Populist Digital Media?

Social media systems and the global populist right discourse

But what is the role of social media in this? Participatory digital spaces or social media communication (SMC) should be viewed as a completely new communicative paradigm. This new communication system has made a radical shift in the way the media has been understood, upending established mass media assumptions in ...
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The Syrian Crisis in Longer View

A review of Fragile Nation, Shattered Land

Reviewed by Spenser R. Rapone The future of the Syrian Arab Republic, still embroiled in a brutal civil war, is today a topic of raging debate in the Middle East and beyond. Taking the long view, James A. Reilly’s Fragile Nation, Shattered Land: The Modern History of Syria recounts the origins ...
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“This is Our Campaign”

What The Bernie Sanders Campaign Means For Racial Justice

Before a sold-out audience of about 200 attendees of a broad spectrum of age, race, and background, and over 10,000 viewers watching online by livestream, these three black women attempted to clarify why Bernie Sanders -- the 78-year-old white man who has served for nearly three decades as a national ...
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How Poland Ruined its 1989

A liberal democratic dream too good to be true

The first half of 1989 in Poland was amazing -- delivering early and decisive blows to the Berlin wall, which fell later that year. From February to April 4th, the representatives of the Polish government negotiated with the Solidarity oppositional groups; in June, in partially free elections, the communist government ...
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Simple Is Sometimes Simplistic, and Stupid

Is it Really Smart to Narrow the Impeachment?

A focused impeachment that builds public support is surely a good thing; I’ve been arguing this for the past six months. But it seems extremely foolish to believe that focus can only be achieved through a narrowing of vision, and it seems worse than foolish to believe that Trump’s other abuses of power ...
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Keeping the Left Alive: Michael Walzer’s Political Action Reissued

If any book can help left-wing activists figure out how not to burn out, this is probably it

That hopeful and interesting work is the subject of Walzer’s book Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics. Originally published in the spring of 1971 and reissued this year by New York Review Books, Political Action is in a genre by itself. Like an organizing manual but more thoughtful and suggestive, like ...
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Democrats Need to Treat Impeachment More Politically

Holding hearings in public now would be a start

The story reports on the information shared with the House Intelligence Committee by Fiona Hill. But why did the New York Times not question the fact  that Hill was testifying in private? Hill is only the most recent current or former national security official to be deposed by the House Intelligence Committee about this latest, and ...
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Why Did Trump Let Erdogan Go?

The Turkish Invasion of Syria and the Global Alliance among Authoritarian Leaders

Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey, which is likely Trump’s way of both appeasing the opposition in the GOP and indirectly supporting Erdogan, as, in their current scope, the sanctions were not an effective instrument to deter Erdogan from going further. Furthermore, Trump accused Kurds of releasing the ISIS-related prisoners, while there is strong evidence ...
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Perpetuating the Uribe Hegemony

How the Media helped to install and normalize Authoritarianism in Colombia

When they were finally allowed into the camp, the peasants found a hole in the ground and a few meters away, the body of Dimar, killed with a shot to the head. This assassination reactivated memories of the so-miscalled "false positives", or extrajudicial executions, that many of us in Colombia believed were ...
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