteur, a judge tasked with giving an independent opinion on the case.

“Not all violence directed against the state, nor all political violence, is necessarily of a terrorist nature,” said the rapporteur, according to a Mediapart journalist who attended the hearing. Protest calls “cannot be regarded as intended to sow terror, but rather as an expression of intense anger towards the ruling authorities and as a means of placing them in great difficulty”, she added.

Government in ‘panic’ mode

To suggest that the protest movement has placed the authorities in “great difficulty” is an understatement. The violence witnessed on October 17, coupled with weeks of mass protests and school blockades, has piled pressure on France’s embattled minority government as it struggles to win support for a deficit-cutting budget.

The widespread rioting sparked “a moment of panic, prompting the Interior Ministry to explore all options at its disposal”, said Klausser. “And they’ve made full use of those options.”

The MICAS orders come on the heels of a slew of other measures critics say have severely curtailed the right to protest. They include outright bans on rallies, changes to protest routes and localised curfews.

“The use of such an arsenal, over such a long period, is indicative of a permanent state of emergency,” Marion Ogier, a lawyer for France’s Human Rights League (LDH), told a press conference earlier this month.

Rights groups have also denounced the widespread use of police custody to deter student protesters who kicked off the movement at high schools across France. In the three weeks leading up to October 14, police detained 6,877 people at school blockades and marches, 86 percent of them minors. It was more than the number detained during 18 months of often violent clashes with Yellow Vest protests that began in 2018.

While the authorities have highlighted the “serious acts of violence” committed by protesters, lawyers have denounced a weaponisation of police custody to intimidate protesters, stressing that the majority of those detained were later released without charges. They have also accused police of abusing minors held for up to 48 hours, alleging insults, beatings and depriving them of food and sleep.

“That’s on top of the repression witnessed at protests themselves,” said Pascual, referring to police’s ample use of “non-lethal” weapons that have maimed dozens of protesters. “When attending a protest can result in being teargassed, injured or ending up in jail, quite a few people are likely to stay away.”

 

Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire – from a Marxist perspective

By Tony McMahon on May 2, 2026 • ( 0 )

How did one of the greatest civilisations in history – the Roman Empire – rise and fall? It’s a question that has vexed historians for centuries. The majestic ruins of ancient Rome are visible across Europe and the Middle East – evidence of this once seemingly invincible force. Yet the empire collapsed. Can the precipitous rise and ultimate destruction of the Roman Empire be explained in Marxist terms?

The Rise of the Roman Empire – from a Marxist perspective

The Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Roman Republic, which was the system of government that saw Rome go from a minor city state to a Mediterranean giant over a four century period from around 509 BC to 27 BC. The republic’s fall is explained in non-Marxist analyses as being due to the emergence of powerful generals, the increasing role of the army, and the idea that only a dictatorship could manage such a vast geographical area.

This version of events was fictionalised by the Star Wars franchise – projected into a mythical future. We have the end of the Galactic Republic and the rise of evil Palpatine, for which read Julius or Augustus Caesar. To the non-Marxist, the republic’s demise was an institutional failure as well as the result of megalomaniac personalities and bitter faction fighting.

But this narrative doesn’t suffice for a Marxist. The primary focus must always be on the economic base and the relations of production. Underlying the shift from republic to empire was a fundamental change from an economy based on small-scale farming to large estates worked by slaves.

The conservative faction in Rome’s senate – the Optimates – recognised that the wiping out of the citizen-farmer class was eradicating the social base of the republic. A slave, after all, had no stake in the system whereas a peasant farmer with a smallholding did.

However, Optimates did nothing to resolve the situation as they were benefitting financially from gobbling up smaller estates and enriching themselves. In opposition to them, the Populares, who were also wealthy senators in their own right, tried to slow down or even reverse the process. They could see the problems ahead – especially when it came to replenishing Rome’s armed forces.

The peasant farmer had traditionally felt incentivised to lay down their plough and take up the sword to protect their precious land from Rome’s enemies. However, these soldiers then spent a long time away – and at greater distances as the republic expanded. They fell into debt – with punishing rates of interest – and were forced to sell up to bigger landowners.

