The 2020–2021 farmers' struggle in India: a post-Marxist detonation?

India has been witnessing a continuous wave of popular people's movements against the policies brought forward by the ruling right-wing central government led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) during its second term in power which began in 2019. Starting with the Citizenship Amendment Act and the protests against its implementation since late 2019 (S. Deb Roy, ‘Locating Gramsci in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh: Perspectives on the Iconic Women's Protest in India', Capital & Class, 45:2 (2020), pp. 183–189), the right-wing government faced strong criticism of its poor management of the crisis faced by the migrant workers during the first wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic in India. The recent addition to the wave of people's movements is the Kisan Andolan (Farmers' Movement) against the ruling BJP government since September 2020 (See https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/new-farm-bill-2020-who-is-protesting-why/articleshow/78179693.cms [Accessed 30 March 2023]). The largest democracy in the world has been gripped by a massive wave of protests by the agrarian populace at the borders of Delhi, the capital of India. The popular movement against the ruling Central Government led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is rooted in the recently passed farm laws, namely the ‘Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020' (See http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222039.pdf [Accessed 30 March 2023]);the ‘Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020' (See https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/farmers-empowerment-and-protection-agreement-price-assurance-and-farm-services-bill-2020 [Accessed 30 March 2023]);and the ‘Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020' (See https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/essential-commodities-amendment-bill-2020#:~:text=The%20Essential%20Commodities%20(Amendment)%20Ordinance%2C%202020%20allows%20the%20central,is%20a%20steep%20price%20rise [Accessed 30 March 2023]). These laws which have been enacted to bring forward further corporate and capitalist control over the agricultural production of the country have not been received well by the people at the heart of the agricultural production of the country—the farmers. © 2023 Critique.

The politics of hate. Infection anxiety and defense

The article approaches the attraction of hate politics via reflections on the dilemmas and resistances that get in the way of its analysis. Sociopsychological investigation of the new political movements that seek communality by way of highly negative affects (such as the protests against measures designed to contain the COVID pandemic) is impeded by the emotional involvement displayed by researchers. Encounters with hostility and hate are invasive in their impact, jeopardize psychic integrity, and spell the demise of curiosity and empathy. Equally threatening is the normative proximity to central topic of these movements: the idealization of criticism, resistance, and autonomy. The regressive temptations held out by hate politics may arouse feelings of envy. Defense operations are undertaken to counteract contamination, involuntary proximity, and envy. These include leaving the field, cathexis withdrawal, and the adoption of the logic of splitting and devaluation. Maneuvers of this kind are also discernible in research on the subject. Keeping one's distance means not learning anything new;letting oneself be drawn in means becoming a part of the very dynamic one is investigating. In research, this leads to a moralizing implementation of defense against anxiety and powerlessness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (French) Le texte evoque l'attrait de la haine en politique et etudie les dilemmes et les resistances qui en compliquent l'analyse. L'etude sociopsychologique des nouveaux mouvements politiques qui forment des communautes par le biais de puissants affects negatifs (comme les protestations contre les mesures visant a endiguer la pandemie de Corona) est rendue difficile par l'implication emotionnelle des chercheurs. La rencontre avec l'hostilite et la haine a un effet invasif, met en danger l'integrite psychique et fait disparaitre la curiosite et la disposition a l'empathie. La proximite normative avec les topoi centraux de ces mouvements-l'idealisation de la critique, de la resistance et de l'autonomie-est egalement menacante. L'offre regressive de la haine peut eveiller des sentiments d'envie. On cherche a contrecarrer la contamination, la proximite non souhaitee et l'envie par des manoeuvres de defense : evitement et retrait de l'investissement, adoption d'une logique de clivage et de devalorisation. La recherche est egalement tentee par de telles manoeuvres. Celui qui prend ses distances n'apprend rien de nouveau. Celui qui se laisse atteindre devient lui-meme partie prenante de la dynamique qu'il veut etudier et sa recherche aboutit a des actions moralisatrices de defense contre l'angoisse et l'impuissance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (German) Der Text nahert sich der Attraktion von Hasspolitik uber eine Reflexion der Dilemmata und Widerstande, die sich ihrer Analyse in den Weg stellen. Die sozialpsychologische Untersuchung der neuen politischen Bewegungen, die sich uber starke negative Affekte vergemeinschaften (wie die Proteste gegen die Masnahmen zur Eindammung der Corona-Pandemie), werden durch die emotionale Beteiligung von Forschern erschwert. Die Begegnung mit Feindseligkeit und Hass wirkt invasiv, gefahrdet die psychische Integritat und lasst Neugier und Empathiebereitschaft schwinden. Bedrohlich wirkt auch die normative Nahe zu zentralen Topoi dieser Bewegungen-der Idealisierung von Kritik, Widerstand und Autonomie. Das regressive Angebot von Hasspolitik kann Gefuhle von Neid wecken. Der Kontamination, der ungewollten Nahe und dem Neid sucht man durch Abwehroperationen gegenzusteuern: Aus-dem-Felde-Gehen und Besetzungsentzug, Ubernahme der Spaltungs- und Entwertungslogik. Zu solchen Manovern ist man auch in der Forschung versucht. Wer sich distanziert, erfahrt nichts Neues. Wer sich erreichen lasst, wird selber Teil der Dynamik, die er untersuchen will, und gerat in seiner Forschung in moralisierendes Agieren der Abwehr von Angst und Ohnmacht. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

