Worth reading two interesting articles with different perspective but same conclusion. Kenan Malik argues that there is inherent tension between democracy and liberalism. The mob rule is part of the package of democracy and current crisis, rejection of liberal values, is crisis of liberalism and not democracy. While Nancy Fraser in her article in Dissent argues that it is the failure of progressive neocolonialism that undermined the economic interests of the their own constituents, working class, by adopting trade deals like NAFTA and TPP and promoting the interests of the wealthy.

Click links below for articles;

A crisis of Democracy or Liberalism by Kenan Malik  

End Of Progressive Neoliberalism by Nancy Fraser

posted by f.sheikh

We can’t ignore the voices that put Trump in the White House. But maybe we can persuade them. By GREGORY FERENSTEIN

 November 29, 2016   The 2016 election was a turning point for me as a writer. Like many of my fellow journalists, I felt that Donald Trump’s campaign was such a threat to the civic order that I set aside the norms of objectivity and actively wrote in favor of Hillary Clinton, arguing for instance, in one piece, why the business community should enthusiastically support her. I was in pretty good company; media outlets ranging from the Atlantic to the Arizona Republic made historic endorsements for a Democratic candidate.  Then, as the election results poured in on November 8, I was forced to reflect on a very (very) difficult realization: Much of my work last year was, electorally speaking, worthless. I, evidently, needed to start writing for publications that were trusted by Trump supporters.  So, two weeks ago, I emailed my contacts at Breitbart News to tell them I would be happy to start contributing.  My reasoning is very simple: I believe we are living in a new political order, where populism is a permanent fixture in our democracy. I might vehemently disagree with some of the anti-immigration and militaristic beliefs that Trump used to excite his supporters. But if I want to persuade those supporters—and I do—I have to reach them on the platform where they are getting their ideas. In the meantime, I just might be persuaded a bit myself.

For more of this article from Politico click the link below:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/why-im-writing-for-breitbart-gregory-ferenstein-214488

Today it’s Facebook. 350 years ago it was the coffee house. In the late seventeenth century, as Markman Ellis tells in his book on the cultural history of the coffee house, there was panic in British royal circles that these newly-established drinking salons had become forums for political dissent, rebellious attitudes and the spreading of untruths. In June 1672, Charles II issued a proclamation ‘to restrain the Spreading of False News, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government.’ ‘Bold and Licentious Discourses’, it continued, had grown to the extent that

Men have assumed to themselves a liberty , not only in Coffee-houses, but in other Places and Meetings, both publick and private, to censure and defame the proceedings of State, by speaking evil of things they understand not, and endeavouyring to create and nourish an universal Jealousie and Dissatisfaction in the minds of all his Majesties good subjects.

I have written an article on the contemporary debate about fake news (it will be published in the New York Times on Monday), but it is worth reminding ourselves that there is nothing new to these fears. Around a century after the coffee house panic, in the early  years of the American republic, Thomas Jefferson worried about press lies and slanders and lamented that ‘a newspaper that stuck to true facts & sound principles only… would find few subscribers’. ‘It is a melancholy truth’, he continued ‘that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its

benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.’ In an echo of today’s debate about the ‘post-truth age’, Jefferson worried that

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

Click for full article

posted by f. sheikh