These landowners in the senatorial class used the cheap and plentiful supply of slaves being taken prisoner in Rome’s wars to work their estates. Meanwhile, the now landless peasantry moved into the cities, living in wretched slums, where the Populare faction in the senate whipped them into a frenzy against their opponents. They became a mob that could be bought and deployed by cynical politicians.

There were attempts to address the problems created by this change in social relations. Gaius Marius, a Populare, saw that the traditional militia system for the army, based on small property holders, was dead. So, he professionalised the army by enrolling landless citizens, removing the property requirement, and with the state providing their equipment and other essentials.

More radically, the Gracchi brothers – Tiberius and Gaius – tried to redistribute land back from wealthy elites to the landless poor. Despite their best efforts, the senate resisted and both men were murdered.

To Marx, the eradication of the small-holding peasantry removed the social base for the Roman Republic, the ‘superstructure’ that sat on the economic base. The slave mode of production allowed the empire to expand rapidly by pooling involuntary labour on to huge estates, quarries, mines, and in all aspects of urban life. But this plus eventually became a minus.

The Fall of the Roman Empire – from a Marxist perspective

When explaining how capitalism will end, Marx described the working-class – the proletariat – as the nemesis of the capitalist class, which had created it. But the fall of Rome is not the result of a vast slave uprising. In fact, Roman history is very much characterised by the absence of such an event. It appears that slaves were largely passive and resigned to their servitude.

However – that’s not entirely true.

During the Roman Republic, between 135 BC and 71 BC, there were three so-called Servile Wars. The first two less well known wars were in Sicily, where slaves rose up over their ill treatment. The third war, on the Italian mainland, was led by Spartacus – whose name has resonated down the centuries. In 1960, he was depicted by the Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas in director Stanley Kubrick’s epic movie titled Spartacus.

But…his rebellion was an abject failure and signalled the end of large scale slave disobedience. Sure, there were bandits and pirates in the imperial period, but the slaves were mostly cowed. Why?

Marxists have explained this by arguing that slaves were incapable of organising along class lines and lacked any notion of class consciousness. They engaged in low-level, individual acts of resistance, but the idea of forming a revolutionary party was not going to happen at this stage of history.

In addition, it’s important to point out that slavery was not the only form of labour in the Roman Empire. There were still peasant smallholders, tenants, wage labourers, and skilled artisans. Most of these people were ‘freemen’ – non-slaves who might be comfortably off or achingly poor.

Why didn’t the free poor and slaves join up to overthrow the rich?

The reality is they didn’t recognise any identity of interest. The free poor viewed slaves as competition for work and they were kept from starving by state handouts of bread as well as entertainment in the arena (‘bread and circuses’). Slaves were locked into a system known as ‘manumission’ where they saved whatever money they could make on the side to buy their freedom. So, they were invested in the system.

There may have been slave uprisings that were not recorded or have been forgotten. The Roman state undoubtedly deployed horrific levels of violence to keep slaves in place. In 10 CE, the senate passed a truly Machiavellian piece of legislation: the Senatusconsultum Silanianum (Silanian Decree of the Senate). It stipulated that if the master of a household was murdered, all slaves under that same roof could be tortured and executed.

For slaves, the situation was truly hopeless. Plus there was no alternative mode of production that offered a path out of slavery. Even Spartacus just reversed the master-slave relationship. This turning upside down of the natural order was even done in jest during the annual festival of Saturnalia where Roman slaveowners pretended to be slaves – for a laugh.

Marx often writes about the internal contradictions that bring a socio-economic system to its knees – where the social relations of class hold back the underlying forces of production. And so, the Roman Empire proved to be a classic case in point. The fall was occasioned more by internal collapse than a revolutionary overthrow.

The ‘barbarians’, by the way, cannot be viewed as a revolutionary class. The agent of revolutionary change normally comes from within the society to be transformed. In addition, the tribes that overwhelmed the western half of the Roman Empire were slave-based societies to differing degrees. And when the goths took over Italy in the 5th century CE, they were at pains to prolong the structure of Roman society – simply placing themselves at the top.

