Viewing Authoritarianism

ADDED 03/28/2018

AUTHORITARIANISM: THE TERRIFYING TRAIT THAT TRUMP TRIGGERS

FROM 03/26/2018 | Pacific Standard

BY Tom Jacobs

Can It Happen Here?, a new collection of essays that ask whether America is susceptible to creeping authoritarianism, includes a startling assertion by psychologists Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt. “Western liberal democracies,” they write, “have now exceeded many people’s capacity to tolerate them.” Their analysis of a survey conducted at the end of 2016 found “about a third of white responders across […]

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ADDED 03/24/2018

Punks are not dead in Indonesia, they’ve turned to Islam

FROM 03/23/2018 | The Conversation

BY The Conversation

The punk movement is notable for its anti-establishment stance and distinct music and fashion style. Starting in the 1970s in the UK and US, the subculture became global and took different forms in each local setting. In Indonesia, punk bands started to emerge in the 1990s. They were central in nurturing leftist activism during the […]

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ADDED 03/23/2018

The Democratic Emergency

FROM 03/22/2018 | American Prospect

BY Paul Starr

This article will appear in the Spring 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.  “It is now clear that the most frightening threats to ordinary politics in the United States are empty or easily contained. … The sky is not falling and no lights are flashing red.” So wrote two distinguished historians, Samuel Moyn and David Priestland, in […]

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ADDED 03/22/2018

A Private Mercenary Firm Is Making Millions Off Tragedy in Houston, Puerto Rico and Standing Rock

FROM 03/20/2018 | AlterNet

BY Mehreen Kasana

The practice of governments and security firms conducting wide-scale exploitation of major disasters, natural and otherwise, is nothing new. Last week, the Intercept reported on TigerSwan, a mercenary security firm that follows a similar disaster-capitalist model and has attacked the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement since 2016, at least. But that’s not all: TigerSwan has also been preying […]

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ADDED 03/22/2018

Why the Center Left Keeps Losing Elections in Europe

FROM 03/20/2018 | Foreign Policy in Focus

BY Conn Hallinan

More than a quarter of a century ago, much of the European center-left made a course change, edging away from its working class base, accommodating itself to the globalization of capital, and handing over the post-World War II social contract to private industry. Whether it was the “New Labor” of Tony Blair in Britain or Gerhard […]

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ADDED 03/16/2018

Our authoritarian government has turned up the heat. But we can still fight back

FROM  | The Guardian - Australia

BY Scott Ludlam

Australia’s accelerating militarisation and erosion of civil liberties must be resisted. There’s an old aphorism about the best way to boil a frog which holds that if that’s your thing, you sicko, you should turn the temperature up very, very slowly. Shock the frog with a sharp enough temperature increase and she’ll jump right out […]

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ADDED 03/16/2018

Let’s Get Real About Russiagate

FROM 03/08/2018 | The Nation

BY Katha Pollitt

Some on the left are still waving away the inconvenient facts that don’t fit with their politics. When will we really know what happened with Russia and the 2016 election? The story lines proliferate so quickly that it’s a full-time job following them all. Quick: How did the Democratic memo refute the Nunes memo? Identify: […]

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ADDED 03/16/2018

Authoritarian ICO: How Venezuela’s Government Is Abusing the Blockchain

FROM 03/14/2018 | Medium

BY Robert Greenfield IV

Maduro’s new Petro token is consolidating power and crowdfunding oppression. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” ― Simone Weil Last year, token sales raised approximately $5.6 billion. The crypto-method of crowdfunding has opened the floodgates to decentralized funding, which […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Democracy stops Netanyahu using Erdoğan tactics to dodge graft probe

FROM  | Ahval News

BY Michael Koplow

As I previously wrote, there are many similarities between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But despite these shared attributes and the fact that they have both dealt with ongoing corruption charges and investigations, Israel’s future will not look like Turkey’s present irrespective of whether or not Netanyahu is able to […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Why Isn’t Trump President for Life Yet?

FROM 03/08/2018 | Slate

BY YASCHA MOUNK

He is following the same playbook as other authoritarian populists around the world. He’s just bad at it—so far. A week after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead and 14 injured, Donald Trump publicly scolded members of his own party: “They have great power over you […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Hungary by now is no longer a democracy, says Rutgers’ R. Daniel Kelemen

FROM 03/08/2018 | Budapest Beacon

BY Staff

“If you don’t have a free and pluralistic press that is conveying messages on different sides of issues and which is actively critical of the government and its policies, then democracy starts to be meaningless. If people are just fed a steady diet of pro-government propaganda by media sources either controlled by the government or […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Filipino chief justice asks people to fight authoritarianism

FROM  | ABC News

BY Jim Gomez, Associated Press

The Philippines‘ embattled Supreme Court chief justice urged Filipinos on Wednesday to stand up against authoritarianism and threats to human rights, in an indirect criticism of the country’s volatile leader, who has long called for her removal. Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is facing two ouster attempts, including by President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, whose legal counsel asked […]

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