ADDED 11/01/2018
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
FROM | Venezuelanalysis
BY Cira Pascual Marquina
Born in 1938, Julio Escalona began his revolutionary activity at an early age in the MIR (Left Revolutionary Movement). Later he helped to found the urban guerrilla OR (Organization of Revolutionaries) and its political arm the Socialist League. A professor of economy in Venezuela’s Central University, he has also been part of Venezuela’s UN delegation. Today, while […]
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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 10/19/2018
FROM 10/19/2018 | Splinter
BY Elizabeth King
It wasn’t so long ago that white nationalist “intellectual” Richard Spencer was the toast of the so-called “alt-right” and was even generously profiled by liberal and mainstream news outlets. His speaking engagements at various public universities attracted headlines for months throughout the 2017-2018 academic year as he faced massive blowback for organizing and attending the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville […]
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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 […]
see sourceADDED 10/15/2018
FROM 10/15/2018 | New York Times
BY Jason Stanley
When fascism starts to feel normal, we’re all in trouble. While calling President Trump a fascist may seem like an exaggeration, it might not be that far from the truth. Should we be worried? Jason Stanley has spent the past decade studying fascism, from Mussolini to Duterte. In this video op-ed, he argues that yes, […]
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