From the Article:

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

Read the Full Article

The post How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days first appeared on Sevenelles.

Discussing the meaning of the taboo f word in relation to Donald Trump’s past behavior and future plans should he get back into the White House, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wanted to know: “Can we call it fascism yet?” 

As a simple and working definition of fascism, and one way to call out fascist politicians and political parties for what they are, I recommend using the Britannica dictionary: “a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.” 

Think about Governor Ron DeSantis of the Republican-controlled state of Florida. The “anti-woke” governor epitomizes a legalistic fascist without the benefits of the First Amendment. 

As far back as December 2015 people were asking whether Donald Trump was a fascist. At the time, eight experts weighed in and Vox determined: “Call him a kleptocrat, an oligarch, a xenophobe, a racist, even an authoritarian. But he doesn’t quite fit the definition of a fascist.” 

At the time, and even after Trump took the reins of power in 2017 and held it through January 19, 2020, Trump and his followers may have been anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and chauvinistic.  Back then and now, Trump and company may also have been refusing to denounce the violence of the MAGA extremists or domestic weapons of mass terrorism. However, the anti-fascist labeling folks of the media were giving Trump a pass as a fascist because he has never been in charge of or led a fascist government. 

The post The Press Cluelessly Fan the Flames of Fascism first appeared on Sevenelles.

Librarians could face years of imprisonment and tens of thousands in fines for providing sexually explicit, obscene or “harmful” books to children under new state laws that permit criminal prosecution of school and library personnel.

At least seven states have passed such laws in the past two years, according to a Washington Post analysis, six of them in the past two months — although governors of Idaho and North Dakota vetoed the legislation. Another dozen states considered more than 20 similar bills this year, half of which are likely to come up again in 2024, The Post found.

Some of the laws impose severe penalties on librarians, who until now were exempted in almost every state from prosecution over obscene material — a carve-out meant to permit accurate lessons in topics such as sex education. All but one of the new laws target schools, while some also target the staff of public libraries and one affects book vendors.

One example is an Arkansas measure that says school and public librarians, as well as teachers, can be imprisoned for up to six years or fined $10,000 if they distribute obscene or harmful texts. It takes effect Aug. 1.

Read the Full Article

The post The New Risk for Librarians: Going to Prison first appeared on Sevenelles.

Tech and democracy are not friends right now. We need to change that — fast.

As I’ve discussed previously in this series, social media has already knocked a pillar out from under our democratic institutions by making it exceptionally easy for people with extreme views to connect and coordinate. The designers of the Constitution thought geographic dispersal would put a brake on the potential power of dangerous factions. But people no longer need to go through political representatives to get their views into the public sphere.

Our democracy is reeling from this impact. We are only just beginning the work of renovating our representative institutions to find mechanisms (ranked choice voting, for instance) that can replace geographic dispersal as a brake on faction.

Now, here comes generative artificial intelligence, a tool that will help bad actors further accelerate the spread of misinformation.

Read the Full Article

The post Our Democracy is Not Ready for Artificial Intelligence first appeared on Sevenelles.

This dynamic has been evident on many occasions in recent decades. In the Philippines, the 2016 election of an authoritarian populist—Rodrigo Duterte—led to the weakening of long-standing security ties with Washington. The replacement of Duterte with a less autocratic leader, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., in 2022, saw the country renew its defense cooperation with the United States. Washington’s security relationship with Ankara has diminished over the last 15 years in close parallel with the decline of Turkey’s democracy: the illiberal worldview of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drew him away from his country’s traditional security partnership with the United States. Democratic decline in Hungary has led that country to become China’s and Russia’s best friend in the European Union, even during the years when U.S. President Donald Trump warmly embraced Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban. Trying to limit or counter democratic erosion, therefore, can directly serve U.S. security interests even as it advances U.S. ideals.

Several countries of major security importance to Washington are in the midst of troubling backsliding. Israel’s democratic troubles and growing polarization, for example, may hurt U.S. security interests in the Middle East by dividing and weakening the Israel Defense Forces or heightening tensions with the Palestinians or Iran. In India, the accelerating deterioration of democracy could hurt the country’s long-term reliability as a U.S. security partner by provoking serious domestic unrest that forces the government to divert attention and resources away from external engagement. Mexico’s troubling democratic erosion—vividly diagnosed by Denise Dresser in Foreign Affairs—may lead to less effective cooperation with the United States on drug policy, immigration, and other key concerns. Falling back on simple bromides about not apologizing for relations with autocrats and prioritizing interests over ideals fails to provide any useful guidance for assessing how democracy and security intersect.

The post Should America Still Promote Democracy? first appeared on Sevenelles.

We have seen this in Ron DeSantis’s efforts to take over the progressive New College of Florida and turn it into a haven for white Christian education. DeSantis wants to remodel New College after the reactionary Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal arts college that Kathryn Joyce states has played a “far-reaching role in shaping and disseminating the ideas and strategies that power the right.”

It’s clear that the far right GOP has deemed education to be the most powerful tool for creating a public that is neither informed nor willing to struggle to keep a democracy alive. This is particularly evident in the right-wing war on education, which aims at replacing public education with charter schools, fashioning public and higher education into centers of far right indoctrination, and destroying higher education as a democratic public good. Central to such an attack is a war on critical thinking, troubling knowledge, historical memory and any form of education that address social problems. Extremists in the GOP fully embrace both white nationalism and white supremacy while simultaneously supporting a culture and society in which the distinction between lies and the truth disappear. What they would also like to see disappear in their reign of domestic terrorism are the educators, institutions, and other public spaces that resist this ongoing tsunami of authoritarian ideas, acts of repression, and war on critical intellectuals, dissidents and educators.

The post Fascism is Spreading as “Patriotic Education” first appeared on Sevenelles.

While quantifying how much wealth is stored in offshore tax havens is notoriously difficult, a 2018 paper estimated that the equivalent of 10% of the world’s GDP is held in low-tax jurisdictions. In recent years, high-profile leaks like the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and the Pandora Papers have shed light on this shadow financial system and on the tax-avoidance schemes used by the world’s business and political elites. Each revelation triggers a public outcry and demands for reform. Even Pope Francis declared that tax evasion is a sin.

By highlighting the crucial role that tax havens play in propping up autocratic regimes, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underscored the urgent need to rein in offshore finance. But it has also illustrated how little progress had been made. In 2013, for example, the OECD launched its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative, a package of corporate tax reforms meant to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share. But while 138 countries have endorsed BEPS, its achievements have been modest so far. As a 2020 paper notes, the framework failed to introduce proper accounting standards, leaving it ill-equipped to tackle some of the more egregious forms of corporate tax avoidance and evasion.

The post To Save Democracy, Close Tax Havens first appeared on Sevenelles.