Figuring out how people became fascists was the aim of Adorno and his colleagues’ 1950 study, The Authoritarian Personality. Has the answer changed?
Politics
Editors: Ivan Ascher & Joanne Randa Nucho
When Law Attacks the Rule of Law
“Precedent” is one of the key mechanisms for restraining autocratic legalism, as demonstrated by the Trump campaign’s tactics following the 2020 election.
Freedom for Whom?
What right does a society have to extoll freedom as its highest virtue if that same society is dependent on the unfreedom of others?
The Manifest Destiny of Computing
Today is overwhelmingly defined by white-supremacist violence and the whiteness of AI technology. Can seeing them together help defeat them both?
Petro-Ghosts and Just Transitions
Latin America shows how hard it is for states dependent on oil and gas—that is, practically the whole world—to break with fossil fuel capitalism.
Apartheid’s Paper Trail
Why did some Black South Africans directly collaborate with their oppressors, and what was their experience like?
Choosing Empire: America before and after World War II
Both America First nationalism and postwar liberalism refuse to face the challenges of the globalized world that America itself inaugurated.
When Nature Is Valued over Human Life
White South Africans used wildlife conservation to build a narrative as a race. Unfortunately, this pursuit came at the expense of Africans.
The Never-Ending Frontier?
The US imperialist wars in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan grew from US wars against Indigenous people in the 19th century.
From Versailles to the War on Terror
The status of the Ottoman Empire and its extraterritorial treaties were left in violent limbo at Versailles. This impacts the world to this day.
The Matter of Time
Versailles treated the people of Greater Syria and Iraq—Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—as inferiors in need of “civilizational therapy.”
Democracy’s Defeat Started at Versailles
Rather than extend democracy into economics (as socialism was then understood), postwar elites stifled democracy in politics instead.
Minorities and Myths: Antisemitism in Europe after 1919
Why were Jews not free from antisemitism anywhere in interwar Europe, even in places—like the USSR—where it was officially condemned?
Versailles: Arab Desires, Arab Futures
What forms of political community did the people of the Middle East imagine for themselves following World War I?
J. M. Keynes and the Visible Hands
In 1919, those crafting the fate of postwar Europe wanted their designs to be hidden from view. Fortunately, Keynes had other plans.
How Versailles Still Haunts the World
Middle Eastern borders, democratic defeats, the US War on Terror: all this flows from the Treaty of Versailles, now just over a century old.
Solidarity Is a Process: Talking with Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Josh Kun, and Destin Jenkins
“Solidarity is not a thing. There’s no formula, no exact science. There is ongoing process.”
Users of the World, Unite?
Critical examinations of the internet too often focus on the successes and failures of corporate leaders, rather than on the real constituents of online communities.
When France Fostered Religious Intolerance
French colonial policies in Algeria created animosity between Jews and Muslims—animosity which the state continues to claim was timeless.
James Baldwin, Here and Elsewhere
How the United States terrorizes the rest of the world, Baldwin realized abroad, echoed how it terrorized its inhabitants at home.