Mamphela Ramphele’s new “political platform,” or party-in-making, represents the latest in  a series of bids for the substantial number of black voters presumed to be disillusioned with the rule of the African National Congress in South Africa.  So far all bids have failed. Many black South Africans are indeed fed up with the ANC. Tens of thousands have joined often violent “service delivery protests” against ANC-run municipalities accused of corruption or neglect. Millions have stayed away from the polls. Yet, relatively few have been willing to vote for opposition parties. The last major new party to try wrest their votes, a breakaway from the ANC called COPE (Congress of the People), secured a respectable 7% at the 2009 general election, but has since descended into a shambles. The best hope for Ramphele’s outfit is that it will scoop up the black African voters poised to desert COPE, yet unwilling to vote for the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), because of its white roots and leader.

It is not easy to give an ideological label to Ramphele’s party, provisionally named Agang (“to build” in the Sepedi language). Leftists dismiss it as a capitalist party,  and their stance is lent some credence by Ramphele’s recent senior positions in the World Bank and a major mining house, and by her concern to make South African economically productive, competitive and investor-friendly. At the same time she professes concern for “workers and poor people” betrayed by a “new elite,” and her policy portfolio is for now too vague to pigeonhole. Notwithstanding Marxist rhetoric emanating from in and around the ANC, there is not all that much by way of concrete economic policy to tell South Africa’s political parties apart. No significant electoral party calls for a break with capitalism; at the same time, none dare sound like rabid free marketers in a land so conscious of its gigantic inequalities. I expect Agang to meet more established electoral parties on the broad ground of the center-left.

What Ramphele stands for is similar to what the DA purports to stand for: good governance. She is presenting hers as the party of competence and integrity. A former medical doctor and academic, Ramphele is a self-appointed scourge of mediocrity. Her enemy is not capitalism, but crony capitalism. She wants a depoliticized, professionalized civil service and higher educational standards. She favors electoral reforms that will reduce the stranglehold of party bosses.  She wants to rescue South Africa’s reputation as a global beacon of human rights from the disrepute brought by the ANC’s coddling of dictators. She encourages a public-spirited ethos in place of the current reign of self-interest and a shared South African citizenship to counter the country’s racial and ethnic fragmentation.

There is a market for this sort of product, especially but by no means exclusively amongst educated urbanites. One commentator has suggested that there is no rationale for a “black DA,” but actually there may well be. What Ramphele lacks, for now, is a machinery to reach out to the five or ten per cent of her compatriots who might be attracted to just such a prospect. Her baseline constituency does not stretch beyond the professionals and businesspeople who admire what they see as her readiness to speak unpalatable truths to power. A good few of an older generation remember Ramphele’s fame as a 1970s Black Consciousness activist, who was personally and politically partnered to Steve Biko, but survey evidence suggests that she is largely unknown to younger people. Biko’s legend is unlikely to rub off on a party that has very little in common with Black Consciousness. Ramphele seems uneasy with racial affirmative action and has told an interviewer that she stands for “South African” rather than “black” consciousness.

Whether or not progressives should welcome Agang depends on which is more urgent in progressive terms: leftward ideological course change or the strengthening of a state machinery currently too hobbled by corruption and incompetence to perform any kind of pro-poor strategic role. Agang is certainly not the long-awaited challenge to the ANC from the left. The problem with Agang-like parties that promise simply to govern better – apart from the possibility that their programs may fail to address structural inequalities – is that their ideological vacuity tends to attract opportunistic hangers-on, especially when they are dominated by a single personality. The answer depends also on whether it is more progressive to favor an incumbent left-leaning party with a clear majoritarian mandate or a strengthened opposition able to check that party’s authoritarianism and looting.  Agang could help to build a countervailing power to the ANC, though it could also end up redistributing votes within the opposition rather than enlarging the opposition electoral share. The party’s significance thus remains to be clarified – by the fleshing out of its policy agenda, by the caliber of people it attracts, by the nature of its funding, by public opinion polls and above all by the next national elections in 2014.

As I celebrate the glorious re-election of President Barack Hussein Obama, and as New York and my friends and family are still suffering from Hurricane Sandy, and a snowstorm follow-up, I have been in Europe, spending time with my daughter, and her family in Paris, giving a lecture and visiting Rome for the first time, and taking part in public talks in Warsaw and Gdansk on the occasion of the Polish translation of Reinventing Political Culture, offering my commentary on the American elections informed by the book. In Gdansk, I was honored to receive a medal from the European Solidarity Center for my work with Solidarność, and continuing work inspired by its principles.

I have been enjoying the joys of citizenship and patriotic hope, the love of family, and recognition for personal and public achievement. I have learned a lot in many very interesting discussions. I have been very busy, torn with mixed emotions, including a frustrated desire to put my thoughts down for Deliberately Considered. Some quick summary thoughts today; next, a close critical response to the election results and the President’s speech. In brief: Obama excelled once again as “story teller in chief.”

Election Day from afar: having cast my vote weeks ago. In Warsaw, I discussed the events of the day and the project of the reinvention of American political culture. As I have explained in previous posts and analyzed carefully in my book, I believe that Barack Obama is an agent of significant reinvention, changing the relationship between culture and power: the way he has used the politics of small things, his eloquence as an alternative to sound bite political rhetoric, retelling of the American story as one centered on diversity, as he embodies this, and his challenge to market fundamentalism, are the major contours of his transformational politics. On Election Day, I explained that as a social scientist I thought that the transformation that he has started would successfully push forward, Nate Silver enthusiast that I am. But I also confessed that as a citizen I was worried. Obama’s accomplishments to date were in danger and his promise has not yet been fulfilled. I am now hopeful.

Earlier in Rome, I spoke to a group of media students about the relationship between media and the politics of small things. We had a particularly interesting discussion about how the power of gestures work in different types of mediated settings. I explained how I think Obama has managed to use long form rhetorical skills to constitute power in the age of twitter and sound bytes. Specifically in the first debate with Romney, this wasn’t enough, but in his victory speech, he showed how this works once again. He is the most powerful person in the world thanks to his speech making.

