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Elections

Argentina: The Milei Moment Has Arrived

Yesterday, Javier Milei’s intense life as a panelist came to an end and his new life as president of the nation begins. Now his words and diagnoses will have to become government actions. For this reason, his first speech in front of the Legislative Assembly, at the very moment this mutation was taking place, aroused so much interest. The first surprise was that he did not address the deputies and senators who were constituted as representatives of the people: the two assembled chambers embody the always heterogeneous preferences of our society. Milei preferred instead the esplanade and to speak to his followers, not to the people as a whole but to his own close followers.

For Human Rights Day: Poor People’s Struggle To Survive In The USA

Sunday, December 10, was the International Human Rights Day to mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. Clearing the FOG spoke with human rights defender Cheri Honkala. A founder of the Poor Peoples Economic and Human Rights Campaign and the Poor People's Army, Honkala talks about the worsening situation for poor people in the United States. She also describes the protests that will be taking place at the Republican and Democratic Party's national conventions this summer, an update on her arrest and conviction at the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC and her new book, a guide on how to take over vacant houses.

Russia Readies For A Brave New World

The announcement on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will seek re-election for a fifth term in office came as no surprise. That he chose the occasion of a Kremlin ceremony conferring the Hero of Russia medals to servicemen who had taken part in Russia’s military operation against Ukraine to make the announcement is striking. Putin was found responding to an exhortation by the Hero of the Donetsk People’s Republic Artyom Zhoga, commander of the famous Sparta Battalion (who succeeded his son Vladimir, who died at the age of 28 in 2022 and was posthumously awarded the title “Hero of Russia”) that the entire Donbass would like him to participate in the election.

The Dangerously Appealing Style Of The Far Right

Before he won Argentina’s presidential election on 19 November, Javier Milei circulated a video of himself in front of a series of white boards. Pasted on one board were the names of various state institutions, such as the ministries of health, education, women and gender diversities, public works, and culture, all recognised as typical elements of any modern state project. Walking along the board, Milei ripped off the names of these and other ministries while crying afuera! (‘out!’) and declaring that if elected president, he would abolish them. Milei vowed not only to shrink the state but to ‘blow up’ the system, often appearing at campaign events with a chainsaw in hand.

The Rise Of The Far Right Is A Global Phenomenon

Across the globe, the far Right appears to be on the ascent. It has seized commanding heights in Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, while formerly ostracized ethno-nationalist parties like the Sweden Democrats and the True Finns are now in governing coalitions. Shortly after this issue went to press, Argentina elected as president the voluble anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, whose promise to commodify all facets of social life is accompanied by rabid anti-feminism and culture war invectives — ​“In my government there will be no cultural Marxism. I won’t apologize for having a penis. I shouldn’t feel guilty for being a white, blond, blue-eyed man.”

Far-Right Libertarian Javier Milei Is The Next President Of Argentina

Javier Milei, the candidate of the Liberty Advances far-right libertarian party, was victorious in the second round presidential elections in Argentina held on November 19. With 99.3% of the votes counted, Milei had scored 55.7% of the vote, while his opponent, center-left peronist Sergio Massa of the Union for the Homeland coalition, trailed behind with 44.3%. Milei will take office as president on December 10. In his victory speech, Milei told supporters, “The situation in Argentina is critical. There is no space for gradualisms nor for lukewarmness or ambiguities…If we don’t advance rapidly with the structural changes that Argentina needs, we will face the worst crisis in our history.”

Biden Is The Greater And Less Effective Evil

During the 2020 presidential election season anyone who hesitated to voice support for Joe Biden was immediately subjected to pleadings for “harm reduction” and “lesser evil.” The ham-fisted effort was an admission that the Democratic Party doesn’t represent the needs and desires of its voters and can only point to right wing republicans as a point of comparison. Barack Obama and the other party oligarchs who chose Biden knew he didn’t have a true constituency or any appeal aside from being a democrat and not being Donald Trump. Hence the desperate need to make a weak case for a weak candidate.

