Culture

Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Manufactured Illiteracy

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The dark times that haunt the current age are epitomized in the monsters that have come to rule the United States and who now dominate the major political parties and other commanding political and economic institutions. Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence, and disposability is also evident in their dominance of a formative culture and its attendant cultural apparatuses that produce a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This is a social formation that extends from the mainstream broadcast media and Internet to a print culture, all of which embrace the spectacle of violence, legitimate opinions over facts, and revel in a celebrity and consumer culture of ignorance and theatrics. Under the reign of this normalized ideological architecture of alleged commonsense, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science.

Culture

Liberals Are the Future of America

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In the chaotic presidential campaign, the remarkable popularity of Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders spotlights a large, not-always-recognized vein of liberal political sympathy in America. Suddenly, the L-word is popular again — not an embarrassment to be avoided. That’s great, I think, because progressives have been the driving force behind most social improvements in western civilization. Look at the historical record: In the three centuries since The Enlightenment, democracy, human rights, personal liberties and family wellbeing have blossomed. Life gradually became more decent and humane. Virtually all the advances were won by reform-minded liberals who defeated conservatives defending former hierarchies, privileges and inequalities.

General News

Tikkun's Passover Liberation Seder Haggadah Supplement

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We are proud to present to you Tikkun magazine’s Passover Liberation Seder Haggadah Supplement, which you will find at the top of our home page tikkun.org or by going to tikkun.org/nextgen/passover2016. Feel free to download and print it out and/or to use any part of it in your Passover Seder or any other liberation-oriented celebration. It’s not just for Jews, as you’ll see if you read through it. Share it with your friends, place it on your website and send it out on Facebook or other social media!! You don’t have to believe in God or be Jewish to get a lot out of just reading this supplement to the traditional Passover Haggadah.

Culture

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism

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Despite all the well-deserved derision the report received, the Regents in their infinite wisdom decided to keep the identification of anti-Zionism as potentially anti-Semitic; the final version of the Principles includes “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism” as the new official red line which the University of California is supposed to police.

General News

​Ideas for Going Forward by Some Progressive Activists

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Attaining worthy new program will entail thinking outside the box, as many emerging struggles around the world have urged, noting that the box is capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and authoritarianism. The box is the imposed mental straitjacket of thoughts and practices typical of all too many countries’ political life.

art

Fiddler on My Mind

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Fiddler on the Roof has been on my mind these days, the plaintive strains of the violinist leading me uptown to the New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), then midtown to experience the current revival of the musical on Broadway starring Danny Burstein, and finally back to the MCNY on March 28th to hear a lively panel on Reimagining Fiddler.

General News

ISIS is America’s Bastard Child

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Now, fourteen years later, it is 2016, and you (as that former Iraqi child) have grown into young manhood while watching Americans kill and maim literally hundreds of thousands of your civilian countrymen—perhaps one or both of your parents, perhaps one or more of your sisters and brothers, perhaps members of your extended family tribe, almost certainly friends and other villagers you had known.

General News

“Feel the Bern”: Reclaiming Democracy’s Future

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Several months still separate us from the November elections but the atmosphere in the country is getting increasingly tense. Americans are angry and they direct their anger against the political establishment. They blame both the Democratic and Republican elites for the continued malaise and political paralysis. While the growing number of American voters believes that the country needs new ideas, there is little new in what either the Democratic or the Republican establishment candidates propose. Neither Ted Cruz nor John Kasich ventures in their imagination far beyond the defunct policies of cutting taxes. The agenda of Hillary Clinton is essentially a rehashed and scaled-down version of the New Deal. With their clear anti-establishment message Sanders and Trump, as different as they may be, are the two candidates who stand to benefit most from the current discontent.

General News

What We Must Do Now, One Year after the Israeli Election

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One year ago, Israeli voters reelected Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, backed by a new coalition from the hardest of the hard right, with the antidemocratic Ayelet Shaked at Justice, Naftali Bennett politicizing the Education Ministry, and Tzipi Hotovely, of “This land is ours, all of it is ours” fame, heading the day-to-day operations of the Foreign Ministry. How did the Israeli left lose so badly? And is there any hope now?