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Category: <span>Dispatches</span>

Dispatches — 2020

Category: Dispatches

Is Some Version of Our Future Now Playing Out on the Streets of Minsk?

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Protest actions in Minsk (Belarus), August 16, 2020 (Source: WikiCommons) A contest over the legitimacy of an election and the illegitimacy of an autocrat is currently playing out on the streets of Minsk and throughout Belarus. I have no particular expertise about Belarus and nothing profound to say about this conflict. Belarus’s longtime President Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator who rose to power on the basis of nationalist …

Pandemic Politics

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Reflections on the first appearance of the Biden – Harris team “Biden gave the best speech of his life!”  “Kamala is killing it!”  “The two speeches, of Biden and Harris, affectively expressed compassion and warmth, as they made sharp political points.”  These were my Facebook responses to the coming out of the Biden – Harris team. Although I generally don’t use Facebook to express such judgments, I couldn’t constrain …

We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update

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The Democracy Seminar, our worldwide committee of democratic correspondence, has moved to Zoom. Before the pandemic, last October, we held a conference in New York (see here for a report). We were scheduled to meet again this month in Wroclaw, Poland, but the meeting had to be postponed. In April, the seminar conveners—from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey and the United States—discussed how we should proceed, and decided that …

Rebirth of a Nation?

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There is a dangerous method to Trump’s racist madness Donald Trump is doubling down on his racism and xenophobia. This is widely acknowledged, and condemned, by many commentators. It is viewed, correctly in my judgment, as both a resort to the rhetoric with which Trump is most comfortable, racist and xenophobe that he is, and as a campaign strategy. Trump’s approach may seem bound to fail. It is …

The Politics of Small Things Before, During and After the Pandemic

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From the Kitchen Table to the Kitchen Cabinet A paper prepared as the keynote address at the BISLA virtual conference “The World After the Pandemic,” May 29, 2020. Between 1973 and 1989, I intensively studied public life behind “The Iron Curtain.” I researched and wrote my dissertation on student theater in Poland. In the late 70s and the 80s, I observed the emergence of an autonomous cultural and …

The NGO Sector in Slovakia as a Subject of Conspirators

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Photo: from the opening of the October 2019 Orbis Civitates conference (200+ participants – no such gathering of NGOs was organized since 2013). On behalf of the organizer (Open Society Foundation) the author is welcoming the President of Slovakia Zuzana Čaputová and Minister of Interior Denisa Sakova, sitting in the front row (right side in the photo). Photo credit: Open Society Foundation Bratislava. Overnight, on Monday, February 26th, …

Torn Mask of Social Solidarity

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Law and Justice response to the economic downturn The government of the right wing Law and Justice party, which came to power in Poland in 2015 after eight years in the opposition and won a second term in 2019, is perceived as being not only socially conservative but also dedicated to redistribution. Its flagship social program, Family 500+, which offers parents 500 PLN (approximately 118 USD) of unconditional …

Domestic Violence as Pandemic

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The Covid-19 crisis, which might last another 24 months, has made the issue of domestic violence a matter of urgent public concern. According to a UN Population Fund study, a 20% surge in incidents of domestic violence globally equates to an increase of 15 million cases for every three months of the lockdown.  The resources available for victims of domestic violence vary greatly from place to place. Democracies …

Fascists in Slovak Politics

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Waiting for a new chance in times of the COVID-19 crisis? On November 24, 2013, Banská Bystrica, a city of 78,000 inhabitants situated in the foothills of the Low Tatra mountains in Central Slovakia, woke up to shocking news. A fascist candidate was democratically elected as the regional governor for the next four years.  Marian Kotleba, a former IT teacher, is infamous for his open hatred of the …