authoritarianism 
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SOURCE: MSNBC
4/29/2022
Tim Snyder Discusses Putin's "Big Lie" about Ukraine on Maddow
Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University and author of "Bloodlands," talks with Rachel Maddow about the manipulative power of a "Big Lie" and why it's so difficult to untangle a person from a Big Lie once they've bought into it.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/30/2022
Putin's Far from the Only Autocrat Abusing History
by Katie Stallard
"As Putin is currently demonstrating, questionable historical narratives in faraway autocracies are a problem for democracies too."
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SOURCE: Politico
4/16/2022
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: How History Says Trump's Cult Will End
"The other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level. These states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
4/11/2022
Authoritarianism Isn't Just About Personality Cults
Recent books on "strongmen" reduce the problem of authoritarianism to the phenomenon of charismatic leadership and ignore many of the structural factors contributing to democratic collapse.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
3/20/2022
Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women
by Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks
"Fully free, politically active women are a threat to authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning leaders—and so those leaders have a strategic reason to be sexist."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/17/2022
Now is the Time to Revisit Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism
by Anne Applebaum
The political and economic supports for stability and prosperity in the developed world are more precarious than ever; the revival of authoritarianism that Arendt predicted may be at hand, making her work more vital than ever.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
2/14/2022
Trolling History: Social Media Harassment From Abroad
by Alexandra F. Levy
In authoritarian regimes there are fewer and fewer safeguards for historians whose work challenges nationalistic myths; often harassment has a green light from the state.
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SOURCE: Truthout
1/28/2022
Fascism's "Legal Phase" is Here, and the Threat is Real
by William Horne
The authoritarian right has identified the institutional weak points in American institutions and is preparing to exploit them to seize power and excuse political violence. This happened before, with Jim Crow the result.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
1/25/2022
The Other Pentagon (We Don't Think About)
by Andrea Mazzarino
The creation of DHS in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was a profound reorganization of the government that created a prodigiously-funded "security" apparatus that views threats to Americans through the dangerous lens of "insiders" vs. "outsiders".
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/20/2022
The End of Democracy won't Look Like You Think It Will
by Tom Nichols
The authoritarian right isn't motivated or organized enough to create the kind of dystopia some fear. But federalism means that significant chunks of the Formerly-United States will turn the clock back to the late 1950s.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
1/19/2022
Now or Never to Stop US Descent to Authoritarian Rule
by Thomas Zimmer
The Republican Party has operated on the core propositions that the Democratic opposition and its core constituencies are fundamentally illegitimate long before Donald Trump. Biden's victory shouldn't obscure how close they are to establishing permanent minority rule.
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SOURCE: Substack
1/18/2022
Orban and Putin Don't do Debates Either
by Ruth Ben-Ghiat
The news that the Republican National Committee will boycott the Commission on Presidential Debates echoes the actions of authoritarians who reject the principle of political toleration and the very legitimacy of the opposition.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/20/2022
Trump's NPR Interview Shows the Hazard of Giving Him Airtime
by Federico Finchelstein
The history of fascism shows that it's a mistake for the news media to treat propagandists as honest actors. They'll exploit the free press to promote their ideas, but crush independent journalism at the first opportunity.
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SOURCE: Organization of American Historians
1/7/2022
The Assault on Democracy from Historical Perspectives: The January 6 Insurrection One Year Later
George Sanchez moderates a discussion featuring Anthea Hartig, Clarence Lange, Erika Lee and Nancy MacLean on the state of democracy on the anniversary of the capitol riot and attempted coup.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
1/9/2022
Tim Snyder: Degraded Integrity of Elections Threatens Democracy
“Democracy needs history, because history teaches you about your mistakes.”
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SOURCE: WORT
12/20/2021
Heather Ann Thompson on Mass Incarceration
Karma Chávez guest hosts a wide-ranging conversation with historian Heather Ann Thompson about policing, mass incarceration, and why overhauling the criminal justice system is the civil rights issue of our time.
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12/19/2021
Biden's Virtual Summit Is Only the Beginning of Securing Democracy
by Leon Fink
Biden's virtual "Summit for Democracy" was not without faults, but it made important nods toward the idea that the power, health and security of labor in the global economy is a vital part of functioning democracy. More needs to be done.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
12/7/2021
The Trump-Bannon Feud Sheds Light on the Direction of the Far Right
Nicole Hemmer explains to Post columnist Greg Sargent that Bannon represents an explicitly anti-democratic strain of nationalism that is separate from the political allegiance of many conservatives to Donald Trump.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
11/13/2021
Tim Snyder: "It Turns Out People Really Like Democracy"
“America first” and “enemies of the people” are words that are consciously applied by people who wish to destroy democracy. If people don’t know how those words have been applied in the past, then that is dangerous.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/15/2021
The Bad Guys are Winning: The 21st Century Reversal of Liberalism
by Anne Applebaum
"Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services (military, police, paramilitary groups, surveillance), and professional propagandists."
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