Daily Archives: January 15, 2021

The usefulness of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies has long been discussed globally. The debate is normally focused on the qualities of cryptoassets as economic and financial instruments. However, the crypto world can also play a role as a tool in the fight against authoritarian governments. As Peter McCormack comments in the Tweet of the day, where he assures that Bitcoin is a tool against oppression:

Democracy is in crisis, and that is a reality that touches absolutely all of us, no matter the country in which we find ourselves. Be it with spectacular events like the attack on the Capitol in the United States, or more subtle moves by authoritarian governments to undermine democratic institutions. It is clear that this is a difficult time for liberal democracy.

In this context, it is difficult to imagine what role Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies can play. After all, normally BTC has been presented as a challenge against fiat money, and not exactly as a tool to fight for democracy.

However, this view can be misleading. Well, at the end of the day, the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies makes them fertile ground for use in the fight against authoritarian governments.

Since, Blockchain technology places crypto assets in a terrain impossible for any government to manipulate. The reason why Bitcoin has become a tool against oppression in countries like Belarus, as Peter McCormack commented through his Twitter account.

Tell it to people in Nigeria and Belarus who use Bitcoin to survive while protesting oppressive regimes.

Thus, in the face of attempts by authoritarian governments around the world to subdue the citizenry. People turn to Bitcoin not just as a means to save, but as a survival tool. Thanks to which activists from all over the planet are facing oppression, using Blockchain technology, in places as diverse as Nigeria, Belarus or even Venezuela.

Continue reading here:

Bitcoin is a tool against oppression - Explica

The medical universities switch to the new, government-preferred foundation-based working model is on the agenda. So far, eight higher education institutions did so or were forced to do so, and two more would switch over in 2021. The government says it aims to raise competitiveness and reliability. The Hungarian way, however, differs from the international examples, and is still under debate from many aspects.

According to the governments proposal, the new working model follows international tendencies, namely the Anglo-Saxon way. Instead of the state, the newly-established foundation will exercise the founders rights and procedural application. Its board of trustees would accept the budget, the annual report, the organizational and operational regulations, and be responsible for the institutions development and asset management. Decisions will be brought by them, instead of the democratically-elected senate. The board of trustees will also have more of a say in the rectors appointment. The new working model is closer to the markets more competitive requirements; as a result, workers public employee status will be terminated, they will become normal employees; as a result, performance would be given greater emphasis, but they can be fired more easily, too.

The board of trustees is first named by the leader of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (ITM-overseer of higher education) but after 2022, he can transfer the foundation rights to the board of trustees.

Increasing number of universities joining new model

It was the Corvinus University of Budapest that served as the pilot project and eventually switched to the new model in 2019. Then, last year, six more followed suit until August: the University of Veterinary Medicine and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest, the University of Miskolc, the University of Sopron, Gyrs Szchenyi Istvn University, and the John von Neumann University in Kecskemt.

Budapests University of Theater and Film Arts (SZFE) officially switched in September. From February 2020, the Szent Istvn University (after uniting a number of agricultural faculties across the country and the University of Kaposvr) will become the vast University of Agriculture and Life Sciences with the same mode of operation. The transition of the Pannon University in Veszprm is foreseen to occur in September 2021.

Government: Hungarian higher educations competitiveness has to be increased

The government says this new working model would raise efficacy and competitiveness thanks to larger exposure to the market, as well as financial reliability thanks to the long-term agreements and guarantees about money. And without the governmental administration, the privatized universities could enter into various projects more easily. In the governments view, this would also ensure greater independence for the institutions, since the government would not be involved in their direct management.

According to IT minister Lszl Palkovics, the governments aim was to create a simpler and more efficient operating environment in the higher education sector. He said the government wanted Hungarian universities to operate under the same conditions that universities in other countries or Hungarian private universities do, and the institutions should not be unnecessarily burdened by matters that do not fit into such a structure.

Palkovics said the innovation capabilities of Hungarian-owned businesses must be improved if Hungarys productivity is to be increased, and this is for what the universities can provide a background.

New system too close to politics?

According to a group of critics, however, the changes will not cease the governments oversee; in fact, on the contrary, as it would pull these universities closer to the governments and Fideszs circles. While in international examples the senate and the rector make decisions, in this model, all the essential power falls into the hands of the board of trustees and the senates power is reduced.

Considering that the board of trustees of those universities already operating in this model include a number of politicians or pro-govt economic actors, it is doubtful how the government would reduce its influence. Just some examples: the Justice Minister is involved with the University of Miskolcs board of trustees, the Foreign Minister and the citys Fidesz mayor (a cardiologist by profession) in Gyr, and former PMO Chief and Fidesz strongman Jnos Lzr, and the agricultural minister Istvn Nagy will be involved in the aforementioned, newly-founded agricultural universitys board of trustees. According to fresh media reports, Szeged would be no exception either, as the family minister could be included in the board of trustees, along with the former Fidesz-backed but independent contender of the citys incumbent, left-liberal mayor. Some believe that what is happening now is the privatization of the Hungarian universities to Fidesz circles.

Too much exposure to the markets demands could also be a point of friction, and those involved also regularly highlight the lack of proper transparency guarantees, and contrary to the anglo-saxon system, the lack of checks and balances and autonomy. In addition, some fear that the new model would sooner or later result in the increase of tuition fees and in the increasing number of students either falling out of the system or falling short of the chance for admission.

While most transitions went relatively smoothly and without major opposition, it was the aforementioned SZFEs that drew the loudest opposition and criticism, even making it to the international headlines as well. After 71 days of blockades and protests, it seems that the government will eventually manage to push through its will at SZFE too. The government, however, is set to name their own Fidesz-linked candidates without any kind of compromise, among them Orbn-ally director Attila Vidnynszky. Not surprisingly, this was regarded by many as consolidation (or repression, if not oppression) of a university (and sphere) where liberal thought has always been dominant, a motivation that certain government politicians statements also confirmed.

Related article

Students of the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) were forced to give up their barricade of the institutions main campus yesterday due to Hungarys new coronavirus restrictions. As what can now only be described as the SZFE movement is put on the backburner, we examine how it unfolded over the past months. Due []Continue reading

Medical universities free to decide

Coming back to the latest news, Budapests Semmelweis Universitys (SOTE) transition is already almost a done deal that can be completed in 2022, according to Npszava. The potential transition of the other three medical universities (Debrecen, Pcs, Szeged) is also on the table. In reference to press reports, the left-wing daily also suggested that perhaps the unification of these in order to establish one large medical university could also be on the agenda (although those involved deny this).

Anyhow, after the Tuesday talks with the four medical universities involved, Lszl Palkovics promised that they are free to decide whether they want to shift to this new working model. The ministry also said it was timing its consultations with universities on their strategic and developmental plans to coincide with the start of the new European Union funding cycle, offering them a chance to shift to the new operational model.

