Category: totalitarianism

A new ‘Totalitarian Temptation’? Authoritarians rely on ideas too

     

Sudan’s transition promises to be anything but easy. Economic problems that sparked initial protests in 2018 still await complex solutions, and the state bureaucracy remains weak. How will the military… Read more »

China’s sharp power targets satirist of totalitarianism

     

China’s sharp power is targeting a satirist of totalitarianism, The New York Times reports. A Hong Kong venue operated by a nonprofit with ties to the local government withdrew an invitation… Read more »

50 years on, exposing The Che Guevara Myth

     

In the 50 years since his death, Ernesto “Che” Guevara has grown into a mythical figure for leftists around the world. As one of the heroes of Fidel Castro’s Cuban… Read more »

North Korea’s Solzhenitsyn

     

It was a dog-eared manuscript, 743 pages bound in string. But for Do Hee-youn, an activist campaigning for human rights in North Korea, it was nothing less than stunning, The… Read more »

Why Russia is ignoring first flirtation with liberalism

     

Russia’s February Revolution is one of history’s great “What if” moments, says the University of Queensland’s John Quiggin. If this revolution — which actually took place in early March 1917… Read more »

Tzvetan Todorov – highlighted democracy’s ‘inner enemies’

     

Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian-French literary theorist and historian of ideas whose concerns in dozens of books ranged from fantasy in fiction to the moral consequences of colonialism, fanaticism and the… Read more »

Iran’s ‘mythical moderate’: Rafsanjani blended economic liberalism, political authoritarianism

     

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (above, left) , who has died aged 82, was one of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran; a shrewd politician who many Iranians saw as… Read more »