My PhD Saved My Sanity and My Life

In this chapter, I explore my experience with psychological stress during the first year of my doctoral candidature that resulted from the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and global Black Lives Matter protests. As a qualitative researcher, I draw on my own autoethnographic vignettes (Ellis. The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. AltaMira Press, 2004) to provide an account of the personal challenges which may be generalizable to minoritised doctoral students during crisis situations. I use the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus and Folkman. Stress, appraisal and coping. Springer, 1984) to identify with and understand the stressors I faced as an insider—a Black, female doctoral student—and share the adaptive coping strategies that I used to be able to focus on my PhD. As a result, I prove the claim that the PhD became my saviour. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.

COVID-19 Waves and Politics in Costa Rica

In 2018, the government that came to power in Costa Rica quickly began to promote socially regressive policies, which directly favored the oligarchic groups, at the expense of the working classes and the middle sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic, instead of stopping this process, accentuated it. After a very moderate first wave of infections (March-May 2020), the disease spread steadily during a second wave (June 2020-February 2021). A third wave (so far May-June 2021) has brought the public health system to the brink of collapse. With the social protests neutralized by health measures to contain COVID-19, authorities took advantage of this situation to promote new reforms that deteriorate labor rights, reduce wages and deepen inequalities. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Using Shakespeare to Address Societal Problems

Stephens uses Shakespeare to address societal problems. Teaching William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet's relevance to struggling readers is challenging. Like Kelly Gallagher's argument that struggling writers do not do enough writing, she thinks struggling readers suffer from similar failures: teachers do not do enough reading with students. Like Gallagher, she believes it is best to focus on what teachers can control. So, when she was required to teach Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to her ninth graders last year, she paused to reflect on undertaking this task with struggling readers while making the text accessible and meaningful. Here she describes her attempt to meet this task.

The CCP after the Zero-Covid Fail

China has two repressive systems that exist simultaneously: the highly coercive and surveilled system in Xinjiang, and the trust-based model of everyday repression prevalent throughout the rest of the country. The trust-based model has undergirded grassroots governance in China and facilitated the routine implementation of Zero-Covid. Drawing on a protest event dataset, I analyze the key characteristics of the covid protests erupted in November and December of 2022, before situating them in the larger context of China's political future under Xi Jinping's rule. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has responded to the protests with a combination of concession and repression. But neither the carrot nor the stick is able to fundamentally address the deep-rooted social problems or halt the tide of dissent. Coupled with structural economic challenges, these protests could be the harbinger of a new era of contentious state-society relations in China, the seeds of which were sown years ago–only precipitated and underscored by the CCP's covid debacle.

