Mike Marqusee

From the archives: A victim of America—Muhammad Ali and the war against terrorism
When Hollywood bosses were asked by the Bush administration to do their bit in the 'war on terrorism', they signed up eagerly – and they came up with the notion of getting much-loved former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali to promote US policy. Mike Marqusee tells the story (first published March 2002)

William Frend: A radical to remember
Frend's founding texts of the British anti-war movement deserve to be better-known, writes Mike Marqusee – and that was just the beginning of his work

Macmillan Cancer Support gets it wrong, big-time
The charity tries not to be 'political' – but it is embracing a highly ideological privatisation initiative, writes Mike Marqusee

Anyone but Ingerland?
From the archives: Mark Perryman puts the case for flying the St George cross at the World Cup, while Mike Marqusee explains why he'll be rooting for any other country to win it (Published in issue 142, June 2006)

The price of experience
The personal is political in this extract from Mike Marqusee's new book of writings on living with cancer

Fifty years ago, Cassius Clay ‘shook up the world’ by winning the heavyweight title – and embracing the Nation of Islam
Mike Marqusee remembers the victory of the underdog who became Muhammad Ali – and how it wasn't just sport's hierarchies that were rocked by it

Conscience little stirred
It took many decades and much bitter argument before the British left embraced the Palestinian cause, writes Mike Marqusee

‘If not now, when?’ On BDS and ‘singling out’ Israel…
It's not possible to campaign against any injustice anywhere without 'singling it out', argues Mike Marqusee

Held hostage by Big Pharma: a personal experience
Mike Marqusee looks at how drug firms can make huge profits from their state-enforced monopoly on an essential good

A party to dream of
When the left alternative goes unvoiced, the real choices unposed, democracy is drained of content, writes Mike Marqusee. That's why we need a new party of the left

World’s longest running industrial dispute sets example for us all
A group of council workers in South Africa have been fighting for 19 years, writes Mike Marqusee

Us and them: how the far right feed off the racism of the mainstream
Contrary to right-wing myth, Britain’s imperial past goes largely unexamined, so its assumptions remain active in forming our views, writes Mike Marqusee

NHS financial squeeze is a contrived crisis
Mike Marqusee says the problems at Barts health trust are caused by attempts to make impossible levels of cuts – while handing billions to private firms

‘An hereditary crown! A transmissible throne! What a notion!’
Mike Marqusee notes Thomas Paine’s views on the ‘master-fraud’ of monarchy

We could have won!
Mike Marqusee looks back at the rate-capping revolt of the 1980s, and how close it came to victory

The People’s Assembly – an absentee contribution
Mike Marqusee looks at the choices and debates this Saturday's People's Assembly will face

Brushing history against the grain
We can’t decipher the present without examining its foundations in the battles of the past, writes Mike Marqusee

Thinking beyond boundaries
Mike Marqusee on the importance of C L R James' Beyond a Boundary - beyond cricket

Dare to fail, dare to win
Only by accepting that we may fail will we take the risks that may lead to a better world, argues Mike Marqusee

The second revolution: 1792
The year 1792 saw demands for social democracy and equality create a revolutionary impulse felt far beyond France, writes Mike Marqusee

Politics, our missing link
A movement without an electoral intervention is doomed to lose out, argues Mike Marqusee

A critical perspective on the Olympic enterprise
Mike Marqusee argues that the ceaseless injunction to consume, cheer and celebrate the Olympics has made the enjoyment of competitive sport something it is not and never should be – mandatory

Olympics: The Games turned upside down
The famous clenched-fists image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting against black oppression at the 1968 Olympics is worth revisiting as London 2012 presents us with a regime of licensed private dictatorship, writes Mike Marqusee

Beyond church and state
‘Religion’ and ‘secularism’ are not mutually exclusive categories, writes Mike Marqusee. Secularists need to focus more on the shared, public realm that has been eviscerated by neoliberalism

Broader horizons
Mike Marqusee asks: are the emerging forms of resistance up to the challenge?

Streets of the imagination
At the front of the crowd in the ‘Gordon riots’ of 1780, William Blake would have seen much that he recognised in the events of this summer, writes Mike Marqusee

This is what Swazi democracy looks like
Protest is escalating in Africa's last absolute monarchy reports Mike Marqusee

The bedrock of autonomy
A life beyond illness rests on a delicate and complex web, writes Mike Marqusee

Let’s talk utopia
It’s utopian thinking, not grim pragmatism, that best informs and inspires the struggle for a better society, argues Mike Marqusee

Palestine’s wandering poet
Mike Marqusee on Mahmoud Darwish, the poet of the Palestinian people