Rome had been in decline from the 2nd century CE. The empire showed occasional signs of recovery but the overall trajectory was downwards. Key factors include the low productivity and lack of technical innovation inherent in a slave society – why bother improve machinery when you have an ample supply of ‘tools that talk’ (an actual Roman term for slaves).

As the empire stopped expanding, the slave supply came under pressure. The Romans addressed this problem by encouraging reproduction from within the slave class. Varro, a Roman author, even wrote about slave breeding as if he was describing cattle. Plus there were always people selling themselves into slavery because of debt; slaves could be imported as a financial transaction; and abandoned babies were reared as slaves.

But in truth, slaves became more expensive. This made the great estates of the wealthy increasingly unviable. How to resolve this problem? Over a long period of time, there was a shift from the traditional slave-based social relations on the land to something termed the ‘coloni’.

To a casual observer, the coloni bear a close resemblance to slaves but there were important differences. They were free – but not free to move. A series of laws from the emperor Diocletian in the 290s CE to his successors in the third century CE forced coloni to stay put – on the land allocated to them. The emperor Constantine made the status of coloni hereditary in 332 CE and those who fled would be treated like runaway slaves – chained to the spot.

So, what on earth is the difference between a coloni and a slave? To summarise, the coloni was a legal person, though with very limited rights, while the slave had no legal standing – in fact, a slave was barely human. A coloni was tied to the land while a slave could be sold separately. In fact, if a landowner sold an estate, it came with the coloni – but not the slaves. A coloni could marry and own property (with the landowner’s approval) but the slave could not.

The coloni paid rent in produce or money. This made them a dependant class of agricultural labourers but not slaves, owned bodily by the landowner, which had clear advantages for the rich. An injured slave needed to be repaired like a physical object you own. But a ‘coloni’ could go and sort himself out.

The barbarians may have accelerated this process. When they were settled within the empire in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, they became increasingly self-governing, creating heavily militarised communities of Frankish, Visigoth, and Burgundian farmers. The Roman state developed, out of necessity, a more arms-length relationship with these settlers, extracting revenue but allowing them to farm on their own terms.

It’s not difficult to see what’s happening here. We are getting the first green shoots of medieval feudalism. Here’s a description in one Marxist text:

“Elements of feudalism, as has already been said, had originated in the womb of slave-owning society in the form of the system of coloni. The coloni were obliged to work the land of their master, the large landowner, to make him a definite money payment or hand over a considerable share of the harvest, and to fulfil various types of duty. Nevertheless, the coloni had more interest in their labour than the slaves, since they had their own holdings.”

Basically, slavery didn’t work anymore. However, it’s important not to embrace a ‘vulgar Marxist’ analysis here where slavery vanished in a puff of smoke as the Roman Empire fell. In fact, there were thriving slave markets into the early Middle Ages run by the Vikings, Venice, and in the Islamic caliphate. Around 10% of England’s population are listed as slaves in the Domesday Book of 1086 CE.

Nevertheless, with Rome’s fall – the era of slavery gave way to feudalism – the next stage of human exploitation.

Democratic Socialists’ Surge In The US Midterms Worries Conservatives – Analysis

Cropped file photo of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Photo Credit: Matt Johnson, Wikipedia Commons

November 9, 2026

By P. K. Balachandran

Key Takeaways:

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), described as a left wing of the Democratic Party with roughly 130,000 members, are credited with helping Democrats secure major midterm gains, including Senate and House majorities and 28 governorships.

The DSA platform includes calls to abolish police and prisons, end aid to Israel, legalise migration and replace the Electoral College, Senate, presidency and Supreme Court with a single congress, though figures such as AOC say capitalism and socialism can coexist.

Exit polls linked the shift to economic discontent, the Iran war and anti-incumbency, while conservatives warn of Trotskyite “entryism” and cite historical failures of socialist regimes.