The rectors assured him that they would soon notify the ministry of the decisions made by their respective senates.

Featured photo illustration by Balzs Mohai/MTI

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Medical Universities Can Switch to Debated Foundation-based Model - Hungary Today

Opinion/Editorial>

Published January 14, 2021

Justin Kerr is the publisher of the McKinley Park News.One of the many reasons to love the McKinley Park neighborhood of Chicago is the natural protection afforded against hatred and bigotry by living in a multicultural community. As McKinley Park is a majority-minority area, with over 50 percent Latino residents and a burgeoning Asian-American population, overt hatred dares not openly show its face here, much less support for traitor Donald Trump.

Still, though, racist and treasonous sentiment may fester in our wonderful neighborhood, even though it seems to be on the run here as in the rest of the country, as it should be. We are but a couple generations away from white folks being a minority, inevitable demographics joined with hopeful signs like waning attendance at circuses of hatred such as white nationalist Christian churches. However, Ive still noted Trump-style bigotry, treason and tolerance of sedition here in McKinley Park and fear the different types of harm it brings to our neighborhood.

I recall participating in the neighborhoods first On the Table grant discussion close to a decade ago. I, the host and other panelists were gobsmacked to hear the husband in an older couple rant about how great McKinley Park used to be, until the Mexicans moved in.

This sentiment lined right up with the disastrous 2004 down-zoning of 35th Street by then-11th Ward Alderman James Balcer, a move allegedly supported by racist white residents that resulted in over a decade of vacant properties and urban decay in what should be a bustling, walkable commercial stretch. Institutional racism the pernicious, quiet cousin of Trumps overt racist hatred devastates the economies of communities like McKinley Park.

Extremely distressing has been the past defacto support for Trump and his harmful policies as voiced in the Brighton Park-McKinley Park Life newspaper by an officer of the McKinley Park Civic Association. Our local civic leaders should be standing up for the United States, the rule of law and our right to live in a peaceful, pluralistic society. They should condemn the seditious, criminal politicians they previously stood behind.

Indeed, the McKinley Park Civic Association should consider expanding its role beyond that of a clubhouse for the neighborhoods rapidly decaying elderly, as our fraught times demand strong civic involvement and leadership. In the decade-plus Ive been attending association meetings, Ive yet to see a leadership election or concerted membership outreach. This organization has brought tremendous good to the neighborhood in the past and could do so again.

Creepy, subtle signifiers of support for Trump-style violence, racism and oppression occasionally pop up here in McKinley Park. The right-leaning administrators of some neighborhood Facebook groups have tolerated pro-Trump sentiment in the past, and one would hope theyd fully disown themselves from previous association with or support for this traitorous criminal.

Of course, our neighborhood must also suffer the occasional blue lives matter flag, which at this point is not a signifier of support for police, but a white power symbol denoting support for police oppression through violence. Its always been an abominable desecration of the good old Red, White and Blue that no patriot would display. Theres a reason why racists have co-opted this flag of black and blue: these are the colors of bruises left by police truncheons.

Deeply terrifying is the Trump support noted and currently tolerated within the Chicago Police Department, aptly personified by the sedition and treasonous support of violent government overthrow by John Catanzara, the head of Chicagos Fraternal Order of Police union (FOP). The fact that he remains a police officer and head of the union further ravages police-community relations, already so deeply damaged by the ongoing bad-faith actions of the FOP and the billion-dollar price tag of Chicagos police abuse lawsuit settlements.

However, I was recently encouraged to learn that the police union allows retired officers to vote for leadership, that Catanzara was narrowly elected, and that he relies on much of his support from racist retirees.

While living in and reporting on McKinley Park, I have never encountered anything but highly professional, appropriate, responsive and caring behavior from our 9th District police officers. I cannot imagine that any would dishonor themselves and the department much less endanger the community and their fellow officers by breaking their oaths and standing with the criminal traitors who are actively and openly engaging in violent overthrow of our government.

Indeed, its law-abiding cops to whom we will turn to protect us from the violence of Trump and his followers, asking officers to put their lives on the line against killers who have already attacked and slain police as part of their violent insurrection. The terrible and inaccurate defund the police slogan, a phrase useful for protest but not for progress, has little standing when our communities need protection from violent terrorists, even though significant reform at every level of policing is still clearly needed.

Although unsuccessful so far, Trumps and his supporters ongoing attempts to violently and criminally overthrow our democratically elected government is a clear and present danger to all of us, not only because criminal insurrection must be extinguished before it grows, but also because Trump supporters are now openly attacking citizens and officials, willing to kill for Trump, as he has asked them to do.

It will only take a single unhinged Trump supporter to kill dozens of our neighborhoods families, whether through easily obtained firearms and ammunition, deadly bombs, or other tools of terrorists. Violent attacks like this are exactly what are now being planned and promoted online by Trump supporters, with Trumps stated and complicit support.

Here in McKinley Park, I would rather live with a house full of Latin Counts on one side of me and a house full of Satans Disciples on the other than a single Trump supporter in the entire neighborhood, for criminal street gang members have more honor and present less danger than a hate-filled Trump terrorist.

Any business or organization that tolerates Trump support not only directly endangers its employees and customers, it opens itself up to massive liability by knowingly providing harbor to criminal sedition and likely violence. Any enterprise that provides direct support to Trump insurrectionists or the criminal Trump organization should have its corporate charter revoked and its officers and board of directors arrested, investigated and prosecuted for material support of terrorism.

Although I am a non-violent individual who believes in and follows the rule of law, were the methods of Trumps supporters applied to themselves, they would be burned alive in their homes. Despite the horrors of war, I am proud of my grandfathers and my great-uncles service in World War II and the staining of my ancestors' hands with the blood of Nazis, who pursued the same violent path of racism, oppression and betrayal that Trump supporters now proudly march down.

I believe that I and other good Americans vastly outnumber these rapidly fading traitors and weekend cosplay bigots, and were we to need to directly protect ourselves and our country, we would do so successfully and decisively.

As it stands, Trump support must be expunged from the McKinley Park neighborhood and our broader society. Those who encounter Trump support, but dont take action against it, are complicit in the harm that their silence enables. Those who ask for understanding or sympathy for Trump supporters are, literally, terrorist sympathizers. Those who remain faithful to Trump are dangerous traitors to the United States and a direct threat to the McKinley Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Originally posted here:

Diversity is Our Strength and Our Protection - McKinley Park News

As the nation erupted this past year in multiple protests against systemic racism in America, the crowds often gave voice to the long-esteemed protest strategy of peace and nonviolence. The mid-century civil rights movements sit-ins and marches were the protest paradigm to be emulated.

The movements events, its leadership and its ethic of nonviolent resistance, grounded in the storied teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, provided the pathway to the desegregation and voting rights successes of the 1960s and 70s. Time and again, be it the summers protests following the death of George Floyd, or the myriad womens marches, and many other protests on abortion, immigration, climate change, science literacy, gun control, health care and others in Washington, D.C. and across the nation, protesters hearkened to Kings lessons.