I also told my Rome colleagues that I was pretty sure that the re-election of Barack Obama would make it likely that the next President of the United States would be Hillary Clinton or another woman nominee of the Democratic Party (I will explain my grounds for this conviction in a future post)

This led to an intriguing discussion. A post doc in the audience observed that the power of Obama’s speech is informed by a specific tradition of oratory, that of the African American civil rights leaders coming from the African American church. She wondered whether there is a comparable tradition among feminist political leaders, supposing that there wasn’t. The voice of African American authority empowers Obama, while the feminist authoritative voice is one of contemporary invention. This led me to wonder about a discussion I had with feminist friends during the Democratic primary season in 2007-8. Which would be the more significant breakthrough Hillary Clinton or Obama? I thought that given the legacies of slavery, the election of Barack Obama would be, but perhaps I was wrong.

In Warsaw, I spoke with two groups, associated with two cultural journals, Kultura Liberalna and Respublika Nowa, the former was an informal meeting in a private apartment, the latter, a meeting at the journal’s offices, which included a cultural center. These groups are part of a reinvigorated intellectual scene in Poland, young intellectuals seeking alternatives in a highly problematic political environment. In both meetings, we talked about possible collaboration with Deliberately Considered.

In the Election Day meetings, I reflected on the fact that what I had to say that day would be speculative, while in my next meetings in Gdansk, if I was right, they would appear as having been inevitable. Before the results and after, I observed how the project of reinventing American political culture was proceeding. How changes in attitudes toward questions of American identity and the relation between the state and the market, the rejection of market fundamentalism are advancing.  I expected Obama to win and he did. I explained before the fact that as a social scientist, I judged Nate Silver’s prognostications to be sound and thought it was highly likely that Obama would win.  The changes he has advanced are compelling, and they are backed by hard demographic, economic and political realities.  But I confessed that I was worried as a citizen, so much was on the line.

I knew when I left home that how comfortable I would feel at home when I returned depended on the outcome of the elections. By the time, I had my meetings in Gdansk, I felt very comfortable.

The first meeting, the day after election day, included a formal ceremony and discussion of the Polish translation of my book as it informed an understanding of the outcome of the elections and Obama’s Presidency. The second meeting, was the first session at a conference on the future of Europe, with focus on the Eastern half, in and outside of the Euro zone. I was asked, among other things, what was the significance of the election results and what America could contribute to an understanding of the crisis in Europe.

I answered both questions by highlighting the great transformation occurring in the United States, facilitated by the President.  In 1789, an American republic centered on the idea of liberty, in the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln reinvented the idea of America, or more precisely, he gave voice to the reinvention that was developing, by making the principle of equality also central. He turned the Declaration of Independence into a central normative text, as Garry Wills powerfully has demonstrated. I think, and explained in Gdansk, that Barack Obama has also added a new critical note, using similar means. Diversity is becoming a central American principle and the basis of identity.  Obama in all his major speeches and in his actions is  charging the great seal motto E pluribus unum with new meaning and application. Diversity as the basis of our unity is now defined as central to our identity, concerning race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and much more. This is new, powerfully pushed forward by Obama and supported by American opinion and by demography. This is the renewed American story and recognized strength. I will explain more fully in my next post.

The performance of Pussy Riot and its repression represent the deep political challenge of post communist authoritarianism and its progressive – transgressive alternatives. This is the first of two posts by Kitlinski that have great significance for Eastern Europe and beyond. -Jeff

Don’t let Putin fool you. Banishing Pussy Riot to a penal colony allowed the Russian leader to reassert his rule. Democracy be damned. Civil rights, religious freedom, and gender equality from herein would be subject to his purview. The ex-KGB officer’s message wasn’t just aimed at Russia. It was directed at all of Eastern Europe, too.

For anyone familiar with the history of regional politics, Putin’s positioning was thick with signifiers. Pussy Riot’s sentencing would please fellow reactionaries, obviously, as well as help serve as a salve for social distress. It also confirmed that the post-Communist period was formally over. Authoritarian capitalism is the rule of the day. There’s no alternative.

The political transition in post-Communist countries has turned majoritarian, as ex-Soviet bloc states start to formalize discrimination against pro-democracy forces.  Curiously, this reaction, of what can only be described as the ancien regime, both Stalinist, and its antecedents, focuses on sexual dissidence, to broadcast its worldview.  In the Ukraine, it’s Femen. In my own home, Poland, it’s Dorota Nieznalska, an artist who was convicted of blasphemy.

It’s a familiar story, one that Pussy Riot’s Nadia Tolokonnikova was quick to point out, when, in her closing statement, she compared her band’s fate to the trial of Socrates, and the kenosis of Christ. Jesus was “raving mad,” she reminded her religiously observant tormentors. “If the authorities, tsars, presidents, prime ministers, the people and judges understood what ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ meant, they would not put the innocent on trial.” Tolokonnikov also cited the prophet Hosea, in the Hebrew Bible: “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.” Surely, the authorities were not thrilled.

Pussy Riot’s choice of Jewish scripture is of course telling, as well as calculated. The prophets argue for forgiveness (Hosea forgave his unfaithful wife) and for social justice. Tolstoy, ultrademocratic, anarchist and religious, was also in conflict with the same Orthodox Church (and excommunicated by it) that now condemns Pussy Riot. Dostoevsky similarly emphasized the importance of forgiveness in Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov receives it from a prostitute. Pussy Riot are obviously traditionalists.

The forces that have condemned Pussy Riot are not religious. They are secular, despite their Orthodox pretense. Pussy Riot, ironically, respond as Christians. They protest the emptiness of consumer culture, and the lack of forgiveness on the part of their persecutors. Thus, they appropriate the figure of the Virgin Mother, to criticize authoritarianism. “Mary is with us in protest! Mary, become a feminist!” the band screamed during its infamous cathedral performance.

As a Pole, I find the entire affair reminiscent of an attack on the previously mentioned Dorota Nieznalska, at a Gdansk gallery, where her seminal Passion installation was being exhibited in 2002. The work, an exploration of masculinity and suffering, shows a cross on which the photograph of a fragment of a naked male body, including the genitalia, has been placed.

Staged by members of the reactionary League of Polish Families, the political party sued the artist over the exhibit.  In July 2003, a court found Nieznalska guilty “offending religious feelings” and sentenced to half a year of “restricted freedom” (she was banned from leaving the country.) When the judge read her sentence, members of the League packed the courtroom and applauded ecstatically. It took six years, but Nieznalska’s conviction was eventually overturned in July 2009, on the grounds that her freedom of speech had been violated.

