Fifty years later, One-Dimensional Man looks more prescient than its author could have imagined. Ronald Aronson November 23, 2020 When Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man appeared fifty years ago, it was a revelation. To many of us who were becoming the New Left, Marcuse reflected and explained our own feeling of suffocation, our alienation from an increasingly totalitarian universe that […]
Photo credit: Donald Trump at a rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Source: AFP/Getty Images/sbs.com The Frankfurt School on the appeal of authoritarianism – and how to counteract it. By Charles H. Clavey* November 5, 2020 A number of recent books have put the methods of the social sciences in the service of understanding Trump, his movement, […]
Designer: Yu Jiansu at CGTN.com Martin Powers September 4, 2020 Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – On the left, there is widespread agreement that Trump’s immigration policies are informed by white supremacist doctrines. His travel ban on Middle Eastern nations was racially charged, not to mention restricting aid to Puerto Ricans ravaged by a […]
By Umberto Eco February 24, 2020 One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositions these days is how do we stay honest as euphemisms and trivializations take over the discourse? Can we use words like “fascism,” for example, with fidelity to the meaning of that word in world history? The term, after all, devolved […]
By Farhang Jahanpour September 17, 2018 1. The western demonization of Islam We have often heard about Osama bin-Laden’s outrageous remarks about the West (if not Christianity), but we often seem to ignore the remarks made by some influential writers, thinkers and politicians in the West about Islam, which are as harsh […]
By Farhang Jahanpour September 17, 2018 1. Islam as the new post-Cold War enemy The journalistic attitudes towards Islam that we referred to above have their counterparts in the academic writing on the Middle East and Islam. In recent years there have been many academic writings portraying Islam as the new enemy of […]
By Farhang Jahanpour September 12, 2018 1. The rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism Just over 100 years ago, Britain, France, Germany and Russia ruled half of the world – most of Europe, all of Africa, South Asia, most of Southeast Asia, and most of the Pacific region. They dominated China and were of […]