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Anti-Democratic Ideologies & Structures
Subject Index

Below are groups and resources (books, articles, websites, etc.) related to this topic. Click on an item’s title to go its resource page with author, publisher, description/abstract and other details, a link to the full text if available, as well as links to related topics in the Subject Index. You can also browse the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, LoC, and Format indexes, or use the Search box on the left.
Particularly recommended items are flagged with a red logo:
  1. America Likes Democracy, Except In Venezuela
    Chavez in the Crosshairs
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Venezuelans can be sure that their vote counts. The government in Venezuela has done everything to increase voter registration and participation.
  2. American Fascists
    The Christian Right and the War on America
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2006
    Hedges examines the Christian Right's origins, its driving motivation and its dark ideological underpinnings, with interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques. Hedges argues that the movement resembles the young fascist movements in Italiy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. He challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
  3. Bakunin
    The Philosophy of Freedom
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1993
  4. Bakunin, Mikhail
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Russian anarchist and revolutionary. (1814-1876).
  5. Bakunin on Anarchy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1971
  6. Bakunin on Marx and Rothschild
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1871   Published: 1979
  7. Bakunin vs Marx
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1979
    The debates between Bakunin and Marx transcend petty personal squabbles and embody two diametrically opposed tendencies in the theory and tactics of socialism, the authoritarian and libertarian schools respectively.
  8. Bakunin vs. Marx 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    The anarchist-Marxist split started with Bakunin, who systematically misrepresented Marx's positions.
  9. Blocking Progress 
    Consensus Decision Making In The Anti-Nuclear Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1983
    Howard Ryan maintains that consensus is wrong in principle and in practice: "The problem is not so much that individuals are being irresponsible or somehow abusing the consensus process. The problem lies in giving individuals that kind of power in the first place. Consensus turns majority rule into minority rule. That's not democracy."
  10. Can the Egyptians Come to Canada to Liberate Us?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2011
    As I sat glued to Al Jazeera for two weeks watching the Egyptian revolution unfold from my home in Toronto, I must confess to having experienced feelings of jealousy. How nice it must be, I thought, to live a country where people want democracy.
  11. Canada's Distorted Electoral System
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    Canada's electoral system is undemocratic
  12. Consensus decision-making
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2010
    Article about the group decision making process known as consensus decision-making.
  13. The Death of Democracy
    Israel's Flood of Anti-Democratic Laws
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2011
    Democracy is dying in both Israel and the United States, and much of the world is turning away in revulsion.
  14. Democracy for the Few
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1988   Published: 1995
    How does the U.S. political system work and for what purpose? What are the major forces shaping political life and how do they operate? Who governs in the United States? Who gets what, when, how, and why? Who pays and in what ways. These are the central questions investigated in this book.
  15. Democracy in a Neoliberal Order
    Doctrines and Reality
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1997
  16. Democracy in the Unites States? Fugetaboutit!
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2007
    We who want a more equal and democratic society are the vast majority. There is no reason for us to feel hesitant about speaking our minds and talking revolution to our friends and neighbors, our co-workers, and even people we meet in the course of shopping and so forth. When millions of Americans feel that they are not alone in wanting a revolution, that's when things will start to change. That's when people will start to think creatively and concretely about how to make it happen. Until then, we'll remain on a treadmill to nowhere, with everybody feeling that they are just one lonely person who "can't fight city hall."
  17. Democracy Is that it?
    New Internationalist June 2000
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 2000
    Democracy has become commonplace and its original meaning -- "rule by the people" -- has got lost. Real democracy depends on active citizenship, something that's missing from contemporary culture. Articles cover democracy in Canada and the developing world, economics in relation to democracy and politics in Pakistan.
  18. Destroying the Commons
    How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    Our rights and liberties and under ever-increasing attack.
  19. The Disconnect in US Democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Noam Chomsky describes how the American people are excluded from political participation, claiming that action must also come before and after elections and not only once every four years.
  20. The End of Politics
    Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2000
    From the events of privatization, economic globalization, spread of violence and gun culture, and the end of the cold war, Boggs explores the depoliticization process in the United States.
