What explains why 51 years after Pinochet’s coup, Chile has elected someone who is nostalgically fond of dictatorship? The far-right candidate focused on immigration and insecurity, with rhetoric inspired by Trump and Milei.
Tag: dictatorship
From Ukraine to global power shifts, the certainties that once shaped our world have collapsed, forcing Europe to rethink what is still achievable in a rapidly changing reality.
A string of political defeats, legal setbacks and economic backlash is eroding Trump’s grip on power, raising cautious hopes that America’s democratic resilience is finally reasserting itself.
Xi Jinping’s military show in Beijing and his alliance of autocrats may look like the dawn of a new world order, yet the economic, scientific, and military balance still tilts toward the democracies of the West.
Iran’s post-revolutionary constitution concentrated all the power in the hands of the country’s supreme leader — a mistake that is still costing Iranians today.
A hot-mic chat between the Russian and Chinese leaders echoes a century of utopian schemes to defeat mortality.
Even after diplomatic overtures and red-carpet treatment abroad, Moscow answers with one of its deadliest strikes since the invasion, showing the Kremlin has no intention of negotiating an end to the war.
Getting El Salvador’s compliant parliament to legislate and scrap presidential term limits is the latest and sure-fire sign that President Nayib Bukele has no intention of ending his no-nonsense rule any time soon.
A new phone, a fancy car, a full fridge: for a long time, politicians assumed that prosperity was all it took to keep democracies running. But that view of human nature is now having serious consequences.
Like Spain after Franco, La Stampa’s Bernard Guetta argues, Iran faces a crucial choice between authoritarian decay and democratic renewal. Before time runs out.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin discussed Ukraine and other international matters during a call on Tuesday. What do the two leaders have in common? A shared worldview alone no longer explains it.
An assassination attempt, the beginning of a revolutionary movement and a historic sports victory.
The Canary island of Fuerteventura is a popular seaside tourist destination, but further inland are the remains of Spain’s dark past of LGBTQ+ persecution during the regime of dictator Francisco Franco.
A personal journey through memory, loss, and resilience — reflecting on Eunice Facciolla Paiva’s quiet strength, Marcelo Paiva’s storytelling, and the haunting echoes of dictatorship in today’s world. It’s a rare Oscars Best Picture nominee from Brazil.
In its first decade, Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution was radical yet legitimate, and enjoyed the people’s electoral support under leader Hugo Chávez. This changed when his successor, Nicolás Maduro, took over after Chávez’s death, and decided he wasn’t going to let votes thwart his insatiable love of power and money.
As Spain prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of dictator Francisco Franco’s death and the return of democracy, fascism is returning around the world. It’s proof, as philosopher Walter Benjamin said, that nothing that has once happened should be considered lost to history.
Multilateral diplomacy may seem to be exhausted today as wars and violence proliferate unchecked, but nobody should think its time is past and expect to see peace in the world.
As Nicaragua’s weakened opponents expend themselves in jail or exile or in rivalries, communist strongman Daniel Ortega has amended the constitution yet again, to lock himself and his family into perpetual power. Could Donald Trump’s reelection become a miraculous glitch in his plans?
Raging bull. Aspiring dictator. Insult comic. Donald Trump has and will always be an impossible subject for the media to cover. With democracy (and the free press) now on the line, what if we embraced the show?
The German Parliament has taken up discussion on a bill for an outright ban on the AfD, the country’s increasingly popular far-right party. Here’s the case to remove a political force that wants to dismantle the institutions of democracy from within. Germany, of course, has its own history on the question.
With results in Sunday’s election showed Kais Saied winning the election by a landslide, Tunisia may have definitively returned to dictatorship and closed a chapter on democracy in the Arab world that began a generation ago on the streets of Tunis. Daraj took a pre-election look at what it means for the people who live there.
