Viewing Democracy

ADDED 01/31/2019

Global alt-right exploiting SA’s divisions and history

FROM 01/28/2019 | Daily Maverick

BY Marianne Thamm

A steady stream of transnational right-wing populists and nationalists has trekked to South Africa in recent years hoping to leverage the country’s fraught racial history for their own global aims. They have found local friends who appear willing to allow these grifters to exploit South Africa’s past and its current high rate of crime and […]

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ADDED 01/28/2019

Netanyahu Forms Alliances with Far-Right Authoritarian Leaders

FROM 01/26/2019 | Real News Network

BY Marc Steiner

Shir Hever says Netanyahu is abusing his image as a protector of the Jewish people, and cuts deals with far-right and anti-Semitic heads of state, absolving them of their racism towards Jews in exchange for their superficial support for the State of Israel. All this, to win the upcoming Israeli elections. MARC STEINER: Welcome to The […]

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ADDED 01/24/2019

EU Leadership Poised To Cut Funds For ‘Illiberal’ Member States As Election Fight Heats Up

FROM 01/22/2019 | Urdu Point

BY Fahad Shabbir

The European Parliament approved last week the European Commission’s idea to make the bloc’s funding conditional on respect for the union’s values, fueling the EU-wide tensions running high ahead of the European parliament election. The commission’s plan was given a go-ahead by the European Parliament in a 397-158 vote on Thursday. The parliament, however, added a safety net to prevent end-users of funds such […]

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ADDED 01/23/2019

Confronting the Culture of Death

FROM 01/21/2019 | Truthdig

BY Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges, an ordained Presbyterian minister, gave this sermon Jan. 20 at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada. The issue before us is death. Not only our individual death, which is more imminent for some of us this morning than others, but our collective death. We have begun the sixth great mass extinction, […]

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ADDED 01/23/2019

Blackshirt bedroom fascist plots to infiltrate Scottish local councils

FROM 01/19/2019 | Daily Record

BY Billy Briggs

Meet Scotland’s self-styled heir to bygone Blackshirt Oswald Mosley. Gary Raikes loves dressing up in the style of the 30s leader of the British Union of Fascists. And he’s a proper comedy turn as he belts out right-wing rhetoric from an amateurish podium set against a grubby background of neo-Nazi flags. Pathetic Raikes’s address is […]

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ADDED 01/23/2019

Holocaust survivors are right: Study history to counter the rise of fascism

FROM 01/19/2019 | CBC News

BY Matt Henderson

In the past few weeks, an important discussion has surfaced in our community, prompted by survivors of the Holocaust. This conversation asks us to contemplate the significance of our memory of the shared human experience. Regine Frankel, who hid from Nazis as a young girl in France and survived, has asked us all to think […]

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ADDED 01/17/2019

The self is capital: Seeing life within, and beyond, the neoliberal frame.

FROM 03/10/2018 | This is Hell!

BY Julie Wilson

People acquiesce to neoliberalism, but they’re completely disaffected from it. They don’t like it, they’re disciplined into it by debt, and by the norms of competition and the kind of social Darwinism that it promotes – but at the same time, that disaffective consent is a tenuous thing to build a society on. So the […]

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ADDED 01/14/2019

The verdict is in: Aung San Suu Kyi is an authoritarian

FROM 01/11/2019 | Washington Post

BY Charles Petrie

Charles Petrie, former U.N. assistant secretary general, just returned from Myanmar, where he has been involved in the peace process since 2012, and had served as the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator from 2003 to 2007. A Myanmar court has rejected the appeal of two Reuters journalists jailed for exposing crimes committed by the country’s military against […]

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ADDED 01/14/2019

Authoritarians, THE ANGLE, and Evangelism Apps

FROM 01/13/2019 | Patheos

BY Captain Cassidy

Hi and welcome to our new series on authoritarians! Last time we met up, we explored the fear that drives people into authoritarian personalities and groups. This time, we examine the main tool authoritarians use to soothe that fear: obedience. We’ll dive into a new breed of mobile apps that take advantage of authoritarians’ need for rules […]

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ADDED 01/14/2019

Report: Nigeria’s democracy just a step above authoritarianism

FROM 01/12/2019 | Today Nigeria

BY Brendan Umoren

Nigeria’s democracy has been ranked 108 out of the 167-country-and-colony in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index. The country, which is Africa’s biggest democracy, has a slight improvement as it moved upward from 109 it was ranked in 2017 and 2016. The country was also ranked 108 in 2015. Nigeria was listed among 39 countries […]

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ADDED 01/14/2019

‘America First’ and the Origin of the Modern Jewish Conspiracy

FROM 01/09/2019 | Religion Dispatches

BY Eric C. Miller

Historian Paul Hanebrink discusses the origin and uses of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth as a grand conspiracy that inspired the Holocaust and how crucial parts of it survived under the umbrella of “Judeo-Christian civilization.” Among other concerning changes, the Donald Trump era has played host to a rise in white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and increasing incidences of […]

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ADDED 01/14/2019

Five Forces Driving the Rise of Fascism in 2019

FROM 01/13/2019 | Truthout

BY Michael I. Niman

The New Year’s Day inauguration of avowed authoritarian strongman Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil signaled an ominous start to 2019. Brazil, as the fifth-largest country by landmass (larger than the Australian continent), the sixth-largest by population (larger than Russia) and the ninth-largest economy (larger than Canada), represents global fascism’s biggest gain in recent history. The rise […]

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