"In Dubai, then, we have a perfected performance of modernity embellished by the tokens of neoliberalism. The malls, the shops, the endless caverns of duty-free enterprises all pay homage to homo economicus. The buying and selling are all interpreted as a commitment to freedom, where freedom means precisely the freedom to partake of frenzied economic activity. Aesthetics add further credibility, the much-touted wonder of Dubai’s metropolitan skyline offered up as the ultimate homage to technological achievement. That all of it is hollow, that beneath it all lie the bodies of enslaved workers who toiled unto their death, that an obstinate government provides these foreign workers no social services or path to citizenship, are the details in small print that nobody cares to read.

Dubai is not just the case of a shady and ruthless city kingdom given to fraud. It is instead a dark but accurate depiction of the post-liberal order, where capitalism savagely exacts profit and tramples the weak, and there is no way to rescue those it condemns as the detritus of its transactions. Dubai, this post-liberal necropolis, imposes its cruelties on hundreds of thousands because its rulers are aware that the values of human rights, of economic and gender equality, have all been reduced to nice words and policy briefs to be produced at regular intervals by front NGOs. The future, even the post-Trumpian future, promises many more Dubais."

thebaffler.com/alienated/performing-modernity-zakaria

"The carceral state itself has a massive social base. Large numbers work directly for the system: over one million police, sheriff’s officers, and prison guards; the twenty thousand who work for ICE and the twenty thousand who work who for the border patrol. As employees they retain significant industrial organization, and as their job functions have become increasingly politicized over recent years the militancy of their unions has grown. They also maintain other kinds of organization: forms of charitable association, for example, often with an edge of coercion. (Hence the stickers police associations give donors to put on their cars.) As the movements to abolish ICE and defund the police have grown, we have occasionally gotten glimpses behind the curtain into the online social worlds of enforcement agents, revealing a running dialogue of racist spite and violent fantasy. Entire departments are known to be saturated with white supremacist gang organizations. The appearance in the physical world of Blue Lives Matter paraphernalia and Punisher symbols are the visible trace of the closest thing we’ve ever had in this country to a Freikorps. Their job, collectively, is the violent maintenance of the racialized social order through a program of mass internment, expulsion, and abuse."

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/we-live-in-a-society/

Trump leaves several dangerous legacies for democracy behind him in the United States and the rest of the world.

1) he has shown that its possible to come to power by democratic electoral means and then subvert the state from within. At the same time, he has demonstrated that in order to remain in power, elections can be delegitimized through lies, fake news, the uses of loyal social networks, while blaming mainstream journalism for bias, and mobilizing paramilitary forces on the streets.

2) he has promoted the idea that in order to succeed economically (following his example), all state regulations must be eliminated, and those that exist sidestepped, going so far in fact as to decriminalize corruption.

3) Trumpism has normalized racism, sexism, and contempt for the left, environmental defenders and all those who represent the liberal agenda of diversity and human rights that has developed since the 1960s. It has articulated in public the rejection of immigrants and refugee claimants that people previously refrained from expressing. Trump spoke out and denigrated these claimants openly. As George Packer wrote, “not because he couldn’t control his impulses, but intentionally, even systematically, in order to demolish the norms that would otherwise have constrained his power. To his supporters, his shamelessness became a badge of honesty and strength”.

4) it has reaffirmed the legitimacy of pro-Nazi groups, extremist militias, and conspiratorial groups armed and organized against the state. His adherence to conspiracy theories further fueled these groups in their fervor for rising up in arms to defend their idea of ​​America.

5) Trump has consistently discredited science, promoting instead conspiratorial and dangerously superstitious interpretations.

6) Trumpism captures the idea of ​​the nation for sectarian, anti-democratic and exclusive purposes.

7) Trump has promoted a political and nationalist conception of religion, through his alliance with evangelicals.

8) he has indicated that in foreign policy each country must defend its interests with transactional methods, moving away from any cooperative policy

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/trumpism-ideology-extreme-far-right-globally/

"While I am hardly the first to talk about a police state, I mean in this book considerably more than what we typically associate with a police state — police and military repression, authoritarian government, the suppression of civil liberties and human rights. Certainly, we see this, and more, around the world. In this study, however, I want to develop the concept of global police state to identify more broadly the emerging character of the global economy and society as a repressive totality whose logic is as much economic and cultural as it is political. By global police state I refer to three interrelated developments."

#books

https://truthout.org/articles/a-global-police-state-is-emerging-as-world-capitalism-descends-into-crisis/

Merry Christmas everyone :)

"Human rights, freedom, and the rule of law have long been viewed in purely political terms. Thus, when those in power assert that the so-called “deeply embedded conflicts” are in fact economically based, those who support the movement are often quick to rebuke or denounce such a claim. However, even though the protests themselves might have been precipitated by formally political concerns, it does not mean that there were no other causes either. On 5 August 2019, the day of the general strike, our team of researchers conducted a questionnaire survey at three strike assembly locations. Based on survey data, we observed that participants were in fact deeply outraged by issues related to the economy and crises of livelihood (see Figure 1). 89.28% agreed or strongly agreed that working hours in Hong Kong are too long. 94.3% agreed or strongly agreed that the wealth disparity in Hong Kong is absurd, and 96.69% thought that the SAR government is too lenient towards large corporations and financiers.

In other words, strike participants actually held a consensus on the hallmark features of Hong Kong capitalism: long working hours, extreme wealth disparity, and overwhelming influence by large corporations. What warrants attention here is that, comparatively speaking, “only” 91.73% stated that they agreed or strongly agreed that Beijing was overly involved in Hong Kong affairs, which turned out to be slightly lower than the number of participants who attested to untenable working hours and unfettered corporate power."

https://lausan.hk/2020/dilemma-of-the-new-union-movement/