The tendency to remember the civil rights movement in this almost mythic fashion, however, stands in stark contrast to the true history of the freedom struggle as it was perceived by the nation at the time. While more than 90 percent of U.S. adults now view King favorably, a 1966 Gallup poll showed Americans were nearly twice as likely to have a negative as a positive opinion of him.

Historian Jeanne Theoharis examined the public memory of the movement in her 2018 book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History. She argues that a simplistic and inaccurate narrative accompanied the erection of monuments to civil rights heroes and the creation of commemorations like the national holiday honoring King. The story we began to construct was a narrative that everyone could get behind, a story of individual bravery, natural evolution, and the long march to a more perfect union, she writes. A story that should have reflected on the immense injustices at the nations core and the enormous lengths people had gone to attack them had become a flattering mirror.

A new film MLK/FBI, by the acclaimed Emmy Award winning director Sam Pollard, speaks directly to the dissonance between our popular memory of the civil rights movement and its complicated history. Pollard, who is known as the editor on Spike Lees films, as well as for directing films on the civil rights movement like Slavery by Another Name and the classic Eyes on the Prize PBS series, wanted to create a film about how [Dr. King] is considered an icon now but was considered a pariah back in the day.

Based on newly discovered and declassified files, the film tells the story of the FBIs surveillance and harassment of King. and explores the contested meaning behind some of our most cherished ideals. The Smithsonians History Film Forum is hosting an evening in conversation with Pollard along with Larry Rubin, a former field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in a virtual event on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 18. Pollards film is in theaters this week and will soon be available for home screening.

Beginning around 1962, long before anyone could imagine King would be honored with a national holiday or even with a postage stamp, the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, saw the civil rights leader as a serious threat to the nation. The FBIs interest in investigating King was initially driven by his relationship with friend and advisor Stanley Levinson, introduced to King by Bayard Rustin, himself the subject of a government probe.

Hoover and William Sullivan, the FBIs head of domestic intelligence, led an investigation into the relationship between King and Levison that eventually broadened into an effort to discredit and destroy King and the movement.

As Yale historian Beverly Gage says in the film, the FBI was most alarmed about King because of his success and they were particularly concerned that he was this powerful charismatic figure who had the ability to mobilize people. Hoover had famously said that he feared the rise of a black messiah, and as Gage has suggested he envisioned himself as not just a law enforcement official but a guardian of the American way of life, which included securing racial and general hierarchies that placed white men as the natural rulers.

As we learn more about the governments campaign against King and the movement, it appears the surveillance and misinformation may have played a significant role in turning King into that pariah.

It began when King stepped down from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial after giving one of the most famous speeches in national and world history, his I Have a Dream speech. In this instance, the march brought together more people than had ever participated in such a protest in the nations history.

That iconic moment defines King and the ideal of protest for many Americans. It was also the moment that Hoover and the FBI wrote an urgent memo stating King was the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation, and resolving to use every resource at its disposal to destroy him.

To dig up dirt on King, the FBI first centered on the relationship with Levinson to suss out possible communist ties to the movement. The government felt that communists threatened to subvert the racial hierarchy in America. Because of general fears of communism in the 1950s and 60s, it was also a convenient brush to paint dissenters with that which would play well with the public. National white leaders quite openly began to speak of the civil rights movement as being initiated and controlled by the American Communist Party and an international communist conspiracy.

This effort was not just directed at movement leaders at the level of King, but became a systematic effort to destroy the movement aimed at both its leadership and rank and file.

Rubin, then a 22-year-old white student organizer who became a SNCC field secretary, was traveling from Oxford, Ohio, with a carload of books to set up Freedom Schools in Mississippi. He was beaten and arrested numerous times and charged with attempting to overthrow the government of the state of Mississippi for his work to educate black children.

During one arrest, police took away his address book and soon after, to turn attention away from the disappearance of three civil rights workers who had been murdered in Mississippi, U.S. Senator James Eastland used the notebook as evidence against him. In a speech dripping with anti-Semitic overtones, he denounced Rubin and other activists as communists.

This period in 1964, a moment of great successes in the movement from the passage of the Civil Rights Act, to the Mississippi Freedom Summer project, to Kings Nobel Peace Prize, is also the period when the FBIs work against King began to diminish the movements popularity. The agencys campaign soon took a new direction from proving communist ties to, as King's biographer David Garrow states, a focus on collecting salacious sexual material of King with various girlfriends.

Unsealed FBI field reports later made public by the National Archives show the campaign used wiretaps and bugs to record King in sexual dalliances with women other than his wife and that this information was sent to reporters, clergy and others in the movement in an attempt to discredit him.

When this effort didnt succeed in producing the destruction of King as Hoover and Sullivan had hoped, the Bureau stepped up its efforts. This time, they sent his wife, Coretta, a recording that was purported to be the civil rights leader with another woman. And the bureau sent the recording to his office with an anonymous letter supposedly from a disenchanted movement activist, suggesting that King should commit suicide before his sins were revealed to the public.

The story of the FBIs campaign against King has clear and sobering relevance today. It reminds us of the danger of a powerful, unchecked and flawed demagogue like Hoover using his office to impose his own views on society and to enforce them with scurrilous and lawless methods. It speaks to the effect that that sort of rhetoric can create bias and scorn, whether terms like communist or Antifa. It also shows the power of elements of American culture like Hollywood films and television as complicit in the oppression of black Americans through the romanticization of an institution like the FBI.

Shows like the 1960s television series The F.B.I. helped lead a biased public to trust the agency and demonize black activists. Lastly this look back at a history that is so different from our collective memory of today, speaks to how we use the past to understand the present.

Was King a flawed individual? The unsealed and biased, but also personally damning evidence, about Kings infidelity creates a more complicated story about who he was and does not jibe well with the mythic memorial of statues and holidays. As former FBI director James Comey says in the film, Ive never met a perfect person.

Pollard says he made the film in part to show that hero worship is dangerous. When you elevate someone to be an icon, you forget that theyre human beings and complex. You forget that King did not do it by himself, he says.

That is unless you remember King and the movement for what they were: committed individuals leading a peoples movement nonviolently grasping for the power available to them, against great odds and in the face of persecution and threat, and successfully making changes in the fabric of this nation. That memory of the movement and its leaders is not only more accurate history but is also more inspirational.

If change can only come through the work of perfect and heroic leaders enshrined in marble monuments, it leaves us waiting for one to arrive. A history embracing both the positive and the imperfect, with flawed people struggling against odds and power should tell us that any one person may be able to similarly affect change.

