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ADDED 10/27/2018

Neoliberalism and Fascism: The Stealth Connection

FROM 10/27/2018 | Common Dreams

BY William E. Connolly

Neoliberalism is not fascism. But the fact that many famous neoliberals have been moved to support fascism to protect a regime from social democracy or socialism does give one pause. Hayek, Friedman, von Mises, among others, took such a turn under duress. They also had highly expansive views of what counted as a “socialist” threat. […]

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ADDED 10/18/2018

What went wrong in eastern Europe?

FROM 10/18/2018 | Open Democracy

BY Tom Junes

A review of John Feffer’s Aftershock: A Journey into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams. On the eve of the 30th anniversary of 1989, one could be forgiven succumbing to pessimism following the news coming out of Eastern Europe. Apart from the alarmism about a resurgent and aggressive Russia, it is the “rise of illiberalism”, for instance, in […]

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ADDED 10/18/2018

Thy Will Be Done: Brasil’s Holy War

FROM 10/18/2018 | BrasilWire

BY BrasilWire

A fifty year foreign battle to combat Catholic Liberation Theology in Brazil promises rich rewards for the vested interests which initiated it, at great human cost. “Brazil is at the vanguard of the global trend of the Pentecostalization of Christianity,” as well as “the epicenter of world Christianity, with the largest Pentecostal population” says Andrew […]

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ADDED 10/16/2018

In Brasil’s Semiotic War, Truth Was The First Casualty

FROM 10/16/2018 | BrasilWire

BY Bruno De Oliveira

Fake news and its propagation via social media has created a suspension of critical thinking. We have people simply believing everything and nothing; accepting the absurd whilst disregarding factual information as fake news. In Brazil, this wave of fake news is creating a state of collective paranoia where ordinary people cannot distinguish between socio-economic and […]

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ADDED 10/02/2018

I JUST VISITED LULA, THE WORLD’S MOST PROMINENT POLITICAL PRISONER. A “SOFT COUP” IN BRAZIL’S ELECTION WILL HAVE GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES.

FROM 10/02/2018 | The Intercept

BY Noam Chomsky

PRISONS ARE REMINISCENT of Tolstoy’s famous observation about unhappy families: Each “is unhappy in its own way,” though there are some common features — for prisons, the grim and stifling recognition that someone else has total authority over your life. My wife Valeria and I have just visited a prison to see arguably the most prominent […]

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ADDED 09/14/2018

Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists

FROM 09/13/2018 | The Guardian

BY Yanis Varoufakis

Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a globally unifying rightwing – a Nationalist International – that sprang out of the cesspool of financialised capitalism. Whether it will also be remembered for a successful humanist challenge to this menace depends on the willingness of progressives in the United States, the European Union, […]

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ADDED 08/23/2018

False Concepts of Liberty

FROM 08/23/2018 | New Republic

BY WIN MCCORMACK

A few years ago, at a panel discussion I attended among labor leaders about the condition of unionism in America, one of the speakers launched into a diatribe against the Koch brothers and their funding of anti-union “right to work” laws. The brothers’ arguments in favor of them, he said, were predicated on a phony […]

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ADDED 08/22/2018

Violent Fascism in Nicaragua and Venezuela: Interview with Fernando Bossi

FROM 08/22/2018 | Venezuelanalysis

BY Fernando Bossi and Cira Pascual Marquina

Political analyst and advisor to President Chavez, Fernando Bossi, looks at the striking parallels between the reactionary offensives in two Latin American countries. Argentinian internationalist Fernando Bossi has a lifelong commitment to Latin American unification that has expressed itself in diverse educational and political projects. Among these were the People’s Amphictyonic Congresses that took place […]

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ADDED 08/15/2018

Towards a Progressive Political Economy in the Aftermath of Neoliberalism’s “Creative Destruction”

FROM 08/12/2018 | Global Policy

BY C.J. Polychroniou

The article argues that, after 45 years of ‘neoliberal destruction’, the time is ripe for moving forward with the adoption of a new set of progressive economic policies (beyond those usually associated with classical Keynesianism) that will reshape advanced societies and the global economy on the whole by bringing back the social state, doing away […]

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ADDED 08/13/2018

Observer Boris Johnson ‘Morally empty’ Johnson is courting fascism, says peer as Tory crisis mounts

FROM 08/12/2018 | The Guardian

BY Mark Townsend and Toby Helm

Ex-Cameron aide and Muslim leaders join condemnation over the former foreign secretary’s burqa comments. A Tory peer and former aide to David Cameron accused Boris Johnson of “moral emptiness”, casual racism and “courting fascism” as division over the former foreign secretary’s comments about Muslim women threatened to develop into a full-blown crisis for Theresa May and her […]

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ADDED 07/31/2018

Israel’s drift to authoritarianism: An illiberal ‘Jewish democracy’ embraces the populist nationalist model

FROM 07/30/2018 | Mondoweiss

BY Jamil Khader

Two important events happened towards the end of the third week of July in Israel: The ethnocratic settler-colonial state of Israel passed its new Jewish nation state law, which has been in the making for over two years now, and Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a two-day visit to Israel. Despite the international uproar over the […]

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ADDED 07/11/2018

What does a middle-class democracy look like when it comes apart?

FROM 07/11/2018 | Letters and Politics - KPFA

BY Mitch Jeserich

Today, Mitch Jeserich is in conversation with Thomas Frank on US History and Politics. Guest: Thomas Frank is a historian and columnist and the author of such books as  What’s the Matter with Kansas and Listen Liberal.  His latest book is a collection of essays called Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society.

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