The Biggest Media Bias That No One Is Talking About

How newspapers are obscuring a violent Republican crime wave

When most people think about “bias” in news coverage, they usually think of some kind of ideological bent, as if the Washington Post, say, is trying to advance some kind of political agenda with its journalism. While this does apply to right-wing outlets, like the Washington Examiner, most of the rest of ...
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The Biggest Media Bias That No One Is Talking About

Are White People Really in Decline?

No, but when the mainstream media reports changing racial demographics as a contest for social domination, they validate white supremacists’ worst fears

_____ When the United States Census Bureau released its 2020 census on August 12, 2021, the news media highlighted two important trends in race and ethnicity: a drop in the number of white people and a rise in the number of people who identify with more than one racial group. Both facts represent ...
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Are White People Really in Decline?

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania.  “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...
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How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

_____ In the summer of 2013, I was about to start my graduate degree at The New School for Social Research. A month before I sat in Jeff Goldfarb’s contemporary sociology class, I was in Istanbul—protesting, resisting, and critically thinking with many others about our collective actions, media activism, and the ...
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What Jeff Goldfarb Understood

A Connection That Never Expired

In 1974, Jeffrey Goldfarb went to Poland to do research about democracy—and put down lasting roots

Claire Potter: Elzbieta, let's begin with when you met Jeff Goldfarb.  Elzbieta Matynia: Jeff and Naomi Goldfarb came to Poland in 1973—Jeff was on an IREX fellowship, and Naomi attended some studio classes at the Academy of Arts. I had just begun my graduate studies. But we were both interested in the same ...
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A Connection That Never Expired

A Tale of Two Democracies

How a movement that claimed to be democratic undermined the rule of law

_____ “Democracy,” wrote Charles Tilly, “does not resemble an oilfield or a garden, but a lake. A lake,” he continues, can come into being because a mountain stream feeds into a naturally-existing basin, because someone or something dams up the outlet of a large river, because a glacier melts, because an earthquake ...
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A Tale of Two Democracies

Democrats and Anti-Trump Conservatives Must Join Forces to Defend Democracy

But the wounds of the Reagan and Bush years have created a stark barrier to cooperation across ideological lines

_____ When Mitt Romney voted to convict then-President Trump in his 2020 impeachment trial, he stepped forward as an icon of truth in a party increasingly committed to lies. Many liberals felt a keen and unexpected thrill, watching Romney, the face of the 2012 Republican Party hold back tears as he ...
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Democrats and Anti-Trump Conservatives Must Join Forces to Defend Democracy

In Defense of Democracy

From Israel to Peru, there are lots of moving pieces in the world right now

_____ President Joe Biden is currently in England, participating in a meeting of the G7, an informal group of wealthy democracies including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The participants have issued a statement reinforcing their shared commitment to “democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of ...
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In Defense of Democracy

Democrat-in-Chief

Why the ‘Battle for the Soul of the Nation’ is a fight for democracy Itself

_____ On Memorial Day, President Joe Biden spoke at Arlington National Cemetery to remember those who gave the “last full measure of devotion” to the United States, dying in our service. His speech was a full-throated defense of the cause for which those soldiers gave their lives: democracy.  “Democracy is more than ...
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Democrat-in-Chief

Liz Cheney Is Right Where She Needs to Be

The patriots among us are getting woke

_____ It’s done. The Republicans in the United States House of Representatives voted this morning to oust Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney as chairwoman of the House GOP conference. I’ve been writing obliquely about this pending vote, as I’ve been trying to make other points. But let me be plain. Ousting one ...
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Liz Cheney Is Right Where She Needs to Be

Why is Caitlyn Jenner Running for Governor of California?

Recall campaigns, invented to remove incompetent or corrupt politicians, are now a conservative tactic to reverse Democratic electoral victories

On April 22, Caitlyn Jenner announced that she had filed paperwork to register herself as a candidate for Governor of California in a recall election against the sitting governor, Gavin Newsom. The organizers will likely meet the threshold of verified signatures, and the election is likely to be scheduled for early fall. Even ...
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Why is Caitlyn Jenner Running for Governor of California?

Brazil

Land of despair

Brazil faces two threats, both lethal. On top of COVID-19, the country faces another virus, lethal to democracy: the virus of autocracy. The pandemic is brutally sweeping Brazil. Almost 4000 deaths per day, according to official data. There is no reason to doubt that we will reach more than 500,000 ...
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Brazil