Much like the Gen Z who appeared from nowhere to topple entrenched regimes in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, America’s Democratic Socialists, dismissed as an inconsequential fringe group by mainstream analysts, inflicted defeats on scores of right-wing Republicans in this month’s US midterm elections.

But conservatives, who represent the bedrock of American political thinking, are warning about the grim consequences of socialism, citing the But conservatives, who represent the bedrock of American political thinking, are warning about the grim consequences of socialism, citing the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc

Electoral Successes

In the Midterms, the Democratic Party took both the Federal House of Representatives and the Federal Senate. In the US, overall, the Democrats did better than the Republicans. As on November 8, according to AP, the score was 54 Democrats and 44 Republicans in the Federal Senate, and 254 Democrats and 162 Republicans in the House. 28 Governorships went to the Democrats and 20 to the Republicans.

Democratic Socialists of America

A noteworthy feature of these midterms is the role played by the socialists and their fellow travellers in the Democratic Party, who identify themselves as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). It is said that the DSA has 130,000 members nationwide.

The DSA is not a separate political party, but is the left-wing of the Democratic Party. It has members as well as ideological affiliates. Prominent among people associated with it are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Rashida Tlaib (both members of the US House of Representatives), Zohran Mamdani (Mayor of New York).

Founded in 1982, the socialist group was resurrected by Bernie Sanders in the 2016 US Presidential election. The DSA is now firmly entrenched within the Democratic Party, determined to thwart the schemes of the extreme right-wingers represented by MAGA (Make America Great Again) led by President Donald Trump.

MAGA got identified with White racism, White supremacy and Zionism. Animosity towards immigrants from Africa and Asia is another feature. It also lacked sympathy for the marginalised economic, ethnic and sexual communities. In foreign policy, MAGA fully backed Israel vis-à-vis Palestine, Gaza and Iran.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialists’ guru, sought government ownership of the energy, banking, telephone, electricity, and drug industries. He has also called for a 100% marginal income tax on higher earners to help fund cradle-to-grave government services, including medical care, housing, childcare, education, Internet, and meals.
Key Structural Changes Envisaged

DSA’s 2026 manifesto said that the future it foresees will also include “fully abolishing the police and prison system”; “queer liberation”; enacting “reparations”; abolishing the Department of War; ending “all military and economic aid to Israel”; and legalising “migration.”

The DSA platform also calls for abolishing the Electoral College and the Senate. It would “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to” one Supreme People’s Congress.

Not Communism, but Quite Radical

The Democratic Socialists have said that they are not communists and have produced “new versions” of socialism like “democratic socialism,” looking like an advancement on President F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is quoted in The New York Times as saying that she thinks it is “totally possible for capitalism and socialism to coexist.”

Anti-Incumbency Factor

According to Ashley Koning, assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, and Kelly Dittmar, associate professor of political science at Rutgers University–Camden, many compared this election to the 1974 Watergate midterms in which anti-incumbency was a decisive factor (https://www.rutgers.edu/news/what-drove-historic-blue-wave-2026-midterms).

According to media reports on exit polls, a plurality of voters mentioned the economy as the most important problem facing the country. Nearly 9 in 10 said the cost of living was a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress, nearly 6 in 10 said they’re very concerned about gas prices, and three-quarters rated the national economy negatively.

Corruption and the state of the country’s democracy were also on the voters’ minds. Nine in 10 voters called government corruption a crucial or major factor in their vote, and a third named democracy the most important issue facing the country—second only to the economy. More voters trusted Democrats than Republicans to handle the economy.

The elections pointed to deep dissatisfaction with President Trump, his policies, and his handling of both the economy and the war in Iran. Vice President J.D. Vance has openly said that the Iran war had caused loss of votes. The media is now predicting the impeachment of the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth

Socialism Attracted

The polls also showed a leftward shift among key voting blocs. Every key demographic group swung toward Democrats, reversing much of their rightward shift from 2024.

As per the CBS News/YouGov survey done before the polls, Democrats overwhelmingly had a more favourable view of socialism than capitalism. Nearly 60% of party members supported socialism compared with 32% who had a favourable view of capitalism. Among those who had a college degree, 71% favoured socialism compared to 16% viewing it unfavourably.

