authoritarianism 
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SOURCE: Dame
5/30/2023
Thomas Zimmer on Danger and Hope for Democracy
The historian and podcaster says hope for a multicultural democracy lies with the young: "Preserving the status quo will not be good enough, and the younger generation understands this better than any other."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/20/2023
The Police Car is PR for Power without Accountability
by Jeffrey Lamson
As the central feature of police technology and the main way that departments present themselves to the public, police cars have long been key symbols in police efforts to claim greater legitimacy, resources and power.
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SOURCE: Project Syndicate
3/13/2023
The Anti-Populist Dilemma
by Jan-Werner Müller
From Turkey to Hungary to Israel, forming a lasting coalition of parties against a right-wing authoritarian populist has proven easier said than done.
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2/26/2023
Suppression of Public Commemoration is an Early Warning of Authoritarian Abuse of History
by Ruben Zeeman
While several laws pertaining to historical memory have been passed under nationalist regimes in Europe, other authoritarian societies actively use other laws as an excuse to suppress inconvenient historic commemorations, reflecting a broad and growing pattern of subordinating history to power.
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12/18/2022
Mussolini in Myth and Memory
by Paul Corner
Italians' recollection of Mussolini and the Fascist regime embody the replacement of historical memory with national mythology—a mythology that dismisses both the violence of the dictatorship and Italians' collective responsibility for it and enables the resurgence of the far right today.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/15/2022
Why It's No Contradiction for Trump to Demand Illegal Actions to Defend "Law and Order"
by Lawrence B. Glickman
Since Reconstruction's overthrow, calls for "law and order" have imagined the former as a tool for enforcing a particular vision of the latter, usually in the form of white-dominated racial hierarchy.
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SOURCE: Lucid (Substack)
12/7/2022
What, Exactly, Is Fascism?
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Are you confused about the meaning of Fascism? If so, you're not alone. Benito Mussolini, the creator of Fascism, famously did not define it until 1932.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/16/2022
Trump is Back In, Officially
by Tom Nichols
"Donald Trump wants to return to the White House. His candidacy should be the final test of whether the United States has truly overcome the lure of authoritarianism."
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SOURCE: Substack
11/4/2022
The Fascism Debate is Over; Fascism Won
by Jonathan M. Katz
Academic hair-splitting about the applicability of the F-word to the MAGA phenomenon has not served the cause of democracy well.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
11/7/2022
Beschloss, Ben-Ghiat on the Stakes of the Midterms
NBC Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss and NYU History Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat discuss the concept of fascism and the danger facing the U.S with American Voices host Alicia Menendez.
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SOURCE: Wired
11/1/2022
Are Americans Ready for their Neighbors to Turn Them In?
From abortion to classroom teaching, state laws are increasingly incentivizing people to report other members of the community for violating new restrictions. Experts say this has worked in the past to erode trust and enable further authoritarianism.
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9/11/2022
The Authoritarian Personality and the Rising Far Right
by Sam Ben-Meir
This moment of peril for American democracy calls for a return to the diagnosis presented in "The Authoritarian Personality," 1950s effort to develop a social-psychological profile of the people likely to embrace fascism.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
9/6/2022
It's Also Frightening When Trump Tells the Truth
by Tom Nichols
Showing his belief that the democratic process is only legitimate when he wins, Trump demonstrates the nihilism at the heart of MAGA, which Joe Biden correctly called out last week in his speech.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
9/5/2022
Can We Do Better than Liberal Democracy?
by Adam Gopnik
Critic Adam Gopnik examines two recent books on alternatives to representative democracy that respond to the recent use of institutions by power-seeking authoritarians.
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SOURCE: We've Got Issues Podcast
7/22/2022
Thomas Zimmer: Slide Toward Authoritarianism on Right is Accelerating
Historian Thomas Zimmer tells Joshua Holland that there is a consensus among experts that American democracy is teetering on the brink of collapse -- but there is a reason for hope.
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SOURCE: Substack
7/24/2022
Trump's Reelection Threatens a Politicized Civil Service
by Heather Cox Richardson
Since 1883, the federal civil service has been protected from the old spoils system by rules for merit-based hiring and promotion. Trump has threatened to revert to a system of rewards for loyalists and punishment for enemies, without regard for performing the public's business.
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7/8/2022
The Dictatorship of the Supreme Court
by Christine Adams
Six judges, who are impervious to public opinion and majority rule are exercising arbitrary control over American society, jeopardizing the very legitimacy of the government.
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7/3/2022
Where Will America Be by 2030?
by Ed Simon
The right's agenda is for a white, Christian, patriarchal nationalism that simply can't be achieved by majority rule. That's what the Supreme Court and 400,000,000 privately owned guns are for.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
6/25/2022
Trump's Incitement Against Shaye Moss over the Georgia Vote Count Carries on a Dark American Tradition
by Tera W. Hunter
Whether for casting ballots or counting them, Trump was quick to blame Black Americans for his defeat, carrying on an ignominious tradition of casting Black political participation as illegitimate and dangerous.
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SOURCE: New Statesman
6/30/2022
Seeing Through America's "Crisis Industrial Complex"
by Nikhil Pal Singh
While the elite media class indulges in lurid fantasies of an armed breakup of the nation, those who live precarious or impoverished lives find themselves already enmeshed in a civil war; the real red/blue conflict is about who will control the infrastructure of repression built up over the last half century.