Departments

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authoritarianism

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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."

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    5/19/2022

    Bringing CPAC to Hungary Betrays the Roots of the Conservative Movement

    by Lauren Lassabe

    It is a bitter irony that the postwar American conservative movement was energized by the anti-Stalinist Hungarian revolution of the 1950s; today the movement takes inspiration from a repressive regime and its autocratic leader. 

  • 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.