Algeria's Hirak protest movement is being marginalised

Significance Some in the movement want to boycott the polls, as they did the June general elections and the constitutional referendum in November 2020, but others have entered the contest. The Hirak’s unwillingness to escalate resistance to the administration or move into the realm of formal opposition politics is increasingly marginalising it. Impacts The authorities will continue using targeted repression and co-optation to exclude the Hirak. The perceived failure of the Hirak to bring about systemic change will deepen widespread political cynicism, alienation and abstentionism. The government’s primary focus will be foreign threats and stabilising the economy, as global oil prices begin a post-pandemic climb.

Why We Fight : A Documentary Film

Why We Fight is a love letter formed into a 17 minute documentary about Guyana, the birthplace of the parents of filmmaker Alyssa Bistonath. It is a land that embodies the values, stories, and memories that Bistonath attributes to her Caribbean identity. The film acts as an inquiry — what is the diaspora’s role and responsibility towards the country? The project juxtaposes a personal narration, with letters from the diaspora, and the lives of four individuals living in Guyana. Bistonath made Why We Fight, because she was concerned with how countries like Guyana are represented in the western media, and how that representation trickles into the identities of people of colour. The film seeks to strike a balance, bridging nostalgia with contemporary beauty — overwriting the colonial and tourist tropes with the lives of real people, addressing violence, and mending political cynicism with the person inquiry.

Why We Fight : A Documentary Film

Why We Fight is a love letter formed into a 17 minute documentary about Guyana, the birthplace of the parents of filmmaker Alyssa Bistonath. It is a land that embodies the values, stories, and memories that Bistonath attributes to her Caribbean identity. The film acts as an inquiry — what is the diaspora’s role and responsibility towards the country? The project juxtaposes a personal narration, with letters from the diaspora, and the lives of four individuals living in Guyana. Bistonath made Why We Fight, because she was concerned with how countries like Guyana are represented in the western media, and how that representation trickles into the identities of people of colour. The film seeks to strike a balance, bridging nostalgia with contemporary beauty — overwriting the colonial and tourist tropes with the lives of real people, addressing violence, and mending political cynicism with the person inquiry.

POLITICAL CYNICISM: UNIVERSAL SOVIET HERITAGE - AFTERTASTE – DANGER

Most modern challenges facing society are shaped by the political elite and the transience of political processes that drive its actions. Political realities daily challenge full-fledged development of modern society. Political pragmatism which is reflected in the nature of political decisions made by the elite, increasingly goes beyond what is permissible and turns into political cynicism. Of course transience of political cynicism’s spread cannot be called the 21st century’s phenomenon.

Between New Sensibility and Transgression: Slovenian Alternative Artistic Practices – OHO and NSK

The article conducts a comparative discussion on the strategic poetic and political similarities/differences between the respective contexts of neo-avant-garde and retro-avant-garde practices in relation to aesthetic, artistic, and cultural revolutions. I juxtapose two revolutionary potentials and effects of their actualisation: the utopias and projections of the international revolution relating to the “new sensibility” and the unity of “art and life” of 1968, and several projects and practices that undermine totalitarian systems, from punk cynicism to the national revolutions of 1989 that overthrew real socialism in the Eastern and Central Europe. In my comparative discussion I focus on two specific cases in Slovenian art and alternative cultures, highlighting the position of “experimental poetry,” “new sensibility,” and “conceptual art” of the OHO group, active between 1966 and 1971, and the position of “political cynicism” and “retro-avant-garde art” in the Neue Slowenische Kunst movement founded in 1984.

Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” More than 40% agreed that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.) I use 127 survey items to measure six potential bases of these and other antidemocratic sentiments: partisan affect, enthusiasm for President Trump, political cynicism, economic conservatism, cultural conservatism, and ethnic antagonism. The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file as a whole and for a variety of subgroups defined by education, locale, sex, and political attitudes, is ethnic antagonism—especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism on Republicans’ commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.