The United States is exhibiting several of the signs that have historically resulted in uprisings and revolutions. Is another American revolution looming?
For China, national amnesia has become a ‘state-sponsored sport’. Memories of events deemed sensitive by the state are not just forgotten, they are winnowed out and selectively deleted.
Reformists are calling for the emancipation of religion from a state that’s seen to exploit Islam for purposes of political power. This remains the most formidable challenge to Iran’s ruling clergy.
The financial oligarchies differ from other kidnappers by being silent about their power over institutions and policies – they don’t want to alert anyone to what they have done.
For Ukrainians, the legacy of the Euromaidan revolution is decidedly mixed, and for the protesters who waved European Union flags EU membership now looks like a distant dream.
The idea that societies equal nation-states, neat containers that can be closed off from outside threats, is powerful. The nationalist paradigm even has a hold over many critics of its politics.
The best defence against post-truth politics is not ‘the truth’. Democracy should resist the political tyranny of claims to some immutable truth as a basis for governing the lives of others.
The physical and political space of cities can be shaped from above or below, but few have had more revolutionary changes, first under the tsars, then the communists, than St Petersburg.
Fraternity is one of the three pillars of the French Republic, but social solidarity is fraying as citizens are criminalised for acting on their beliefs in the human rights of asylum seekers.
The protesters who took to the streets of Paris didn’t know what they wanted: they just knew what they were against. But they did make us think that maybe there is another, better world.
Senior Lecturer and Director of the SITADHub (Social Impact Technologies and Democracy Research Hub) in the School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney