Angela's dark side
GERMANY: Alternative sources can challenge Merkel's polished self-image. For example, the closeness to the GDR regime in terms of both herself and her father. The message is that Angela Merkel has destroyed the CDU and is responsible for the political, economic and cultural problems Germany is currently struggling with. Much of the criticism from the right also touches on the Stasi. Merkel has underemphasised the collaboration between herself and the GDR regime.
Censorship from two sides
Freedom of expression is the last barrier against the dominance of media moguls.
The story of the moral victors?
ARCHITECTURE: o Leading figures in the campaign to preserve the Y-block have now published a 431-page book of commitment, and often anger. The international reaction to Norway's demolition drive prompted much reflection at the time.
Where is the Peace Party?
SV:MODERN TIMES publishes here an open letter to the SV leadership. Why is the previous work program's claim that NATO is not primarily a defense alliance being deleted? And why should SV no longer believe that NATO is "a tool for promoting Western economic and foreign policy interests"?
The one we don't talk to...
MODERN TIMES CONVERSATION: We hear from Pål Steigan about his political background, upbringing and thinking. Also about the establishment of the newspaper Klassekampen, and his time in the AKP (ML) and Rødt parties. He is contrarian and censored in Norway when it comes to many issues. We have chosen to let him speak with his own arguments, where we meet him in Italy at the Franciscan monastery he has furnished as a writing room and seminar venue.
Nobel Peace Prize to South Africa!
FRED: Awarding the Peace Prize to South Africa could be part of a necessary settlement with the less peaceful role Norway has internationally – after, among other things, the attack on Libya.
With SV for 50 years
POLICY: SV once stood for a third position in the Cold War: Weapons were not the way to peace, and security should also be sought for the opposing party.
The political has collapsed, and various nihilistic phenomena are dancing on its grave
DESTITUTION: The triumphant narratives of national liberation, anti-imperialism and socialism have become exhausted. Today we see new mass protests as destitutive acts. They no longer take place with reference to the labor movement's models of social transformation, neither social democratic, Leninist nor Eurocommunist. The resistance does not coalesce into a recognizable and redeemable political demand, instead it grows into a hatred of the entire political system.
Adorno-pris
PHILOSOPHY: In her acceptance speech for the Adorno Prize this autumn, the philosopher Seyla Benhabib recently highlighted Adorno's concept of the "non-identical" as an anti-authoritarian force. In an interview with Till Schmidt in the German Philosophie Magazin on 31 October 2024, the philosopher explains how Adorno can be used to counter right-wing.
"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
PHILOSOPHY:Here follows an assessment of three new books about the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. From a debate in a castle via a critique of modern Western society to a call for more dynamic and 'wild' thinking. Tensions in the past, present and future.
What remains of critical theory?
FRANKFURT SCHOOL: The question "Why philosophy?" eventually became the question "Why Adorno?". The intellectual work of Theodor W. Adorno's heirs has been highly productive and diverse. In Frankfurt, ideas critical of authority were promoted, which were largely legitimized by the fact that the shadow of National Socialism rested over the country.
Freedom and self-realization
ESSAY: According to Erich Fromm, the new freedom and individual independence must be paid for with insecurity, isolation and alienation. A society in rapid transition can pack in tough demands for adaptation to the market, 'change skills', mobility, the necessity of constantly starting over as having more freedom and choices. MODERN TIMES here puts the newly published classic in context with other books on the subject of freedom.
The energy of '68 – being able to affirm life in an open quest
UTOPIA: Without a belief in the glow of utopia, Bloch writes, we end up like TS Eliot's cavemen with a «hollow world space in a disenchanted atheism.» Has the constant work focus, busyness and the search for security and comfort sucked the life out of us and thus also the utopian glow and search that keeps us awake as human beings, asks Alexander Carnera in this essay.
The Palestinians are Israel's 'Indians'
LANYARD: What can a philosopher like French Gilles Deleuze tell us today, 42 years later, regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians — and settler colonialism?
A violent rage against reality
PROTESTER: It is as if a generalization of misery, depression, climate anxiety and state terror has taken place, so that young people in both the south and the north are staring in despair at a world in disintegration. In this reworked book excerpt, Mikkel Bolt shows the community of the new mass protests. It is as much an anthropological as a political showdown that we see taking shape.
Surrealism, 100 years later, at the Center Pompidou in Paris
ESSAY: Most Surrealists had participated in the First World War, André Breton and Louis Aragon, for example, were sent to the front as medical students on the French side, and Max Ernst was an artilleryman in the German army. The senseless trench warfare endowed the Surrealists with an intense hatred of the ideals to which the warring parties referred. The plan was to initiate the necessary dismantling of the basic categories of the capitalist mode of production such as profit and wage labor, but also art and literature as activities reserved for a few selected individuals.
Is it natural for humans to resort to violence?
VIOLENCE: Is man fundamentally violent? History does not show exactly that. We have several examples of large societies in prehistory showing few traces of war and authoritarian rule. For example, the Stone Age can be essential for anyone who wants to say something about human evolution and nature.
25 years of NATO hubris
THE LAW OF THE PEOPLE: Russia's formal justification for carrying out its "special operation" against Ukraine is an exact mirror image of NATO's justification for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 – despite established international law.
Will Russia perhaps take out Norwegian-American air bases?
NUCLEAR WEAPONS: For Moscow, the Ukraine war is about defense, not conquest. But for the West, the war is about Russia's attempt to conquer Ukraine and about Ukraine's right to choose an alliance. Like the Western doctrine, the Russian one now allows for the first use of nuclear weapons.
Trump's victory and the decline of liberal hegemony
USA: The European political-media elite portrays Trump as the new Hitler, but is nevertheless in a great hurry to subordinate itself to the USA economically, militarily and politically. Glenn Diesen analyzes the US situation now.
Independent journalism
MEDIA: To uncover something about the independent media in Turkey, I visited P24, at the literature house for culture and political debate – in the heart of Istanbul.
Pragmatism and repressive politics
TURKEY: Last autumn, MODERN TIMES met two intellectuals in Istanbul regarding today's Turkey – and attended a major conference there on political economy. We look here at the use of force, at freedom of expression, the media, militarization and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's political pragmatism.