Unpopular Front

Articles

Does Trumpism Have A Future?

3 days ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

On his Substack, has a two-parter on “Trump’s futurism,” dealing with whether or not Trump’s movement contains a positive vision of the future.
Time Off

3 weeks ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

Starting later today and until May 7th, Unpopular Front will be on vacation! I often make these announcements and then end up writing newsletters anyway, but this time I’d really like to not work — at all. I’ve taken basically no time off since the release of my book last year. Although this vacation was planned for a while, it’s also timely since I’m not exactly enjoying my job at the moment. As I wrote a few weeks ago on Twitter, it’s both too awful and too easy.
Kautsky's Fable

3 weeks ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

Karl Kautsky’s “Ultra-Imperialism” may be the worst-timed article ever written. In the September 1914 issue of his party’s theoretical journal Die Neue Zeit, the German Social Democratic Party’s chief theorist—“the Pope of Marxism”—argued that a massive war was not the necessary outcome of competition between the great powers.
Trump's Art of the Book; Rethinking Sam Francis; Class Dealignment?; Another Visit from the Bond Squad

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. If you are not yet a paid subscriber but regularly read, enjoy, or share Unpopular Front, I ask you to consider signing up: This newsletter is totally reader-supported and represents my primary source of income. At 5 dollars a month, it’s less than most things at Starbucks. And it’s still less than the “recession special” at Gray’s Papaya — $7.50 for two hot dogs and a drink.
Apocalypse Delayed?

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz |Max Read

Three months ago, speaking to Quinn Slobodian and , I proposed that the market might be the only remaining form of rationality and therefore the only thing that we might be relying on to temper Trumpian madness. Now, as a person whose scattered thoughts on economics are shaped by the traditions of Keynes and Marx, this is not a particularly hopeful idea. I don’t happen to think the rationality of the market is very rational at all.
Globalism? In this economy?

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

It’s long been my contention that you can understand Trumpism as the synthesis of two ideological currents, which were long dormant and marginal in the American political scene, and then came roaring to prominence. One is radical libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism, articulated most fully in the thought of Murray Rothbard, and the other is national populism, represented by the writings of Samuel T. Francis.
Le Pen goes down; "Beggar-thy-Neighbor;" the end of Exorbitant Privilege; Pro-Tariff industry, Wladimir S. Woytinsky

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. A huge piece of news that got obliterated in the tariff apocalypse: the conviction of French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. I refer you as always to Arthur Goldhammer’s essential commentary: The RN, taking a leaf from Trump’s playbook, will of course attack the “weaponization” of the judicial system.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Free Trader

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

One of our country’s worst commentators on politics, Batya Ungar-Sargon, recently compared Trump to a “21st century FDR” since he is supposedly trying to help out the working class. This is, of course, totally absurd. I cannot say if Trump is the anti-Christ, but I can say with some certainty that he is the anti-FDR.
No Person Shall Be Deprived...

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

On Monday, the Trump administration admitted that it had deported a Maryland man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error” to El Salvador where he was thrown in the nightmarish CECOT prison. In 2019, Abrego Garcia received protected legal status from an immigration judge who determined he could be tortured if he was returned to his home country.
Political Romanticism; the Reciprocal Siege; "Constitutional Collapse;" Fear as a political factor; Returning to the Conformist

1 month ago | unpopularfront.news | John Ganz

This is a weekly feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. Hope you enjoy! There’s been a lot of discourse about “neo-romanticism” that I’m keen to comment on because the history of romanticism is a particular favorite of mine, but I’m going to try to give that more of an essay treatment in the coming weeks.