"'We Have Gone From Zero to Hungary Faster Than I Ever Imagined'"

"There's something else, too. Trump's dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It's like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked 'Swag': we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing."

Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian states that "the US is entering full authoritarian mode."

Francoism Is Still Dead

"He was repressive; Spain successfully democratized after his death, while the institutional prestige of the Church collapsed. The Spanish Republic had been anti-clerical, but the government sought to moderate against opposition and prevent anti-clerical violence. Instead, the catastrophist right instigated violence to destabilize the Republic. Franco's conduct in Spain's Civil War, which began as a right-wing coup, was not heroic but brutal and methodical and supported by Mussolini and Hitler. They overstated the crimes of the Republicans, and buried the far greater crimes of the Nationalists, and misunderstood the role of the Soviet Union."

Joshua Tait at The Bulwark writes that, in regarding Francisco Franco of Spain, "[t]he fact that American conservatives were willing to overlook all this in a sympathetic strongman should give today's Hungary enthusiasts pause."

"If Ever There Was a Time to Rejoin the Two and Leverage Nationalism to Counter Ethno-Nationalism, It Is Now"

"Post-Vietnam progressives answered King's call to eschew imperialism but they mistrusted nationalism. Many came to regard it as just another expression of toxic tribalism that modernization and popular enlightenment would one day wash away. Democrats have told stories of class, gender, and racial injustice, and they have rightly pressed for ameliorative policies, but they have typically failed to scale up their message to a full-blown narrative that joins the pursuit of justice to the nation's ideals, identity, and greatness. Most party leaders have also refrained from taking the lead on national interests and security, leaving that to the Republicans. As a result, they left the flag with politicians who carried it into another reckless war—and eventually turned it over to Trump, whose patriotic pretensions too often go unchallenged despite their manifest hollowness."

M. Steven Fish, Neil A. Abrams, and Laila M. Aghaie at Slate argue that "American liberals have been relatively comfortable talking about race but have forgotten how to speak the language of nationalism."

"Liberals and the Left Haven't Been Sufficiently Cognizant of the Political Problems Caused by Refugee Flows and Immigration"

"The people who care about maintaining liberal democracies and abiding by international law and giving genuine refugees a fair shake need to push back against this nativist rhetoric and the far-right parties. But we also need to be conscious of the fact that mass migration of people on a regular basis is not going to be sustainable because at a certain point it becomes too much for a society, especially a society that's constructed as a generous welfare state, to handle."

Isaac Chotiner at Slate interviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of Go Back Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy.

A Spectre Is Haunting Europe

"The revolutionaries, he argues, were overmatched by near-impossible challenges that sound remarkably familiar today. They had to wrestle with the demons of nationalism, which threatened to drag liberal revolutions down into the muck of ethnic conflict. They had to forge new constitutional orders that could temper violent radicalism. And they had to confront the grinding poverty and social misery of the freshly empowered masses, who had unattainable expectations for economic growth and social equality. The book’s descriptions of impoverished serfs and alienated city dwellers could equally well be about peasants in the Chinese countryside and migrant workers in Beijing and Chongqing today."

Gary J. Bass in The New York Times reviews Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.

Tom Lantos, 1928-2008

Marisa Lagos in the San Francisco Chronicle reports the death of the Bay Area congressman and former representative for the Late Adopter.

And Brian Beutler in The New Republic explores Lantos's views of foreign policy.