Our Children Will Fight for the Climate: How Congo-Basin Writers Prophesied Global Youth Climate Activism 1

According to Riikka Paloniemi and Annukka Vainio (2011), as early as 1992, the United Nations in its international programme dubbed Agenda 21 asserted that young people, who constitute about 30 percent of the world's population, are important stakeholders in achieving sustainable development (398-399). Much momentum has accumulated in the direction of youth activism for the climate and environment. Besides garnering much recognition from the international community as important actors in climate change policy and action, youth-led climate commitment has continued to grow in leaps and bounds. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, this movement mobilized millions of school-going children/youths across many cities throughout the world to skip classes on Fridays and protest, asking their governments and corporate bodies to concretely address the global climate and environmental crises and save their future.2 Greta Thunberg has spoken to world leaders on the need to curb carbon emissions and has addressed the issue of climate change at many high-level gatherings, including COP24, which was held from in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland;the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019 and 2020;the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Commission in February 2019;an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican in April 2019;and the UK Parliament in Westminster, also in April 2019. [...]the School Strikes for Climate movement has not only caused the resignation of Belgian Environment Minister Joke Schauvliege (who had falsely claimed that children's climate protests were 'set-up') but has also been positively received by key global figures such as UN Secretary General António Guterres, who, following an unprecedented turnout of approximately 1.4 million young protesters in over 120 countries on 15th March 2019, remarked that "the climate strikers should inspire us all to act at the next UN summit".3 Moreover, on 12th April 2019, having witnessed the massive turnout of young protesters the month before, twenty-two renowned scientists across the globe published a letter in the journal Science acknowledging that "the concerns of young protesters are justified" and pledging their support for the youth strikes for climate (Hagedorn et al. 2019, 139-140).

On the Benefits of Plague: Polish Fringe Theatre in 2020

The aim of this essay is to demonstrate the significant function played by theatres during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. It examines three pandemic projects created by fringe theatre companies and individual performers in Poland that address political and social questions, such as women's reproductive rights, excessive government control over private lives, and the social exclusion of disabled and immigrant communities: Arti Grabowski's Improvised Lecture, Usta Usta Republika Theatre's Embassy 2.0, and Adam Ziajski and Scena Robocza's Don't Tell Anyone: The Quarantine. The essay traces how these artists rediscovered the new relevance of earlier work and explored the potential of multimedia practices to reach larger or different audiences. Its discussion is grounded in Antonin Artaud's concept of theatre as the plague and Susan Neiman's perspective of "corona as chance," whereby emphasizing the major alteration of perspective and commitment to change brought about or facilitated by the pandemic.

Documents on Democracy

Global/Canada The post–Cold War assumption of democracy's inevitable triumph—described by Francis Fukuyama as the "End of History" thesis—does not apply to our world, and democracies need to adjust accordingly, argues Canada's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland. The jeers I face in Question Period, the fact-checking of skeptical journalists, the hard verdict of the ballot box—all of these make me a better minister than I would be if we governed in splendid authoritarian isolation. Support independent workers' power in and beyond these protests;abolish anti-worker practices like the 996 work schedule and strengthen labor law protections, including protecting workers' right to strike and self-organization, so they can participate more extensively in political life. Avoid the risky tactic of long-term occupation of streets and town squares—adopt "Be Water"-style mobilization to prevent authorities from too easily clamping down on protesters.

Estimated Mask Use and Temporal Relationship to COVID-19 Epidemiology of Black Lives Matter Protests in 12 Cities.

BACKGROUND: There is an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission during mass gatherings and a risk of asymptomatic infection. We aimed to estimate the use of masks during Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and whether these protests increased the risk of COVID-19. Two reviewers screened 496 protest images for mask use, with high inter-rater reliability. Protest intensity, use of tear gas, government control measures, and testing rates were estimated in 12 cities. A correlation analysis was conducted to assess the potential effect of mask use and other measures, adjusting for testing rates, on COVID-19 epidemiology 4 weeks (two incubation periods) post-protests. Mask use ranged from 69 to 96% across protests. There was no increase in the incidence of COVID-19 post-protest in 11 cities. After adjusting for testing rates, only Miami, which involved use of tear gas and had high protest intensity, showed a clear increase in COVID-19 after one incubation period post-protest. No significant correlation was found between incidence and protest factors. Our study showed that protests in most cities studied did not increase COVID-19 incidence in 2020, and a high level of mask use was seen. The absence of an epidemic surge within two incubation periods of a protest is indicative that the protests did not have a major influence on epidemic activity, except in Miami. With the globally circulating highly transmissible Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants, layered interventions such as mandated mask use, physical distancing, testing, and vaccination should be applied for mass gatherings in the future.

