Water Belongs to the People, Not Corporations

Protecting our water is a sacred commitment to all life on earth

Is water sacred? In the Roman Catholic tradition, it is through a rite of minor-exorcism: prayers that both breaks the influence of evil and sin in a person's life and sanctifies water as “holy.” In this ancient rite, a priest blesses the living “creature of water” to cast out devils, put sickness to flight, ...
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Water Belongs to the People, Not Corporations

Phony War Again?

How should we respond to Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy’s repeated demands to institute a no-flight zone over Ukraine?

The question now put before us is simple but fraught: How should we respond to Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy’s repeated demands to institute a no-flight zone over Ukraine? I think there are good reasons why we should heed his request. ...

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Phony War Again?

On Collective Responsibility and “Good” Russians

Preaching to Ukrainians that there are “good Russians out there who are also victims of Putin” is the same as saying “all lives matter”

Despite what I regard as obvious parallels with Nazi Germany, I still find it very hard to break the wall with my international colleagues who urge us Ukrainians to remain open to dialogue and even sympathy with ordinary Russians—the good Russians—who they say are “also victims of Putin’s regime.” ...

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On Collective Responsibility and “Good” Russians

The Riot on New Zealand’s Front Lawn

Reckoning with an antivax occupation, homegrown racism, and global white nationalism

Ardern’s words might have comforted those New Zealanders taken aback by the protest, but it fails to seriously engage with the complexity of the occupation, which intermingled transnational far-right tactics with homegrown white supremacy, wellness misinformation, and indigenous disenfranchisement. The protest, and Ardern’s response, has wide implications for parsing both ...
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The Riot on New Zealand’s Front Lawn

Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom

Russia’s imperial dreams and the tragedy of Central Europe

Some in the West are amazed that Russia is losing this war so far. Others are surprised by the courageous ways in which Ukrainians are resisting attacks and defending themselves with determination. Yet the opposite has happened. Ukraine has never been further away from Russia and closer to Western Europe ...
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Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom

The Return of the Repressed

Poland has effectively abandoned antifascism

Was it only my generation—people born shortly after World War II—that believed fascism had been defeated? We were convinced that lessons had been learned and linear progress was ahead of us; it was unimaginable that anyone would defend such an ideology any longer. All European regimes (but for Franco’s) were ...
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The Return of the Repressed

What Are We Defending When We Defend Democracy?

The unruly role of modern social movements in testing the limits of political freedom

I realized, as I wrote to Bill, “that it's quite unclear precisely what form of the American regime we are all ostensibly defending, at this juncture in history. Is it the current form as you describe it, which is so peculiarly open to popular pressure from the bottom up? What if ...
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What Are We Defending When We Defend Democracy?

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Our contemporary conundrum

But how deeply have these recent developments disrupted the forms of the two main political parties? Are we still dealing—as the title of my book implies—with “movements and parties?” Or with movement-parties, hybrids that have added the passions of movements to the parties, while depriving the parties of one of ...
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Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?