Performances of Democracy

An excerpt from Jessica Pisano’s Staging Democracy

This book is about performances of democratic politics in Russia and Ukraine: why people take part in such performances, how they are related to economic change, and how they affect the meanings that attach to political participation. ...

Read More
Performances of Democracy

A Letter to the Western Left From Kyiv

Critique of liberal internationalism cannot add up to support for the ‘spheres of interest’ doctrine

A large part of the western Left, focused on NATO and the USA, failed to see Russian aggression. Of course, the war on terror needs to be brought into the discussion – but critique of liberal internationalism cannot add up to support for the ‘spheres of interest’ doctrine....

Read More
A Letter to the Western Left From Kyiv

Not about NATO

To frame NATO as a security threat to Russia caters to Kremlin propaganda

On Monday 21 Feb, on the eighth anniversary of the victory of the Euromaidan, Russian president Vladimir Putin effectively declared war on Ukraine. To justify this recklessness, he gave an hour-long pseudo-historical rant that portrayed Ukraine as an artificial state that owes its existence to Russia. He also accused the ...
Read More
Not about NATO

What Freud Would Say About Left-Wing Infighting

Sanders supporters and others need to resist the temptation to retreat into ideological purity

At the 2008 reunion of veterans of the 1968 Columbia occupation, I remember sitting near him at one session and watching the abuse he patiently took from aging movement heavies who voiced their anger at him for having raised doubts, in his books, about the wisdom of their most violent ...
Read More
What Freud Would Say About Left-Wing Infighting

The Future of the GOP

Has the Republic National Committee firmly dragged the Republican Party into Trump’s war on our democracy?

Coming as the statement did, just after former President Trump said that Pence had the power to “overturn the election” and, that if reelected, Trump would pardon those who attacked the Capitol, it has put the Republican Party openly on the side of overturning our democracy....

Read More
The Future of the GOP

What’s at Stake in Ukraine

“If you want peace, prepare for war”

Thus, the potential occupation of Ukraine should not be seen as a local affair, nor should the country be viewed as a strategic sacrifice to appease Putin’s fears about NATO. Instead, it should be seen as a warning of how far he can push his might, if not properly restrained. ...
Read More
What’s at Stake in Ukraine

How the Republic Of Letters Was Killed In Turkey

Democracies are not just dying in the world; they are being killed deliberately in order to contain resistance and lengthen the life span of corrupt regimes

On a mellow Oxford evening in 2005, my colleague from Nuffield College wanted to show me some Oxford architectural gems after a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre. We walked towards the entrance to the Proscholium of the Bodleian Library in the Schools Quadrangle, where I saw for the first time ...
Read More
How the Republic Of Letters Was Killed In Turkey

The Phantom of the “Greatest Generation”

“Citizen soldiers” of America, unite!

With the greatest generation serving as their antithesis, it has become de rigueur to mock and attack the baby boomers: spoiled children of fathers infinitely better than they. But whatever the errors and failings of the post-war generation, it rose up against war and racism and stifling rules, all of ...
Read More
The Phantom of the “Greatest Generation”