Pegida is the first radical right political party in Germany which managed to successfully act outside the neo-nazi ghetto. This party managed to establish all the ultranationalist and racist positions in the public debate which were not accepted beforehand in the wider society. This party is heterogeneous and holds internally contradictory demands, but that does not hinder its political activism. One can see in Pegida's racism, antiestablishment-resentment, chauvinism and fear politics what Umberto Eco called the pre-fascism. Pegida is probably not the last format of mobilization of the racism and ultra-nationalism, but only the first element in the coming chain of conflict situations. A lesson for the extreme right is that it is important to rely less on the verbalization of the enemy, and more on emphasizing privileges of those who consider themselves to be victims of political developments.
20 May 2016
Salon: Israel’s new defense minister Avigdor Lieberman is a far-right extremist who called for beheading disloyal Palestinian citizens
While serving as the foreign minister in March 2015, Lieberman declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel who are disloyal should be beheaded.
“Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done – we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head,” Lieberman asserted at Israel’s “Voting for Democracy – 2015 Elections” conference. “Otherwise we won’t survive here.” [...]
Lieberman’s fascistic decapitation proposal led a member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to characterize him as the Jewish version of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS/ISIL.
Meanwhile, major U.S. media outlets, including the New York Times, failed to report on Lieberman’s ISIS-like call. (There still appears to be no mention in the pages of the American newspaper of record.)
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Associated Press: Hungary: US wants to fill Europe with Muslim migrants
President Barack Obama and the United States favor illegal migration in Europe because they want to fill it up with Muslims, the chief of staff of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Thursday. [...]
"Not so long ago while visiting Europe, President Obama clearly spoke out in favor of the importance of migration, settlement and even the forced settlement (of migrants)," Lazar said at a news conference. Obama and America "are following a very strong pro-migration, pro-illegal migration policy in the interests of having as many Muslims as possible in Europe."
Business Insider: There was just a sign that Putin's grip on power is slipping
Organized crime groups are colluding with the authorities and with law enforcement at every level. Police are often more concerned with taxing the illegal narcotics trade than fighting it. And even things like cemeteries are bound up in Russia's sprawling political- bureaucratic-criminal web.
Russian media quoted law enforcement officials as saying that this weekend's shoot-out -- which involved enforcers from the North Caucasus attacking Central Asian migrants working at the cemetery -- was related to turf wars over who would control burial plots and maintenance work at the cemetery.
One of those arrested was a police officer. Also under investigation is the cemetery's director. And one of the main subjects of the investigation is Ritual, a state-run funeral agency.
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The Wall Street Journal: The Wealthy in Florence Today Are the Same Families as 600 Years Ago
New research from a pair of Italian economists documents an extraordinary fact: The wealthiest families in Florence today are descended from the wealthiest families of Florence nearly 600 years ago.
The two economists — Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti of the Bank of Italy — compared data on Florentine taxpayers in 1427 against tax data in 2011. Because Italian surnames are highly regional and distinctive, they could compare the income of families with a certain surname today, to those with the same surname in 1427. They found that the occupations, income and wealth of those distant ancestors with the same surname can help predict the occupation, income and wealth of their descendants today. [...]
But they note their research is not focused on the super elite at the top 1% of income. Their finding is for the overall population. The entire top 33% of the income distribution in 1427 is likely to be wealthier today. This is a far broader group than Medici princes and dukes, with castles and estates to hand down through the centuries. This suggests that some 25 generations later, the hundreds of descendants of comfortable — but far-from-regal — leathermakers are likely to be doing quite well, and it’s not because they inherited great(x25)-grandpa’s shoes and belts, let alone his palaces.
This evidence suggests social class persists up and down the scale, for wealthy families and middle-class and poor, through renaissance and economic boom, through busts and upheavals, through military occupations and overthrows, through republics and kingdoms and dictatorships and for centuries and centuries.
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