White Supremacists

By Deena Winter | – The Minnesota Reformer BUFFALO — A flag hanging from a telephone pole marked the turnoff to the Land of Promise. It was unseasonably warm for late October, but three dozen Minnesotans chose to spend their Saturday here, at a church on the north side of Beebe Lake. Inside a building, […]

Authoritarianism

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: How to Combat the GOP Election Denialists’ Plot to Subvert Democracy

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In the 1978 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an alien fungal spore infection takes over the minds of susceptible people, growing into pods that duplicate their bodies and transforming them into pod people — mindless authoritarian monsters that want to control America. A remake of the 1956 movie […]

Climate Crisis

On Turning 70 in a Graying, Climate-threatened World where Christians and Muslims must learn to Understand Each Other

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A daily column is inevitably personal, even if the focus is, as with Informed Comment, on current events. Today I’m going to reflect, not so much on my turning 70 as on the world I confront through these old eyes, and how my experiences help me cope with it and […]

American Jews

Ken Burns’ Holocaust Documentary should set our Hair on Fire about the Creep of Trumpian Fascism

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland (Special to Informed Comment) – The genius of Ken Burns’ documentaries is his ability to personify history. Watching the documentary by Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein on the U.S. and the Holocaust is a challenging experience for most people, and is especially difficult for those from Jewish families that include survivors. I learned […]

Donald Trump

How America’s Democracy Is “Ripe to Be Exploited”

ProPublica

By Eric Umansky | – ( ProPublica) – Voters in Sweden this month gave a leading role to a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots. Italy is also on the cusp of putting a party in power that has fascist origins. And of course, in the United States, one party has increasingly embraced election denialism and […]

Antisemitism

Israeli Dilemma over Swedish and Italian Fascism: Fears of Antisemitism, Hopes for Right Wing Solidarity

Middle East Monitor

By Adnan Abu Amer | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Israelis are watching political developments in Europe with interest, particularly in Sweden and Italy, amid fears that the Jewish communities there may soon face problems. Italy, for example, is expected to have a right-wing government involving Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and […]

Colonialism

How Whiteness was Invented and Fashioned in Britain’s Colonial Age of Expansion

The Conversation

By Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta | – (The Conversation)- Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before. The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion of the British empire and […]

Donald Trump

White Nationalism is a Political Ideology that mainstreams racist Conspiracy Theories

The Conversation

By Sara Kamali, University of California San Diego | – In September 2022, President Joe Biden convened a summit called United We Stand to denounce the “venom and violence” of white nationalism ahead of the midterm elections. His remarks repeated the theme of his prime-time speech in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, 2022, during which he […]

Authoritarianism

Roots of White Rage

Peter G. Prontzos

Vancouver (Special to Informed Comment) Recent development show just how divided the United States of America really is. The latest polling shows that 72% of Americans believe that democracy is in serious danger. Even more strikingly, 43% said civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Robert Reich, a former US […]