President Donald Trump reacts to a question from a reporter after announcing his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement during a statement at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 8, 2018. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
Katha Pollitt is not happy with leftists’ calling Trump a “fascist”—maybe there’s a better term for his attacks on democracy, which have a lot in common with authoritarian leaders in Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, Poland, and other places. The foundation for all of them: austerity, pushed by the big banks and right-wing parties, which creates the economic anxiety that fuels racism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Plus: Left politics can win all over the country, not just in New York City and Chicago and LA—that’s what Mike Lux says, he’s a longtime strategist for the progressive movement and Democratic candidates.
Also: Jonathan Gold, who died on July 21, was the first food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He wrote, not about high-end restaurants, but about mom-and-pop places in immigrant neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, talks about the significance of Gold’s writing about immigrants and their food in the Age of Trump.
Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.
Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.