Ilya Budraitskis, author of Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia, taught political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences until he left Russia in March this year. He is now involved in the anti-war media project posle.media. Ilya spoke to Red Flag about the effect within Russia of the invasion of Ukraine.
The Italian general election was a historic win for the far right. A coalition of the three major parties won 44 percent of the vote, enough in Italy’s byzantine electoral system to form a clear majority in both houses of parliament. Most importantly, it was driven by the meteoric rise of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in the post-Mussolini fascist tradition, which secured 26 percent of the vote, making it the single largest party in parliament.
In 1994, 15-year-old Jimmie Åkersson sought out a neo-Nazi party. Today, he’s brought that party into the mainstream. In disturbing results, the Swedish parliamentary elections on 11 September have given the far-right Sweden Democrats, which Åkersson has led since 2005, more than 20 percent of the vote. The party is now the second most popular in the country, and holds more seats than any other party.
Despite decades of climate research, public activism and international conferences, fossil fuels are back in vogue. Big producers are making astronomical sums of money, their share prices are going up, and new investors are pouring in. The result is that the much-vaunted global transition to renewables is, yet again, on hold.
The New Democracy government, under the leadership of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is facing the most serious political crisis since it came to power after the defeat of the SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) government in the elections of 2019.
After a lifetime of bludging off the public, Queen Elizabeth is gone at last.