By Arnold Vaatz · Tuesday, August 18, 2020 The following essay originally appeared in German at Tichys Einblick. Translated by Russell A. Berman, who has written a separate note on the topic here.
At the outset I want to make clear that I view the stipulations of the governments for containing the corona pandemic as appropriate and that it is necessary to obey them.
Yet this is not the central issue. Instead, the central issue is that the BLM demonstration against racism was widely praised and tolerated, while the demonstration of August 1 [against corona restrictions—trans.] was widely condemned, despite posing identical dangers.
The most valuable good for a government is its credibility. One does not need it in a dictatorship, as long as the arguments come from the barrel of a gun. In a democracy, however, credibility is one of the foundational conditions for domestic peace.
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Politicians who warn us against the New Right have been speaking about “Weimar conditions.” Isn’t the comparison with the pre-Hitler era exaggerated?
Not as far as the surprise attack dynamic is concerned. One is in fact reminded of the speed with which the National Socialist party gained political ground in the Weimar Republic. First it had 18%, then suddenly 30%, and soon governing without it became practically impossible. Let’s be honest: Today no one knows where the AfD will reach its limit. In Austria, the candidate of the right-wing populist FPÖ got half the votes. Not that long ago, who would have thought this possible?
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By Kenneth D. Johnson · Monday, February 9, 2015 The recent protests of the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, both black males, at the hands of police, ignited what some believe to be a new movement in the vein of the historic black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Little did Messrs. Brown and Garner know that their tragic deaths would breathe new life into a near-dead progressive Left.
New groupings of Gen Xers and Millennials, networking through the Internet, have now displaced older activist groups led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Other groups, like organized labor (especially SEIU), and perennial malcontents of Marxian legacy, such as the ANSWER coalition and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, have appeared in protests, alongside shadowy cadres of white anarchists, who in some cities have thrown firebombs and damaged property during protest actions. Unlike Occupy Wall Street and its derivatives, the new protest groups have an identifiable leadership, appear regularly in news media, and are building the road as they travel, that is, working out tactics and strategies based on their reading (or misreading) of past protest movements, as they go.
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By Matt Applegate · Thursday, March 13, 2014 As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Matt Applegate looks at Paul Piccone’s “Students’ Protest, Class-Structure, and Ideology” from Telos 3 (Spring 1969).
 Paul Piccone’s 1969 essay “Students’ Protest, Class-Structure, and Ideology” captures the revolutionary ethos of that time in the United States. Hippies, student politics, Black Power, as well as the work of such figures as Régis Debray and Herbert Marcuse all come under Piccone’s earnest critical consideration. His primary concern, however, is the link between these student revolts and the state of education in the United States. On the one hand, Piccone is intent on charting the means by which hyper-industrialization and the technologization of work lead to open student rebellion. On the other, he is interested in understanding why student rebellion is effective in relation to other forms of revolutionary organization that appear alongside it.
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By Timothy Stacey · Sunday, August 14, 2011 The past few days have seen the worst unrest in the UK since the 2001 Bradford Race Riots. Residents have watched from the questionable safety of their homes as mobs of men, women, boys, and girls attack and set light to shops, cars, and buses. Sometimes bystanders and journalists have been attacked too. Many have been shocked by the tendency of some to smash rather than steal expensive goods. The following is a dispassionate look at the facts and possible causes, followed by a controversially hopeful look into what the riots, and the reactions to them, might mean for the future of community in Britain.
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