Politics Archives - Page 34 of 105

Politics

What Kyle Rittenhouse Teaches Us

Whatever the Kenosha jury ultimately decides, the American right’s embrace of citizen violence, and the effects of their propaganda on boys, is far more troubling

November 16, 2021 • by Claire Potter

I watched Kyle Rittenhouse’s testimony last week, and as he crumpled up in tears, I thought: what a sad, stupid story. For anyone who has missed the background to the Rittenhouse trial: this is the guy who, at 17, decided to go to Kenosha, Wisconsin, from his home in Antioch, Illinois, ...

Politics

A CEO (Allegedly) Admitted to the Scam

Was Domo offered millions to stay in Utah—without ever planning to leave?

November 15, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

As readers here well know, a key fact about corporate tax subsidies is that they don’t actually influence corporate behavior: Research shows that nearly all of them simply pay corporate leaders to do what they would have done anyway for other reasons. The trouble is that CEOs and executives like to ...

Politics

The Horrifying Right to One’s Own Context

Seven rules of culture warfare

November 8, 2021 • by Ondrej Slacalek

Anybody can become a cultural warrior, even unwillingly. With common grounds diminishing and liberals and conservatives dead-set against each other, is the Left doomed to fail? “Culture wars” has become a rather annoying expression, encompassing far too much while explaining far too little. At the same time, it seems to be ...

The Horrifying Right to One’s Own Context

Activism

Shout Out at the Supreme Court over Abortion

A photo essay

November 2, 2021 • by Jo Freeman

Pro-choicers and pro-lifers conducted a non-violent shoving match in front of the Supreme Court, while inside the Court prepared to hear oral argument in the Texas abortion ban. For the most part, only words were used. As is common when there are opposing groups, the U.S. Capitol Police allowed separate ...

Shout Out at the Supreme Court over Abortion

Politics

The Power of Empty Terms

The increasingly militant culture wars divide the public into two irreconcilable camps

November 2, 2021 • by Zora Hesová

Unlike a historical dispute or ideological debate, the “politics of morality” is primarily about power, a concept with American origins, now playing out in Europe. But what lies even further behind central Europe’s growing disagreement over same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and immigration? The Czech Republic has recently caught up with the ...

Politics

France Unleashes its Racist Demons

How a Jewish writer of Algerian-Berber descent has become the nation’s most dangerous man

October 29, 2021 • by Mitchell Abidor and Miguel Lago

The most dangerous man in France today is Éric Zemmour. A best-selling author and far-right polemicist, Zemmour seems to be an increasingly serious candidate to become the next President of France. Recent polls show him surpassing Marine Le Pen, the French far-right’s former leader—even though Zemmour has yet to formally ...

Activism

A Chronicler of Human Complexity

Swedish magazine Ord&Bild asks three James Baldwin scholars why his writing is so resonant today

October 27, 2021 • by Douglas Field, Justin A. Joyce and Cora Kaplan

James Baldwin has become the most cited literary figure in the Black Lives Matter movement. But his writing was never political in the narrow sense. So what makes Baldwin relevant today? On complex answers to a simple question. Ord&Bild: The first question is straightforward: what makes the work of James Baldwin relevant ...

Politics

Moonwalking in Brasilia

How Jair Bolsonaro creates the illusion of moving forward while sliding back

October 26, 2021 • by Felippe Ramos

In Brazil's ongoing experiment with a far-right populist President, there is a gap between Jair Bolsonaro's performance in face-to-face rallies and on social networks and his minimal accomplishments as a politician constrained by a complex constitutional network of institutions and norms. Bolsonaro’s oral and written communication is filled with the hallmarks ...

Politics

Media Secret Keepers

Why local journalists don’t care more about corporate subsidy mysteries

October 22, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

On October 15, 2021, the Tampa Bay Times published an article explaining that the St. Petersburg, Florida city council granted nearly half a million dollars plus a potential future property tax exemption to an unnamed retail corporation, a “mystery company” as the lede puts it. Reading between the lines, it seems the ...

Politics

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

No—Butler did something far more useful. They asked us to think more deeply about body politics

October 19, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

The latest Judith Butler story goes like this: Butler, a renowned philosopher and queer theory bigwig, did an interview with Jules Gleeson of The Guardian. The interview was published on September 7, 2021: social media instantly exploded over Butler's assertion that so-called “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (otherwise known by their opponents ...

Did Judith Butler Really Say TERFs Are Fascists?

Politics

Democratizing Movements v. Constitutional Politics

An introduction to this week’s issue on the future of constitutionalism and democracy

October 13, 2021 • by James Miller

The idea for a symposium in Public Seminar on “Constitutional Politics” grows out of a two-day conference on Liberalism & Democracy: Past, Present, Prospects. I organized these conversations at the New School in February 2019, in collaboration with Helena Rosenblatt, a historian at City University of New York Graduate Center. One of the key participants was Aziz Rana of Cornell University, ...

Constitutional Politics

The Merits—and Risks—of Constitutional Politics

Further comments on the prospects for democratizing modern forms of government

October 13, 2021 • by Aziz Rana and Sanford Levinson

Sanford Levinson: The participants in this symposium all join in desiring significant constitutional reform, focusing on the general rubric of “democratizing” what is now almost universally recognized to be an undemocratic political structure established by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. As in 1787, when the mission was to supplant the “imbecilic” government ...