A collaboration with The New School and the European Democracy Institute
 

Category: Issue Themes

The Last Time I Saw Them- New Democracy Seminar Forum

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On the uses and disadvantages of historical comparisons for life This new forum engages authors and artists—from very different places and writing in very different genres—in an ongoing conversation on “the uses and disadvantages of historical comparisons for life” (title stolen from Nietzsche). The idea initially arose in response to the American administration’s southern border policy of taking children away from their parents: might this not be a …

Democracy “As If“

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Statue of Man at Work, Bratislava, Slovakia, author Diego Delso, (via WikiCommons) More than a century ago, Hans Vaihinger formulated his philosophy “as if” to describe our willing choice to live in a world of logical contradictions. As we cannot reach our ideals  (e.g. a truly just society), we produce imperfect fictional explanations full of deliberate errors to fill in logical gaps and oversee the inconsistencies. When the …

From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic

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Protest at the SNP Square on 9th of March 2018 in response to the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová (via WikiCommons) Slovakia is a rather unique case within post-1989 Central Europe as far as democratic transition is concerned. The lack of a tradition of statehood is the most evident difference between Slovaks and the other nations of Central Europe. It is necessary to keep this fact in …

Securing the November U.S. Election

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The urgent task for all democrats   “To support the Ins when things are going well; to support the Outs when they seem to be going badly, this, in spite of all that has been said about tweedledum and tweedledee, is the essence of popular government. Even the most intelligent large public of which we have any experience must determine finally who shall wield the organized power of …

Hong Kong: Pandemic, Protests, and Protecting “National” Security

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On July 1st, the first day of the implementation of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law, tens of thousands of Hong Kong people gathered on the streets in Causeway Bay to march. Source (via WikiCommons) The annual June 4 candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to commemorate those who died in the 1989 suppression of peaceful protests in China was canceled this year, although a few …