Is The US Turning Into A Christofascist State?

Jeff Sharlet has spent two decades covering the intersection of extreme Christian nationalism and the far-right. In his new book, Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, he gives snapshots of a country rapidly devolving into a Christian fascism state. He captures the rage, the despair, the dislocation, the alienation, the aesthetic of violence, and the magical thinking that are the foundations of all fascist movements—forces that are now coalescing around the Trump-led Republican Party. The bizarre conspiracy theories and buffoonish quality of many who lead and embrace this movement, such as Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, make the use American fascists easy to ridicule and dismiss.

Ecuador’s Election Could Have Lasting Consequences

Imagine a developing country where a 43-year-old economist with a PhD from the University of Illinois, who is relatively unknown as a politician, runs for president and wins. Despite the preceding decades of corruption and institutional rot, he puts together a competent government and gets the economic policy right. The numbers tell much of the story: in the 10 years of his presidency, poverty fell by 41 percent; income per person grew at more than twice the rate of the previous 25 years; and public investment and government expenditure on health services doubled as a share of the economy.

Fascism Comes To America

The parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state. The liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic insecurity and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement. Trump, as the writer Jeff Sharlet points out, has morphed from the Elmer Gantry huckster of politics — holding out the illusion that we can all get rich like him — to the peddler of dark conspiracies about the deep state and pedophiles running the Democratic Party, to full blown fascism.

Bolivia’s Ruling Party Confirms Evo Morales’ Candidacy

The split in Bolivia’s ruling political party has become official. President Luis Arce and vice-president David Choquehuanca are no longer part of the MAS (Movement towards Socialism) party, which ratified the decision, informally announced on the 24, to present former president Evo Morales (2006-2019) as its candidate in the 2025 elections. The MAS held its tenth congress from October 3-4 in the town of Lauca Ñ, a coca growing region in the center of the country. On that occasion, the party decreed the “self-expulsion” of Arce and Choquehuanca, for not attending the meeting, and of 20 other deputies aligned with the Arce government.

Depleted Ukrainium

You cannot name the last time you read anything about a parliamentary election in Slovakia, so I won’t bother asking. But you are reading about one this week, assuming you still follow mainstream media—if only to understand what you are supposed to think about one or another event, as against what has actually occurred. In results announced in Bratislava Sunday, a leftist party whose primary platform plank is opposition to the war in Ukraine won 23 percent of the vote. On Monday the Slovakian president, Zuzana Čaputová, formally asked Robert Fico, who leads the SMER party, to form a government.

Paradoxes Of Democracy In Ukraine

On September 10, elections to regional and municipal assemblies were held across the Russian Federation. For the first time, they were held under Russian law in the two Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk which formally became part of the Russian Federation in February 2022. Elections also took place in the two ‘new territories’, as they are called in Russia, of the Russian-controlled parts of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions (that is, the areas of those two regions lying south and east of the Dnieper River). The governing regime in Ukraine as well as the Western countries allied with it condemned and refused to recognize the elections in the Donbass republics and new territories

For Peace In The Congo, US And UK Must Hold Their Allies Accountable

Analyst Kambale Musavuli talks about the latest developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where anger is mounting against the presence of foreign forces. He talks about the recent repression of those protesting the presence of UN forces and explains that the country needs a political situation. This calls for the US and UK to hold to account their allies Rwanda and Uganda who are backing rebel groups in the Congo. Kambale also talks about the recent actions of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, the distance between his words and deeds, and his close collaboration with Israel.

How Guatemalans Are Mobilizing To Defend Their Fragile Democracy

Guatemala is facing one of its most critical political crises in the last three decades following the surprise victory of progressive anti-corruption presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo on Aug. 20. The crisis stems from what many Guatemalans see as an attempt by officials accused of corruption to undermine and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results of the country’s democratic process in order to protect their interests. In response, citizens and social movements have mobilized to defend the Central American country’s democracy as public officials attempt to undermine the will of the people.
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