Changing Views on Who is Electable

Women proved again that they are a key to Democratic success. Democratic women will now hold record levels of representation in the US House, US Senate, and Statewide elective executive offices, including Governors. They flipped at least 10 districts from Red (Republican) to Blue (Democratic) and won some of the toughest contests for US Senate and Governor.

Koning and Dittmar say that together, these results challenge yet again any notions that women are less electable than men. Even more, one saw historic wins for women of Colour, including the first Native American woman Governor, Deb Haaland of New Mexico, and the first Black woman Governor in the US. These women’s wins not only proved their electability but also disrupted dated views about who can and should lead at the highest levels of US politics.

Ethnic Dimension

Democrats also solidly won back Latino voters, 62% to 35%, including Latino men, who broke for Trump in 2024 but backed Democrats 56% to 41% this time around. Democrats also gained double-digit ground with Asian and suburban voters, winning about 7 in 10 Asian voters and nearly 6 in 10 suburban voters, and even made significant inroads with non-college voters, narrowly losing a group Trump won comfortably in 2024, Koning and Dittmar say.

Flip Side: Trump’s Warning

Given the rise of the Far-Left, President Trump worked to paint leftists as full-blown communists and urged Republicans to spotlight their hardcore policies heading into the midterm elections.

“Our American identity under a renewed attack. A generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” The President had said.

“No more checks and balances. No more federalism. No more republic,” commented a conservative writer.

Trotsky’s Entryism

Conservatives suspect that the Democratic Socialists are following Trotsky’s tactic called “entryism,” which means infiltrating larger movements, converting followers, taking charge of power centres, and then altering policies to the Left. The Democratic Socialists have infiltrated the Democratic Party to make it a socialist party. Sanders and his team began recruiting socialist candidates to run in primaries, it is pointed out.

Conservatives warn that the socialist experiment in every country has failed. And the authoritarianism that accompanies centralisation and state control will only alienate people in the long run.

Given the traditional conservatism of Americans and the strong trend towards some form of socialism seen in the midterms, America is at a critical political and ideological crossroads. But the dalliance with socialism is expected to continue till America’s domestic and foreign policy issues are sorted out to the satisfaction of Americans.

About P. K. Balachandran
P. K. Balachandran is a senior Indian journalist working in Sri Lanka for local and international media and has been writing on South Asian issues for the past 21 years.
View all posts by P. K. Balachandran →

Reagan, Trump, and the Neoliberal Propaganda State

Gerald Sussman

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 November 2, 2026

Many observers have posed the question, “How did the US end up with a psychotic president who displays no regard for truth?” A critical and historical understanding of the political economy of politics helps to explain the self-aggrandizing transactional presidency and make sense of the seemingly nonsensical.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, both the US and UK led the radical transformation of the international political economy toward a fundamentalist neoliberal regime. What this meant is that the public sphere would be systematically eroded in favor of an all-out, untethered private sphere as the moral ideal. The arbiter of rationality would shift away from the leadership of public-minded individuals to those eager to run the state along strictly market principles.

Margaret Thatcher famously uttered the credo of the neoliberal state: “There is no alternative,” meaning that corporate capitalism is the only game in town. Her goal was to smash labor unions and socialist politics. Her partner in crime Ronald Reagan, elected a year later, acted as her pas de deux. One of Thatcher’s targets was the National Union of Mineworkers, while Reagan aimed at the air traffic controllers union, PATCO, which he reduced to rubble.

The duo were able to spread their shared individualist-oriented ideology by hiring the talents of PR specialists drawn from the private commercial sector. “Spin masters,” as they were called, came from the fields of marketing, sales, advertising, publicity, public relations, public opinion management, and related communication professions. Thatcher hired the giant advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi to help run her campaign, while Reagan broke away from the tradition of limited use of campaign specialists to the wholesale employment of propaganda professionals and consultants taking leave from the major Madison Avenue agencies, BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, and others.

