Vladimir Putin has long been a favorite with many American evangelicals who praised his support for conservative values – and some of them still can’t break up with him.
New school textbooks in China focus less on the Chinese Communist Party and more on its figurehead Xi Jinping. The growing cultivation of a personality cult is reminiscent of the days of Mao Zedong.
Eugene Debs, at center with flowers, who was serving a prison sentence for violating the Espionage Act, on the day he was notified of his nomination for the presidency on the socialist ticket by a delegation of leading socialists.
George Rinhard/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
Free speech is a long American tradition – but so are attempts to restrict free speech. A First Amendment scholar writes about measures a century ago to silence those criticizing government.
‘Tug-of-words’ posts debating the merits of socialism versus capitalism are all over social media platforms.
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Robert Kozinets, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
An analysis of social media commentary about socialism versus capitalism shows that people are talking past each other, but some are engaging in more nuanced discussions as well.
The Bonus Army stages a demonstration at the empty Capitol on July 2, 1932.
Underwood and Underwood, photographers; Library of Congress
Marches, demonstrations, civic unrest, attacks by law enforcement and the military on protesting civilians: The parallels between the summer of 1932 and what is happening currently are striking.
Actor Peter Paul Muller as Bram Fischer in the film ‘An Act of Defiance’.
Supplied
South African lawyer Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context. He was raised in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him.
Michael Cohen, left, walks out of federal court, Nov. 29, 2018, in New York.
AP/Julie Jacobson
Michael Cohen will soon testify before Congress about his work for Donald Trump. But the hearing’s subject goes far beyond the committee’s jurisdiction, which is government operations and activities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a mass in his hometown of St. Petersburg, Russia, on Jan. 7, 2018.
Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
During the Cold War, American evangelicals smuggled Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other communist countries. They still see Russia as a partner on evangelical values.
The 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote how refugees, in the absence of legal rights, were forced to live in a state of ‘absolute lawlessness.’ Her words matter today.
The fact Jeremy Corbyn spoke to a Communist spy posing as a diplomat in the 1980s does not make him a Communist agent. Many politicians and diplomats were tricked into similar meetings.
Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya.
Antoon Kuper/flickr
Russian revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya, like other leading women in the new Stalin-led state, was marginalised. But in her case, because she was Lenin’s widow.
“Hanging Man” by David Cerny - Uncertainty about intellectualism in the 20th century.
James Cridland/flickr
In some places, the dismal labour conditions of young academics have spurred them to unionise. Not so in the Czech Republic, where students and intellectuals lead lives of “state-ordered poverty”.
A protest in support of Raymond Suttner released from detention in 1988 by apartheid authorities.
Robert Botha/Times Media Group
In the new introduction to his prison memoir South African anti-apartheid stalwart Raymond Suttner uses the word ‘betrayal’ to explain his break from the ANC.
How do leaders find authority as discerners of evil?
Wellcome Library, London.
Witch-finders of early modern Europe and modern Africa made themselves indispensable by showing people a threat of a growing crisis of threatening evil.
Supporters of presidential candidate Moon Jae-in.
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
In this new world where its lost thousands of votes does South Africa’s ruling ANC know who it is, how to be in opposition, or how it might fight its way back to winning ways?