Essays Archive - Page 61 of 131

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 James Miller

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, ...

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

History

Waiting for the Executioner in 1848 Austria

Regime change and the case for clemency

January 21, 2021 • by Alison Frank Johnson

_____ In 1848, the Austrian Empire was ruled by the absolutist equivalent of a lame-duck emperor. In March, a peaceful demand for civil rights escalated into a full-fledged revolution. The emperor and his advisors were forced to flee the capital city of Vienna. It was a strange situation. An emperor ruled in ...

Waiting for the Executioner in 1848 Austria

Democracy

Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Mixed Lessons of Weimar Germany

An assassination that took place almost one hundred years ago echoes today

January 21, 2021 • by Andrew I. Port

——— For the past four years, many have wondered when Donald Trump would finally have his “Have-you-no-sense-of-decency?” moment. That was, of course, the memorable rebuke uttered by attorney Joseph Welch on June 9, 1954, just after Joseph McCarthy’s insinuation that one of Welch’s colleagues had ties to a Communist organization. The ...

Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Mixed Lessons of Weimar Germany

Politics

This is Not America, They Say

The shining city on a hill is in lockdown, surrounded by floodwaters, eating its young

January 21, 2021 • by Alison Smith

For her college admissions portfolio, my niece has to answer this question: How would you describe the events of the past year to a young person twenty years from now. I’ve been thinking about this question ever since she told me about it, thinking about how I would answer it. ...

Politics

Social Media Faces a Reckoning

Power online resides in the wrong hands

January 20, 2021 • by Marshall Auerback

JANUARY 13—Tech companies, such as Twitter, Apple, and Facebook have been de-platforming President Donald Trump and his supporters at a rapid pace since the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building, much to the approval of the Democrats and much to the chagrin of the GOP (even though more than a ...

Imaginal Politics

The Riot in the Rights

Fascism, freedom and the far-right

January 19, 2021 • by Rose Parfitt

The Trump presidency has been a rocky road for pretty much everyone to the left of Trump himself – and not only in the United States. Nonetheless, the efforts of the President’s supporters, at his command, to ‘stop the steal’ and overturn the election result by force really has taken ...

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 Todd Gitlin

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 ...

A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside

Feminism

How Black Women Fight for Our Democracy

A conversation about Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

January 17, 2021 • by Martha S. Jones and Claire Potter

A legal and cultural historian, Martha Jones has dedicated herself to telling the story of how Black Americans have shaped American democracy, even – or especially – when they were formally excluded from the democratic process itself. Jones’s most recent contribution is Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and ...

Migration

“I will tell you the story of belatedness”

Why for us, migrants, it is always too late

January 14, 2021 • by Valeria Castelli, Giulia Sbaffi and Dagmawi Yimer

“I will tell you the story of belatedness. We migrants, we refugees, we foreigners.We are always seen as delayed people.We arrive [at] the right time.And it is always too late.”Shahram Khosravi It is mid-June when we video chat with Dagmawi Yimer, an Ethiopian refugee and filmmaker living in Italy, for the first ...

Democracy

Expanding Democratic Ownership

The ownership model of the public corporation should no longer be the aspiration for startups in the digital economy

January 14, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz

In August 2019, a group of 200 chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations, calling themselves the Business Roundtable, issued a statement committing to invest in their employees, compensating them fairly, and providing benefits. They also committed to fostering diversity, and inclusion, dignity, and respect. And this was newsworthy given ...

Democracy

Hopeful New Year!

Five Notes Against Despair, 2021

January 14, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The Covid-19 pandemic is spreading and is ineffectively controlled, as is the global political pandemic, spectacularly on view in Washington, D.C. White supremacy and politicized misogyny, homophobia and transphobia are becoming ever more virulent, supporting an ascendent right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Economic and social inequalities are increasing, as police ...

Gender

Cis Lit and the Trans Writer

On Torrey Peters and the possibilities for trans girl fiction

January 12, 2021 • by McKenzie Wark

What would happen if we took seriously the perspectives of trans people, and allowed them to potentially transform how we see the whole of gender? Detransition, Baby is a book about what cis and trans women might have to say to each other. It does allow a certain amount of cis tourism ...

Essays

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

Waiting for the Executioner in 1848 Austria

Regime change and the case for clemency

Embracing Democracy: The Storming of the US Capitol and the Mixed Lessons of Weimar Germany

An assassination that took place almost one hundred years ago echoes today

This is Not America, They Say

The shining city on a hill is in lockdown, surrounded by floodwaters, eating its young

The Riot in the Rights

Fascism, freedom and the far-right

A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside

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

“I will tell you the story of belatedness”

Why for us, migrants, it is always too late

Expanding Democratic Ownership

The ownership model of the public corporation should no longer be the aspiration for startups in the digital economy

Hopeful New Year!

Five Notes Against Despair, 2021

Cis Lit and the Trans Writer

On Torrey Peters and the possibilities for trans girl fiction

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