In not recognizing multiple imperialisms, is the Left also guilty of Americocentrism? It is tough for leftists to be on the same side as the mainstream. We can easily feel at those times that we’re missing something, that we’re letting down the struggle, that by ganging up even on an admittedly bad actor we’re helping strengthen the nemesis at home, allowing it to appear as the good guy. …
We often hear that in times of war, political divisions should be put aside. As Polish government officials like to say, this isn’t “the right time” to discuss petty domestic issues. Yet, it’s apparently the “right time” for them to continue to dismantle Poland’s democracy. It might seem that the war in Ukraine will change everything about our politics, especially in terms of our approach to the most …
I can’t depend on things that I have long assumed. Democracy in America, flawed as it has been, can no longer be counted on; social progress can no longer be anticipated. Indeed, the survival of the species is becoming less and less likely. Many on the left and the right contend that, therefore, these desperate times require desperate, radical measures. But I don’t think so. I think, to …
Do they work, can they work? If the opposition parties had agreed on a candidate, Orban in Hungary, Modi in India, Duterte in the Philippines, and Morawiecki in Poland wouldn’t have won the last national election in their countries. In fact, the incapacity of the opposition to establish election alliances helps authoritarian governments all around the world. One of the factors behind this incapacity is the fact that …
Kateryna Mishchenko is a Ukrainian writer, curator and publisher. She is co-founder and editor of the Ukrainian publishing house Medusa, and has also served as the editor of Prostory, a magazine on art, literature and social critique. A participant in our recent Democracy Seminar webinar on the Russian war on Ukraine, Kateryna spoke powerfully about her initial shock and horror at the Russian attack, which she experienced from her …
Putin and the limits of Realism The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the unified international response to it, have raised once again the specter of nuclear war. After the US, the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia responded to the invasion with robust economic sanctions, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to move to a higher state of alert—to take up “a special regime of combat duty” that has no …
As I observed in a recent commentary, Russian teachers are at the center of whatever debate is still possible in Russia about Putin’s bloody war on Ukraine. The regime is doing its best to use public schools as vehicles of its propaganda, because it is only through propaganda and disinformation that its war can be sustained in the face of the Russian military’s incompetence and the extraordinary Ukrainian …
Paweł Pieniążek from Kyiv – 03/01/2022. Originally published in Tygodnik Powszechny. Overhead we heard the reverberation of a guided rocket engine and whistling. A minute later it hit a TV tower a few kilometers away from my location. | CORRESPONDENCE BY PAWEŁ PIENIĄŻK FROM KYIV The driver parks the car. I get out with two journalists to talk to volunteers in the ranks of the territorial defense. A …
Paweł Pieniążek – 2/28/2022. Originally published in Tygodnik Powszechny. After a day and a half of lockdown, the city’s inhabitants replenish their supplies. No one knows if stores will open tomorrow | CORRESPONDENCE FROM KYIV Due to an extended curfew, the people of Kyiv had to spend one and a half days at home. The three-million-strong city of Kyiv seemed completely deserted. During the curfew the territorial defense …
Paweł Pieniążek form Kyiv – 02/26/2022. Originally published in Tygodnik Powszechny. Mikola queued up with others in front of the store. Behind them was a twenty-story apartment building. Something made an awful boom. The shockwave threw all five into the supermarket. A rocket had hit the apartment building. Mykola, 69, was finishing the night shift. He is a security guard in one of the buildings. He was walking …
