12 Facts About Bhaskar Sunkara

Bhaskar Sunkara was born on June 1989 and is an American political writer.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of The Nation, and publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and London's Tribune.

Bhaskar Sunkara is a former vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality as well as a columnist for The Guardian US.

Bhaskar Sunkara's father was a migrant from Andhra Pradesh while his mother's family had migrated to the island in the 19th century as indentured labourers from Punjab and Bihar.

Bhaskar Sunkara credited his politicization to his reading as a teenager: from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm he developed an interest in Leon Trotsky, reading his autobiography and Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography, before progressing to the New Left, including thinkers such as Lucio Magri, Ralph Miliband, Perry Anderson and the journal New Left Review.

Bhaskar Sunkara joined the Democratic Socialists of America at the age of 17, becoming editor of the DSA youth section's blog The Activist.

Bhaskar Sunkara went on to study history at George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he conceived the idea of Jacobin: after his sophomore year, he missed two semesters due to illness during which time he read Marxist works.

Bhaskar Sunkara described Jacobin as a radical publication, "largely the product of a younger generation not quite as tied to the Cold War paradigms that sustained the old leftist intellectual milieus like Dissent or New Politics".

Bhaskar Sunkara writes for Vice magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets.

Bhaskar Sunkara has appeared on the PBS Tavis Smiley program, MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes, and the FX show Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell.

In June 2023, Bhaskar Sunkara led The Nation's relaunch of Bookforum magazine.

In 2020, Bhaskar Sunkara was named to Fortune magazine's "40 Under 40" list under the "Government and Politics" category.