Departments

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authoritarianism

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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."

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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". 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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.