Working Class perspective on books, movies, video games and other art.
Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) is yet another first-person shooter fetishizing imperialist war and allowing children to be their own one-man death-squads in a virtual world. America’s youth will be tossing grenades, firing automatic weapons, slitting throats and even… Read More ›
Modern Times (1936), written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp, is widely regarded as a classic film which, although mostly silent and black-and-white, effortlessly entertains contemporary audiences. Plot summary (Contains Spoilers) The film begins with Chaplin’s well-known character… Read More ›
Left-wing music has been a cornerstone of the American socialist movement throughout its entire history. Stemming from the early 1900s to the present day, a good number of musicians and bands have expounded socialism through their lyrics and song content…. Read More ›
Triumph of the Will is a brilliant work of propaganda demonstrating how cultural hegemony can be used by those with power to suppress dissent and obscure material realities with artificial, idealized perceptions. If one were to watch this with the… Read More ›
Art can be understood as how we express ourselves, translating experiences, desires, emotions, and knowledge into concrete images, sounds, and so forth. All humans are artists and we all have a hint of creative spark within us. Marx noted that… Read More ›
Basic Plot Under The Bombs follows the story of a woman named Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) who returns to the south of Lebanon after the 33-day Israeli bombing campaign in search of her son, who has gone missing along with… Read More ›
The capitalist system, by its very construction, requires systems of stratification to perpetuate itself. These systems serve many functions, but chief among them is as a means of dividing workers against one another. To distract and befuddle the endeavors of… Read More ›
Severe Clear, or This is War, is a documentary made from footage shot by First Lieutenant Mike Scotti on his own personal camera as he is deployed in Iraq as part of the invasion force sent in to capture the… Read More ›
A Glimpse at the Perpetrators of Genocide When we think about the various atrocities of history, something in our nature wants us to think of the perpetrators as being different from normal people. We envision brutes and sadists; stereotypical villains… Read More ›
In light of the rash of suicides by young LGBT individuals as the result of homophobic violence and bullying, the APL recommends this Public Service Announcement by actor George Takei. http://www.thetrevorproject.org/ http://www.itgetsbetterproject.com/
Slog through the murky depths of scandal, controversy, and murder in Jeremy Scahill’s chilling account of Blackwater Worldwide’s ascension to prominence as the world’s most powerful private military company (PMC). Jeremy Scahill earns his keep as an accomplished investigative journalist… Read More ›
In modern Western politics, especially American politics, it has become cliche to attack so-called “gangsta rap” in public. Indeed, like Clinton before him, Barack Obama also had to publicly attack a rapper to please the sensibilities of white America. Naturally,… Read More ›
The Theory of “Shock Therapy” Every once in a while, a book comes along that sets the liberals on fire. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is one such book. This volume has been hawked… Read More ›
The Nationalist’s Dilemma The nationalist has always found himself in a difficult quandary. Virtually all nationalist mythology tells of some better time in the nation’s history. It speaks of a time when people were patriotic, respectful of their elders and fellow… Read More ›
When one removes the rose-colored glasses of American consumerist ideology, that anti-culture which assures us that happiness is only “one purchase away,” the world we see is one plagued by stratification. We live in a world of billionaires and starving… Read More ›
The Red Phoenix 