The late Marxist intellectual Gáspár Miklós Tamás captured Europe’s disorientation after the Cold War. By Anton Jäger In the late 1920s the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth took a series of trips through the Soviet Union. The timing was duly symbolic. Ten years earlier the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Tsarist regime and won the subsequent civil war.… Read More Gáspár Tamás; prophet of post-fascism
… there is a more foundational reason why DeSantis and the far right are attacking education: it is the means by which our young people are made into citizens. Schools and universities are laboratories of aspiration, places where young people cultivate their own capacities, expose themselves to the experiences and worldviews of others, and learn… Read More Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture war
Gonzalo Pozo on Isaac Deutscher’s wartime years in London London Reviw of Books – Vol. 45 No. 3 · 2 February 2023 Isaac Deutscher , later the biographer of Trotsky and Stalin, was in the Warsaw flat of his closest friend, the political journalist Bernard Singer, early in October 1938 when the Wehrmacht’s entry into the Sudetenland was… Read More I must start completely alone
Fatima Bhutto If recent Bollywood films are any indication, it is fair to say that India’s film industry is obsessed with Pakistan. Obsessed. Like standing outside your apartment and trying to peek through your windows at night with binoculars obsessed. If the films were smarter or more daring, Pakistan might be flattered. Instead, we are beginning to be mildly… Read More Bollywood is obsessed with Pakistan. We’d be flattered if it weren’t so nasty
NB: The Iranian theocracy has banned happiness, in Gods name. I wonder what they understand of the promised paradise. DS An Iranian court has handed jail sentences of more than 10 years each to a young couple who danced in front of one of Tehran’s main landmarks in a video seen as a symbol of… Read More Iranian couple filmed dancing in Tehran are jailed for 10 years
By Gerry Shih, Karishma Mehrotra. and. Anant Gupta Published in: The Washington PostDate: January 25, 2023 All told, the remarkable steps taken by the government seemed to reinforce a central point of the BBC series: that the world’s largest democracy was sliding into authoritarianism under Modi, who rose to national power in 2014 and won reelection in 2019 on a Hindu nationalist… Read More Censorship, arrests, power cuts. India scrambles to block BBC documentary
John Harris You may not have heard of Nat Wei, AKA Lord Wei of Shoreditch. Until very recently, the 46-year-old Conservative peer – ennobled by David Cameron, for whom he once did some work on the concept of the “big society” – had certainly escaped my attention. But when he published a brief article on the activist… Read More Ludicrous ideas, perpetual scandal: British Conservatives are in absolute freefall
By Tania Branigan In an age of increased repression, few air their concerns. But as the party congress opened in October, a lonely figure protested in Beijing: among the demands on his banners was “Reform, not the Cultural Revolution”. That call was taken up by others at the remarkable protests against the zero-Covid policy that swept through cities weeks later.… Read More A tragedy pushed to the shadows: the truth about China’s Cultural Revolution
Bharat Bhushan Bharatiya Janata Party’s governors in opposition-ruled states have been controversy’s favourite children as they amplify the BJP’s ambitions for complete political control of India. However, even among them, Tamil Nadu governor RN Ravi stands out. No other governor has gone to the extent of censoring tributes to well-established political icons, told the Tamils… Read More Tamil Nadu governor is lighting fires the BJP cannot control
The Cult of the Nation is the professionalism of the people. This cult is becoming their greatest danger, because it is bringing them enormous success, making them impatient of the claims of higher ideals. The greater the amount of success, the stronger are the conflicts of interest and jealousy and hatred which are aroused in men’s… Read More Rabindranath Tagore’s essay on the cult of the nation
After the truth-shower 