Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest announces itself dramatically, with a blank screen and two minutes of foreboding music by Mica Levi heralding something ominous and important. The film, loosely based on the Martin Amis novel of the same name, centres around the professional and family life of Rudolf Höss, […]
Over the years, the Socialist Voice has had some great articles advocating for the Irish language, seen from an anti-capitalist lens which are definitely worth re-reading. I didn’t go to school in Ireland so I don’t have any experience with learning Irish in that setting, but I did grow up […]
From its outset, International Women’s Day was characterised by the fight for peace, against militarism and war. At the Second International Conference of Socialist Women at Copenhagen in 1910, resolutions concerning the “maintenance of peace” and “to combat internationally militarism and secure peace” were tabled in response to the growing […]
Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song winning the 2023 Booker Prize signifies a notable awareness regarding the dismantling of democracy in the Western world. It underscores the realisation that the erosion of democratic principles is a pressing concern that transcends borders and could impact any country. Microbiologist Eilish Stack is married […]
Illustrated with an interesting and refreshing selection of photographs, posters, paintings and newspaper clippings, John Ellison’s new book “World War Two A People’s War?” puts a long and complex story of World War Two into a brief and accessible narrative. Coming from the British perspective on the war and dominantly […]
Má fhaighimse bás, ní mór duitse fanacht beo chun mo scéalsa a insint mo chuid giuirléidí a dhíol ruainne éadaigh a cheannach agus cúpla téad, (bíodh sé bán ags ruball fada air) chun go mbeadh radharc ag páiste, áit éigin i nGaza agus é ag stánadh ar neamh ag feitheamh […]
If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in […]
1 Often and copiously honour has been doneTo Comrade Lenin. There are busts and statues. Cities are called after him, and children. Speeches are made in many languagesThere are meetings and demonstrationsFrom Shanghai to Chicago in Lenin’s honour. But this is how he was honoured byThe carpet weavers of Kuyan-BulakA […]
Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) speaks to us again today with great intensity. Why has this painting become so indelibly engraved in the collective memory of the human community? The figure not only hears the scream, he is also screaming in despair. His hands cover the ears to protect them […]
A bilingual poem inspired by Nie Wieder Krieg (Never Again War) by Karl Wiener Nie Wieder Krieg (c. 1928) UKRAINE wooden crosses over gravesbeginning to look like daggerssunk with a squelch into the earthto quieten the undeadbut undead and quivering they are notthey are truly deadempire masters of the eastempire […]
“In the dark timesWill there also be singing?Yes, there will also be singing.About the dark times”—Bertolt BrechtThe night is darkI see light across the skyIt is not a light of hopeIt is not the sign of dawnThe heat it radiates does not give warmthIt scorches you to ashesThe place I […]
■ Paul O’Brien, Seán O’Casey: Political Activist and Writer, Cork University Press, 2023, €39. Paul O’Brien has published a political biography of Seán O’Casey, looking at the dramatist from a broadly left-wing viewpoint. The book is accessibly written and sheds light on details of working-class Dublin and international history. O’Brien’s […]
The painter of Renaissance humanism Hans Holbein the Younger, born in Augsburg in the winter of 1497/98, was one of the foremost German painters of Renaissance humanism. Augsburg was the seat of the Fugger family, trading magnates and bankers. Jakob Fugger “the Rich,” elevated to the nobility of the Holy […]
It is nearly twenty years since the publication of Socialism Betrayed by Keeran and Kenny.¹ They offered an interpretation of the USSR’s collapse that was influential within the communist movement and the CPI. The book highlighted the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as derived from the […]
After a number of years off the radar, out of vogue, the bogeyman of online piracy is back on billboards and your television screens. Launched in October, BeStreamWise is the latest awareness campaign to deter people from using illegal internet protocol television (IPTV), also known as dodgy boxes, firesticks, and […]
Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song has deservedly been short-listed for this year’s Booker Literary Award. The author spins a chillingly realistic tale of an Ireland governed by a fascistic regime in the throes of an armed conflict with its local opponents. The regime’s definition of public order is maintained by […]