Reagan was enthralled with how his own Hollywood career had influenced American culture. Why couldn’t he, a grade “C” actor, accomplish the same in the political sphere with such banal phrases as “the shining city on the hill,” i.e., America as a unique and universally revered state, and his studied observation that: “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles”? Reagan’s ad/PR team turned White House communication into a “permanent campaign,” with continuous polling, giving his advisers immense power to mold and manipulate popular political discourse and fashioning the Reagan persona as an almost cult-like figure.

The presidential image-making industry did not simply arise from the brilliance of Reagan’s senior media advisers James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Michael Deaver. The cultural brokering of the mass media industries had already been established with the propaganda uses of Roosevelt’s radio “fireside chats” and Eisenhower’s television campaigning (“Eisenhower Answers America” and the upbeat “I like Ike” jingle).

What was unique about Reagan’s tenure was that his communication team ran a non-stop media/PR diffusion of White House spin throughout his eight years in office, creating what became known as the “public relations presidency.” No other president since, up until media-obsessive Trump, was able to able to exercise as much control over the mainstream media (MSM).

Trump has taken the highest public office and the media to monarchic and ultra-narcissistic levels, constantly roping in the scandal-hungry MSM to make himself, not public policy or the public interest, the news. The monopoly capitalist control of the mainstream media and the breakdown of liberal democratic journalistic standards make both natural allies of Trump and work symbiotically with his combative style.

Three other earlier developments paved the way for Trumpism. In the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision, the majority ruled that setting limits on campaign spending by groups or individuals represented a constraint on free speech, thereby establishing the principle that “money equals speech.” It opened the floodgates of corruption and oligarchical domination of electoral campaigns and corrosive political speech and behavior.

Spending on the presidential election alone in 1972 was $138 million; in 2020, it reached $6.37 billion; combined with congressional races, it reached almost $16 billion. The largest share went to television advertising, a major beneficiary of the best electoral system that money can buy. The advertising windfall binds the corporate capitalist media to the political parties, the electioneering industry, and the broader ruling class, all in the service and maintenance of state legitimacy.

The elimination of the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which since 1949 had required broadcasting stations to air contrasting responses on controversial political subjects, brought a new wave of extremely partisan and shock jock political talk show commentary, especially on radio and Fox News. In the neoliberal age, even the limited constraints on time-honored protocols in political speech were lifted, enabling the political right as well as liberals to go on the warpath against their opponents. Russiagate was one such carnival of political warfare spun by the liberals to wreck Trump’s first term in office. He has since retaliated.

Third, America’s deindustrialization, starting in the 1980s and 1990s under both parties, went hand in hand with neoliberalism, replacing a producer economy with a selling (i.e., marketing, PR, advertising) economy. Americans now spend an inordinate amount of their lives as audiences – from doctor visit ratings to online podcast “likes.” The form of political communication displayed so grotesquely by Trump, drawn from the outrageous character he played on his TV “reality” show, can thus be traced to the onset of neoliberal capitalism, the deregulation of spending rules, the emergence of the dominant political marketing culture, the breakdown of political communication, and the demise of the fragile public sphere in America.

In foreign policy, his predecessor Joe Biden resumed the Cold War and, to that point, brought political speech to a new low, referring to the Russian president as a “thug,” a “killer,” a “crazy SOB,” and a “murderous dictator.” Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hilary Clinton abandoned all manner of diplomatic protocol in calling Putin a “white supremacist” and comparing him to Hitler. In neoliberal discourse, the only thing that matters is whether it sells.

Will there be a return to discursive normalcy after Trump? Are happy days here again? Hardly likely, inasmuch as the inner circles of policymaking and the oligarchs will continue to run the country and rule the commanding heights as much as they did before, probably even more so. In realpolitik, what Trump has done is actually not beyond the pale of postwar American politics but rather represents a more transparent effort to turbocharge the country’s expansionist and imperialist market political economy and reassert its global hegemony.

