Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies

“Russia is giving carte blanche to the far right”

A year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine on the pretext of „denazification“. A year after the outbreak of war, IRGAC member Alexander Tushkin from Russia spoke to Sergey Movchan, left-wing activist and participant in the Marker project which tracks far-right violence in Ukraine, about Ukrainian nationalism, the far right and antifascists in the Ukrainian army, and how the war has affected their position in society.

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Sergey Movchan is a left-wing activist and participant in the Marker project, which tracks far-right violence in Ukraine.

Campuses in Action: Myanmar’s Academia Resisting against the Coup

“My decision was firm since I left my university in mid of February. My aunts are now giving me pressure to go back to my professor job. After seeing atrocities and mass killing of the junta, I no longer want to be part of the system they are ruling.”

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Education workers´ strike in Myanmar, © Khant Min Htin

“We don’t keep quiet, we are not afraid, we don’t obey”

Femicides stand out as one of the biggest social problems in Turkey today causing a widespread and pronounced public reaction. The femicide cases are frequently on the news exploited by mainstream media with graphic coverage. The names of murdered women and pleas for retribution regularly become trending topic on Twitter. The outrage against femicides is expressive of the liberalizing worldviews and gender ideology in Turkish society while also conveying the popular contention against the government’s overall authoritarian politics along with its efforts for the recomposition of patriarchy.

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Demonstration of We Will Stop Femicides Platform for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 22 November 2020, Istanbul. Photo by Ülker Sözen

Institutional Violence in the Time of Coronavirus: Argentina and its Democratic Deficit

The mandatory lockdown and social distancing decreed by the National Government of the Argentine Republic in Decree No. 297/2020 has been the policy designed to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. This way of addressing the crisis in a timely and initially efficient manner, in contrast to other countries in the region, gained Argentina international recognition. Simultaneously, the new President of the Nation, Alberto Fernández from the Justicialist Party, (Partido Justicialista, PJ)—also known as the Peronist movement—managed to get a very high level of support from the population by promoting this set of measures to deal with the pandemic. This entailed health, social, and economic measures to protect the most vulnerable sectors and workers.

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