The observance of defeat, especially in an election, is often all that keeps a state from tipping into violence.
South Africa has 12 official languages. The two most dominant are isiZulu and isiXhosa. While the Zulu and Xhosa people share a rich common history, they have also found themselves engaged in ethnic conflict and division, notably during urban wars between 1990 and 1994. A new book, Divided by the Word, examines this history – and how colonisers and African interpreters created the two distinct languages, entrenched by apartheid education.
Teaching college classes about the geographies of Russia and East-Central Europe, it is becoming clear that Putin’s ultimate goal is to carve off a distinct Russian-speaking region from Ukraine. The partition of Ukraine is very much on the table.
Short of the emergence of a progressive people’s movement in Ukraine, there may be little that can be done to stabilize the country and prevent bloodshed. What is needed is a strategy the Bolsheviks called “revolutionary defeatism.”
New York Times Pulitzer writer Isabel Wilkerson was widely applauded for two books on caste, using racial discrimination analysis that flourished in 1940s academia. But does her U.S. model explain other forms of discrimination internationally?
How critical race theory has become a handy target for an old-fashioned assault on civil rights.
Her willingness to learn from her base, while holding fast to principles and being willing to take a public stand even when that stand might cost her, offers a lesson to the party in how to evolve in the years to come.
If working people fail to see real material distinctions between life under Trump and life under Biden, they’ll look for an alternative to the party in power.
Neither political party has truly addressed the issue of economic security, which is why the country remains a house divided against itself.
Turkey’s incursion into Syria has roiled the Middle East and NATO countries, demonstrating one key polarizing divide on both sides of the Mediterranean. As far as I can tell, that divide is between supporters of political Islam and its opponents.
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