PizzaGate originated in 2016 from the hacked emails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton‘s campaign manager, published by WikiLeaks. Internet users on platforms like 4chan and Reddit began to interpret these emails, focusing on those that mentioned pizza and other food items. They falsely claimed these were code words for a child sex trafficking ring operated […]
Pathocracy is a relatively lesser-known concept in political science and psychology, which refers to a system of government in which individuals with personality disorders, particularly those who exhibit psychopathic, narcissistic, and similar traits (i.e. the “evil of Cluster B“), hold significant power. This term was first introduced by Polish psychiatrist Andrzej Εobaczewski in his work […]
The Snow Revolution was a series of popular protests beginning in Moscow in 2011, demanding the reinstatement of free elections, the ability to form opposition parties, and the end of massive state corruption. The protests were sparked by claims of electoral fraud in the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections and were further fueled by Vladimir Putin‘s […]
Buckle up, we’re in for a wild ride. Many of the serious scholars of political history and authoritarian regimes are sounding the alarm bells that, although it is a very very good thing that we got the Trump crime family out of the Oval Office, it is still a very very bad thing for America […]
The special grand jury in Georgia that investigated efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results in favor of loser Donald Trump has recommended indictments against 39 individuals, a number significantly higher than the 19 people ultimately charged by prosecutors. Among those recommended for indictment in the Georgia RICO case but who were not […]
The Council for National Policy is a conservative organization founded in 1981 by far-right Republican activists in the U.S. including Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly, and Tim LaHaye to advance a Christian Right agenda in American politics. Today, the CNP is enormously influential on the right and almost unknown on the left. Its secretive […]
Project Lakhta is the internal name for the disinformation operation that Yevgeniy Prigozhin‘s Internet Research Agency is running to interfere in elections across the Western world, according to the Robert Mueller indictments relating to the Russian attacks on the 2016 election. The op included/includes bots on social media, fake influencers, paid crisis actors, massive propaganda, […]
Legal statute requiring those persons lobbying on behalf of a foreign government or other entity to register such with the U.S. government. Folks like Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner ran afoul of this law during their time in the US government. History of FARA The Foreign Agents Registration Act, often abbreviated as FARA, is a […]
Cancel culture refers to the practice of publicly calling out or boycotting individuals, companies, or institutions for behavior that is perceived to be offensive, controversial, or problematic. The goal is to hold these entities accountable for their actions and to pressure them to change their behavior. This can manifest in various ways, such as social […]
Many people around the world were shocked in the aftermath of World War II. How could “polite” society break down so utterly, so swiftly, and so zealously? Why did authoritarian personality traits come to dominate human affairs, seemingly out of nowhere? How thin is this veneer of civilization, really? The authoritarian personality is characterized by […]
Gerrymandering is a political tactic used to manipulate the boundaries of electoral districts to favor one political party over another. It’s essentially the opposite of what the Founders meant by representative democracy — voters are supposed to choose their representatives, and not the other way around. The practice is named after Elbridge Gerry, a governor […]
We glibly believed it could never happen here even though we’ve been warned again and again. And in some sense, even though it’s been here all along — hiding in plain sight. It could happen here, and it did, because it’s happened here before. This dictionary of American authoritarianism collects definitions and charts the rise […]
The Big Lie about the 2020 Election was hardly the first or even the Biggest of the Big Lies in American history — fomented in vast majority by the right wing. Call it a personality trait, an ideology, or perhaps a financial preference — but Republicans seem to lean towards the disingenuous end of the […]
Hate speech is a way of dominating & monopolizing the conversation: Hate speech is a weapon being used to shut down political discourse — under the guise of promoting it. It’s a kind of false flag operation — a strategy of war disguising itself as “legitimate political discourse.”Putin and the American right-wing are using the […]
The Founders meant for the republic to be agile in philosophy — always changing to meet the new demands of the next generations. They meant for us to be self-governing, and empowered to create policy for problem-solving in new eras they themselves could not even conceive of. Thomas Jefferson wrote forewarningly of the Dead Hand […]