Nonetheless, Nieznalska  suffered inestimable damage as  consequence of her successful prosecution. For years, Polish galleries refused to show her work. It took curator Pawel Leszkowicz to rehabilitate her reputation, by featuring her sadomasochist works in the exhibitions Love and Democracy and the GK Collection, claiming she was working in the S&M tradition of renown Polish writer Bruno Schulz.

I could go on. My point is that misogyny is the biggest threat to Eastern Europe’s incomplete democracies, and that it’s been a problem across the region for a good while now, not just in Russia. Abortion, for example, is banned, and a number of cultural and economic constraints on women and queers alike exist. Female artists who deal with sexuality have been especially hard hit by censorship. Pussy Riot is just the best-known example.

If Pussy Riot is what it takes to wake the West up to this situation, and help us complete our transition to democracy, so be it. Until then, as it has been said, we are all Pussy Riot. I’m sure the ‘band’, as it were, would agree with me.

The post was originally published in ‘Souciant’ (August 23^rd, 2012) under the title “Pussy Riot in Polish.” Tomasz Kitlinski acknowledges the help of Joel Schalit, editorial director of Souciant, for his assistance in preparing the English text version.

Of course, forecasts of profound transformation have been the technique of doom-laden partisans who, until the age of computer caches, could rely on the limited memory of their audience. This is not merely a trope of the right. Partisan rhetoric is often more similar than rivals would care to admit. Paranoia is bipartisan. The end is nearly near! In the weeks prior to Reagan’s election, dear friends promised to invite me to Toronto after they migrated, concluding that America would soon become a fascist regime. I never did receive those invitations. Some of those friends remained to celebrate November 2008 in Grant Park. I have wondered whether America in 2012 conforms to their dark imaginings of what America would look like from the standpoint of Reagan’s ascent.

Despite the science fiction cliché of the man who awakes after decades, the world changes slowly, even in the face of shocks to the system. The fact that gay and lesbian Americans can now marry in many states with the trend continuing is a real change, but it doesn’t create an unrecognizable America. The fact that income inequality has increased or that hunger has decreased over the past fifty years certainly matters, but it doesn’t make America, always a land of rich and poor, unrecognizable, and certainly within four years changes are unlikely to be dramatic. The century-old pictures in Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives are no longer precisely true, but they reflect a world that we know.

Conservatives point with horror to the changes that are coming to health care in America, but what is striking is that, despite changes, the structure of providing health care will not be so different. Americans will receive health care through hospitals and insurance companies and someone (corporate advisers or government advisers) will determine what procedures will be paid for and what will not. Even if government-mandated health care is repealed, personal health care options will change in ways that may be similar to ObamaCare if not in all the details. Perhaps the decision to institute a single-payer health care system with different venues in which health care will be provided would dramatically alter the face of medicine. But such a system apparently was not politically possible, and even such a system would not be unrecognizable.

With the partisan divide that is predicted to remain after the election with neither party having the ability to end filibusters or to achieve a veto-proof majority, it is likely that any changes will be incremental. Surely raising the top tax-rate from 35% to 39% will not make America unrecognizable. Neither will any foreseeable changes in energy policy alter transportation choices.

Whether one hopes for massive changes, the forces that change society are gradual. Often they are not political, but are technological, organizational, or social. The world of personal connections has been replaced by computer technology. Social media has shaped dating and social movements. If anything has made America unrecognizable it is this, standing outside of government action.

If Rip van Winkle woke up after 50 years from a Mad Men-inspired sleep, there would be surprises aplenty. Rip would be endlessly startled, and some government policies had much to do with these changes (Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Immigration Act), but many of the changes resulted from forces outside of public policy. Government channels popular desire, but should do so in ways that are modest and restrained. It is this that should make us all conservatives.

Ultimately those who fear that America will become unrecognizable are too enamored with the present and lack the sense that change does not mean a new world. We are able to incorporate change while holding to a fundamental stability. For my part I am comforted that come next July 4th I will hear those fireworks again and I will hear that America is on the precipice of changes that are unimaginable.

Recent posts and discussions at Deliberately Considered have been about fundamental problems in contemporary democratic culture: the need to engage in political discussion beyond clichés, the consequences of the persistence of modern magical political thinking, and the danger of transition to dictatorship from democracy. It makes me think about the state of the right and the left and the ideal of a contested political center.

Ideology has not ended, to my dismay (as I reported in my New Year’s post). People believe that they have the truth in politics in a variety of different forms, on the left and right, in the U.S. and globally. In a strange mirroring of Socrates, who confirmed that he was the wisest of men because he “knew that he didn’t know,” contemporary ideologues know that their opponents don’t know. Opponents don’t only think differently but incorrectly, politically incorrect. Material interests, character, moral failure and ignorance are used to explain the other’s mistaken position. Alternative views are dismissed instead of confronted. True believing market fundamentalists know that the problem of the economy will be solved through de-regulation. They will not pay attention to the arguments and evidence of those who explain how such de-regulation is the cause of our global economic crisis. Those who are sure that capitalism is the root of all evil won’t pay attention to those who examine how all attempts to construct a systemic alternative to capitalism in the last century have ended in economic and political failure. It is not the convictions that I find disturbing. It is the unwillingness of people to actually take into account the insights and evidence of those with whom they disagree.

Thus, I think that Gary Alan Fine’s imagined magazine is not only a matter of idiosyncratic taste. As he put it in his recent post:

“I hold to a somewhat eccentric contention that there are smart liberals (neo- and old-timey, pink and pinker), conservatives (neo- and paleo-), progressives, reactionaries, socialists, libertarians, and more. Is my generosity so bizarre?”

No, not at all bizarre. I think there is a pressing need for Fine’s generosity, that we need deliberate debate about the problems of our times, drawing upon diverse opinions and orientations. It is my hope that over the coming months Deliberately Considered becomes more and more like the magazine of Fine’s dreams. Indeed, I think we have from the start been moving in this direction.

“People reside in gated communities of knowledge.” Fine notes. I trust we contribute to opening the gates, a place for serious discussion about the problems of our times. The pungent political speech that Fine sometimes enjoys, though, from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and company, is not particularly welcome. This is not the place for shouting heads. I suppose Fine would be fine with that.

