Guest Commentator
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and author several books, numerous articles and the dystopian novel Splinterlands. He has been an Open Society Foundation Fellow and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee.
21 pieces
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
The citizens of Brazil, Poland, and South Korea defeated the dragons threatening their democracies. What can Americans learn from their examples?
The best way of preventing authoritarian leaders from overthrowing democracies is to make sure that they never get into power in the first place. That’s what…
Continue reading 11 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
In South Korea, martial law was undone by public protest. In the United States, Trump will reverse the equation and use martial law to overcome public protest.
The Trump administration has sidelined Congress, violated the U.S. Constitution, and taken an axe to both the U.S. and the global economies. Trump has issued executive…
Continue reading 7 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
In the seven stages of grief, progressives are wallowing in the first three stages of shock, denial, and anger. But don’t get stuck in the seventh stage of acceptance.
Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election was surprising in a number of ways. He won every swing state as well as the popular vote,…
Continue reading 6 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
the recent electoral victories of Javier Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands suggest that the world has not yet reached peak populism.
Panic does not produce prudent politics. Panic produces provocative populists. And it reduces pundits to Seussian spluttering. How can voters choose such…panic-peddling panderers?! The defeats of…
Continue reading 12 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
Fratricide, as the latest conflict between Hamas and Israel has proven once again, only benefits the one percent of extremists on both sides.
Fratricide, as the latest conflict between Hamas and Israel has proven once again, only benefits the one percent of extremists on both sides. The Palestinian people…
Continue reading 11 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
Americans on the left can be just as blinkered and arrogant as all the figures further to the right that we’ve criticized repeatedly for the same sins.
Henry Kissinger is arrogant. At 100 years old, he still represents all that is smug and imperious about U.S. foreign policy. Donald Trump and his fellow…
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Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
The far right in the United States is potentially just one election and one declared "state of emergency" away from dismantling the "deep state" and subverting democracy from within.
It's easy to dismiss Herschel Walker as the hapless face of the far right. Yes, he lost. But he lost by less than 1 percent of…
Continue reading 2 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
Meloni has not been following a historic model of Italian fascism so much as the current model of American neo-fascism, courtesy of Trump himself.
Italy just elected a far-right leader. Is this the beginning of a resurgence of fascism, or the beginning of the end? The telegenic star of Europe’s…
Continue reading 11 min
Guest Commentary
Guest Commentator
In the past 100 years, we’ve quadrupled the human population and increased the per capita consumption nine-fold for a 36-fold increase in the size of the economy. That can’t be sustained.
The planet is running out of resources, and humanity is living beyond its means. At the end of July, the International Monetary Fund warned of a…
Continue reading 22 min