Tag: ideology

Downfall of a British institution: London Metropolitan police found to be racist, sexist and homophobic

It may be an understatement to say this is a cataclysmic disaster that has befallen the Metropolitan police, the people it serves, the trust it has squandered and the bullied and overworked staff repeated leaders have let down. Lady Casey’s report details the fall of a British institution, tumbling harder than any organisation at the centre… Read More Downfall of a British institution: London Metropolitan police found to be racist, sexist and homophobic

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2023 B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture: Nafrat se Itni Mohabbat Kyo? Why Do We Love to Hate?

Chameli Devi Jain Award 2023 – India International Centre The Lady Vanishes Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha Four Indian intellectuals who were murdered for their ideas (2013-2017) George Orwell: Ignorance is Strength; Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace George Orwell – Freedom of the Park (1945) George Orwell’s Final Warning: “If you want a picture of the… Read More 2023 B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture: Nafrat se Itni Mohabbat Kyo? Why Do We Love to Hate?

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Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism & New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han. Review (2017)

An examination of the internet age suggests that we should cultivate the heresies of secrets and silence Stuart Jeffries During a commercial break in the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple broadcast an ad directed by Ridley Scott. Glum, grey workers sat in a vast grey hall listening to Big Brother’s declamations on a huge screen. Then a… Read More Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism & New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han. Review (2017)

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March 18, 1871: Revolt of the Paris Commune; March 18, 1921: The Bolsheviks crush the Kronstadt sailors’ rebellion against tyranny

Paris Commune: The revolt dividing France 150 years on Over 150 years after the Paris Commune, rival passions flare over how to remember the city’s brief and much-romanticised experiment in power to the people. The first act of the city’s famous insurrection came on 18 March 1871, when crowds stopped troops from requisitioning cannons parked… Read More March 18, 1871: Revolt of the Paris Commune; March 18, 1921: The Bolsheviks crush the Kronstadt sailors’ rebellion against tyranny

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Formula Pinochet: Chilean Lessons for Russian Liberal Reformers during the Soviet Collapse

Tobias Rupprecht Journal of Contemporary History: Vol. 51, No. 1, Special Section: The Dark Side of Transnationalism (January 2016) Numerous references to the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet run through Soviet and Russian political discourse from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Official representations of Pinochet, a carefully constructed bogeyman of Soviet domestic and foreign… Read More Formula Pinochet: Chilean Lessons for Russian Liberal Reformers during the Soviet Collapse

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The trouble with patriotism

Can patriotism be virtuous? Although philosophy has increasingly struggled to justify it on moral grounds in recent decades, patriotism remains a powerful source of self-identification and political participation. Simon Keller and Mitja Sardoč Mitja Sardoč: Despite its centrality in the pantheon of political ideals, patriotism remains a contested concept that continues to divide its advocates and… Read More The trouble with patriotism

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Rhapsody of emancipation: the interventions of Gáspár Miklós Tamás

Ferenc Laczó An anarchist philosopher turned right-leaning libertarian and anti-capitalist critic of the illiberal order, Gáspár Miklós Tamás (1948–2023) embodied what east European thinkers have tended to be best at: making paradoxes intelligible. Democracy is ‘an odd thing to be glad about all on one’s own,’ Gáspár Miklós Tamás quipped in the late 1990s, and… Read More Rhapsody of emancipation: the interventions of Gáspár Miklós Tamás

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Rupert Murdoch’s press empire is a threat to democracy

By Liam Barrett In an interview for the Guardian last week, MSNBC broadcaster Mehdi Hasan launched a broadside against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox is less of a news channel, Hasan said, than “a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.” Hasan accused Murdoch of overseeing the “degradation of our democracy and media.” His criticisms mirror a general distrust of the mainstream… Read More Rupert Murdoch’s press empire is a threat to democracy

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Mezquita and Hagia Sophia: two sacred symbols and the culture wars that belie their complex history

World heritage monuments in Córdoba and Istanbul stand at the centre of a reductionist bid to rewrite the past In these two remarkable buildings at opposite ends of Europe, in their stones and slates and marble and gold, in their pillars and arches and windows and mosaics, can be glimpsed the complexities of European history,… Read More Mezquita and Hagia Sophia: two sacred symbols and the culture wars that belie their complex history

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