The Pandemic as a Political Opportunity. Media Visibility and the Mobilization of Migrant Laborers in Spain

The fear of food shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the image of the agricultural sector as an essential activity of European countries. The situation faced by the agricultural labor force in Europe (which mainly consists of migrant workers from countries in the Global South) became the subject of much political, media and academic debate. Research published in this context shows that the pandemic further exacerbated the precarious working and living conditions of these migrant day laborers. However, so far, the same attention has not been paid to how migrant agricultural workers took political advantage of the public attention afforded them by the COVID-19 crisis. As a case study we have taken four Spanish agro-exporting regions and in this paper we analyze the cycle of protests and mobilizations conducted by day laborers between June and December 2020. We demonstrate how workers and their support organizations were able to transform the strong public visibility they enjoyed during the pandemic (with both positive and negative images of migrant day laborers) into a political window of opportunity to claim rights and to protest against the structural precariousness of their sector.

Intensification or diversification: responses by anti health-pass entrepreneurs to French government announcements.

We study the extent to which French entrepreneurs mobilized in an online collective action against the generalization of the health-pass policy in summer 2021. We document the dynamics of registrations on the website Animap.fr where entrepreneurs could claim they would not check the health-pass of their clients. We first note an over-representation of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners among the mobilized people. We also suggest that professionals related to the touristic industry mobilized on the website. Second, we show that the government announcements led to an increase in the mobilization. However, they did not affect the diversity of the entrepreneurs joining the action. This lack of diversity may have restricted the pool of potential participants as well as limited the identification of the "public opinion" to the mobilization.

Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)

On 26 November 2022, prompted by a deadly fire in a high-rise apartment block in Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, protesters took to streets and university campuses across China calling for an end to the country's restrictive ‘zero Covid' policy (清零政策) (Davidson and Yu 2022). With its zero-Covid policy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attempted to position itself as the polar opposite of governments in the West and the United States in particular—as a biopolitical state that ‘deploys its governing techniques in the name of defending the security of life against external threats' (L.G. 2022: 139), which represents a centralised technocracy starkly distinct from the class-based revolutionary politics of the Mao Zedong era. [...]the emergence of the much more transmissible Omicron variant of the virus, the Chinese Government successfully mobilised the population, state, and economy in a concerted effort to suppress transmission through newly developed surveillance technologies aimed at systematically mapping, tracking, and containing the population. In their recent book on the pandemic, What World is This?, Judith Butler (2022) argues that the normalisation of deaths due to Covid-19 means the acceptance of a percentage of the population as disposable—or a society in which ‘mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order' (Lincoln 2021: 46). If it is a natural disaster, the party appears as the saviour;human-made catastrophes, on the other hand, raise questions about responsibility and point to broader systemic issues.

Phantom Sounds, Haunting Images

Powerful, imaginative, and long-lasting, the half-year mobilisation and its iconography are hard to forget, and the ongoing political crackdown keeps our memory alive with constant republications of photographs and video clips of the events. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the proclamation of the National Security Law (NSL) on 30 June 2020, protests have, however, almost disappeared from Hong Kong's public spaces. [...]many films, books, and artworks have vanished from screening venues, shops, and libraries. Soon after the end of the movement, two anonymous books documented these ephemeral displays challenging authorities and urban order (Abaddon 2020;Guardian of Hong Kong 2020). [...]in October 2021, the Film Censorship Ordinance was amended to align with the NSL (Ho 2021b).

Peddling the Revolution?

[...]as there is no need to rent shop space and the seller purchases products only after an order has been paid, it is a business that requires no advanced capital and thus is easily accessible to young and poor people. [...]it involves an almost exclusively one-way flow of Taiwan-made commodities to Hong Kong and a flow of cash in the opposite direction. Taiwanese snacks, fruit, and creative cultural products are also increasingly popular in the city, partly for political reasons. Since the 2014 Umbrella Movement, Taiwan's government and civil society organisations have stood behind Hongkongers' struggle for democracy, incurring criticism from the Chinese authorities. According to the explanation provided on RS International's website, the initials ‘RS' refer to ‘Radical Solider' and ‘Rebuild System', indicating their radical motivations.

