Author Archives: DemDigest

A democratic antidote to Russia’s information warfare

     

Russia is employing information warfare to exploit social divisions and tragedies such as the Las Vegas mass shooting, Aaron Aupperlee writes for the Tribune-Review: The Alliance for Securing Democracy, an… Read more »

Non-state actors exporting kleptocratic norms, ‘Neo-Gulag values’ to the West

     

There persists among post-Soviet and other kleptocratic elites a profound disdain for democratic and ethical principles, reflected and reinforced by a pervasive culture of physical theft and intellectual dishonesty in… Read more »

Will Hamas’s ‘Hezbollah model’ scupper Palestinian reconciliation?

     

Hamas’ supreme leader says his group will not give up its weapons, a vow that is sure to complicate reconciliation talks with the rival Fatah movement, The Washington Post reports:… Read more »

Stepan, Turkey and Islam’s democratic compatibility

     

The emergence of an “upstart populist party” like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been facilitated in no small part by a widespread fear that Islam and democracy are incompatible,… Read more »

Is Tunisia’s democracy being derailed?

     

Over the course of just one week, the Tunisian government has made three concerning moves that, taken together, signal a major backsliding in its democratic development, Carnegie analyst Sarah Yerkes writes… Read more »

How to stop Russian propaganda winning the information war

     

The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. There was “Defend the 2nd,” a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with… Read more »

Spies, lies and the oligarch: inside the kleptocrats’ booming secrets industry

     

In 2009, a fugitive Kazakh oligarch arranged a meeting in London with the head of an international private intelligence agency. Mukhtar Ablyazov (left), a slim man in his mid-forties with receding… Read more »

CVE report: non-violent Islamist groups ‘a recruitment pool for jihadists’

     

  Non-violent Islamist groups have acted as a recruitment pool for dozens of jihadists who have gone on to join al-Qaeda, Islamic State and similar extremist groups, according to research… Read more »

How to tame Putin

     

Vladimir Putin isn’t just undermining our democracy, he’s securing his own long-term power in Russia by destabilizing the West — a strategy that United States and Europe have been dangerously… Read more »