The American disaster
TRUMPISM: How do democracies die? Often with the help of elected leaders. This was the case in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland, as well as in several South American countries. And in the United States?
Silently disciplining research
PRIORITIES: Many who question the legitimacy of the US wars seem to be pressured by research and media institutions. An example here is the Institute for Peace Research (PRIO), which has had researchers who have historically been critical of any war of aggression – who have hardly belonged to the close friends of nuclear weapons.
Psychedelic communism
RADICAL CHIC: If the left is ever to become dominant again, it must, according to Mark Fisher, embrace the desires that have emerged under capitalism, not just reject them. The left should cultivate technology, automation, reduced working day and popular aesthetic expressions such as fashion.
An ever-creeping feeling of loneliness
INSULATION: Acute loneliness affects both winners and losers. Daniel Schreiber visits a wealth of hermit literature – such as Thoreau's Walden and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. But what does social withdrawal mean today – whether it is the occupational or pandemic condition?
Food and drink – a burning political, personal and ecological torch
FOOD: Everyone eats. Some people know what they are eating. Few people know what they ought to.
A liberal left?
Accelerationism: Several thinkers believe that it is possible for what they call a rather complacent left to carve out a better and freer future through capitalism and technology.
Caste – a universal system of inequality, abuse of power and humiliation
RANK: In India it is the surname, in the USA it is the skin color which determines whether one is at the top or bottom of the caste system's ladder
The world's best Catholics?
CANADA: With the discovery of children's graves in Canada, the Canadians are arguably making the Irish rank as "the world's best Catholics". Children from First Nations were outright stolen, imprisoned in isolation, forced into a foreign culture, a foreign language, subjected to sexual abuse and general neglect.