Impact of public protests on Education system: a case of 2021 political unrest in South Africa

The peaceful environment of South African communities witnessed sudden civil unrest that led to the wanton destruction of public and private properties between 9-17 July 2021. The civil unrest which aggravated on daily basis within this period also culminated in massive looting in both KwaZulu-Natal Province and Gauteng Province. During the disturbances, the protestors looted and set ablaze many stores and warehouses. The turmoil was also extended to some schools, with some private and public schools looted and vandalized. Hence, this article aimed to explore the impact of this unrest on schools and to establish how teaching and learning had been affected in these South African institutions. Therefore, in this systematic review, we analysed the impact of political unrest on the education system in South Africa. A total of 139 schools were affected in Kwazulu-Natal, with six schools razed by fire, 30 damaged, and 95 schools looted. Thus, a total of 139 schools were affected. However, at the time of this article, the degree of damage in 8 other Schools was unknown. It was noted that, of the six schools set ablaze, four were only slightly damaged and two were fully destroyed. Furniture and other items such as food items the Schools Nutrition Program and offices were destroyed. Doors, windows, and others were also broken. This indicated that learners would be temporarily relocated from the burnt schools to locations where the government provided temporary classrooms for these schools. Conversely, rebuilding the damaged buildings and replacement of stolen school supplies will cost the Department of Basic Education millions of rands.

CHANGES TO INDIAS CITIZENSHIP L AWS *

In December 2019, India's Parliament passed, and its President signed into law, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, altering the country's 1955 Citizenship Act. For the first time in independent India's history, a religious criterion was added to the country's naturalization process. The changes sparked significant controversy, including large-scale and sometimes violent protests. Opponents of the CAA warn that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are pursuing a Hindu majoritarian, anti-Muslim agenda that threatens India's status as an officially secular republic and violates international human rights norms and obligations. In tandem with a National Register of Citizens (NRC) planned by the federal government, the as-yet unimplemented CAA may threaten the citizenship rights of India's large Muslim minority of roughly 200 million. India's Supreme Court is set to resume its review more than 250 petitions on the law's constitutionality in December 2022.

Empty Streets

This visual essay invites renewed reflection on the iconography of the people. In the spring of 2020, Guatemala's President Alejandro Giammattei prohibited citizens from leaving their homes to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19. Doing little to manage the spread of the virus, these curfew events gave new aesthetic and political meaning to a familiar visual genre: photographs of empty streets. For more than a century, and especially in the summer of 2020, images of crowds and mass protests have provided both governments on the one hand, and protesting multitudes on the other with an aesthetic representation of the people. But this interest in collective assemblies has tended to engage only one side of the equation. To fully appreciate the visual power of the people, it is also necessary to understand those images from which people are strikingly absent.

Neofascist "Thugs,” Pandemic Protests, Populisms: Giorgia Meloni's Cerchiobottismo and the Rise of Fratelli D'Italia During the Pandemic

In this essay, I examine the rise to power of Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), the populist far right Italian party led by Giorgia Meloni, in the 2022 election. I first situate FdI's victory in the complex context of the Italian experience of the pandemic—exploring the erosion of the democratic sentiment in Italy after COVID-19 and the mutual influences of crises and the shaky anti-establishment and anti-intellectual epistemologies of populisms. I then proceed to examine Meloni's recurring rhetorical strategy to deal with FdI's problematic relationship to fascist heritage during the electoral campaign. Specifically, I analyse Meloni's rhetorical maneuvers as instances of cerchiobottismo. Cerchiobottismo is an Italian term that explains the practice of strategic ambiguity typical of seasoned politicians that can juggle two sides, telling both sides that they are partially wrong, without compromising too much of the rhetor's own position. In the second part of this essay, I unpack Meloni's cerchiobottista rhetorics in a set of three significant examples in relation to the 2022s election and the controversies over fascism to illustrate how Meloni rejected the repeated public accusations of fascist nostalgia in her party, while boosting FdI's electoral appeal among a moderate electorate and also reassuring international stakeholders. © 2023 EURICOM.

COVID-19 and the Ugandan Presidential Election: Contesting Lockdown Authority in Popular Songs

The COVID-19 pandemic struck when Uganda was in the middle of an acrimonious campaign season, in which longstanding president Yoweri Museveni was being challenged by Bobi Wine, a reggae singer turned politician. When Museveni imposed a strict lockdown, musicians sympathetic to Wine responded with songs about COVID-19 that challenged the government's short-term, biopolitical demarcation of the national emergency. Pier and Mutagubya interpret a selection of Ugandan COVID-19 pop songs from 2020, considering in musical-historical perspective their various strategies for re-narrating the health crisis.