It is with my concerns about true-believing and the need to take into account the positions of those with whom I disagree that I reported my response to the Iowa caucuses. I don’t want the eventual Republican nominee to win the election. This is my partisan position, not only because I support President Obama, but also because I think there is a fundamental crisis on the right in our times, which has not yet been addressed. A shellacking would help. I think there are real signs that a day of reckoning is upon us. I think the fissure in the Republican Party, clearly revealed in its primary campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, is a hopeful sign. Thus, Michael Corey in his response to my post misunderstands me. My point is not that the Republicans are fighting with each other, therefore my candidate will win, or my position will prevail. Rather, my point is that the odd combination of the Reagan coalition, including true-believing free market, neo and Christian conservatives, along with Main and Wall Street moderates, is breaking down, and that this is good not only for Democrats, but also for Republicans, and for the Republic. I understand that Romney will likely win the primary campaign and that he may even defeat Obama. But the lack of enthusiasm for Mitt underscores that the coherence of Reaganism, with its unexamined dogmatisms, is at last over. The only thing that now holds it together is an extremely dark force, hatred of Barack Hussein Obama.

I agree with Lisa Aslanian in her reply to my post, in which she emphasizes the dangers of hatred. I also agree with her that Obama’s opposition enflamed by hatred could conceivably persist into his second term. But I suggest that the power of hatred, like the power of love, has its limits. I think the limits of Obamaphobia are already evident, as the President is taking the initiative against the Republicans (more on this in a later post). I also think his new tough turn does make an appeal to OWS and Ron Paul skeptics (as Lisa desires). My hope, which is pitched against hopelessness, is that those who are committed to libertarian principles, conservative morals and the wisdom of habit and custom, learn to proceed with their commitments in a less dogmatic fashion. A reinvention of Republican political culture is something that is pressingly needed. Such reinvention is already ongoing among Democrats, led by Obama, as I explore in Reinventing Political Culture.

Scott in his reply to my Iowa post ends with the assertion that we are all liberals. I assume he is referring to the legacies of 19^th century liberal thought, that unites present day conservatives, i.e. free market liberals, and progressives, i.e. those who think that state interventions are necessary to assure individual opportunity, along with those who want to keep the government out of the bedroom, along with those who want to keep it out of the market. While I think Scott is making an important point, there are also many who are motivated by principles outside the liberal tradition, as I am sure he realizes. Some conservatives believe in the priority of community, tradition, religion and an inherited order. Among the Republican Presidential hopefuls, this is the emphasis of Rick Santorum. And, of course, there are those who are in principle socialist, as well. Although the self-proclaimed socialists are rare in American society at large, they are quite common in the academic world. In fact, while I am extremely skeptical that there is a systemic socialist alternative to capitalism, I do think that socialism is an important principled position within a democratic society with a modern economy, a real utopia that suggests that the way things are now is not the way they will always be. Vince Carducci has been developing this position in his posts here.

Rather than declaring that we are all liberals, I would suggest that we all should be democrats and republicans, in favor of a free public life and rule of the people, committed as we are to competing partisan positions. I imagine Deliberately Considered contributing to this, in its small way, at least as an exemplar. Crucial to this is having a center where left and right meet, for common debate and action, for deliberate consideration.

Final note: This past week I posted a letter authored by former dissident activists, key figures of the democratic opposition to Communism in Hungary, expressing their deep concern on the recent developments in their country. The post attracted a wide global readership. Later this week we will follow through with a series of reflections on the course democracy is taking in that specific Central European country as seen by critical observers in another country in that region, Poland. We also will be taking stock of the developing American political drama. Comparing developments there and here, I trust, will highlight the importance of a free public for democratic culture and also provide us an opportunity to understand the fragility of democracy.

I have made this editorial decision because I am not an optimist. While I take it as my intellectual project to illuminate hopeful alternatives to the prevailing unjust order of things, I think it is important to realize that dangers loom.  The path from democracy to dictatorship is not only a danger in Hungary.

Minutes ago I received this open letter from prominent critical Hungarian intellectuals via Andras Bozoki (author of an earlier post on the transition from democracy, who will present an update in the coming days). The message speaks for itself, warning of a looming European political crisis. -Jeff

The decline of democracy – the rise of dictatorship

The undersigned, participants of the erstwhile human rights and democracy movement that opposed the one-party communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s, believe that the Hungarian society is not only the victim of the current economic crisis, but also the victim of its own government. The present government has snatched the democratic political tools from the hands of those who could use these tools to ameliorate their predicament. While chanting empty patriotic slogans, the government behaves in a most unpatriotic way by reducing its citizens to inactivity and impotence.

The constitutional system of Hungary has also sunk into a critical situation. As of the 1st of January 2012, the new constitution of Hungary along with several fundamental laws came into force. Viktor Orbán’s government is intent on destroying the democratic rule of law, removing checks and balances, and pursuing a systematic policy of closing autonomous institutions, including those of civil society, with the potential to criticise its omnipotence. Never since the regime change of 1989 when communist dictatorship was crushed has there been such an intense concentration of power in the region as in present-day Hungary.

Institutions with the authority to hold government activity in check have met a similar fate: Fidesz continuously deprives such institutions of their autonomy, blackmails them for survival, discharges professional management, takes unlawful decisions and moulds these institutions so that they can no longer control and correct government activity but, in sharp contrast to their original function, they serve to augment unbridled autocracy. With the removal of the checks and balances, the whole state has become subservient to the government, or rather to the prime minister. The Parliament and the president obediently comply with the dictates of the cabinet. By having their staff radically reshuffled and implementing laws curtailing their competence, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of Justice and the Constitution Court act as the lengthened arms of the government. While local councils have lost the better part of their clout, semi-autonomous institutions such as the Court of Auditors, the Hungarian Press Agency, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Cultural Fund may well be regarded today as quasi government agencies. Arbitration committees, including the now defunct National Conciliation Council, have been disbanded.

1. Legislative power

Fidesz created a system that put an end to genuine debates in and outside the Parliament, and by excluding stakeholders the Parliament became a virtual one-party powerhouse. It was stripped of even a semblance of lawful parliamentary protocol. By means of modifying house rules, Fidesz now has the exclusive right to turn any bill into law and make decisions about any issue concerning parliamentary protocol, thus rendering the existence of opposition parties a mere formality. Bills are rushed through legislation with no debate worthy of mention.

