Viewing Authoritarianism

ADDED 10/14/2018

IOWA NEWSPAPER SAYS GOP CONGRESSMAN SPENDS ALL HIS TIME WITH ‘NEO-NAZIS’ AND ‘FASCISTS’, ENDORSES DEMOCRATS INSTEAD

FROM 10/14/2018 | Newsweek

BY Tim Marcin

Iowa’s largest and most influential newspaper, The Des Moines Register, slammed Representative Steve King (Republican – Iowa) in a scathing editorial that went also after the GOP as a whole. The Register‘s editorial board on Saturday endorsed voting for Democrats down the line, arguing that Republicans had failed to get anything good done despite controlling both chambers […]

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ADDED 10/12/2018

Brazil’s Neo-Liberal Fascist Road to Power

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 10/12/2018

Protests Outside The White House Could Soon Be Limited & Experts Are Sounding The Alarm

FROM 10/12/2018 | Bustle

BY MADHURI SATHISH

Back in August, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would limit protesters’ right to assemble outside the White House and on the National Mall, prompting outrage from the ACLU and other civil rights groups. This rule would also allow the National Park Service to charge “event management” costs for protesting in these areas, which critics have described […]

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ADDED 10/12/2018

AN ITALIAN STREET ARTIST IS TRANSFORMING FASCIST GRAFFITI INTO FOOD

FROM 10/12/2018 | Quartz

BY Ephrat Livni

Italy’s rich history has something for everyone. The country that brought the world fine artists like Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli, and gastronomical treasures like mozzarella cheese and tortellini, is also where Benito Mussolini’s fascism was born in the early 20th century, an ultranationalism exported across Europe. Neo-fascists still thrive in Italy today, with a strong resurgence […]

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ADDED 10/12/2018

Are women the last line of defence against Brazil’s authoritarian shift?

FROM 10/06/2018 | Open Democracy

BY ANA CERNOV and INÉS M. POUSADELA

In a matter of days, 2.5 million Brazilian women had gathered on Facebook to discuss how to best present their case against Bolsonaro and how to take their action offline and organize themselves locally. In the world’s most celebrated footballing nation – where ‘the beautiful game’ is akin to religion – it’s almost no surprise […]

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ADDED 10/10/2018

Do authoritarian regimes wish to be seen as crazily vindictive?

FROM 10/10/2018 | Scroll.in

BY Girish Shahane

Assassinations carried out in foreign lands can chill dissent, offsetting their costs. There are people who cannot take a win. Khabib Nurmagomedov is one. On Saturday night, Nurmagomedov, a Dagestani-Russian mixed martial artist, dismantled the defences of his Irish opponent Conor McGregor to retain his UFC lightweight belt, and improve his record to a remarkable […]

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ADDED 10/10/2018

Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and the path to neoliberal fascism

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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ADDED 10/09/2018

The Left and Opposition Unity: How Fascism Can Be Defeated in 2019

FROM 10/09/2018 | The Wire

BY Prabhat Patnaik

The real obstacle to understanding, or even recognising, contemporary fascism is alas, the memory of the 1930s. The fact that we have fascists in power in India, at the helm of a liberal bourgeois state, is indubitable: their organisation, the RSS, to which they belong and swear by, has made no secret of its admiration […]

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ADDED 10/09/2018

How to build an authoritarian regime — and how to stop one

FROM 10/09/2018 | Big Think

BY Timothy Snyder

First, we have to understand the internet. Then we have to understand the audience. Timothy Snyder: It’s normal that when a new medium comes along, a new communications technology comes along, that this is very disorienting to our own hardware. The same thing was true when the book came along. I mean the book, as compared […]

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ADDED 10/09/2018

The black dawn of Greece: Golden Dawn on trial

FROM 10/09/2018 | Observatorio Balcani

BY Elvira Krithari

The trial against the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn is currently underway in Greece. A case that is testing the ability of the Greek society to reject the drive of intolerance and hatred grown in the shadow of the economic crisis. At the dawn of September 18th, 2013, Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-Nazi party, in line […]

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ADDED 10/07/2018

BIKERS BROADCAST SLOVAKIA’S NEW COLD WAR DIVIDE

FROM 10/07/2018 | Ozy

BY Nick Fouriezos

Atop multicolored motorcycles, nationalist Night Wolves bikers revved their engines outside the Russian embassy in Bratislava before driving 44 miles to establish their newest European base — in Dolna Krupa, a village in Slovakia, the former Eastern bloc nation that in the years since the Berlin Wall fell had mostly escaped Russia’s interference. Their muffler-marked arrival in […]

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ADDED 10/07/2018

Friendship Alone Cannot Deradicalize Fascists

FROM 10/07/2018 | Truthout

BY Elizabeth King

With the publication last week of journalist Eli Saslow’s new book, Rising Out of Hatred, which details how the son of KKK leader Don Black renounced white nationalism after becoming friends in college with Jewish students and others who questioned his views, discussions about how to deradicalize fascists are once again in the news. While stories of […]

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