Socially responsible investment. Since the 1980s, the practice has become commonplace in the United States and Europe. Used to describe the practice of investing money in the stock market to do good – as well as earn some returns – the idea is that capitalism doesn’t just have to be about maximizing individual gain. (More…)
Political asylum has been a major topic in Germany for decades. Because the Basic Law that has served as the Federal Republic’s de facto constitution since 1949 was intended to counter the exclusionary ideology of the Nazis, it made the nation seem more welcoming to refugees than other European states. By the 1980s, however, this “open door” policy was being sorely tested by a large number of asylum seekers. (More…)
The polls confirmed his instincts were correct. Singing the praises of Il Duce on Holocaust Memorial Day proved to be a smart decision. Now only five points behind frontrunner Pier Luigi Bersani, Silvio Berlusconi’s popularity with voters was unharmed. With a population of less than thirty thousand, in a country of over sixty million, Italy’s Jewish community doesn’t count. (More…)
Seeing the political posters Souciant features in Randomizer, readers sometimes ask if there’s a US equivalent. In cities like New York or San Francisco, and around college campuses, analogous street communications aren’t hard to spot. But elsewhere in the country, particularly suburbia, the dominant form of street communication is mobile: the bumper sticker. This startling couplet is a fine example. (More…)
For a moment, I thought I was in Israel. “Why are there Palestinian flags here?” I wondered, as I approached city hall. Its website had said that an event to commemorate the Holocaust would be held here, facing its entrance. I’d expected there would be Israeli flags instead, with bearded Jewish men davening for good measure. (More…)
What does it mean to be an anti-fascist? Never easy to answer, today this question can seem like a Zen koan. First you have to decide what constitutes fascism. Then you have to figure out how to oppose it. Beyond those groups that deliberately invoke the iconography of brown and black shirts — a small number, relatively speaking — there is a wealth of potential enemies. The challenge is to choose them well. (More…)
State repression. Leftwing violence. The dialectic is familiar, worse, discomfiting. There is something decidedly crude about it all, as though such scenarios ought to be a thing of the past, replaced, as it were, by less harmful modes of conflict. What happened to culture jamming? Isn’t alternative consumption enough? (More…)
Switzerland isn’t synonymous with the left. Best-known for its banks, it’s more commonly equated with financial services, and the politics such an economic specialty suggests. Independent, historically, from the rest of Europe, the affluent, alpine, multilingual confederation is far more difficult to make sense of than its neighbors. (More…)
What is the best way to handle a legacy of extremism? This is an important question for every democratic government, but particularly in those nations where radical ideology once held sway. And Germany remains on the top of list. No matter how stable the post-war Federal Republic’s political institutions, the Third Reich is never too far from people’s thoughts. (More…)
Piazza Vittorio was empty. With the exception of two elderly men, struggling to inflate what looked like an enormous stage prop. As I grew closer, its details came into focus. It was a fake boulder, with the word “Crisis” (Italian for “crisis,” shorthand for the economic crisis) written on it. (More…)
This sticker, the final installment in Souciant’s series on the German Left Party’s youth outreach campaign, complements the other anti-military message in the series. But, whereas that one builds on a pull-no-punches approach developed in the Weimar Republic, and reanimated by punk, today’s is strangely subdued. (More…)
Squatting is in the news again. This time, as a consequence of a new UK law criminalizing the practice. In effect since November, the legislation could not have been passed at a poorer (to put it bluntly,) time. With the British economy in its fourth year of crisis, there was something especially cruel about the gesture. If you’re homeless, that’s your lot. Shelter is out of the question. (More…)