#1273 Death of the Old, Birth of the New (Global Authoritarianism)
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2019
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date: 5/17/2019
Today we take a look at the socially and politically existential threat of our time - the fight against encroaching authoritarianism in the US and around the world.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Donald Trump Puts Our Democracy and Our Lives in Serious Danger - @Thom_Hartmann - Air Date 01-13-18
Not a single president has met more than one of the four qualities identified by political scientists as warning signs of an authoritarian or fascist leader. Trump meets them all. Is this how our Democracy dies?
Jair Bolsonaro's election in Brazil marks the most radical political shift in the country since military rule ended more than 30 years ago. We speak with Fernando Haddad, a presidential candidate on the Workers’ Party ticket who lost in a runoff.
Ch. 3: The War for Normal - Analysis - Air Date 1-28-19
Extremism is the new normal. Conspiracies are fact and Right wing is mainstream. The world is moving too fast for us to catch up, let alone understand and take action.
In his new book “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” Yale professor Jason Stanley outlines the 10 pillars of fascism and warns about the dangers of normalizing fascist politics.
Thom reads an excerpt from the book They Thought They Were Free about the slow, nearly undetectable rise of fascism in Nazi Germany
Is the United States sliding toward tyranny? That is the question posed by Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder in his new book that draws on his decades of experience writing about war and genocide in European history.
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 7: Final comments to wrap the show and introduce Sam from Nashville, the misunderstood Trump voter
MUSIC(Blue Dot Sessions):
- Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr
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- Moon Bicycle Theme - American Moon Bicycle
- Astrisx - Bodytonic
- Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent
- Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This program is made possible by members and donors, so a huge thanks to everyone who |
| 0:07.2 | contribute on Patreon to support the show. |
| 0:09.8 | And now, welcome to this extended episode of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast, |
| 0:14.8 | in which we shall learn about the socially and politically existential threat of our time, |
| 0:19.8 | the fight against encroaching authoritarianism in the US and around the world. |
| 0:24.8 | And today, come from the Tom Hurtman program, Democracy Now, and Analysis. |
| 0:29.5 | A brilliant piece by Nicholas Kristoff in today's New York Times. |
| 0:39.8 | I strongly recommend you check this out. |
| 0:41.7 | Actually, it was yesterday's times, it's January 10th. |
| 0:44.4 | It's titled Trump's Threat to Democracy. |
| 0:46.8 | It's on the front page of the digital New York Times right now. |
| 0:49.8 | And he points out a couple of political scientists. |
| 0:52.7 | This is Stephen Lovitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors at Harvard. |
| 0:57.3 | They just published a new book titled How Democracies Die. |
| 1:01.4 | And in that book, they said that there are four warning signs when you're looking at |
| 1:08.3 | a politician to indicate that that politician may become a Mussolini or a Hitler, that he |
| 1:14.3 | may become a or she, may become an authoritarian destroyer of democracy. |
| 1:23.4 | And those five four criteria. |
| 1:25.3 | Now, actually, before I tell you these criteria, let me give you the kind of backstories, |
| 1:30.7 | it's a public, Stephen, the two professors, Harvard professors who wrote this book, write |
| 1:36.1 | a politician who meets even one of these criteria's cause for concern with the exception of Richard |
| 1:41.3 | Nixon. No, major party presidential candidate, not even presidents, candidates. |
... |
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