John Feffer

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands (Dispatch Books/Haymarket, 2016).

Apocalyptic Christians are Hoping Trump Will Usher in the End Times

Trump is no churchgoer. But for evangelicals, his stance on Israel and machinations against Iran make him the ideal instrument of the end times.

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer
Pastors from the Las Vegas area pray with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a visit to the International Church of Las Vegas, and International Christian Academy, Oct. 5, 2016, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Welcome back, Gog and Magog. I can’t say that I’ve missed you.  You might remember the Gog and Magog story from 2003, when George W. Bush was making plans to invade Iraq and assembling a “coalition of the willing.” French President Jacques Chirac was quite unwilling, so Bush went to great lengths to break down his resistance. As part of this

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The Ideology That Unites Trump and the Authoritarians He Admires

For Trump and his majoritarian cronies, it’s about propping up “besieged majorities” in multiethnic countries.

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One for Israe from Saudi Arabial, the next stop in his international tour, at King Khalid International Airport, Monday, May 22, 2017, in Riyadh. (AP/Evan Vucci)

Washington and New Dehli are having a mutual lovefest these days. Donald Trump is popular in India — where only 17 percent of the population considers the president “intolerant,” compared to a global average of 65 percent — and he has warmly welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. Both leaders are eager to bump up bilateral

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If the Trump Revolution Is Possible, so Is a Progressive One

As with all revolutions, the Trump insurrection has opened people’s eyes to the potential instability of all that had previously seemed solid.

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer
Trump toilet art banner

Opinion -- Don’t kid yourself: 2016 was a revolutionary year in the United States. Yes, I know, the United States is a deeply conservative country. Americans don’t engage in periodic attempts to overthrow the system. There is no viable political party that threatens the status quo. When protesters gather in Washington, they have no intention of

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The Crack-Up:  Donald Trump And The Fourth Great Shattering 

A country that hasn’t had a civil war in more than 150 years, where secessionist movements have caused merriment not concern, now faces divisions so serious, and a civilian arsenal of weapons so huge, that the possibility of national disintegration has become part of mainstream conversation

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer
Trump protester Bryan Sanders, center left, is punched by a Trump supporter as he is escorted out of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's rally at the Tucson Arena in downtown Tucson, Ariz., Saturday, March 19, 2016. (Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Star via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

When the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published his bestseller The Disuniting of America in 1991, he didn’t seriously entertain the worst-case scenario suggested by the title. At the time, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were imploding, while separatist movements in Quebec, East Timor, Spain’s Basque country, and elsewhere were already

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The Splintering Of States May Signal A New Era Of Corporate Rule

If this trend continues, with the world continuing to splinter, the only entities left with any global power will be corporations and religious organizations, a world where frightened people pray to Facebook and the gods of Google

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer

Democracy can be messy. In the northeast corner of Spain this week, democracy was downright chaotic. Catalans went to the polls on Sunday to vote in a referendum on whether to stay in Spain or go their separate way. The Spanish authorities, however, declared the vote illegitimate and sent in the national police to disrupt the

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It’s Rigged: Takes One To Know One

Increasing skepticism of the U.S. government can either lead to ugly conspiracy theorizing, or fuel a movement to bend the status quo.

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer
trump comic

The system is rigged. Let’s be clear: the American political system favors the two major parties and our economic system favors the wealthy. The global system is similarly rigged in favor of powerful countries (such as the United States) and powerful economic actors (such as transnational corporations). This is not, however, a conspiracy. No

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The Pacific Pivot: Why America’s Strategic Rebalance Is Really Just Retreat

The “strategic re-balancing” the Obama administration has been promoting as a mid-course correction to its foreign policy remains strong on rhetoric and remarkably weak on content.

John Feffer
بواسطة John Feffer

In a future update of The Devil's Dictionary, the famed Ambrose Bierce dissection of the linguistic hypocrisies of modern life, a single word will accompany the entry for "Pacific pivot": retreat. It might seem a strange way to characterize the Obama administration's energetic attempt to reorient its foreign and military policy toward Asia.

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