Originally posted here:

A New Film Details the FBI's Relentless Pursuit of Dr. Martin Luther King - Smithsonian Magazine

Lucknow, Jan 15 (UNI) Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu along with Partys leader in the Legislative Council, Deepak Singh and several Congress workers were detained on Friday as they attempted to march towards Raj Bhawan to observe 'Kisan Adhikar Diwas'.Mr Lallu and his supporters were detained just near his house. The Congress had announced that it would observe Kisan Adhikar Diwas on Friday and gherao the Raj Bhawan in protest against the farm laws. Scuffles between Congress workers and the police were reported from other places as well as party workers attempting to reach Raj Bhawan.Talking to reporters, the UPCC chief said that the Yogi Adityanath government was infringing on their democratic rights to hold a peaceful protest.

"When BJP is organizing big rallies, programs and chief minister Yogi Adityanath himself celebrating Gorakhpur Divas and several other events, only the Opposition Parties leaders, especially of the Congress were stopped or even held while demonstrating against the misdeeds of the Government in the name of implementing corona protocol, claimed Lallu while attacking BJP government of snatching their right of making peaceful demonstration. "The Congress will continue its fight against this kind of oppression," he added.

Prominent against those held included District President, Ved Prakash Tripathi, City President, Mukesh Chauhan, former minister RK Chowdhary, Mahila state president Mamta Chowdhary etc.UNI MB RHK2053

Originally posted here:

Congress leaders detained in UP - United News of India

I have been attracted to critical theory all my life, and never dreamt that I would be compelled to defend liberalism, as I intend to do in this piece. Oddly, a philosophy that has been dismissed by the radical Left as tame and status-quoist, has become a term of abuse in the hands of the religious Right.

Lutyens Delhi, the Khan Market gang, and Urban Naxals are contemptuously dismissed as libtards. The mind boggles. What on earth is the meaning of libtard? The word is clumsy at best and incoherent at worst. The wider question is why is the Right so scared of liberalism?

The problem is that we simply do not know what is under attack and why. There is no one liberalism. No two liberals agree with each other. Many have launched acerbic and offensive broadsides against their ideological colleagues. There is a world of difference between the egalitarian liberalism of John Rawls and the libertarianism of a Robert Nozick. Liberals are under attack by postcolonial theorists for violating their own cherished principles when it came to the societies they colonised, and the natives they brutalised. Matters are further complicated when we recollect that the early liberalism of say, John Locke, was completely transformed after John Rawls published his much-acclaimed Theory of Justice in 1971.

Socialist philosophers had poured scorn on every liberal principle. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, something strange happened. Liberal philosophers proceeded to take over the agenda of socialism. Today, liberals debate the concept of social justice argued for by John Rawls, equality as sovereign virtue defended by Ronald Dworkin, and minority rights/multiculturalism introduced by Will Kymlicka, along with the welfare state, social movements, the need to control the rampant oppression of the market, social democracy, and what society owes the disadvantaged.

Remains of the Berlin Wall are pictured at former Bornholmer Strasse Berlin Wall border crossing point in Berlin, Germany, October 18, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo

What do cadres of the religious Right attack when they lambast liberalism theories of constitutionalism or of cosmopolitanism and global justice? Perhaps these cadres run scared because the basic precepts of liberal philosophy show a mirror that reflects the strange beliefs of the religious Right.

Take the first precept of liberalism, liberty. Liberalism emerged as a distinct philosophy in days of the absolutist state to defend liberty. This was not new. Freedom has prompted rebellion against pre-modern tyrants and modern populists. Yet freedom wrote Lord Byron, yet thy banner, torn, but flying/Streams like the thunders-storm against the wind. What early liberals did was to theorise liberty as a natural right that accrued to men (women got rights much later).

The right to liberty, (which presupposed the right to life), was closely tied to the right to private property. The vindication of private property posed constraints on the power of the state to interfere with basic rights. Individual rights limited state power.

The second principle of liberalism is the limited state. Liberals have always been fearful of two aspects of democratic life demagogues and majorities. Demagogues exercise frightening power; they can convert crowds into rampaging mobs. Majorities can run amuck, stampeding the equal rights of others to liberty.

Voltaire. Photo: Public domain.

The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) was not precisely a liberal. He was an Enlightenment thinker. But he summed up the fear of demagogues when he reportedly wrote: If they can make you believe absurdities they can make you commit murder. I use the word reportedly because Voltaire has been credited with many quotes, some of which were manufactured by others. His exact words are: Truly whosoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust.

These fears have motivated liberals to focus on the need to contain state power through constitutions, institutions, the rule of law, independent judiciaries and individual rights. Liberty is feared by cadres of the religious Right, mainly because assertions of the basic right to liberty constrains the power of the state to do with its people as it wills.

Further, the liberal belief in the primacy of the individual, who is mature enough to know what she wants to do with her life, galls the collective sensibility of the religious Right. They prefer to subordinate the individual to the nation, and individual rights to the state organised as the nation. The citizen is infantilised. Like a Victorian school child, she has to listen, not speak, she has to be seen, not be heard.

What we see is a clash between the philosophy of individualism and the ideology of collectivism. Collectivism is the name given to states that are supposed to possess a mythical presence and an identity that subordinates the presence and the identity of citizens. In history, collectivism has lapsed into fascism. Liberalism tries to block this development because it poses a threat to individual liberty. Collectivists see liberals as threatening to their own agenda.

Unfortunately, cadres of the religious Right do not realise that they are cutting the ground from beneath their feet. Institutions have been compromised, and the basic rights of individuals trampled upon. The problem is that the dynamics of authoritarianism do not distinguish between individuals. Today, it is my turn to be arrested and detained, tomorrow it might be yours. For this very reason, institutionalised power is infinitely preferable to power exercised by individuals. But the Right chooses to shoot the messenger rather than understand the message: the state is there for the individual, the individual is not for the state.

Also read: A Reminder That People Do Not Dissolve, Governments Do

Of course, liberalism is not perfect but which political philosophy is? It has been attacked rightly by women, by ethnic minorities, and particularly by postcolonial theorists who see the ideology as complicit with colonialism. What is interesting, however, is the way leaders of the freedom struggle changed the text of liberalism by situating it in the context of a mass-based freedom struggle.

For one, liberals in India recognised that individual rights, so central to the philosophy of liberals, could never be realised unless the country became independent. A collective right the right of the nation to freedom, became a precondition for individual rights.

Dadabhai Naoroji. Photo: Public domain

Even a committed liberal like Dadabhai Naoroji was compelled to accept that the British would never treat Indians the way they treated their own citizens. The only solution was self-government.

At the 1906 session of the Indian National Congress, held amidst unrest and anger at the partition of Bengal, Naoroji, as the president of the party, famously called for Swaraj or self-government for India. His address was considered too moderate by some Congress leaders and too extreme by others.

But the message was clear: a collective and indivisible right to freedom was an essential precondition for individual rights. For liberals in the classical mould, the very idea of collective right is inimical to freedom. Till today, they are not comfortable with nationalism. For the colonised, no individual could possess rights unless the nation was free.