In 2026, he bluntly stated that he invaded Venezuela in 2026 and kidnapped its president and first lady to “take the oil.” This was nothing more than the logical conclusion of an aggressive regime with a singular unipolar orientation, differing from his neoliberal Democratic predecessors more in style than in substance.

Gerald Sussman is professor emeritus of urban studies and international studies at Portland State University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including the most recent (2025), British and American Electoral Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism: Parallel Trajectories (Routledge). Professor Sussman can be reached at: sussmag@pdx.edu

The World in a Cloud: Digital Chokepoints and Global Power

Joseph Grosso

 November 6, 2026

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Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, people have been forced to reckon with the reality of chokepoints. Who could forget the shortage of facemasks or the sight of cargo ships parked thirty-deep at California ports? This year has featured the Strait of Hormuz, where normally about 25 percent of traded crude oil passes through. At the moment, though it’s still quite dangerous dodging Iranian drones, shipping volume some weeks has almost reached pre-war levels while the Black Sea has become the world’s deadliest shipping corridor. A crucial corridor for global grain supplies, by some estimates the number of attacks on ships is six times higher than in the Gulf. According to the International Maritime Organization more than 570 vessels have been struck in the Black Sea this year, killing at least 40 sailors (that compares with 24 confirmed deaths in the Hormuz). Meanwhile, it was reported over the summer that during a cabinet meeting Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto mused, “Do we realize that 70 percent of East Asia’s energy needs and 70 percent of its trade pass through the Indonesian straits?” – referring to the Strait of Malacca, where a third of global trade flows. Indonesian officials have since denied any plan to attempt to impose a toll.

Not all chokepoints are strictly geographical. The U.S. dollar has slowly lost a bit of its shine over time, but it remains a dominant part of global trade and finance. Successive U.S. administrations have put a lot of effort into freezing Chinese companies out of access to the most advanced chips and processors, most of which are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The Financial Times recently reported that China has resorted to importing a million Nvidia gaming and workstation chips this year, turning to products never designed to power advanced AI. Not to be outdone, the Chinese government has periodically leveraged China’s dominance in rare-earth metal mining and processing to achieve its geopolitical goals. A rare earth cut-off in the spring of 2025 succeeded in getting Trump to back off some on tariffs. One could say Low-Earth Orbit is increasing a chokepoint given SpaceX’s dominance of satellite-based communication through Starlink. We have seen this power through Elon Musk’s effect on the war in Ukraine, cutting off Ukraine’s resistance several times. It certainly has been that reports have Europe scrambling to create alternatives. It will surely be a while as Europe’s current alternative is Eutelsat’s OneWeb. But OneWeb has only about 600 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites compared with over 10,000 for Starlink, and OneWeb’s are positioned further away from Earth. Then there is a chokepoint that hasn’t gotten as much attention: cloud technology.

What would happen, for instance, if Microsoft365 was blocked? In June 2024, a cybersecurity partner (CrowdStrike) mistake led to a global outage, affecting 8.5 million Microsoft devices (only 1 percent of Windows machines) causing airport shutdowns and large disruptions in emergency, banking, and even government services. The market for cloud services is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google: globally they account for almost 63 percent of it. Just this past quarter Microsoft reported a 48 percent jump in its Azure cloud business. It was the CEOs of these companies, along with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, that were seated in front of even the cabinet picks at Trump’s last inauguration. The companies each donated a million dollars to the inauguration fund (combine those with Larry Ellison’s Oracle Cloud and over that’s over two-thirds of the cloud market. Ellison dropped $45 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign). Take away Microsoft365 or Amazon Web Services and many government ministries will collapse, many firms will fail, not to mention many households will reel. This isn’t hyperbole. Last year the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, and his staff had their Microsoft emails and other services suspended after the U.S. applied sanctions to ICC staff in response to ICC investigations into key Israeli politicians. Alexandre de Moraes, the judge in Brazil who sentenced Jair Bolsonaro, also appears to have been targeted.

But it goes beyond petty politics. The cloud is where production happens at scale, where data is arranged and stored, software is produced, the architecture of platforms is designed.

