The GOP’s Anti-American Animus

Trump is the culmination of 40 years of sabotage.

I suppose we should give the president a round of applause. Donald Trump has done something no Democrat (and no liberal) could have done -- demonstrate to a voting majority the anti-American animus of the “conservative” project of the last 40 years. “Anti-American” might sound strange. This is, after all, the same president who vowed in 2016 to ...
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The GOP’s Anti-American Animus

The Business of Disinformation

In Central and eastern Europe, political disinformation is highly profitable

Since February 2019, the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University has been mapping individuals and companies running or owning disinformation websites in five central and eastern European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. The goal is to collect data on independent (i.e. not ...
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The Business of Disinformation

Out of Jail and Homeless

City struggles to stop COVID-19’s spread among New York’s recently released prisoners

Stefan Outlaw had just recovered from the worst of his COVID-19 symptoms when he learned that a charitable fund had paid to bail him out of the Rikers Island jail. It was mid-March, and much of the jail population was quarantined in cells for 24 hours a day. Outlaw, age ...
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Out of Jail and Homeless

The Age of Infection

Is life turning against itself?

In the age of infection, the goal of human existence is to become a virus -- to have a Tweet or TikTok infect the cells of the cultural body, cutting through the cacophony, so that others might finally see me, and acknowledge that my existence matters (even if that “existence” ...
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The Age of Infection

How Long Is a Football Field? The Kent State Shootings Reconsidered

It was a story told in photographs, but what we saw wasn’t what happened. It was worse.

The author would like to extend deep thanks to Thomas Grace, Alan Canfora, and Dean Kahler; and to NYU history Professor Robert Cohen for his clarifying remarks. Fifty years is a big part of a human life. How unsettling that the meticulously planned 50th commemoration of the tragic May 4th, 1970 killings at ...
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How Long Is a Football Field? The Kent State Shootings Reconsidered

Mitch McConnell’s Betrayal of Democracy

McConnell is happy to let a pandemic weaken and impoverish his political rivals

Nearly 50,000 Americans have died in the last five weeks from COVID-19, the disease caused by a new strain of the coronavirus. The death toll would almost certainly be higher had not good-faith governors (both Democrats and Republicans) taken aggressive measures to force people to isolate or distance themselves from ...
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Mitch McConnell’s Betrayal of Democracy

Hong Kong Under Lockdown

From the masks of protesters to the mask of public health

The mask ban, based on a century-old colonial emergency ordinance, was largely upheld earlier this month in a controversial ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. By then, the Covid-19 crisis had stopped the mass protests, accomplishing what Carrie Lam and her officers could not during much of 2019. ...
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Hong Kong Under Lockdown

Don’t Personalize Donald Trump’s Response to Covid-19

It’s classic neoliberalism — with a Schmittian face

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It’s total.” President Donald Trump, April 13, 2020 Carl Schmitt, Germany’s most influential authoritarian jurist, has long played a major role in political and legal debates around the world. Because of ...
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Don’t Personalize Donald Trump’s Response to Covid-19

The Penal State and Authoritarianism in Turkey

The Justice and Democracy Party relies on the unrule of law

The long history of the authoritarian state in Turkey is full of examples of human rights abuses: among them are the prohibition of expression, penalization of thought, and repression of social movements. Reinforced by periodic military dictatorships, as well as the war on the Kurdish guerrilla movement, Turkey’s authoritarian state ...
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The Penal State and Authoritarianism in Turkey