Second, in England, democracy in the minimal sense of universal adult franchise, came slowly and haltingly. In 1918, some women were given the right to vote, but all men got the right. Universal adult franchise for both men and women was granted only in 1928.

The 1789 revolution in France had put forth the idea of the rights of man, but women were given the right to vote only in 1944. The Indian case is different. In the second decade of the twentieth century, Gandhi brought into the Congress social groups who till then had been overlooked by the upper-class leadership. These groups enthusiastically supported Gandhis programme of non-cooperation and later civil disobedience, at a time many leaders of the Congress were sceptical of the efficacy of such movements. The mainstream national movement was transformed.

The recognition that formerly excluded groups had become active in the movement bore results. In 1928, Lord Birkenhead, the then Secretary of State for India, dared the leaders of the freedom struggle to produce a constitution that would fetch approval across the board. The honourable Secretary of State was fated to disappointment. Leaders of the Congress party rose to the challenge and in the Madras session in 1927 decided to draft a constitution in association with other political groups. An All-Parties Conference was set up to supervise the task.

Also read: Pray, What Is This Reform That the Rightwing Peddles?

On May 19, 1928 the Conference appointed a committee of nine members with Pandit Motilal Nehru as the chairman. The mandate of the committee was to determine the basic principles of a future constitution, with special reference to the communal problem, and Dominion Status/Responsible Government.

Gandhi leading his followers on the famous salt march to break the British Salt Laws. Photo: Public domain

The Congress had stipulated that the basis of the constitution should be a Declaration of Fundamental Rights. The committee accordingly took care to conceptualise, list, and guarantee an integrated list of fundamental rights that could not be withdrawn at any point of time. Paramount among the rights recommended by the committee was universal adult suffrage for men and women, the classic right to liberty and privacy, and freedom of conscience. Also granted was the right to free expression of opinion, the right to assemble peaceably and without arms, and the right to form associations or unions for purposes not opposed to public order and morality. All citizens were assured equality before the law and granted equal civic rights.

Notably, the draft emphasised the right to the free profession and practice of religion subject to public order or morality and state neutrality in matters of religion. There shall be, declared the constitutional draft, no state religion for the Commonwealth of India, or for any province. Nor shall the state either directly or indirectly endow any religion, or give any preference, or impose any disability on account of religious belief and status. No person shall be obliged to attend religious instructions in schools receiving state aid or public money. Significantly, the Motilal Nehru Constitutional Draft introduced the notion of minority rights, or the rights of minorities to their own religion, culture and language. All citizens were granted the right to constitutional remedies.

The Constitution of India.

In his report to the president of the All Parties Conference, Motilal Nehru stated, We cannot believe that a future responsible government can ignore the claims of mass education, or the uplift of the submerged classes, or the social or economic reconstruction of village life in India. Whereas political power was necessary to lift people out of poverty, ill health and illiteracy, whereas political power was an essential precondition for social and economic rights, it could be justified only when social and economic rights were enacted and implemented.

On September 2, 1928, an editorial in the Hindustan Times titled Dawning of a New Era, saw the report as heralding the final death of communal egotism and the birth of a national consciousness in the countryWe have drawn the Magna Carta of our liberty. The Amrita Bazaar Patrika was one of the few newspapers that paid attention to the grant of social rights.

Also read: A Life Beyond Capitalism: Reimagining a Socialist Future With Yanis Varoufakis

On the same day, an editorial stridently criticised the addition of a clause initiated by Madan Mohan Malviya: that an independent government shall not confiscate lawfully acquired private property. According to the editorial, Jawaharlal Nehru had strenuously opposed this anti-socialist measure at the Lucknow meeting. His father, Motilal Nehru, suggested that it was useless to put a patch of socialism on the report. Quite right; but why put the patch of capitalism either? asked the editorial.

A version of liberalism that included collective and individual freedom, rights, rule of law, limits on state power and above all constitutionalism came onto the platform of the mainstream freedom movement led by the Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his autobiography that everywhere I spoke on political independence and social freedom and made the former a step towards the attainment of the latter. I wanted to spread the ideology of socialism especially among the Congress workers and the intelligentsia, for these people, who were the backbone of the national movement, thought largely in terms of the narrowest nationalism.

The yawning chasm that separated liberal thought from socialism in Europe was bridged by the young leaders of the national movement in the 1920s.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakrabarty

Liberalism can be, and has been faulted on many grounds. Today when the integrity of institutions has been eroded, when the voice of the people is dismissed as anti-national, when vigilantism runs rampant and when leaders do not listen but speak down to us, we realise that liberalism might be of some import for the rebuilding of democracy. We have no choice but to go back to the basics of political life the rights of individuals, limited state power, rule of law, and constitutional remedies, mediated through the imaginations of the leaders of the freedom struggle.

We have to revisit the 1920s, when the national movement was transformed from an elitist organisation into a peoples movement, and learning from history, reinvent and innovate the basic tenets of our democratic life. If liberalism has become a bad word for the Religious Right, there must be some virtues in the concept and practices of the ideology. Let us reinvent it.

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Why Is Liberalism a 'Bad' Word for the Right? - The Wire

Wednesdays insurrection laid bare the fragility of democracy in the United States. It is unsurprising that many Americans feel their confidence in the countrys democratic ideals deeply shaken. The expressions ofconcernfrom American allies, and the schadenfreude fromautocrats,including Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdoan, are sobering.

Writing inForeign Policy, Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council,argued, Ambitious foreign-policy goals are completely out of step with the realities of the countrys domestic political and economic dysfunction How can the United States spread democracy or act as an example for others if it barely has a functioning democracy at home? InForeign Affairs, James Goldgeier, a professor at American University, and Bruce Jentleson, a professor at Duke University,calledon President-elect Joe Biden to abandon his proposed international summit for democracy and hold a domestic one instead. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations,lamented on Twitter that it will be a long time before we can credibly advocate for the rule of law overseas.

However, it would be wrong to conclude that our current humiliation means that the United States has somehow lost its standing to speak up for democracy and human rights globally, or that these ideals are less pressing because of our domestic troubles. Quite the opposite. Our situation shows that the United States has a real stake in the struggle.

Repairing democracy at home is not incompatible with standing up for democracy abroad; they are mutually reinforcing. The threats to democracy are not unique to the United States. Trumpism is part of a global nationalist-populist movement that benefits from international networks of kleptocracy, disinformation, and corruption. As Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren noted during the Democratic presidential primary, taking down these networks is a necessary prerequisite for restoring democracy and the rule of law at home.

Many of the long-term threats to democracydisinformation and the lack of an objective truth, political interference by China and Russia, inequities in the global economy, and fears about interdependence and globalizationcan only be addressed collectively. And American allies still want the countrys help. Allied officials have told me in recent days that although they are worried about whats happening in the United States, they would regard it as a disaster if the U.S. abandoned its leadership role in strengthening liberal democracy globally.