2. Executive power

Since a considerable proportion of proposals and amendments are submitted by individual members of Parliament who make no effort to seek consensus and often ignore relevant ministries, professional and accountable governance ceased to exist. This is a telling sign of the way power-sharing has become but a facade, with ministries and ministers having lost teeth. The president who is supposed to act independently of government and political parties, thereby being a living symbol of constitutional order, is a man who promptly signs any document pushed on his desk, and by disregarding the constitutional role bestowed on him, he is no more than a puppet of the executive power.

3. Jurisdiction

Numerous changes in legislation have been made that testify the direct political intentions to ignore democratic rules of law.

• The Constitutional Court, the ultimate institution to safeguard legality, has been gradually turned into a weightless body. The number of judges has been increased with members known to be loyal to the ruling parties (including a former minister and a member of Parliament, both being Fidesz party members). The scope of the Court has been narrowed, partly by depriving it of arbitration on economic issues.
• Established as part of the judiciary reform, the National Judiciary Office (NJO) is under direct political influence. Instead of being an independent professional body, the chairperson of NJO, who happens to be the wife of a Fidesz member of the European Parliament, has the exclusive right to appoint, delegate and promote judges, as well as to determine which court deals with which case. The chair of NJO has been elected for nine years by a two-third parliamentary majority, and short of a qualified majority in the future, the chair may remain in her post indefinitely.
• While retirement age has been raised across the board, a sigificant proportion of leading judges has been forced into retirement. The judiciary has thus become existentially dependent.
• The Chief Prosecutor, who has the exlusive right to decide which case may be forwarded to the Court of Justice and which court should hear it, is a politician of the ruling party.
• In the future, suspects and the accused may be deprived of the opportunity to consult their solicitors.

This new system marks the end of independent jurisdiction in Hungary.

4. The media

Fidesz intends to place the entire media under its control and regulation, hindering any form of an impartial, analytical and critical judgment of its policy. With this in mind,

• Originally destined to be an impartial forum, the public media has been forced to serve the goverment parties. Instead of professionalism, the only criterion for its continued existence is political loyalty.
• News service has been centralised: the same news is broadcast in every channel.
• Recently established and authorised with unprecedented power, the National Media and Telecommunication Agency, led by its chairman, a Fidesz loyalist, may exercise wide-ranging regulatory and sanctioning rights.
• Radio frequencies and television broadcasting rights are conferred in an arbitrary fashion.
• Independent press may be levied enormous fines, thus urging it to exercise self-censure. Destined to lose state-sponsored advertisers as well as private ones scared of retaliation, disobedient newspapers even run the risk of going bankrupt.

5. Election law

Democracy is posited on the condition that anyone may be voted out of office through peaceful measures. The new election law significantly restricts the opportunity to satisfy the will of citizens and realise a democratic change in the power structure. Instead of seeking consensus and a harmonisation of interests, Fidesz is intent on destroying rival political forces with the purpose of perpetuating its own power.

• Motivated by political considerations, the new election law redrafted constituencies, thus creating a system which favours candidates of the ruling parties. Undeserving of constitutional democracies, no independent body has the right to veto the new distribution of constituencies.
• Fidesz has taken the unprecedented step to ensure that all the votes from the compensatory list go to the winning party; ignoring the will of the electorate, this clause will distort the final outcome of the election.
• The new single-round system will force the rivalling opposition parties into a coalition.

Fidesz does its best to criminalise its rivals: 21years after the regime change a new law has been passed in which the Hungarian Socialist Party, a democratic party of the Hungarian Parliament, has been deemed guilty as being the legal successor of the former communist party.

In Hungary, liberal democracy as interpreted in the West has come to an end, the autonomy of power centres has become a formality. The government is thoroughly antidemocratic by according no respect to the sanctity of private property, eliminating local councils, and pushing all channels of social mobility, public and higher education under its political control. It seems obvious that the aim of the present government is to overhaul the entire society and, with recourse to threats and blackmail, to create a country rendered incapable and cowardly to defy its dictatorial rule. Under such conditions, Hungary would have stood no chance in 2004 to join the European Union, the community of the Western democracies. Regretfully, Hungary can only expect further isolation, impoverishment and hopelessness in the future.

However, instead of searching for an alternative to replace this constitutional dictatorship, we had better consider ways in which we can get rid of it within the bounds of legality. The question is whether there is any chance at all to break out and reinstate the rule of law under the legal constraints imposed by Fidesz.

The advocates of democracy and the rule of law within and outside Hungary must not acquiesce in having the government of a member state of the European Union crush these universal values. Nor should the European Union just sit back and watch as it is being held hostage by an outdated, provincial tyrant. It is in the interest of both Hungary and the European Union to make a stand against the prime minister of Hungary. The leaders of the European Union are right in their decision to tighten intergration, but this step should be taken not only to combat the financial crisis but also to challenge political crises and risks. The European Union may disintegrate not only for economic reasons but for reasons of pursuing disparate and antidemocratic policies as well.

As we regard ourselves simultaneously as Hungarian and European citizens, we wish to avoid a clash of identities. We reject any political command that we give up our „dual citizenship”. If choose we need, our choice will be between the values of democracy and dictatorship – just as we did at the time of communist dictatorship. We are aware that the idea of a common Europe was born as an economic project, but this project is no more than wishful thinking unless its value system is accounted for and enforced, and lack thereof gets punished.

We are convinced that Hungary can become a country where the rule of law is reinstated. However, we must not forget that Fidesz, busy building a one-party dictatorship at an ever-growing speed, will never surrender unless compelled by the political representatives of Hungarian democrats, in compliance with the legal norms of democracy on which the European Union is founded.

The dictatorial rule has already reached a point of no return; under the present circumstances our country is unlikely to be able to find its way back to the rule of law. However, a debate along these lines is not timely when democratic forces are faced with the daunting task of uniting forces – in and outside the Parliament, with one another. We cannot afford the luxury of learning the lesson after a lost election.

Unity for the time being – and for a long time hence – implies obtaining mass support. The size of this support will determine the means available for the reinstatement of democracy and the rule of law. Beyond raising its voice against the economic adventurism pursued by Orbán, Europe and the whole world will offer help for Hungarian democracy only after unity has been achieved with mass support to back it up.