As Cecilia Rikap describes in her book The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud:

their power is rooted in their control over global knowledge production, both within and beyond the tech sector. Big Tech controls the very technologies that determine knowledge and ignorance. These same technologies are essential to the organization of every productive process: from building a car to performing an X-ray…By controlling the essential technological scaffolding of global capitalism, tech giants become more than just the world’s largest corporations- they are political leaders and global economic planners.

Not coincidentally, these same platforms have undergone a general process of ‘enshittification’ (not often that an author coins a term that becomes a standard, but Cory Doctorow managed). ICE increased its reliance on Microsoft technology amid its increased immigration raids. Google, a thrice-convicted monopolist, has long cornered 90 percent of the market on search and has done a lot to keep it. Google has forked over $26 billion a year, including $20 billion to Apple, to be the default search engine on phones and browsers. The company has clearly made Google search noticeably worse to gum it up with more advertising and AI slop that nobody asked for. In fact, the company’s stock just saw a single-day loss of $500 billion in market value over concerns its “AI mode” searches are hurting its advertising business (the second-largest daily drop in Wall Street history after Nvidia’s $593 billion rout in January 2025). Google and Meta have long dominated digital advertising.

Amazon has followed what has become the standard playbook for platform capitalism: First, be good to users, then abuse users on behalf of business customers, then squeeze the business customers to grab almost all the value. As late as 2014, Amazon’s cost to sellers was still reasonable at about 19 percent of sales revenue. Yet, after establishing its online and logistical dominance (helped by buying rivals like Abe Books, Zappos, and Diapers.com) to hook sellers to the platform, Amazon ratcheted up fees, soon reaching 30 percent. Then there is the matter of the advertising fee to generate visibility on the site. Those who don’t pay get demoted toward the bottom on searches. Amazon’s advertising revenue was less than a billion in the early 2010s, but by 2024 it was up to $56.2 billion. On top of all this, Amazon gets to develop its own products based on the vast trove of data it gets from the site to compete with the same sellers it is squeezing.

From Uber to the airlines, this sort of stuff is ongoing. From algorithmic wages to ‘dynamic pricing’, for every digital racket that makes prices higher there is a twin to make wages lower (for a good primer, see Lindsay Owens’ new book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What it Means for Your Wallet). A recent study by Columbia Business School professor Len Sherman concluded that Uber has gotten its ‘take rate’ on U.S. rides to above 50 percent.  Analysis by Princeton’s Workers Algorithm Observatory on ride-share data from Oregon found take rates of 44 percent for Uber and 52 percent for Lyft. Until Uber’s 2019 IPO, drivers were keeping 80-85 percent of fares (of course, back then, Uber, flush with venture capital, was able to undercut and devastate yellow cab service in cities).

And digital consolidation marches on. A 2021 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation revealed that Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple collectively made over 800 acquisitions from 2010 to 2019 (that included Meta’s acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp). DoorDash just announced its $17 billion acquisition of Instacart.

Opposition to all this has been piecemeal. Congress and dozens of states have introduced legislation that would prohibit the use of personal data to set or adjust prices (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland passed laws). It needs to happen at the federal level. Even better would be a stronger resurgence of anti-monopoly organizing to break up tech monopolies.

Thinking bigger, digital sovereignty could become a real thing. Under Trump’s tariff assault and his spouting about making Canada the ‘51st state’, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carey proclaimed an ‘elbows up’ response yet, under pressure, Canada repealed the Digital Service Act that would have enacted a 3% levy on large tech companies. U.S. tech giants save billions in taxes by ‘moving’ to Ireland. Canada’s tech sector is expected to pay a combined 38% federal and provincial tax. Enacting such laws, along with the repealing of anti-circumvention laws, can allow more startups to flourish in more places. Finally, there is the possibility of a truly public cloud for tech collaboration and exchange, perhaps beginning with global healthcare (as Rikap recommends).

Ironically, it is Trump who has given much of the world the incentive. The world needs to follow through.

Joseph Grosso is a librarian and writer in New York City. He is the author of Emerald City: How Capital Transformed New York (Zer0 Books).