ADDED 11/01/2018
FROM 10/30/2018 | GQ
BY Drew Magary
Here are two awful things in a vast timeline of awful things: Over the weekend, Brazilians elected aspiring dictator Jair Bolsonaro to be their next president. You can find plenty of explainers online as to why Bolsonaro is a monster (naturally, President Trump offered him warm congratulations on his victory), but I can go ahead and give you a […]
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ADDED 10/29/2018
FROM 10/17/2018 | Letters and Politics
BY Mitch Jeserich
A conversation with Professor of History Arthur Eckstein about how democracies and republics fell apart into chaos or despotism in the ancient western world. A history that recounts the current state of the rise of despotic demagogy in the White House. Guest: Arthur Eckstein is Distinguished Scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park. He specializes in the history of […]
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ADDED 10/29/2018
FROM 10/29/2018 | Mint Press
BY Rob Urie
With Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in Sunday’s runoff election for president of Brazil, a global resurgence of the radical right is indisputable. Mr. Bolsonaro is a particularly ugly representative of this movement, both politically repressive and culturally intolerant. The question being asked in the bourgeois press is: what psychological malady is taking hold that could […]
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ADDED 10/27/2018
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 10/21/2018
FROM 10/21/2018 | BrasilWire
BY Brian Wier
Bolsonaro’s illegal slush-fund financed social media campaign appears too sophisticated for his tiny political party to be doing on its own. On the Friday before the October 7 Brazilian presidential elections, Brasil Wire ran two articles that proved to be prophetic. In the first I warned that the integrity of the election was being compromised by presidential […]
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ADDED 10/18/2018
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
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 10/18/2018
FROM 10/18/2018 | Salon
BY Chauncey Devega
History can teach us many lessons about Donald Trump and his rise to power. As shown by his deeds, words and policies, Trump is an authoritarian and a demagogue who has, so far, been restrained by America’s weakened democratic institutions and norms. Trump has repeatedly shown contempt for America’s cosmopolitan, pluralistic multiracial democracy. He and […]
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ADDED 10/17/2018
FROM 10/17/2018 | Asia Times
BY SAWATHEY EK
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has been met recently with a wave of protests by Cambodia’s diaspora communities living abroad, urging the international community to condemn his government as fake and illegal. These relentless and coordinated protests, starting from Australia, the US, South Korea and Japan, followed the July national election that the US government […]
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ADDED 10/16/2018
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 10/12/2018
FROM 10/12/2018 | Dissident Voice
BY James Petras
The decisive electoral victory of far-right Brazilian presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro startled politicians and analysts of the traditional parties of the left and right. The possible implications for the present and near future raises a number of fundamental questions whether it represents a ‘model’ for other countries or is the result of the specific circumstances […]
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ADDED 10/10/2018
FROM 10/10/2018 | Slate
BY Henry A. Giroux
Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is not an isolated event, and in the current historical moment has dark meaning. Even in the darkest of times we have the right to some illumination. — Hannah Arendt The threads of a general political and ideological crisis run deep in American history, and with each tweet and policy decision Donald Trump pushes […]
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