This week, Twitter wasawashwithpeople arguing that the United States has no moral authority to lecture others about human rights given what happened in Washington. This sentiment was also prevalent over the summer, following the murder of George Floyd. Then, Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former Obama-administration official, wiselyobserved, in an article on the Brookings Institution website:

To insist that we must first get our house in order before speaking to others oppression, to be so ashamed by our own shortcomings that we refrain from calling out abuses abroad, and thus to withhold our solidarity from the abused, would itself be an act of moral abdication.

After four years of Donald Trump and rising authoritarianism around the world, we now live in what former U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband haslabeled the age of impunity, when governments believe that they can get away with anything, largely because they can. If the United States does not push back against this, it will only get worse.

In the days after the insurrection, the Chinese embassy in Washingtontweeted a horribly offensive statement about the forced sterilization of Uighur women in Xinjiang, China, that was later taken down by Twitter. The post could be interpreted as a deliberate provocation to show that, as the United States fell into crisis, China could push the boundaries of acceptable discourse. Earlier in the week, China arrested scores of prodemocracy activists in Hong Kong in its efforts to slowly strangle the last remnants of freedom in the city.

Perhaps denunciation of these actions and a renewed focus in Congress on how to respond would sound hollow because of Americas domestic problems, but that does not make them any less necessary. Beijing may argue that the United States lacks credibility, but its victims certainly would not.

Unlike the Trump administration, the Biden team has signaled that it is willing to get tough with American allies and other countries when they commit human-rights abuses or undermine democracyincluding the Saudi Arabian governments murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the imprisonment of women-rights activists. Many domestic critics of U.S. foreign policy have long argued for these actions. Because America electedand then rejecteda populist who incites violence, it would be a very unfortunate irony if his newly elected replacement would shy away from holding to account an absolute monarchy thatsends teams abroad to kidnap and sometimes murder its critics.

Moments of crisis and despair should force us to confront our own failings and reconcile them with our values and purpose. Sometimes, an individual can articulate that in a way that resonates and breaks through. This time, that eloquence came from a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, a group that has been attacked and undermined by the Trump administration. Two days after the invasion of the Capitol, Natalie Brown, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, issued astatement that explained why the United States must still stand for freedom and the rule of law:

When we speak out against human rights abuses, we do so not because such abuses do not occur in America. When we speak out for press freedom, we do so not because American journalists are entirely free of harassment. When we call for judicial independence, we do so not because judges in America are free of external influence. On the contrary, we do so because we are mindful of the work still to be done in the American experiment with democracy and because our history has taught us that democracy must be defended if it is to endure.

The U.S. certainly has lessons to learn from the past few days, and years. For example, the Trump administrationused democracy and human rights purely instrumentally, as weapons with which to bludgeon its enemiesChina, Venezuela, Cubawhile giving its friends a pass and undermining these values at home. That approach is bankrupt and will fail if tried again.

Biden transition officials have admirably spoken out in support of human rights and seem likely to continue to do so. The president-elect likes to talk about the power of our example rather than the example of our power. He is right, of course, but the sad truth is that the power of our example will not be sufficient to fight authoritarianism worldwide. The urgency and gravity of the struggle is such that it requires concrete action as well as strong words. These could include legislation to prohibit U.S. companies from aiding and abetting authoritarian governments in their acts of repression. It should also mean imposing a cost on U.S. allies that undermine democracyfor instance, banning their leaders from visiting Washington, or even reducing cooperation with them.

Trump, more than any other president, has tried to empower autocrats and undermine liberal democracy. In this, he succeeded for four years. Now we are poised for a reversal. For the United States to lose confidence in its own ability to protect democracy abroad would be to hand Trump and Trumpism a victory when he is on the verge of defeat. It is precisely because American democracy is under pressure at home that the U.S. government ought to stand up for it overseas.

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The US must now repair democracy at home and abroad - Brookings Institution

Washington went dry before the rest of the nation. Booze was restricted by 1916. During World War I, the government would not allow alcohol sales within 10 miles of a military installation, and Seattle had a number of those, like Fort Lawton.

In 1919, national prohibition went into effect and lasted until 1933. Saloons shut down, breweries closed or, like distilleries during the recent pandemic that turned to making hand sanitizer, they began making nonalcoholic products like grape juice or soda pop.

But Seattles thirst would not remain unquenched. The large population of men, gambling joints and a sex trade was fueled by loggers, fishermen, miners, sailors, sawmill workers and others. Bribes to members of a long-corrupt police department helped lubricate a system that allowed illegal booze to flow. Some cops were even part of organized bootlegging gangs.

The underground economy wasnt just for the rich who drank in their private clubs. It flourished in places like Pioneer Square, Japantown, Chinatown and Jackson Street, long-standing places where many Seattleites went to sin. And it fed entrepreneurs who took not to risky smuggling, but to making moonshine on a grand scale for different markets with their own hidden stills and breweries.

It should also be said that some scholars believe that Prohibition was largely a movement of the white, Protestant middle class to control the working class, immigrants and people of color especially in growing urban areas.

One flourishing moonshine sector catered to the Japanese community, where illicit sake was sold to quench the thirst of towns with large Japanese populations, including Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Spokane.

In his landmark book on the first generation of Japanese in the Northwest Issei author Kazuo Ito talked about Japantowns gambling clubs, like the Toyo. Wherever there were Issei, there were sake, women and gambling, he wrote. Clubs like the Toyo paid a price to the police to stay open about $1,000 a month! Thats a lot in 1920s dollars.

For that generation, sake was not only a traditional drink for Shinto rituals or special occasions, but it was the beverage of choice for social recreation, especially among the abundance of cannery boys and sawmill workers who were encouraged to drink and gamble on payday, Ito writes. The greatest number of Japanese in Seattle at that time were employed as laborers.

Sake is called wine but is actually brewed from specially milled white rice and transformed with a fungus called koji, which is also used in making staples like miso and soy sauce. By Prohibition, California had a thriving commercial rice-growing industry in the Sacramento Valley. In other words, sake ingredients were readily available.

In addition, a hard liquor called shochucould also be distilled from sake ingredients to which other things, like sweet potatoes or barley, could be added. Such a drink was sometimes referred to as Japanese whiskey.

The process of sake brewing can be elaborate, with many steps. Illegal sake was often made in outlying rural areas, away from the prying eyes of the citys dry squad officers who raided with axes and smashed and confiscated what they found. Federal agents and local sheriffs stepped in to stop sake at these sources and make arrests.

Some operations were large. In 1918, the feds busted a rice whiskey operation between the Washelli cemetery and Edmonds that was the largest ever discovered in the area. Confiscated were an elaborate still, 3,000 pounds of rice and laundry and garbage containers designed to conceal the booze in a delivery truck.

Another operation, in Milton in Pierce County, was also said to be big. It was hidden in the woods and manned by four Japanese men. Fifteen large vats with a capacity of 4,500 gallons of sake were taken, along with tons of rice and corn.

