Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

To read Parts I, II and III, please visit the following links: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/09/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html Although an undercurrent of populist nationalism has been surging toward the surface since the turn of the millennium, it is no coincidence that it has become a fully-fledged international trend in the years since the 2008 world financial crisis, the catalyst for which was the US mortgage debacle and the ensuing stock market crash that it triggered. Nor is right-wing populist nationalism the only manifestation of rage and frustration on the part of common citizens at what they perceive as a broken system and as a worldwide “game”—led by the West—in which the deck is definitively stacked against them. Trumpism in the US, Nigel...

“What is Aleppo?” asked third party libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on nationwide US television. And everyone who is aware of the horrendous human drama unfolding in Syria gasped and wrote him off as too ignorant to run for dogcatcher let alone president of the most powerful nation on earth and leader of the Western world. US Presidential candidate Gary Johnson Devastated by the Syrian War over the course of the past five years, Aleppo will very likely be, for all intents and purposes, leveled within the next two months, under constant air attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and those of his Russian ally and overlord Vladimir Putin. While many may know where Aleppo lies in the bitter war between Assad and nationalist rebels and in the proxy wars of regional and worldwide rivals, fewer know what Aleppo means in terms of world history and culture. Possibly in existence since as far back as the 6 th millennium before the Christian era, it has been i...

To read Parts I and II, please visit the following links: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-populist-nationalism-part.html In a recently released documentary video written and directed by Kelly Nyks, Peter D. Hutchinson and Jared P. Scott for PF Films ( http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/ ) , the internationally esteemed dean of US intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, provides, like no one else to date, a clear, concise analysis of how the much-touted American dream has become an American nightmare for all but a privileged elite. And as goes the United States, so too goes the world, often with devastatingly multiplied effect. The failure of the majority of the public to understand the causes behind this dream’s demise and, worse still, their lack of tools for dealing with it, are at the root of the fears and frustrations currently fueling populist nationa...

To read Part I, please visit the following link: http://vivoonwarpeaceandjustice.blogspot.com.ar/2016/08/the-rise-of-nationalist-populism.html Despite the general proliferation of far-right nationalist groups across Western Europe, certainly the most alarming example of the swift emergence of populist nationalism to date—not only because of the potential consequences for the country involved, but also because of those for the world at large, given that nation’s superpower status—has come in the United States, with the meteoric launching on the political horizon of billionaire real estate czar and reality show host Donald Trump. The flamboyant tycoon has skyrocketed from political obscurity to the position of presidential candidate for one of the country’s two major parties in just a few short months, solely on the strength of his populist nationalist rhetoric and its effect on the angriest segments of the population. Trump was not the pick of the Republican Party itself, ho...

Hitler said what beleaguered Germans wanted to hear. Ever since World War II, people in the Western world have been asking rhetorically how a nation of the education and cultural excellence of Germany could have believed in and rallied around such a sinister, bigoted, megalomaniacal and xenophobic leader as Adolf Hitler. Perhaps there is no single, clear-cut response to that question. But part of the answer is that such an autocratic, über -nationalist leader,  whose stilted them-and-us world vision led to the most tragic global conflict in the history of the human race, was a product of his era, a supremely-driven opportunist who saw clearly how to take advantage of the widespread sense of discontent, disenfranchisement, humiliation and despair bred in his nation as of the end of World War I, in order to build a witheringly powerful and highly militarized movement “to make Germany great again.” Hitler’s so-called Nazi movement evolved by challenging the democratic syste...