Europe is at a crossroads too. Hungary is a sad example of what may happen wherever there is a concentration of crisis tendencies, aggravated by attempts to resolve problems caused by an economic and social crisis with authoritarian means and a policy of nationalistic isolation. Instead of prosperity and stability, such a policy can only lead to suppression, conflict and turmoil. The desperate situation of present-day Hungary should be a warning for all of us: if Europe is prepared to help Hungary, it will also help itself.

Attila Ara-Kovács, journalist

György Dalos, writer

Gábor Demszky, former Mayor of Budapest

Miklós Haraszti, former OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, former MP

Róza Hodosán, former MP

Gábor Iványi, pastor, former MP

János Kenedi, historian

György Konrád, writer

Bálint Magyar, former Minister of Education

Imre Mécs, former MP

Sándor Radnóti, philosopher

László Rajk, architect, former MP

Sándor Szilágyi, writer on photography

Forwarded by László Rajk

H-1061 Budapest, Paulay Ede u. 19.

Phone, facsimile: +36 1 351 9543

www.iprotest.hu

www.rajk.hu

As a foreigner, I am sometimes mystified, and sometimes awed, by the radical consequences of the foundational freedoms in the U.S.. For instance, the freedom to say anything, including, to cite a recent Supreme Court decision, the freedom to hurl anti-gay slurs at mourners attending a funeral. Even such speech acts are protected under a firm system of liberties, the firmest that I know of. On the other hand, I am also bemused when friends at a restaurant divide the bill to exactly reflect what each one of the eaters has consumed, dollar by dollar, with due attention to the price of each and every item. A “depraved taste” for equality, de Tocqueville would say.

De Tocqueville argues that liberty and equality are always in tension in America; economic liberty, for example, may go against the principle of equality, as it often does. Or, vice versa, the push for equality may curtail some liberties. But the system, he adds, has built-in mechanisms designed to keep the needed equilibrium in place. Again, I am being schematic: of course the system is more complex and there is more to America’s history than the principles of equality and freedom.

My point is that Obama is right about the strength of this country. As Max Weber has demonstrated in his great comparative studies of the world religions and in his investigations of economy and society, ideas matter. The powerful Soviet empire collapsed not only under external forces, but primarily because its institutional order was based on unsustainable principles. The same can be said about right and left-wing dictatorships, which also tend toward instability and collapse. And also in the U.S, the basic political principles and ideas matter as they have proven to provide stable support for the institutional system, and thus underlie the country’s considerable strength.

With this in mind, let me follow Sherlock Holmes’s method and think like a terrorist. If it is true that ideas are the main strength of, arguably, the strongest country in the world, then, the terrorist’s primary targets should not be military, economic or infrastructural. They would have to be ideological. If de Tocqueville is correct, as most experts agree, the terrorist would focus his or her attacks on the principles of equality and liberty to erode the country’s institutional apparatus, to create unrest and systemic instability.

To accomplish this, the terrorist would have to target key decision-makers, beginning with the President and the members of Congress. The terrorist would try to encourage them to change the basic rules, t0 diminish the role of the judiciary, to suspend principles such as habeas corpus,  to undermine the fair treatment of presumed criminals and the humane treatment of actual criminals, and to undermine the principle that the country has to wage wars according to established rules and conventions. A goal of such an extremist would be for the U.S. to wage war following undemocratic means, fostering a sense that legality can be dispensed with. Another front of attack would involve freedom of expression and the free circulation of ideas. The terrorist would hope to increase the degree of policing and surveillance of private information. Executive capacities should be transferred to specialized branches in the military and to intelligence agencies, as dictatorships do. Freedom of worship should be dealt with also, preventing religious groups from houses of worship, for example.

For all this, the terrorist would have to enlist, above all, his or her most radical opponents. With their help, the terrorist can weaken the foundations of democratic practice and social order of America, turning the country against the very principles that sustain its distinctive social order.

Years ago, I would have been convinced that such a plan would be impossible, even ridiculous. But after George Bush, I began to wonder. And even under Obama, I am concerned.

Memory and development often seem to be in tension in Latin America. The left speaks of the need to remember the past, particularly the human rights abuses committed by dictatorships during the cold war; the right, on the other hand, is concerned that an obsession with memory will forestall economic growth.  A few weeks ago, Gerardo Bleier published, via Facebook, a piece that made the old-guard of the Uruguayan left quite uncomfortable.  In the post, he presented a strong and provocative argument concerning collective memory and economic development. A leftist in distinguished standing, Bleier argues that in order to achieve justice concerning human rights violations during the recent Uruguayan dictatorship, Uruguayans must focus on social and economic development. Development, he argues, ought to be seen as an instrument of justice.  He has thus rejected the common sense positions of the left and the right and maps out a significant alternative.

Bleier has been a noted Uruguayan journalist since the 1980s. During the first government of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, the left of center coalition), led by socialist Tabaré Vázquez (2005-2010), Bleier served as a high level consultant; and currently, he publishes weekly reflections about the vicissitudes encountered by the present Frente Amplio.

Importantly, he is the son of Eduardo Bleier, who was a high ranking cadre in the Communist Party. Without ever having held a gun, Eduardo was one of the many activists who disappeared, was tortured, and murdered during Uruguay’s “dirty war” of the 1960s and 1970s.  He probably died the first week of July, 1976, though no one knows for sure. After being tortured in the most savage way, he was thrown into a small wooden box and buried alive. The family never saw his remains. It is rumored that he was buried in a clandestine cemetery located within an army compound assigned to Battalion 13 of the Infantry Division. At some point between October 1984 and March 1985, as democracy was being reestablished, Bleier’s body was unearthed and transferred to a different military compound. Later, his body was unearthed yet again, together with the bodies of several military officers. This time his remains were incinerated and thrown into the Río de la Plata, according to some versions, or into a nearby creek, according to others.

The son’s political judgment is of course shaped and informed by his father’s fate. In his recent post, Eduardo Bleier provided a personal and poignant reflection about the meaning of memory and justice in Uruguay. He writes:

It is obvious that this [growth] should not prevent us from weaving and reconstructing the collective memories pertaining to the civil war and to the terrorism that was perpetrated by the state. We cannot stop reminding ourselves of the scale of this state-sponsored terrorism, which many have tried to hide, and the systematic violation of human rights, which occurred during the dictatorship. We can’t stop trying to find avenues that would lead us to the missing truths. We can’t stop debunking the politics of silence and protection of criminals. Yet, these themes cannot occupy the central stage in Uruguayan politics, as Uruguayans essentially understand.