As the host of the next UN climate summit, Azerbaijan is positioning itself as a peacemaker, calling for the end of conflicts that “worsen climate change.” But this stands in stark contrast to the country’s commitment to increase gas and oil production and its record of military aggression against Armenia.
Venezuela’s elections this year took a very different course than Nicaragua’s in 2021. In both Latin American countries, an authoritarian leader wanted to stay in power and committed electoral fraud to do so. But in Venezuela, the opposition was able to create resistance to Nicolás Maduro.
The leaders of three big Latin American powers, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, have shown they believe keeping a fellow socialist in power is more important than respecting the votes of millions of ordinary Venezuelans who chose freedom over socialism.
Updated July 31, 20244 at 11:20 a.m. Fidel Castro officially handed over power to his brother Raúl Castro on this day in 2006. Why did Fidel Castro decide to transfer power to his brother? Fidel Castro’s decision to transfer power to his brother Raúl Castro was prompted by his declining health. Fidel underwent intestinal surgery […]
What we are witnessing is the struggle of a people against their oppressors. This electoral process, although flawed, could become a milestone for Venezuelans to regain their freedom — and it is one that should concern everyone who believes in democracy.
July 22 – July 28, 2024
The Albanian writer has died at the age of 88, after a life challenging, and occasionally acquiescing, the whims of the regime.
As citizens across the EU prepare to elect a new parliament, Italian author Viola Ardone remembers her late grandmother who, despite an elementary education and lack of political interest, never missed an election.
Brazilian journalist Ludmila Pizarro grew up surrounded by idealists who were targeted and tortured during Brazil’s brutal dictatorship. But it wasn’t until she started researching a story to mark 60 years from the beginning of the dictatorship that she learned the details of her father’s own ordeal. For Agência Pública, she reconstructs the story of her family’s past.
It all started on April 25, 1974, when some frustrated military officers — who had seen with their own eyes the effects of colonization in Western Africa — decided to overthrow the military regime. And over the past half-century, Portugal has gone from an archaic dictatorship to bona fide cool corner of the Western world.
It’s the most insipid kind of historical revisionism. Both in Argentina and Brazil, far-right leaders are denying the countries’ history of human rights abuses during the brutal dictatorships of the 1960s and 70s, and using it to rally support around their causes.
Updated April 9, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. The photos of the Saddam Hussein statue being toppled were iconic images of the fall of the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on this day in 2003. U.S. forces entered Baghdad and toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square and the image of the statue […]
Turkey has more than a century of democracy and elections, and a bonafide opposition, which stands out from recent Russian and Iranian votes. We see it again in the victory in Sunday’s victory for Istanbul Mayor of the opposition party. Still, the increasingly authoritarian Turkish regime risks sliding toward a point of new return with its assault on rights and freedoms.
With Putin’s war in Ukraine, people may need reminding that Belarusian leader and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator in Europe’s midst, write German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in an article for Die Welt.
Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is expected to win Indonesia’s presidential election, on Feb. 14. Yet concerns about democracy are on the rise, as the nation carefully balances ties with Beijing and Washington.
As nearly half of the world prepares to vote in elections this year, Turkish journalist and author Ece Temelkuran warns, in the Istanbul-based weekly Oksijen, that many countries are following Turkey’s path from democracy to dictatorship.
Updated Jan. 21, 2024 at 12:15 p.m. It was 100 years ago on this day that Vladimir Lenin died at the age of 53. Who was Vladimir Lenin? Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He was the founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet […]
It’s the first big election of 2024, and it may well prove one of the most contested — and significant ones. As these vote on Saturday, Taiwanese citizens will be picking the fate of their identity and democracy.
Updated Dec. 13, 2023 at 12:10 p.m. It was exactly 20 years ago that Saddam Hussein was captured by the United States military in the town of Ad-Dawr, Iraq. Why was the U.S. at war with Iraq? In 2003, a coalition between the United States and British forces initiated war on Iraq to depose Saddam […]