Must A Leader Not Be Above the Law?

Understanding the a-legal Foundations of Trumpism

Having spent some years studying and teaching about the structure and functioning of Nazi ideology, and having written books on the Christian-Jewish relationship in German culture, as well as German Orientalism, I would like to apply some of what I may have learned about extreme right-wing ideologies to the current ...
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Must A Leader Not Be Above the Law?

The 2,000-Year-Old Men

We have had this guilty thought long before Mayor Pete articulated it for us in his unique tone, one in which he manages to convey optimism, despair and his own brand of aggression simultaneously. Lately, as Sanders’s actual policies seem to be impressing more and more voters, and an extraordinary ...
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The 2,000-Year-Old Men

Is Democratic Socialism in America’s Future?

The success of every radical movement in American history has occurred when it is co-opted by the forces of reform.

More than at any time since World War I, Americans are talking about socialism. Conservatives fear it. Liberals question it. Many progressives and radicals embrace it. Why is that word, and its egalitarian vision, enjoying a resurgence in the United States? And does it mean that socialism is on the ...
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Is Democratic Socialism in America’s Future?

Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

Slandering the party’s leading candidate is bad

This does not obviate the real limits of the Sanders campaign and the challenges it must address moving forward, if Sanders is to successfully claim the nomination much less the presidency. On Saturday night Jacobin, the organ of Sanders’s hard-core ideological supporters, declared that “After the Nevada Blowout, It’s Bernie’s Party Now” (indeed, ...
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Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

Revisiting the Netroots, 2020 Edition

Recent reports that Russia has been interfering with the election are no surprise — but this is what to do about it

But at Public Seminar, we have been paying attention to the corruption of what blogger Jerome Armstrong dubbed “the netroots” in 2002: grassroots political activism that occurs primarily online. In collaboration with our friends in the Eurozine network, we have a cluster of articles in this week’s issue about Disinformation. Adam Ramsay shows how disinformation, on its ...
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Revisiting the Netroots, 2020 Edition

The Contemporary Art of Lying

The moment Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, journalists began counting his lies. According to The Washington Post they numbered no less than 4229 by the end of Summer 2018. Paradoxically, however, Trump is a president with high ‘truth-capital’. He is not a liar, according to his voters, but ...
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The Contemporary Art of Lying

A Post-Impeachment Roadmap for Congress

Impeachment may be over, but President Trump is continuing his assault on the Constitution. The House can check him. Here’s how.

The problem is that Donald Trump does dwell on the past. His recent impeachment has replaced his 2016 presidential election the primary focus of his resentment. He seeks to magnify the significance of his acquittal and diminish that of his impeachment. As Americans turn their attention away from impeachment, Donald ...
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A Post-Impeachment Roadmap for Congress

Why Bloomberg is a Disaster for the Democratic Party

And it will take a healthy Democratic party to defeat Trumpism

Enter Mike Bloomberg, billionaire tycoon, former Republican mayor of New York City, master of social media, sincere adherent of some liberal causes (gun control, environmentalism) and sincere partisan of the new Gilded Age capitalism, and -- did I forget to mention it? -- mega-billionaire. Can Bloomberg outspend Trump? Surely. Can he outsmart ...
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Why Bloomberg is a Disaster for the Democratic Party

The Bloomberg-Clinton Ticket is a Myth

But it points to the troubling fact that political disinformation is being deliberately spread by legitimate news outlets

What was also predictable is that Donald Trump’s media handmaidens would find a way to bring Hillary Clinton into it. They will do this regularly for the rest of the 2020 cycle. They will do this, not just to increase the chaos, but to divert attention from the charges of ...
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The Bloomberg-Clinton Ticket is a Myth

The Peace that Kills

Notes from the launch of the Trump & Netanyahu ‘peace plan’

If they can afford it, the Palestinians won't have to pretend to be working with the US anymore. Perhaps the security and economic deals related to the Oslo Accords framework can now be abandoned and this, yet another-peace-that-kills, rejected. It is a fool’s hope, but there might thus be a ...
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The Peace that Kills

Things Fall Apart?

Perhaps, but in the shadow of Trump this is not a good thing

Bruenig is one of many young writers on the left to take heart from the mainstream Democratic panic over Sanders’s ascendancy. On Facebook, Alex Gourevitch, a fine political scientist and frequent contributor to Jacobin, was even more emphatic. “The jury is out on what Bernie’s ultimate effect will be,” wrote Gourevitch, adding that ...
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Things Fall Apart?