1/ The home of all my journalism, @The_Corres, is celebrating one year of publishing hopeful journalism this month! If you are a founding member, it would be so great if you'd renew your membership by the end of the month via corr.es/renew-now
2/ Here are just a few of the stories I’ve published this year:
--> A chapter that I ended up leaving out of my book, about Peter Kropotkin, the Russian prince-turned-anarchist who had a VERY dangerous idea: most people are pretty decent. thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-your…
3/ A few months into the pandemic, it became clear that the era of neoliberalism is over. But what comes next? I wrote that the time has come for ideas that seemed impossible just months ago: thecorrespondent.com/466/the-neolib…
4/ And I’ve also published several extracts from my book HUMANKIND, including this essay about the remedy for hatred and prejudice (hint: get to know those who are different to you). thecorrespondent.com/668/science-sh…
5/ If you’re a founding member, please do renew your membership before 30 September to support ad free, independent journalism. corr.es/renew-now
6/ If you’re not a member, but enjoyed some of these articles, become a member! Membership is pay-what-you-want, because we know that most people are pretty decent, and will pay what they can afford for independent journalism: thecorrespondent.com/join [the end]
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96 private jets full of corrupt elites and celebs flying into Venice, a city destroyed by tourism, to celebrate the wedding of the world’s most shameless tax dodger: Jeff Bezos.
Well, it's the perfect anecdote for future historians writing about this Second Gilded Age --> 🧵
The location is very fitting. The fall of the Republic of Venice is one of history’s most telling examples of how great civilizations can rot from within—not through external conquest, but through elite decadence and corruption.
At its peak, Venice was a marvel of commerce and innovation. A small city built on a lagoon had become a maritime empire, dominating Mediterranean trade routes for centuries.
For years, historians and experts were cautious about using the f-word to describe today's events. But that hesitation is gone now. 🧵
This thread is a summary of this brilliant piece by my former colleague Rosan Smits. It went viral in the Netherlands—and you can read the English translation now --> decorrespondent.nl/16177/this-is-…
Let's start with the experts. Robert Paxton, the world’s foremost scholar of fascism, long resisted calling Trump a fascist. But after January 6th, he changed his mind.
“It’s the real thing. It really is,” Paxton told The New York Times in the fall of 2024.
How to stop authoritarian takeovers, 6 simple lessons from history:
1. Build a broad pro-democracy coalition. No purity politics. Learn to work with people who annoy you. You can go back to dunking on them after democracy is safe.
2. Draft a positive, optimistic agenda. So not just: ‘our institutions must hold!’ Successful movements framed democracy as freedom, dignity, equality.
3. Target blatant corruption and cronyism as rallying issues. This is the soft underbelly of autocrats. Citizens across the political spectrum appreciate a vigorous anti-corruption agenda.
Incredibly powerful investigation in Dutch newspaper NRC: Seven of the world’s leading genocide scholars — including renowned Holocaust experts — describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal.
And according to them, nearly all of their peers agree.
These are not activists. They include Holocaust scholars and the heads of major genocide research centers. Scholars from Israel, the U.S., the U.K., Australia and the Netherlands.
And they are not divided. Without exception, they describe Israel’s actions as “genocidal.”
Raz Segal (Israeli scholar): “Can I name someone whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide? No."
Uğur Ümit Üngör (University of Amsterdam & NIOD): "I don’t know them.”