A raid by Seattle dry squadders In 1919 at a Ravenna truck garden resulted in the arrests of four Japanese men with a 500-gallon mash tub and bottles labeled grape juice. The moonshiners were taken to the city jail.

Four hundred gallons of sake was seized or destroyed in a bust south of Georgetown on McKinley Hill. The local sheriff was amazed at the scale, saying I have wondered a long time where so much sake came from.

The breweries and stills had to be hidden, but so too their points of distribution. In Seattles International District a bust at Fifth and Maynard avenues resulted in the seizure of 2,000 gallons of sake and rice whiskey, but one man escaped through a secret underground passage.

A caf at Fifth Avenue and Main Street was found to have a hidden sake stash under its garbage cans. And how about this? A rooming house on King Street had attached its sinks faucet to two 20-gallon copper vats of moonshine and sake. Hot and cold running booze! It was detected because the landlady had left the faucet on when police raided.

Seattle celebrated when Prohibition ended. But some people had to reacquaint themselves with beverages. Ito quotes a Japanese caf owner saying the demand for beer after repeal of Prohibition was intense at the Jackson Caf in the International Districts Bush Hotel. Desperate customers drank it even though it was warm, too foamy and flat to taste. To look back on it, he said, both seller and customer had forgotten the taste of beer. They certainly werent picky, as happy days were there again.

Despite Prohibition, though, people hadnt lost their taste for their traditional rice-based beverage. Sake endured as a cultural touchstone. It was even brewed in secret in the barracks of camps where West Coast Japanese Americans were forcibly incarcerated during World War II. It helped to keep spirit and culture alive despite hard times and oppression.

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Mossback's Northwest: The bootleg sake of Prohibition-era Seattle - Crosscut

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On Wednesday, the United States Treasury Department sanctioned Astan Quds Razavi (AQR) and Execution of Imam Khomeinis Order (EIKO), plus their subsidiaries and four other individuals including Ahmad Marvi, the AQRs current caretaker. These two huge financial institutions controlled by the Iranian regimes Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, are the regimes resources for plundering the national wealth and funding terrorism.

These institutions enable Irans elite to sustain a corrupt system of ownership over large parts of Irans economy, said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The United States will continue to target those who enrich themselves while claiming to help the Iranian people.

Today, the United States is imposing sanctions on two organizations controlled by the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Execution of Imam Khomeinis Order (EIKO) and Astan Quds Razavi (AQR). While masquerading as charitable organizations, EIKO and AQR control large portions of the Iranian economy, including assets seized from political dissidents and religious minorities, for the benefit of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, his office, and senior Iranian government officials, said Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State in a press statement.

These institutions enable Irans corrupt leaders to exploit a system of ownership over a wide range of sectors of Irans economy. The United States will continue to target entities and individuals that enrich themselves while claiming to help the Iranian people, Secretary Pompeo added.

In this regard, Behzad Nabavi, a government minister in several administrations, in an interview with the state-run Alef news agency on September 21, 2019 revealed some information about this issue. In our country, there are four institutions which control 60 percent of the national wealth. This includes Executive Headquarters of Imams Directive (Setad Ejraie Farman Imam), Khatam-ol-Anbiay Base, Astan-e Quds and Foundation of the Oppressed and Disabled. None of these institutions are in connection with the government and parliament, he said.

The Iranian Resistance had previously exposed these two financial institutions, along with 12 other power houses, under Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) control, and their role in funding the regimes illicit activities.

In an exclusive report, published on November 8, 2019, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) exposed the AQRs role in funding terrorism and extremism.

Astan-e Quds Razavi has played an active role in providing financial, material and logistical support to fundamentalist and terrorist groups within the last few years. Particularly, the heads of AQR have vast relations with Hezbollahs top officials. It is worth noting that these activities within the past few years have been expanding, read the NCRIs report.

Astan-e Quds Razavi, also supports family members of Iranian agents who have been killed, including members of terrorist groups like Hezbollah, as well as agents in Iraqi, Syria, Nigeria, and so on. The regime organizes pilgrimage and tourism in Iran and uses this for further terrorist and extremist recruitment., the NCRIs report added.

The Iranian regime uses foundations such as Astan-e Quds to circumvent sanctions and fund its oppressive and terrorist policies subsequent to the blacklisting of the IRGC and the expansion of US sanctions aimed at cutting off the regimes economic resources, the regime has utilized AQR and similar entities to circumvent the sanctions and to finance its repressive and terrorist policies, the NCRI wrote.

In a newly published exclusive report, the NCRI also exposed the role of the regimes Setad Ejraie Farman Imam also known as EIKO or Setad in plundering the national wealth and funding the regimes terrorist apparatus.

Setads influence and domination over the Iranian economy surpass even that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is the most assertive of the so-called non-government public sector companies when it comes to the confiscation of assets. An important difference between Setad and other similar institutions in the sphere of the velayat-e faqihs influence is that it has been able to take possession of some of the most profitable and largest commercial and financial firms, thanks to the direct and daily backing of Khamenei himself, the report said.

The NCRIs report highlighted that A review of Setads activities also confirms that this complex is one of the most important interlocutors for transactions with western companies. To strengthen the financial backbone of Setad, in 2010, Khamenei transferred close to $1B worth of assets from Astan-e Abdol-Azim in Rey city to Setad.

Recently Khamenei banned the entry of credible Covid-19 vaccines from the U.S. and the United Kingdom. He persisted on production of so-called domestic vaccines which over 167 pharmacists have called a joke.

This so-called domestic vaccine is being produced under the EIKOs supervision and by one of its subsidiaries. Thus, Khamenei and his foundation further plunder Iranians.

The Food and Drug Administration is under heavy pressure to approve domestically produced vaccines and anti-coronavirus medicines. Because obtaining approval from the Ministry of Health means a huge profit for the drug owner, wrote the state-run Jahan-e Sanat in this regard on December 14.

Khamenei, the IRGC and their financial power houses, are looting the Iranian economy and national wealth and wasting them on terrorism and oppression. While over 200000 people have died because of coronavirus, and while these institutions hold billions of dollars the regime has not allocated a budget for procuring vaccines.

These institutions and immense conglomerates control all aspects of Irans economy. Thus, doing business with the regime in Tehran means directly or indirectly funding the regimes terrorist activities.

The European Union has been promoting business with Tehran, without referring to the dangers this trade will have for not just Iranians, but for EU citizens as well.

Irans diplomat-terrorist Assdollah Assadi and his accomplices, who are on trial in Belgium, tried to plant a bomb in the heart of Europe in 2018. Their bomb plot, if not thwarted, could have been the largest terrorist attack in Europe. The regimes terrorist apparatus which planned and attempted this bombing is funded through various forms including by front companies, institutions, banks or the so-called private sector.

But behind the official banks and companies lies a web of institutions controlled by the regime, and specifically the IRGC and Khamenei.

