The Right

The Internet

Why We Should Ban Oppressive Speech Acts

The debate around deplatforming and “cancel culture” remains mired in a naive understanding of how language really works

February 24, 2021 • by
_____ When Twitter and Facebook shuttered the account of Donald Trump, along with thousands of others for allegedly spreading far right violence and conspiracy theories, many felt that it was long overdue. Antifascist organizers and writers, myself included, have for years argued against giving platforms to white supremacists, including powerful public ...
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Why We Should Ban Oppressive Speech Acts
Democracy

The Future of a Delusion

Why Trump’s followers still have faith in him

February 15, 2021 • by
Noon on January 20 was a “ding-dong the witch is dead” moment for many. Defeated in the election, discredited by the invasion of the Capitol, and impeached for a second time, Donald Trump disappeared into his Mar-a-Lago mansion. His hold on the Republican Party and the nation seemed over. But though ...
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The Future of a Delusion
North America

The Problem Isn’t Fascism – It’s Democracy in America

Trump wasn’t an aberration: he only renewed our nation’s bitter, uncivil war over whether a clear majority of its people want to forge a multiracial republic of equals

January 21, 2021 • by
In his inaugural address on January 20, Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, declared that “Democracy has prevailed” because “the will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded.” But Biden also conceded, with good reason, that “democracy is fragile.” After all, ...
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The Problem Isn’t Fascism – It’s Democracy in America
Media

A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside

The MAGA insurrection will be a forever reality show for recruiting new right-wing activists

January 18, 2021 • by
On January 6, Donald Trump’s spectacular MAGA insurrection radiated far beyond Capitol Hill. It was screened everywhere, over every known medium—broadcast, social, antisocial, what have you. The events and their meanings have been stockpiled in a cornucopian arsenal of propaganda, digital weaponry that is not done ravaging the world.  The videos ...
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A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside
Politics

Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out

What 20th-century fascists can teach us about the need for truth in the 21st-century

December 10, 2020 • by
In a bizarre 46-minute address, given from the White House and posted to social media on December 2, Donald Trump gave (in his words) “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” Intended to describe the means by which the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, and supplemented with graphs that ...
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Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out
History

QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism

How a conspiracy theory was born in the Great War and made its way into the 21st century

December 7, 2020 • by
For the past three years, someone using the alias “Q” has been posting updates to internet forums, supposedly from within the so-called “deep state.” The posts allege a conspiracy: Donald Trump, they say, is fighting a secret war against a cabal of pedophiles and Satanists entrenched in the government. Soon, ...
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QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism
Democracy

Yes, Democracy Can Survive Trump

When conservative officeholders and judges had to choose between party and country, some chose our country

December 3, 2020 • by
The day after Thanksgiving, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals pulled yet another rug out from under Donald Trump’s serial attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected the claims made in the campaign’s brief as specious and excoriated ongoing attempts to exclude legitimate votes from ...
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Yes, Democracy Can Survive Trump
Podcast

Spectres of Fascism

A conversation with James Miller

November 9, 2020 • by
Eurozine · Fascism for our time? ‘Fascism’ has entered America’s political lexicon as a way to understand and oppose the rise of the far-right. Trump’s polemics against the left have also propelled the label ‘antifascism’ into the mainstream. But are we really seeing a US fascism? What baggage does the concept ...
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Democracy

The Showdown Between Democracy and Autocracy

Why the broad anti-Trump coalition must prepare for a post-election crisis

October 29, 2020 • by
Could democracy in the United States die? A number of troubling signs, such as Donald Trump’s refusal to endorse a peaceful transfer of power and his refusal to condemn white supremacists, lead many to worry about what has, until recently, been unthinkable. As a historian of Nazi Germany, I share this ...
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The Showdown Between Democracy and Autocracy
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