I agree with Bleier’s most provocative point: addressing the problems of the past should not distract us from the need for development. Uruguay has to address its problematic past, but it cannot be careless about issues of poverty and institutional life in the future. We have to remember, but we also have to develop. After all, Uruguay was, for 70 years, on the forefront of education, and yet today it experiences a grotesque decline of its educational system; a decline that coincides with a previous collapse of the economy and the subsequent process of polarization which led to 12 years of dictatorship.

Bleier also wrote this in his Facebook account:

[I]t is also true that the overwhelming majority of Uruguayans, particularly the youth, need a collective memory that is not marked by the traumas of the past, but by the challenges of the future.

His post generated strong responses, in favor and against, among readers who are mostly intellectuals and activists with bright futures. The debate took place just as the Administration of President José Mujica –a former militant of the guerrilla group Tupamaros— lost a battle, failing to pass legislation that would allow the judiciary to prosecute members of the military who, during the civil war, committed crimes against humanity. The legislation was designed to reverse the amnesty law that was approved in 1985, shortly after democracy was reestablished in Uruguay. This amnesty law had allowed for a peaceful transition from 12 years of military rule to a democratic form of governance.  In essence, this law was a form of extortion, whereby the dictatorship protected its members from being judged for crimes against humanity.

Mujica’s predecesor, Tabaré Vázquez, had begun the legislative process intended to reopen cases of human rights violations that involved members of the dictatorship. As a result of Vázquez’ initiative, 28 police officers and members of the military who worked for the dictatorship have been jailed in a military detention center. Among them are lower-level functionaries, intelligence service operators, some police officers, a former Chancellor, Juan Carlos Blanco, and two former presidents, Juan Maria Bordaberry (under house arrest), and Lieutenant General Gregorio Alvarez.

Yet, of course, these people were not the only ones who were responsible for disappearances, torture and murders. According to the Freedom and Concord Forum (Foro Libertad y Concordia), an association that allegedly represents retired military, more than 400 military officers and soldiers are needed to serve as witnesses, in case Mujica’s government prosecutes the 88 members of the military whose cases have been pending. The spokesman of the association, retired Colonel Juan Perez de Azziz expects that dozens of these witnesses have a chance of ending up in jail themselves.

Today Uruguayans are confronted precisely with the question of whether or not to proceed with this amnesty law, of whether to focus on their past or to focus on their future.

After all these years, Gerardo Bleier knows that those responsible for his father’s torture and death are not just the politically alienated and the ultra-nationalist members of the military; the small cadre that operated during the cold war. He knows that political groups and people with economic interests also added fuel to the terror, people whose names can fill countless pages, even tomes that may never be part of our history. The government of the United States, to begin with, was the main facilitator of this crisis, having financed, since 1968, our Homeland Security Program, under which Uruguayan officers were trained by CIA operatives.

Ever since, many historical events have met their expiration date. And Bleier, the survivor, knows well that each passing day truth flees yet again. But he also knows that there will be no truth and no justice if Uruguay doesn’t consolidate its future. And he knows that this future and these truths will not be possible if we don’t take care today of our current, important, urgent demands: educate the young, address the problems of gross inequality, develop the economy.  These are not tasks that turn away from remembering the past. They are preconditions for it.

We certainly said good-bye to revolutions too soon, between 1989 and 1995. Yes, we were right Romania was the exception, and the series of changes of regime certainly did not represent revolutions. Yet the fact that the latter were represented finally and definitively by the journalistic cliche as the “Revolutions of 1989” demonstrates the tremendous power of the topos.  Central European ideologists of the radical right could still rely on it in the canard of the betrayed revolution, and the demand of a new revolution reversing the agreements of 1989-1990.  It is indisputably true that both the revolutionary imaginary, and the empirical possibility of revolutions belong to the concept of modernity.  This does not mean, however, that the critique of revolutions we inherit from Burke, Hegel, most brilliantly Tocqueville, and, despite all her sympathy, Hannah Arendt has lost their meaning and importance.

In the following analysis of the “revolutions” of 2011 I use the term revolution, from the legal point of view, as a type of internal change that transforms a system according to rules or practices other than those of the systems. This was Hans Kelsen’s definition, who could not however distinguish coups and revolutions as a result. Thus, I add that successful revolutions, unlike coups, change a system’s organizational core or its principle of organization.  Better still, following Janos Kis, we should introduce a new principle of legitimacy. Either way, an illegal act of changing rules is necessary if not sufficient for a revolution, whether carried out by a group or institution outside the old governing order (Lenin’s party or Khomeini’s sect) or one within it, sometimes called autogolpe or self-coup (a president, the Estates General, the military command).

Moreover as the legally sophisticated minds among revolutionaries like Marx, Lenin, and Carl Schmitt always knew, these coups always establish dictatorship at least in the interim. When the goal is truly revolutionary, Schmitt called them sovereign dictatorships, but he was only describing Robespierre’s and Lenin’s practice. Finally, both coup and dictatorship require organizational power.  This power must step in the place of the power that is overthrown, and this can be in the name of the masses that have forced the collapse of an old regime and achieved part of the work of liberation, but never by them.  The exception Hannah Arendt recognizes in this context, the American Revolution, is notably one with inherited republican-constitutional institutions that can step into the breach when the colonial sovereign is eliminated. The same thing happened more or less in India. Under dictatorships and autocracies, there is no such option.

1. Thus Hillary Clinton was only partially wrong when in Munich (amazingly enough!), a few days before the fall of Mubarak she warned about the destructive logic of revolutions. The reform she was pushing was however itself destructive in the given context, and reform and revolution as we should all know since 1989 are not exclusive options. It was admittedly a little strange that Clinton neglected the paradigm of 1989 in the company of chancellor Merkel, a GDR activist at that time. Since the American Secretary of State’s opinion counts for a lot, we should see the partially self fulfilling nature of her polarizing use of the two concepts. With that said, the correct part of her warning should not be disregarded. The highly admirable, disciplined, non-violent movement could force the fall of the Mubarak government, but
2. It could not control either the terms of its replacement, or the linking of liberation to a genuine change of regimes.
3. The latter would have to entail the replacement of what is ultimately a military dictatorship, originally established in the revolution of the Free Officers of 1952.
4. But given the fact that the last step in the Mubarak’s removal was carried out by a silent military coup,
5. And that not wishing to rely on inherited institutions at all the protagonists established a pure if supposedly interim open military dictatorship, the likelihood of such a genuine regime change establishing constitutional democracy is now rather remote.