  21. Everything under control, Life in a managed society
    New Internationalist April 1985
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1985
    A deluge of commercial messages are subtly undermining the consumer's ability to make autonomous decisions. Discussion of why, and how, social control is becoming the norm in Western societies.
  22. Falsifying History and Ourselves: Anti-Democratic Propaganda in the Classroom
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    Contrary to the views promoted by FHAO, the true facts about Germany during the Holocaust show that 1) working class Germans fought the Nazis; 2) anti-Semitism did not come from ordinary people; and 3) anti-Semitism was a weapon used by Germany's industrial and aristocratic elite to attack not only the Jewish minority but the entire working class.
  23. Fascism
    What it is. How to fight it. (A compilation)
    Resource Type: Book
  24. Fascism and Big Busness
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1939   Published: 1973
    A history of the rise of fascism in Europe and the role of big business in supporting fascism.
  25. Fascism and Big Business (excerpt)
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1938
    Events have demonstrated with tragic clearness that the moment the working class allows the fascist wave to sweep over it, a long period of slavery and impotence begins - a long period during which socialist, even democratic, ideas are not merely erased from the pediments of public monuments and libraries but, what is much more serious, are rooted out of human minds. Events have proved that fascism physically destroys everything opposing its dictatorship, no matter how mildly, and that it creates a vacuum around itself and leaves a vacuum behind it.
  26. Fascism and Socialism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1945
    Fascism is not a product that is specifically Italian or specifically German. It is the specific product only of decaying capitalism, of the crisis of the capitalist system which has become a permanent one. It has a double origin in the determination of big business to revive the profit mechanism by exceptional measures and in the revolt of the pauperized and despairing middle classes.
  27. Fascism Shall Not Pass
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1936
    On all fronts communists, anarchists, socialists and republicans are fighting shoulder to shoulder. We have also been joined by non-party people from town and country, because they too have realized what a victory for fascism would mean to Spain.
  28. Individualist anarchism
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    Refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his/her will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.
  29. Is Stephen Harper displaying fascist-like tendencies?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
  30. Is this what a police state looks like?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    The corporate security state is not static - it will keep filling more and more space to the extent that they are allowed to by civil society. The police actions in Toronto are one of those key moments, one that we will look back on as a time when the authoritarian governments we now endure tested our resolve. They know exactly what they are doing. There was no spontaneous 'over-reaction.' There were no cops 'out of control' - the obvious fact is they were always in control. The decision to allow the Black Bloc to do its destructive work without any intervention at all was strategic. They were assisted in their work by the Black Bloc, some of them agents provocatuers, all of them enemies of social change.
  31. Jura Federation
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
  32. Keep raising the issue of democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1989
    Socialists should keep hammering away at the issue of democracy.
  33. The Mass Psychology of Fascism 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1933   Published: 1970
    Wilhelm Reich's class study, written during the years of the German crisis. Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or any ethnic or political group. He understands fascism as the expression of the irrational character structure of human beings whose needs and impulses have been suppressed.
  34. National Anarchism
    Connexipedia Article
    Resource Type: Article
    National-Anarchism is a syncretic political current that was developed in the 1990s by former Third Positionists to reconcile anarchism with nationalism and in some cases racial separatism. It has philosophical roots in the writings of Julius Evola and the neo-Spenglerian Francis Parker Yockey, and claims Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Max Stirner among its influences. Critics are concerned that national-anarchism may be the potential new face of fascism. They argue that by adopting selected symbols, slogans and stances of the left-wing anarchist movement in particular, this new form of post-war fascism hopes to avoid the stigma of the older tradition, while injecting its core fascist values into the newer movement of anti-globalization activists and related decentralized political groups.
  35. National Catechism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1866
    Bakunin sketches out his vision of an anarchist social and political revolution, stating that "in order to prepare for this revolution it will be necessary to conspire and to organize a strong secret association coordinated by an international nucleus."
  36. The Nazi Seizure of Power
    The Experience of a Single German Town
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1965
    A study of how the Nazi takeover took place in one German town.
  37. On Translating Securityspeak into English
    In the Land of False Cognates
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    The Security State has its own language: Securityspeak. Like Newspeak, the ideologically refashioned successor to English in Orwell’s “1984,” Securityspeak is designed to obscure meaning and conceal truth, rather than convey them.
