Poor Steve Bannon. He has tried very hard, but the Cosmos seems to have lost patience with his European project. After leaving Donald Trump’s White House, he engaged in a valiant educational effort to impose his unique version of reality on the Western world so that, in turn, the West can...
When Steve Bannon left the Trump administration in 2017 after having established the new dogma of “America First,” few assumed that his new vocation would be to convert Europe to his doctrine. No one expected an opportunist who had dallied with the movie industry and alt-right journalism at...
Like canaries in a mine, two iconic figures of the right and the left sing in unison about the dangers of big tech and the importance of breaking them up. Something strange is happening. Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist of President Donald Trump, and Robert Reich, the Berkeley professor...
Tommy Robinson has been transformed into a truly global figure, a purported martyr for the dispossessed and the most influential radical-right leader in Britain since Sir Oswald Mosley. Following Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment in May for contempt of court, the #FreeTommy campaign demonstrated...
Does The Economist really think Steve Bannon can help define an “open future”? On September 15, The Economist inaugurated its Open Future festival, a global media event linking Hong Kong, London and New York. Its announced, noble intention was “to grapple with the most urgent issues of our...
From Nixon to Nix, manipulated elections are part of a long tradition. The major story of the week includes the revelations by the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, of how his company manipulates elections all over the world and how it handles politicians. He makes his opinion of the...
In the post-truth world, it is unlikely that the questions raised regarding Michael Wolff’s exposé of Donald Trump will ever be effectively answered. It can be said without any pretense that Michael Wolff, the author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, has conjured a reaction —...
If Trump succeeds in ramping up military spending and gutting everything else, we’ll be left with a bunch of nukes and an underfunded state. The storm inside the Republican Party has reached category four. At the end of August, as Hurricane Harvey tore through Texas, and Hurricane Irma was...
House Speaker Paul Ryan is inching closer toward the same fate as his predecessor for failing to preempt the president’s deal with the Democrats. On September 6, Donald Trump announced his endorsement for Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi's proposal to provide more federal aid...
An assessment of institutional democracy at the onset of the Trump administration. Since his election to the US presidency on November 8, 2016, there has been much discussion as to whether Donald Trump is a rising authoritarian strongman who will bring the downfall of liberal democracy in the...
If Trump cracks down on journalists, there might be less uproar than you'd think. Even before the election of Donald Trump—and his extraordinary declaration that the media are the “enemies of the people”—US journalism was in trouble. According to Gallup polling, American trust in mass...
The popularity of Breitbart among conservative voters is an outcome of a long-term right-wing campaign against the progressive media. The 2016 presidential campaign was arguably the most divisive and polarized in modern American history. The election of a demagogue like Donald Trump to the White...
What does it mean for international relations when the most powerful country in the world becomes a pariah state? Donald Trump is holding up the severed head of the Statue of Liberty. It’s a striking image for a magazine cover. But it’s not the front of The Nation or the American Civil...
Trump's extremely effective at dividing and conquering his opponents. What would it take for progressives to divide his supporters? The resistance to Donald Trump’s presidency has been strong, sustained and multi-dimensional. The Women’s March after the inauguration deluged DC in a sea of...
