Jacobin #61 Spring 2026

Features

Lily Sánchez
When the Pencil Was the Sword

When revolutionary Cuba asked its youth to eliminate illiteracy, 100,000 answered the call, reshaping their country and themselves in the process.

Megan Erickson
The Therapist Will Raise You Now

Therapeutic culture risks raising a generation taught to look inward while the sources of their distress lie outside themselves.

Lauren Fadiman
The Making of the Teenager

The teenager we know today came of age in the postwar era — but she owes her existence to the New Deal.

Sam Kriss
Politics After Literacy

Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type.

Front Matters
The Soapbox
Listen to Your Elders
The Internet Speaks
Who’s Your Second International Crush?
Party Lines

Minali Aggarwal, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and Elizabeth Torres-Griefer
Why the Left Misreads Gen Z — and What the Right Sees Clearly
Dossier
Struggle Session

Meagan Day
Can the Left Get the Last Laugh?

Hasan Piker interviewed by Alex N. Press
Stream of Consciousness-Raising

Cultural Capital
Reading Materiel

Alanna Schubach
How Adults Took Over YA
What’s on a Leftist Teenager’s Bookshelf?
Red Channels

Eileen Jones
The View From the Arena
Anime Pirates in Opposition
Bass & Superstructure

Kneecap interviewed by Alexander Kloss
“They Won’t Stop Us From Speaking Out”
The Devil’s Music
Ways of Seeing

Natasha Lasky
The Minecraft Marxists
Kid-Free Zones
Beyond a Boundary
Abolish Travel Teams
Fun and Games?

The International
Americas

Kurt Hackbarth
Generation Z in Name Only
A War for Oil?
Europe

Adam Baltner
Don’t Just Give 16-Year-Olds the Vote — Give Them Something to Vote For
MENA

E. A. Halevi
Israel’s Young Settler Vanguard
Growing Up in Israeli Prison
Africa

Sungu Oyoo interviewed by William Shoki
Kenya’s Youth Protesters Are Ready to Govern
Asia

Sushovan Dhar
The Inheritors of an Unfinished Revolution
The Price of Love

The Tumbrel
Girondins

Nicholas Liu
Wolves in Youth’s Clothing
Zohrannabes
Is Zionism Political Poison?
On Newness, the Nautilus, and the Democratic Need for a Savior
Thermidor

Seth Kershner and Scott Harding
JROTC Is Preying on Poor Students
High School Hunting Grounds
On Terrorists, Wine Moms, and Life on the Fringes
Versailles

Ryan Zickgraf
Behind MrBeast’s Cold, Dead Eyes
Misery Index
On Libertarianism, Luddites, and the Decline of Western Civilization
The Worst Estate

Amber A’Lee Frost
A Teen Magazine for Grown-Ups
Yesterday’s News

Leftovers
The Vulgar Empiricist

Jordan Buchman
The Gen Z Crack-Up?

Martin Bernstein
Unequal Inheritances
The Dustbin

Steve Early
When Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam
Popular Front

Aron Ali-McClory
The Student Intifada

Trey Cook and Nick French
ICE vs. High Schoolers

Shayna Elliot and Griffin Mahon
Jobs You Should Salt
Working Overtime
Means & Ends
No Cap, the Line Struggle Is Real
Horoscopes