Bylines

Benjamin Balthaser

Joseph McCarthy.

The Red Scare Is American Past and Present

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here.
Mike Gold fading into a field of stars of David.

On the Decades-Long Erasure of Jewish Working-Class Anti-Zionism

Mike Gold, Alexander Bittelman, and the paradoxes of left-wing Zionism.
The Communist National Convention at its first session on June 24, 1936, at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City.

The Long Anti-Zionist History of the American Jewish Left

Thousands of left-wing American Jews have protested Israel. They are taking part in a tradition of anti-Zionist Jewish radicalism.
Jewish activists hold Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand an end to Israel's war on Gaza.

The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity

Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations are part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.
CPUSA members demonstrate in Union Square on May Day, ca. 1930s.

Maurice Isserman’s Red Scare

A new history of the CPUSA reads like a Cold War throwback.
W.E.B. Du Bois.

Racial Violence in Black and White

From lynching photos to Black Lives Matter – what does it mean to look at images of African Americans being murdered?