Cover of The Public Eye, Winter/Spring 2020

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The Public Eye, Winter/Spring 2020

Nearly a year in the making, Winter/Spring 2020 is a special internationally themed edition of The Public Eye, drawing on contributions from 10 writers and covering nine countries. Overall, the picture these pieces show is grim, with country after country contending with a greatly emboldened Far Right, and many sliding away from democracy and toward autocracy.

Over the course of finalizing this issue, as much of the world shut down to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, some nations used the crisis as an opportunity to further entrench illiberal or authoritarian policies, as with Viktor Orbán’s seizure of emergency powers in Hungary. But all of these trends have been years in the making, and many are deeply interrelated.

In this issue

The Golden Dawn Model

Once Emulated by American White Nationalists, Greece’s Anti-Migrant Party Faces an Uncertain Future

October 24, 1998. Anyone walking past the conference in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, would have likely found the presence of…

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Enemy in the Making

The Language of “Anti-Sorosism” in the U.S. and Hungary

“I really feel that Soros, in many ways, is the biggest danger to the entire Western world.” So argued British right-wing populist Nigel Farage in 2018 on the U.S. right-wing TV network Fox News.[1] Though…

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Nothing is Untouched

The Aftermath in Chemnitz

The sun was high and the air thick with a weighted August heat as we sat down for lunch at Schmetterling, a Persian restaurant in the heart of Chemnitz, Germany. Anne Gersch, a staff member of Courage, a project that facilitates anti-discrimination…

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End Times Antisemitism

Christian Zionism, Christian Nationalism, and the Threat to Democracy

I first encountered Christian Zionism—political support for the modern State of Israel grounded in beliefs about its prophetic significance in End Times scenarios—in 1992, while working as a fight-the-Right researcher in Portland, Oregon. A big part…

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The Right in the Streets

The Past and Present of the Polish March of Independence

In the early afternoon on November 11, 2019, in central Warsaw, tens of thousands of people came together at the Roman Dmowski roundabout, for an event known as one of the biggest right-wing gatherings in the world. The location itself was telling:…

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Third Millennium Fascism

Highlights from Italy

The annual spring Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin is not just a book fair, but one of Italy’s most important cultural events: five days of debates, book presentations, and discussions with writers from Italy and around the world, featuring…

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Right-Wing Populism Outside the Global North

Brazil and the Philippines

Over the last several years, countries including the U.S., UK, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and Spain have witnessed the rise of authoritarian leaders and the return of politicians posing as defenders of the “will of the people.” Right-wing populism is…

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