It is time for the international community, mainly the EU, to adopt a firm policy vis--vis this terrorist regime. The EU should impose, maintain and increase sanctions on the regime and recognize the IRGC as a terrorist entity. It is time for the world community to hold the regime to account.

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U.S. Sanctions Two Financial Institutions Under Khameneis Control Involved in Terrorism and Harming Iranians - National Council of Resistance of Iran...

The English writer George Orwell, who died more than 70 years ago, is experiencing a resurgence of popularity among the political right. Last week, Donald Trump Jr. reacted to Twitter's decision to ban his father from the social media platform with a tweet of his own: "We are living Orwell's 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what's left is only there for a chosen few."

Minutes earlier, Josh Hawley -- the Missouri senator and outspoken proponent of Trump's false claims to have won the 2020 election, who offered a raised fist to those assembled outside the Capitol, just hours before the mob turned violent and forcibly breached the building's defenses -- had responded to the news that Simon & Schuster had decided to cancel his book contract with a tweet. "This could not be more Orwellian" he wrote. "Only approved speech can now be published. This is the Left looking to cancel everyone they don't approve of. I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have."

On Wednesday, Anthony Shaffer, retired military intelligence officer and adviser to the Trump campaign, accused the BBC's Evan Davis of using "Orwellian language to change what happened" when Davis described the president "inspiring insurrection, sedition, violent attack on Congress."

Orwell opposed censorship, not only official state censorship, which was "obviously ... not desirable," but the informal censorship of the media. As he wrote in an unpublished 1943 essay on "The Freedom of the Press": "If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face."

Yet, while Orwell opposed censorship, he abhorred the corruption of language by political leaders intent on masking dubious or amoral actions behind either the anodyne language of bureaucracy and legalese, or the emotional language of patriotism. One of Orwell's deepest laments was that, during his lifetime, "political speech and writing" had become "largely the defense of the indefensible." Most likely Orwell would not have supported either the de-platforming of Trump, or the cancelation of Hawley's book contract. But he likely would also have despised both men for their cynical abuse of the English language.

More straightforward would have been his reaction to Shaffer's disingenuous effort to invoke his name to delegitimize the BBC's characterization of the events of January 6. In his classic 1946 essay "Politics and the English language," Orwell wrote that "Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

The term Orwellian, used correctly, is a shorthand for the perversion of language to mask truth and defend the indefensible, the most concise example of which is the government's mantra in Orwell's "1984": "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." "1984," in addition to being an indictment of totalitarianism, is also an indictment of the displacement of plain truth with political doublespeak. It's a warning of the societal danger of rewriting insurrection, sedition and violence as patriotism and protest.

Trump Jr. and Hawley's tweets rolled into my feed as I was finishing the syllabus for an undergraduate history seminar, "George Orwell and the Making of the Modern World," which will explore the early 20th century taught through Orwell's writing. Not for the first time, I was reminded of Orwell's continued relevance, and more broadly, what his work reveals about the importance of truth and language in political discourse in America and beyond.

I teach in the US now, but I taught my first class on Orwell in 2016 in the United Kingdom as that country was consumed by the bitter referendum campaign over whether Britain should leave the European Union. Brexiteers famously campaigned with a giant red bus emblazoned with the slogan "We send the EU 350 million a week. Let's fund our NHS instead."

It was a knowingly false equation, that money "saved" by withdrawal the EU would be directly available for investment at home -- akin to Big Brother's 2 + 2 =5 in Orwell's "1984" -- but one that the Remain camp seemed unable to neutralize. The distortions and untruths of the Brexit campaign only underscored the enduring relevance of Orwell's quip that, "Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth."

Four years later, I was teaching in America. This time, my students and I were discussing Orwell in the context of a Trump presidency that has frequently been denounced by the left as Orwellian for its embrace of lying and "alternative facts," but also in the context of a newly emergent "cancel culture" on the political left which has been perceived as Orwellian by public figures with far more credibility than Sen. Hawley.

I can report that the extremist political rhetoric of the 2020 election campaign as well as the growth of demagoguery and totalitarianism around the globe has only spurred undergraduates' interest in Orwell; the course I'm finalizing is full and has a waitlist.

I first read George Orwell in middle school, during the dying days of the Cold War, when "Animal Farm" was considered an ideal vehicle to teach American students about the perils of Soviet totalitarianism and to inculcate the virtues of America's commitment to free speech and the protection of political dissent. I went on to read "1984" in high school English, where my teacher made analogies between Big Brother and Joseph Stalin and the cult of personality and spelled out the connections between Newspeak and Room 101 and Soviet censorship and the torture and repression of the Gulag.

Donald Trump Jr. is a year older than I am. Josh Hawley is a year younger. For American children of our generation, the Orwell whom we were taught in high school was a Cold Warrior, an anti-Communist crusader against thought policing and dictatorial repression. If I had left Orwell behind in high school, I can imagine having sympathy for Trump and Hawley's claims that their First Amendment rights have been suppressed by a left-wing media establishment they deemed "Orwellian." After all, to quote the inscription beside the statue of Orwell outside the BBC's headquarters in London, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

But I didn't leave Orwell behind. In college, I read Orwell's indictments of racial oppression, based on his own experience as an imperial officer in Burma, and his writings on unemployment and poverty in Britain and France. Crucially, I read Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's memoir of his decision to volunteer alongside the Trotskyist POUM party in Spain in defense of the Spanish Republic against Franco's coup, only to discover that the POUM's worst enemy was arguably not Franco but the Stalin-backed Republican government which was intent on extinguishing their POUM "allies" with physical persecution and vicious propaganda.

Orwell's memoir sought to dispel the propaganda and rehabilitate the POUM's reputation as champions of democracy. To his dismay, he found that his publisher Victor Gollancz would not publish the book, despite accepting the truth of Orwell's narrative, for fear of upsetting the Stalin-backed government and undermining the Republican cause. Orwell, like Hawley, saw his book contract canceled -- and ultimately published the book through a small press that shared his political sympathies.

The more Orwell I read when I was young, the more I came to appreciate that, even above freedom of speech, Orwell was dedicated to defending the truth. In the world of "1984," where Big Brother insists that 2+2 =5, "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four."

Published in 1949, Orwell's "1984" is set, not in Communist Russia, but in Oceania, a dystopian Anglo-American superpower constantly at war with Russia (Eurasia) and China (Eastasia). In setting his novel in a version of Britain, Orwell is underscoring the point that political repression and dishonesty are not the preserve of Soviet totalitarianism.

The students who are enrolled in my class this spring were born well after the end of the Cold War. Their interest in Orwell is driven presumably less by his political relevance as an anti-Communist tribune than by the question of whether modern political culture, with its information silos, lies and alternative facts, has become the dystopian nightmare that Orwell envisaged.

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Why the right and left both want George Orwell on their side - KCTV Kansas City