Politics Archives - Page 70 of 105

North America

Sustaining Democratic Opposition to Trumpism

Why the Democratic Party Must Support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

April 22, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Since Super Tuesday, it has been clear that the Democratic nominee will be Joe Biden. And in the past week, there has been an extraordinary public display of political unity behind the Biden campaign, with Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and then Elizabeth Warren issuing full-throated endorsements. The appeal to party unity in the face ...

Sustaining Democratic Opposition to Trumpism

East Asia & Pacific

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

But this time, the protests were against a new imperial power: China

April 22, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

Protesters demanded electoral reforms, investigations of police conduct during the protests, and the preservation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, under which Beijing had promised to maintain “one country, two systems” after Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997. The protests have continued online — including anti-government slogans in a popular video ...

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

North America

“There Go the People….”

By endorsing protesters who demand that states reopen, Donald Trump reveals himself as a leader of a movement, not a party or a nation

April 21, 2020 • by Sidney Tarrow

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. No one could be further from Donald Trump in either ideology or personal biography than Ledru-Rollin, who was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, a well-known quack doctor under the Old Regime. But the celebrated quote attributed to the radical French ...

Democracy

Donald Trump Advocates the Overthrow of (State) Governments

Is Republican populism approaching its Thermidor moment?

April 20, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” The media has been on fire ever since. A president advocating a violent overthrow of three states with Democratic governors is unprecedented and quite possibly illegal—Mary McCord, acting US assistant attorney general for national security from 2016-2017 ...

Donald Trump Advocates the Overthrow of (State) Governments

Democracy

Donald Trump Has Been in Politics for Decades

As a new book by Andrea Bernstein details, creating a 20th-century real estate empire demanded it

April 19, 2020 • by Claire Potter

As early as 1987, rumor had it that Donald Trump was considering a presidential bid. In October 1987, as both parties began to assemble the 1988 field, Trump took a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where a crowd bearing “Trump for President” signs greeted him. He decided not to run ...

Donald Trump Has Been in Politics for Decades

Activism

Don’t Give Paranoids Too Much Credit

Some minds can’t trust anything or anyone not on their side

April 17, 2020 • by John Stoehr

The evidence? Here’s the Washington Post, explaining the Michigan rules. “Confused shoppers found they could buy liquor and lottery tickets … but couldn’t visit the vegetable seed aisle … The order required large stores to shut down plant nurseries and rope off sections where carpet, flooring, and paint were sold, provisions ...

Democracy

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Why populist-nationalist movements detest international cooperation

April 16, 2020 • by Robert Wright

But however grave Bannon’s crimes, to write him off back then—to assume he would never again be a significant force within Trumpism—would have been to underestimate his resourcefulness and determination. A pandemic is a time of opportunity as well as tragedy, and Bannon is seizing the moment. And the way ...

Steve Bannon and the Struggle for America’s Post-Pandemic Soul

Politics

Can Donald Trump Adjourn Congress?

The Constitution says no, but judges appointed in the last three years might say yes

April 16, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

There is no such disagreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate; they have agreed to end the session on January 3, 2021. Trump is unhappy because members of Congress have left Washington due to the pandemic, and the Houses are staying open through “pro forma” sessions. These sessions consist ...

History

Lies Are Back in Power

The history and troublesome present of fascist ideology

April 16, 2020 • by Federico Finchelstein

Today we’re seeing an emergent wave of new right-wing populist leaders throughout the world. And much like fascist leaders of the past, a great deal of their political power is derived from questioning reality; endorsing myth, rage, and paranoia; and promoting lies. In my new book, A Brief History of Fascist ...

Europe & Central Asia

Hungary Is on the Edge of Dictatorship

Viktor Orbán’s coronavirus power grab

April 11, 2020 • by Kim Lane Scheppele

Orbán sought an expedited procedure to ram through this law when the parliament opened on Monday 24 March. The opposition united and denied Orbán the 4/5ths vote he needed to pass the law without the requisite parliamentary procedure. The coronavirus emergency law -- called by its critics the “Enabling Act” with ...

Democracy

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

How Erving Goffman helps us understand the hidden power of Biden, Sanders, and the Democratic governors

April 10, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We can appreciate this by drawing upon the insights of the pioneering ethnographer of social interaction, Erving Goffman. There is irony in this. Goffman is not usually considered a political thinker, nor did he think of himself as such, but his creative examination of the details of social interaction, in my judgment, illuminates an ...

The Expressive Antidote to the Trumpist Virus

Democracy

#Orbanistan

Democracy in lockdown

April 7, 2020 • by Kriszta Kovács

A month later, a subsequent “Enabling Act” allowed the new German government led by Adolf Hitler to issue decrees independently of both Parliament and the President. In effect, it turned Hitler into a dictator. On 23 March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament debated a piece of legislation so similarly sweeping that some Hungarians informally now call it ...