Hannah Arendt analyzed revolutions in terms of two elements, liberation or the removal of old authorities, and constitution, or the construction of a new, free regime.  In line with what we are seeing in Egypt, she thought liberation succeeds often, but constitution very seldom. There is however a constituent process in Egypt and it is instructive to see why as it is currently organized it falls under Arendt’s strictures.

The current junta has suspended the existing constitution and has dissolved parliament. It has established a new constituent process based on its own decision alone. This consisted of a small unrepresentative panel of experts drawing up some few, indeed very much needed, amendments to Mubarak’s constitution, reversing in fact his most recent and most undemocratic amendments to the Constitution of 1971. This was done in 10 days, with very minimal results that Mubarak himself was ready to concede before he fell, with popular ratification to follow in a referendum in two months. Again, the method of amendment is entirely illegal under the constitution that is to be amended. Its democratic legitimacy will be equally doubtful, given a constrained referendum where the voters would have only the “choice” to approve these amendments or to retain Mubarak’s version that is moreover suspended. Thus they will have no choice at all in reality.

If approved, the amendments would provide for elections 6 months from now (or 4 months from ratification) it was said – too soon for new democratic forces to organize. This should favor a candidate close to the military, and/or the Muslim Brotherhood, if they support one as well.

Lenin rightly warned against electing constituent assemblies under these conditions in 1905, and the Hungarian Democratic Opposition of 1989 followed his advice, rejected quick elections for a national constituent assembly promoted by others, including reformists in the ruling party. Yet surprises in a setting like this, as Lenin himself found out in 1918, in the only free Russian elections till Yeltsin, are also very possible, fortunately. When he lost, needless to say, he did not abide by the results, and dissolved the constituent assembly with bayonets. It should not come to that in Egypt.

Aside from the constitution, free and fair elections in Egypt would require replacement of a wealth of laws dealing with the press, media, public meetings, personal freedom, and while no plans for such legislation have even been suggested, even the 30 year state of emergency has not been lifted. It is under that system that people are still detained, held, interrogated and tortured. Hardly a conducive framework for free and fair elections, even if there are international monitors present. This in addition to the problems of the questionable way the election system is being proposed and the overly powerful nature of the Presidential system.

If the scenario the military junta has in mind is carried through there will be no regime change, or only very incomplete steps in that direction. Egypt will look perhaps like some kind of democracy, but that was the case before, especially before the very last years of Mubarak, in appearance at least. More importantly, the military regime, deeply anchored in the state, society, and the economy as well will preserve all or most of its power. At worst, it will control the political outcomes. At best it won’t, but the governments that emerge will be weak and unstable, opening the door to future interventions. This will still be the old regime, especially on the level that people will experience it. I will explore this more fully in my next post.

Gary Alan Fine is not worried about hate speech.  Most of us are.  He thinks it excites and draws attention, and that its negative effects are overdrawn.  Iris “hates hate speech,” but thinks that we have to learn to live with it.  It is the price we pay for living in a democracy.  Rafael offers a comparative cultural approach, agreeing that in English hate speech may not be as pernicious as it may first seem.  But he, nonetheless, reminds us that sometimes hate and its speech have horrific consequences, citing the case of a local preacher “insisting on an idea of building a memorial reminding folk that Mathew Sheppard is now in hell.”  Rafael underscores that sometimes hate speech and aggressive actions are intimately connected, sometimes, even, hate speech functions as an action.  Esther looks at the problem from a slightly different angle. She thinks that concern about civil discourse is a good idea, but asks: “shouldn’t we be thinking, talking and doing some more about cause and prevention of violent outbursts by lost individuals?”  While, Michael is more directly concerned with hate speech and action, maintaining that it undermines democratic culture.  “Hate frequently destroys the cultural underpinnings needed for democratic processes to emerge and thrive.”  He then expresses his concern about the hate speech in Madison, echoing those who were most concerned with the relationship between hate speech and the massacre in Tucson.

© Akiramenai | Wikimedia Commons

And then, in a sense, the Supreme Court joined our discussion, supporting the free speech of anti-gay zealots at funerals, deciding more or less on Fine’s side of the debate.  But, this was a legal position, not really deciding our political problem. How to judge hate speech?  How to respond to it?

I don’t think there is an easy answer to these questions.  But I think that the beginning of the answer is to be found in thinking about our practice here at DC.  Look at the issue from different angles.  Observe how various principles apply in different situations.  Debate the issue.  Act upon the implications of the debate.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi © Martin H. | Wikimedia Commons

Don’t support hate speech and its actions, or make believe that such thought and action is normal, as many have responded to Colonel Qaddafi over the years.  Certainly don’t endorse a country’s participation and even leadership in a UN body on human rights when its leader spews hate and supports terrorism connected to that hate.

But do support the development of a political system which can be open to what Fine calls “lusty talk.”  He maintains that “The allegiance to debate reflects the principles of the Founders, it doesn’t deny them. Being engaged in left or right disruption – talk or action – can be handled by a confident society. Yes, legislators, justices, and government officials must find grounds for reaching agreement, but they can do this – and over centuries have done this – within a welter of voices.”  But of course, constituting such a confident (democratic) society is very difficult.  Something we should note as we observe the revolutionary changes in North Africa and the Middle East.

© Unknown| Wikimedia Commons

Benoit Challand in his two posts examined how the counter power of civil society, with people acting independently and freely, has been the force behind the great ongoing transformation in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond.  Not the magic of class identity or of sacralized politics, but youth, he tells us.  I think what is particularly important is that the youth are basing their actions on free and civil discussion.  Once a civil order is established, perhaps, it will be able to handle hate speech.  But civility and its order must be supported as a top priority. It’s a precondition for democratic life, as we see it also is a cause promoting democracy’s institutionalization.  And, I think, this is not only for newly constituted democratic societies.  I should add: exactly these are the issues that I tried to work on in Civility and Subversion, one in which I consider not only civil intellectuals such as Walter Lippmann and John Dewey, but also subversive ones who sometimes use a language of hate such as Malcolm X.