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In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent’s politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world…
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This is a follow-up post to my recent one on the House of the People project, a national citizens’ assembly run by Assemble. From what I’ve heard, it went very well, with a facilitator I’m in touch with saying it was “a truly uplifting experience”. Assemble issued a press release in which a participant described…
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A recent poll from Ipsos sheds some light on the attitudes that underpin the rise of the far right. It found that across 31 countries surveyed, respondents by a 47%-27% margin were more likely to agree that their country needs “a strong leader willing to break the rules”. This included a 53%-22% margin here in…
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All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse is a book by two activists connected with the Portuguese climate campaign Climáximo, Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden. I heard about All In during a Rev21 webinar with Alice Gato, another Climáximo activist, and gave it a read. All In begins with the argument that the…
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Many have wondered, as I have, why we study history. For a long time, I only really did it for fun, only in the last few years beginning to realise that it can do more. Seeing the past puts present-day problems in perspective. It can give clues as to what may happen next, but one…
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As Vladimir Lenin didn’t say, “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” In his book The Quiet Before (2022), the journalist and writer Gal Beckerman makes the case that revolutionary political and cultural movements have often been “incubated” by a period of quiet discussion beforehand: People don’t just cut…
Assembly Project 