The Platypus Review

[ Die deutschsprachige Platypus Review ]

Latest Issue: 186

Reconciling revolution: An interview with Peter Dale Scott

On January 3, 2025, Platypus Affiliated Society member M. P. Byrne interviewed Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat, poet, and professor emeritus of English at the University of California Berkeley. His critical writings on deep politics have focused on the clandestine operations of the American state from Vietnam through the War on Terror. Scott’s books include The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War (1972), Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993), and most recently Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment (2024).

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To restore political and social life in Syria: An interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh

D.L. Jacobs

On February 2 and March 4, 2025, Platypus Affiliated Society member D. L. Jacobs interviewed Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer and dissident who participated in the Syrian Revolution and the Arab Spring. Saleh was imprisoned from 1980 to 96 for his membership in the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau). Saleh is the author of The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy (2017) and other books.

[. . .]

A Marxist critique of DSA

Anthony Teso

This essay argues that DSA’s commitment to electoralism within the Democratic Party, its reformism without a developed theory of the state, its class composition, and its ideologically diffuse “big tent” model together forms a set of contradictions that Marxist analysis reveals as structural rather than accidental.

[. . .]

Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Louis Sterrett

COPY EDITORS

Mike Bartlett
Charles Crum
Rory Hannigan
Octavio Hernandez
Thom Hutchinson
Liam Kenny
Michael McClelland
Divya Menon
Olivia Mistretta
Matthew Ramirez
Evan Rodgers
Patrick Unwin
Allen You

DESIGNERS

Mike Atkinson
Chris Mansour

WEB EDITOR

Nick Cochran

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

Gabe Gottfried

DISTRIBUTION

Erica Gamble
Diaz Mathis
Allen You

CHAPTER COORDINATOR

Ceci Chang

Editorial Statement

Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains of what was once possible.
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Submission Guidelines

Articles will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about this project to editor.platypusreview@gmail.com. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.

The Platypus Review is funded by:

Phedias Christodoulides
Dalhousie Student Union
Loyola University of Chicago
The New School
New York University
Northwestern University
The Platypus Affiliated Society
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Student Government
The University of Chicago Student Government
The University of Illinois at Chicago