Articles

The ongoing revolution in knowledge and service economies is every bit as dramatic as the revolution in the industrial economy during the nineteenth century, says Adrian Wooldridge. And it is displacing or disorientating workers in the same way too, but probably at an even faster rate.

The hope of the Arab Spring, as pro-democracy revolutions swept the Middle East, is now a distant memory, as Yemen, Syria and Egypt remain mired in chaos and conflict (to varying degrees). But where did it all go so wrong? In his new book, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy, Jean-Pierre Filiu examines the destructive role of Arab dictators in funding and arming hardline Islamists – boosting groups such as Islamic State (IS) – with a view to dividing the opposition and convincing western powers to back their dictatorships. Here, he discusses his arguments with New Humanist editor Samira Shackle.

Earlier this year, a hologram protest against Spain’s new “gag law” was staged in Madrid. A proxy protest fit for the age of proxy politics? Boaz Levin and Vera Tollmann weigh up the options now that power increasingly enjoys a prerogative to obscurity, while political subjects are rendered increasingly transparent.

Responding to Slavenka Drakulic’s recent Eurozine article on the situation of women caught up in the post-’89 transition, Kristen Ghodsee and Adriana Zaharijevic reconsider notions of “emancipation from above” and the grassroots participation of ordinary women in both the East and the West.

As anti-gender movements gain momentum throughout Europe, using the concept of gender as a technical category may, in the long run, prove more self-destructive than useful. Andrea Peto argues for the re-enchantment of feminist politics.

At a certain point, every authoritarian state must choose democratization or collapse. But according to Ella Paneyakh, the Russian system is seeking a third way. It has in its sights nothing less than the social fabric: human interrelations, mutual support mechanisms and the capacity for joint action.

Given its global impact on the free speech rights of citizens versus those of corporations, the regulation of the Internet cannot be left to chance, writes Dana Polatin-Reuben. Hence the importance of recent efforts by the US Federal Communications Commission to effect net neutrality.

Art is suffering in Hungary’s oppressively nationalist climate, writes Edit András. Criticism of the state-supported cultural system is weakened by a gradual acceptance of the new configuration; and due to general exhaustion, the protest movement among artists has also lost its vigour.

The shadow citizenry is a territorial reserve army of foot soldiers, who want in but are forced out; often defiant yet somehow disunited, disgruntled and raging in a global civil war of austerity and high frequency piracy.
To coincide with its fifteenth anniversary, the Austrian journal of urbanism ‘dérive’ has launched its 60th issue, devoted to Henri Lefebvre and the right to the city. It includes the following article by Andy Merrifield.

The sooner Europe gets used to a future without the nation-state, the better, writes Robert Menasse. Amnesia about what the unification project originally meant is causing a catastrophic lack of imagination about where it is heading.

In societies with colonial histories and that are traditionally open to the world, there is widespread tolerance of diversity at a fundamental level. So says Aleksander Smolar; who is afraid that, for Poland, the smallest step towards adaptation will be a dramatic struggle.

The system currently known as the European Union is the embodiment of post-democracy, says Ulrike Guérot. The solution: to turn Europe on its head. For the Europe of tomorrow is a European Republic, the embodiment of a transnational community.

In Europe all political thought is imperialist, says Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz. This means that politics as we know it today incorporates the experience of imperial politics from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, when the foundations of what we call “the political” were forged.

The works of Somalian-born activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali show that the civilizational jump is incompatible with clan ethics, writes Oksana Forostyna of Krytyka (Ukraine). And given that Somalia is already a synonym for “failed state”, time is of the essence in solving the Ukraine crisis.

Privacy and identity are two sides of the same coin, argues Luciano Floridi. And yet, paradoxically, western governments are now eroding privacy in the interests of their own self-preservation. However, collecting data first and asking questions later is not a policy, says Floridi; it’s an affront to one of the foundations of liberal democracy.