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ADDED 12/29/2018

Facebook is not equipped to stop the spread of authoritarianism

FROM 12/24/2018 | TechCrunch

BY Yael Grauer

After the driver of a speeding bus ran over and killed two college students in Dhaka in July, student protesters took to the streets. They forced the ordinarily disorganized local traffic to drive in strict lanes and stopped vehicles to inspect license and registration papers. They even halted the vehicle of the chief of Bangladesh Police Bureau of Investigation and found that […]

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ADDED 12/29/2018

Indonesia’s president turns tough

FROM 12/24/2018 | UCA News

BY KEITH LOVEARD

Joko Widodo was welcomed as a fresh breeze when he stood for election as president of Indonesia in 2014. A stranger to the elites that had long dominated politics, he became a media darling by talking to ordinary people in the street, in what quickly became known as blusukan, roaming around.Now, facing re-election next April, questions are […]

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ADDED 12/19/2018

New Orleans’ Transgender Community and the Fight Against Fascism

FROM 12/18/2018 | Big Easy Magazine

BY Michael David Raso

“I don’t have any faith in the whites in power responding in the right way … they’ll treat us like they did our Japanese brothers and sisters in World War II. They’ll throw us into concentration camps. The Wallaces and the Birchites will take over. The sick people and the fascists will be strengthened. They’ll […]

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ADDED 12/19/2018

THE UNDERLYING PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL RADICALISM

FROM  | Pacific Standard

BY TOM JACOBS

New research finds radicals are less able to recognize when they’re wrong, even in a task having nothing to do with politics. Radicalization is surely one of the scariest words of the 21st century. After the 9/11 attacks, much effort was devoted to discovering how terrorist organizations convince people to die for their religion. More recently, angry demands […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

How The US Left Failed Brasil

FROM 12/10/2018 | Brasilwire

BY Brian Mier, Sean T. Mitchell, and Bryan Pitts

On November 29, 2018, the socialist magazine and news site Jacobin co-sponsored a public interview with Fernando Haddad, the 2018 presidential candidate of Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT). The former São Paulo mayor and federal education minister was introduced at Manhattan’s People’s Forum by Jacobin’s founding editor, Bhaskar Sunkara. To a packed house, Sunkara praised Haddad and the governments he […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

The Heresy of White Christianity

FROM 12/10/2018 | Truthdig

BY Chris Hedges

There are, as Cornel West has pointed out, only two African-Americans who rose from dirt-poor poverty to the highest levels of American intellectual life—the writer Richard Wright and the radical theologian James H. Cone. Cone, who died in April, grew up in segregated Bearden, Ark., the impoverished son of a woodcutter who had only a sixth-grade education. With […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

Turning tyranny into a client: How McKinsey is helping the rise of authoritarian regimes like China & Russia

FROM 12/17/2018 | Economic Times

BY Walt Bogdanich

This year’s McKinsey & Co. retreat in China was one to remember. Hundreds of the company’s consultants frolicked in the desert, riding camels over sand dunes and mingling in tents linked by red carpets. Meetings took place in a cavernous banquet hall that resembled a sultan’s ornate court, with a sign overhead to capture the […]

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ADDED 12/17/2018

Heated protests against overtime, court reform

FROM  | Budapest Business Journal

BY BBJ

Anti-government protesters took to the streets of Budapest after Wednesdayʼs uproarious parliamentary session, protesting the passing of new laws governing overtime and the establishment of administrative courts, with more demonstrations planned today, according to multiple reports. Demonstrations started almost immediately after the completion of voting on the laws. Initially a few hundred protesters closed down Margaret […]

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ADDED 12/12/2018

An estimated 15,000 have marched to counter a far right rally in London

FROM 12/09/2018 | DAZED

BY Thom Waite

Counter-protesters have gathered today to oppose a Tommy Robinson-led, Brexit-based Ukip march in London. Groups opposing the far right, such as Unite Against Fascism and Momentum, are leading the opposition march with backing from figures such as Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell. In a Twitter video, political commentator Owen Jones pointed out that the number of counter-protesters […]

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ADDED 12/12/2018

Fascists Find Fertile Recruitment Ground in Anti-Choice Movement

FROM 12/11/2018 | Rewire.News

BY Elizabeth King & Erin Corbett

Some anti-choice activists know they’re attracting neo-Nazis and white supremacists, brushing off the phenomenon as a left-wing conspiracy to smear abortion rights foes. Those on the far right who have long discussed and acted upon their desire to dominate women’s sexual and reproductive rights are pushing that agenda into the political mainstream with help from […]

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ADDED 12/12/2018

Our Enemy Is Still Fascism: Understanding Fascist Politics & How Best To Confront Its Growing Power

FROM 12/11/2018 | The Aerogram

BY Sudip Bhattacharya

By the 1920s, fascism’s rise garnered a wide range of reactions from political and economic elites. Business leaders viewed Benito Mussolini’s fascism in Italy as necessary for “preserving” economic growth. Others, including some socialists, believed fascism would simply fade away. Clara Zetkin, the founder of International Women’s Day, was a veteran German revolutionary socialist by the […]

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ADDED 11/30/2018

Neoliberalism’s Dark Path to Fascism

FROM 11/26/2018 | Truthdig

BY Chris Hedges

Neoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite—eight families now hold as much wealth as 50 percent of […]

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