Viewing Democracy

ADDED 11/26/2018

This Is How We Radicalized The World

FROM  | BuzzFeed

BY Ryan Broderick

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — From the balcony of BuzzFeed’s São Paulo office right now, you can hear screams of “Ele Não” echoing through the city’s winding avenues. It’s the same phrase I’ve seen graffitied all over the city this month. The same one I heard chanted from restaurants and bars all afternoon. It means “not […]

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ADDED 11/13/2018

Has America Gone Insane?

FROM 11/06/2018 | Truthdig

BY Jeffrey Bowers

What does United States of America stand for nowadays if political division is at an all time high? Is it still the land of the free if America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world? Are we still the home of the brave if we refuse to stand up to injustice, because it […]

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ADDED 11/13/2018

Another Night in Portland

FROM 11/12/2018 | City Journal

BY Andy Ngo

“A.C.A.B.,” shouted a protest leader on a bullhorn in front of Portland city hall on Election Day. “All cops are bastards!” responded the crowd of about 60 demonstrators. A coalition of far-left activist groups were demanding the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but they also used the occasion to rail against Oregon’s Measure 105, […]

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ADDED 11/13/2018

How conservative corruption opened a fascist door in Rio

FROM 11/13/2018 | Brasil Wire

BY GABRIEL DESLANDES

Massive corruption in Rio de Janeiro’s disastrous Public/Private transportation partnerships brought an end to decades of MDB party hegemony, but the power vacuum that it opened was filled by neofascists. When the June, 2013 protests against bus fare hikes and lack of quality public transportation rocked Brazil, protesters in Rio de Janeiro had a clear […]

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ADDED 11/13/2018

Survival of the fittest has become survival of the fascists

FROM 11/12/2018 | Mondo Weiss

BY Jonathan Ofir

A week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told Likud officials that “occupation is nonsense”. This is a continuation of a right-wing spinning of history that says that Israel is not an occupying power. Then Netanyahu went further, to speak with clear fascist eliminationist undertones: “Occupation is nonsense. Empires have conquered and replaced entire populations and no one […]

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ADDED 11/12/2018

CHRIS HEDGES ON ELECTIONS, “CHRISTIAN FASCISTS,” AND THE ROT WITHIN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

FROM 11/07/2018 | Intercepted

BY Jeremy Scahill

POLITICIANS LOVE TO tell us every election is the “most important of our lifetime.” With Donald Trump in power, it rings true for many voters. This week on Intercepted: Journalist Chris Hedges has spent the past 15 years trying to ring the alarm about the dangers of the U.S. political system and the impact of a […]

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ADDED 11/12/2018

Poland’s president addresses far right at independence march

FROM 11/11/2018 | The Guardian

BY Christian Davies

More than 200,000 people are estimated to have taken part in a controversial independence-day march through central Warsaw on Sunday, after a last-minute agreement was struck between senior politicians and the event’s far-right organisers. The March of Independence, organised by nationalist and far-right groups and held annually in the Polish capital on 11 November to […]

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ADDED 11/12/2018

There is No “Mainstream” Conservatism

FROM 1/01/2018 | Jacobin

BY BRANKO MARCETIC

The line between the far right and “mainstream” conservatism is rapidly crumbling. But the two were never very far apart in the first place. If you go by most of what you see in the media, you would think politics is governed by some strange version of Newtonian physics. “Both sides” are perennially to blame, […]

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ADDED 11/02/2018

The Not-so Invisible Hand of Uncle Sam

FROM 11/01/2018 | BrasilWire

BY Bryan Pitts

The United States has spent over a century meddling in Latin America. Recent crusades against corruption in Latin America are only the latest chapter. Today Brazil is on the front lines of the US battle to re-establish its hegemony in the region. When you study Latin American history, as I have for well over a […]

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ADDED 11/02/2018

Illiberal Democracy Spreads in Israel

FROM 10/25/2018 | Tablet

BY Shany Mor

For two generations, Israeli politics has been riven by one question: the future of the West Bank. A loose coalition of right-wing factions, nationalists, and religious parties wants to keep the territory conquered in 1967 and settle it with Jewish civilians, and an even looser coalition of leftists, liberals, secularists, and Arabs opposes this. For […]

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ADDED 11/01/2018

Timothy Snyder Speaks, ep. 14: Politics of Eternity, Politics of Inevitability

FROM 06/21/2018 | YouTube

BY Timothy Snyder

History is not just what happens in time, it is how we think about time. The present moment seems not just threatening but destabilizing because many of us are shifting from one sense of time to another. The concepts of eternity and inevitability conclude On Tyranny and frame “Road to Unfreedom.” In this talk I […]

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ADDED 11/01/2018

The Suffocation of Democracy

FROM 10/30/2018 | KPFA

BY Mitch Jeserich

A conversation with Professor Christopher R. Browning about the similarities and differences in which the current political situation in the United States resembles the interwar period of WWI and WWII and the rise of fascism in Europe. Guest: Christopher R. Browning is Frank Porter Graham ­Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author, […]

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