A Donald Trump supporter wears a gas mask and holds a bust of him after he and hundreds of others stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Given the current, often erroneous, use of the term ‘fascist’ to describe political movements and leaders, it’s important to determine what fascism is and is not.
In recent decades, musicians have been quick to object to the use of their material by the far-right.
Etienne Laurent/EPA
After rioters outside the US Capitol sang Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’, here are more global instances when history has sounded a little out of tune.
Trump yells while visiting a portion of the border wall in Alamo, Tex. on Jan. 12, 2021.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Donald Trump has become the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. But the ignorance and lawlessness of Trumpism will have a dangerous afterlife even after Trump has left Washington.
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump addressed his supporters in Washington. Shortly afterwards, thousands of them will forcibly enter the Capitol.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
In his January 6 speech in Washington DC, Donald Trump urged his supporters to force their way onto Capitol Hill, is a perfect compendium of his inflammatory populist rhetoric.
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 61.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
The US faces many of the same problems Germans faced after World War II: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the enemies of democracy. There are lessons in how Germany handled that challenge.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Carson City Airport on Oct. 18, 2020, in Carson City, Nev.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Americans can survive a second Trump term if they resurrect a language of critique and possibility that draws from history and shields the U.S. from authoritarianism.
Charlottesville city workers drape a tarp over the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 2018. Debate over removing the statue continues today.
AP Photo/Steve Helber, File
Once stripped of their symbolic power, problem monuments offer what educators call ‘teachable moments,’ helping people assess society’s current values and compare them with what mattered in the past.
A police officer pushes an antifa demonstrator out of the way during a 2019 protest in Washington, D.C.
Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Objections raised about the school syllabus by parents, schools and civil society point to a bigger problem with the state.
A photo from Nov. 10, 1938, showing Jewish shops in Berlin destroyed by Nazis is placed at the same location 80 years later.
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to concentration camps in the German Reich in the immediate aftermath after Kristallnacht, the night of the Broken Glass, in November 1938.
The United States is exhibiting several of the signs that have historically resulted in uprisings and revolutions. Is another American revolution looming?
Hitler and Mussolini – dismantling democracy.
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Parliaments were and remain institutions of frustrating negotiation and very often unpalatable compromise. They also represent an imperfect but significant check on the abuse of power.
An Indian child wears a mask of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a campaign rally on April 7, 2019. India is entering its latest round of polling on May 6.
Diptendu Dutta/AFP
India’s elections are not about policy issues. Instead, they have zeroed in on the leadership of Narendra Modi and, through him, the legitimacy of Hinduness as India’s new dominant ideology.
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema at an election rally.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
It was 100 years ago this month that Benito Mussolini created the fascist party in Italy. Today, his life offers cautionary lessons for contemporary politics.
In this video, Bruce Isaacs looks at Rome, Open City. Made in 1945, it was Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist response to the end of German occupation, and Italy’s history of Fascism under Benito Mussolini.
Though best remembered for her role in the doomed German Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg’s theories on how capitalism exploits people and nature need hearing today.