  38. One Vote for Democracy 
    Consensus vs. democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1986
    Makes the case that the democratic model is better than the consensus model for activist group decision-making.
  39. A Profound and Jarring Disconnect
    The Writing on the Wall
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2011
    How the US government has gone against the wishes of the public majority on key issues.
  40. The Program of the International Brotherhood
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1869
    Bakunin maintains that his revolutionary anarchist vision "excludes any idea of dictatorship and of a controlling and directive power." but then goes on to say "It is, however, necessary for the establishment of this revolutionary alliance and for the triumph of the Revolution over reaction that the unity of ideas and of revolutionary action find an organ in the midst of the popular anarchy which will be the life and the energy of the Revolution. This organ should be the secret and universal association of the International Brothers.... a sort of revolutionary general staff, composed of dedicated, energetic, intelligent individuals, sincere friends of the people above all, men neither vain nor ambitious, but capable of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the instincts of the people."
  41. Radical Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1997
    Lummis revives the meaning of democratic struggle and critques the economic and technological processes that have hindered its growth.
  42. Revolutionary Catechism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1866
    Bakunin believed that workers were very far from being able to attain revolutionary consciousness on their own. To imbue the masses with this consciousness and to prevent the deformation of a resulting revolution, Bakunin felt that the only alternative was to organize a secret International Fraternity headed by himself. Bakunin was convinced that this kind of vanguard movement was indispensable to the success of the anarchist Social Revolution.
  43. Right-Wing Populism in America
    Too Close for Comfort
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2000
    Examines the historical roots and current situation of right-wing populism in the US. Berlet and Lyons highlight the dangers of right-wing populism in affecting the political system and opportunities for social change.
  44. The Secret Secret
    Of Wikileaks and Literacy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    Only those with proper clearances can participate in discussions that affect significant aspects of our lives. Certain technological achievements, our collective ethical decisions (torture, secret prisons, air strikes, etc.), our collective behavior towards other nations and peoples (foreign policy discussions) and more are often obscured by state secrecy. Like the medieval clergy, those holding classified clearances are the sole legitimate interpreters of the 'really important' knowledge. In effect, they are a caste that guides our political and technological cosmologies.
  45. A Short History of Black Voter Suppression
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2012
    The Right's organized movement to suppress the votes of African Americans and Latin Americans, and the urban and rural poor by means of the passing of voter ID (Poll Tax) laws in states receives no mention in the dominant media.
  46. The Silent Takeover
    Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2001
    A combination of globalisation and the growing power of major corporations is rendering democratic governments impotent for influencing key decisions that affect the lives of ordinary people.
  47. State Lawlessness on the Rampage
    The Menu for 2011
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the country primed for a fascist dictatorship.The situation will be worse by 2012. The most uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks saga is that American public discourse consists of cries for revenge against those who tell us truths.
  48. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy 
    Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1995   Published: 1997
    The twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda practiced by U.S. businesses and the ways in which such corporate propaganda was exported to, and adopted by, other western democracies especially the United Kingdom and Australia.
  49. The Two Souls of Socialism 
    Socialism from Above vs. Socialism from Below
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1960   Published: 1970
    It was Marx who finally brought the two ideas of Socialism and Democracy together, because he developed a theory which made the synthesis possible for the first time. The heart of the theory is this proposition: that there is a social majority which has the interest and motivation to change the system, and that the aim of socialism can be the education and mobilization of this mass-majority. This is the exploited class, the working class, from which comes the eventual motive-force of revolution. Hence a socialism-from-below is possible, on the basis of a theory which sees the revolutionary potentialities in the broad masses, even if they seem backward at a given time and place. Marxism came into being, in self-conscious struggle against the advocates of the Educational Dictatorship, the Savior-Dictators, the revolutionary elitists, the communist authoritarians, as well as the philanthropic dogooders and bourgeois liberals.
  50. The Tyranny of Structurelessness 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1970
    Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk about their lives; they aren't very good for getting things done. It is when people get tired of 'just talking' and want to do something more that the groups flounder, unless they change the nature of their operation.
  51. Who Will Tell The People
    The Betrayal Of American Democracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1993
    An exploration of the undermining of U.S. democracy, starting with the basic issues of who gets heard, who gets ignored, and why.
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