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For the last three months, Israelis have been taking to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, on a weekly basis, to protest what they see as the far-right governments regime coupa plan (which it has already begun implementing) to subordinate the judicial system and change the system of governance to the point that all checks and balances on those in power are removed.

The plan is being led by a prime minister on trial for corruption in three separate cases, while Israel continues to hold millions of Palestinians under occupation with an agenda to further entrench its control. Each party in the Israeli government has specific and explicit goals that the various laws in this judicial overhaul package would serve.

For the ultra-Orthodox parties, its primarily about ensuring their constituency does not have to serve in the military. (They study Jewish religious law instead.) In 2017, Israels Supreme Court struck down a law exempting ultra-Orthodox seminary students from conscription in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on grounds it perpetuates inequality. For the Shas Party specifically, it is also about circumventing existing law to enable its head, Aryeh Deri, to serve as a minister despite several recent convictions of tax fraud.

For the religious, nationalist, racist, far-right partiesJewish Power and Religious Zionism, both headed by settlers who are now senior ministers in governmentits about extending Israeli sovereignty over all occupied territory, what they call the Land of Israel, and making public institutions more religious.

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus ruling right-wing Likud party, its also about continuing to expand Israels settlement enterprise, consolidate power over media, culture, and public institutionsand for Netanyahu, it is about assuming enough control over the courts, through appointing judges, to evade conviction.

In essence, what the parties that comprise this government all share is the determination to create and shape new laws that serve their narrow interests, even if they violate the rule of law as is commonly understood in democracies both in Israel and abroad, trample certain rights, and shatter liberal democratic norms.

In other words, they seek to legalize those illegal actions that further their interests.

Protests against the contentious judicial overhaul of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus nationalist coalition government in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 18, 2023.

Oren Alon/Reuters

The act of creating new laws in order to serve its interests on the ground is precisely what Israel has been doing for 56 years as an occupying power. Since it conquered the West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip in 1967, the government, through its military and legal experts, created an entirely novel and distinct legal framework to implement long-term military rule over an occupied population that is in line with the rule of law as it always defined it, with the Supreme Courts imprimatur, and thus the norm.

The unprecedented protests taking place across the country are largely ignoring this fact. They include a range of groupstech sector employees, academics, military reservists, former politicians, doctors, LGBTQ rights activists, religious and secular Israelis, and even some settlers who identify as liberalwho are all engaged in various acts of civil disobedience the likes of which Israel has never seen.

There are a plethora of signs at the protests with all kinds of messaging, but as a whole, the protesterswho are almost exclusively Jewishhave galvanized around one main slogan: democracy.

People are screaming it in the streets, blue wrist bands are being handed out with the word, protesters insist they are trying to save it. They say they have risked their lives for a state that is Jewish and democratic and that they will not cooperate with the state if it ceases to be a democracy.

But Israels 56 year-long military occupation has systematically disregarded the principles of democracy and equality they say they are fighting for. While protestersmany of them among the most privileged in Israeli societywalk in the streets demanding the rule of law and democracy, Israeli forces are demolishing Palestinian homes; standing alongside settlers who are terrorizing Palestinians; denying freedom of movement and assembly; holding people in prolonged detention without trial; killing unarmed protesters; carrying out torture; and deporting Palestinian activists. And within Israel, Palestinian citizens face structural discrimination and inequality under an explicit policy that prioritizes Jewish rights.

The occupation is inseparable from Israel. The same government that operates Israels liberal democratic mechanisms presides over millions of stateless Palestinians, who are effectively barred from protesting their condition. The same Supreme Court that struck down a law legalizing Jewish settlement on private Palestinian land has given the green light to Israels continued transfer of citizens to occupied territory and to the siege on Gaza. That is why the Israeli human rights group BTselem defines Israel as an apartheid regime, and why Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid.

One of the changes this government has already made that exemplifies just how synonymous the occupation and Israel arebut which hasnt gotten nearly as much attention as the judicial overhaulis the authority it has granted to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich, who advocates for formal annexation of the West Bank and, in late February, called for the Palestinian town of Hawara in the West Bank to be wiped out, has successfully transferred authorities that have been held by the military for 56 years into his own handseffectively becoming the governor of the West Bank. Even if protesters manage to stop the anti-democratic legislation, this step in the direction of de jure annexation will remain.

Most of those warning that Israel is at risk of becoming a dictatorshipincluding many of Israels top former security brass, among them the recent head of Israels internal security service, the Shin Bet, under Netanyahuare compartmentalizing these issues, convinced that Israel can continue to be a liberal democracy as long as it can stop this legislation. Even many of those who oppose occupation believe it will have to be dealt with separately, and at another time. Yet they are trying to save a system that was never fully democratic to begin with, while the new right-wing government they are fighting sees that undemocratic system as still overly restrictive of its own more radical ambitions.

There are, however, indications that some are starting to draw the connection between Israels occupation and the states illiberal direction. After hundreds of settlers went on a rampage burning cars and homes and attacking Palestinians in Hawara as soldiers largely stood idly by, protesters in Tel Aviv began chanting at police, Where were you in Hawara?

There is also a small but dedicated anti-occupation bloc that carries signs at the protests with messages like: There is no democracy with occupation and Democracy for all from the river to the sea. At one of the recent protests, a gray-haired woman held up a sign that may sum it up best: We were silent about occupation, we got a dictatorship.

Israelis who have bent the rule of law to suit their ideology for decades are now themselves becoming the target of a far right that is using its newly won power to bend it even further.

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Israelis Are Trying to Save a Democracy That Never Existed - The Daily Beast

WASHINGTON (AP) The Biden administration has extended invitations to 120 global leaders for next weeks Summit for Democracy, including to representatives from eight countries that werent invited to the White Houses inaugural summit in 2021.

Thats according to a senior administration official, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the yet to be publicly released invitations. The countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina., Gambia, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Lichtenstein, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Tanzania were extended invitations to this years summit after being left out of the invite list to the 2021 gathering.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is slated to take part in a pre-summit event on Tuesday focused on Ukraine with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

This years summit takes place next Wednesday and Thursday. It will be co-hosted by the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia. The first day of the summit will be a virtual format and will be followed by hybrid gatherings in each of the host countries with representatives from government, civil society and the private sector participating.

The world has seen big change since the December 2021 summit with countries emerging from the global pandemic and Russias invasion of Ukraine, the largest-scale war in Europe since World War II that has devastated the eastern European country and rattled the global economy.

The president will look to make the case that the events of the last year have put into stark relief that democratic government grounded in the rule of law and the will of the governed remains despite its frequent messiness the best system to promote prosperity and peace, according to White House officials.

Biden initially proposed the idea of a democracy summit during his 2020 campaign and has repeatedly made the case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a better vehicle for societies than autocracies.

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120 leaders invited to Biden's 2nd Summit for Democracy - The Associated Press

Review of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracyby Quinn Slobodian (Metropolitan, 2023)

After reading historian Quinn Slobodians new book, you are not likely to think about capitalism the same way. As one blurb aptly put it, the story is head-spinning, and, by the way, great fun to read. Slobodian is a professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College and bearer of one of my favorite Pynchonesque names on the internet, along with Match Esperloque and Con Skordilis. His style and subject matter call to mind the recently departed Mike Davis.

Slobodians book gets off to a great start, because it speaks to one of my pet peeves about the US left: we tend to think of public policy in exclusively national terms, as if we were a unitary state like France. The reality is that the US federal system, with over ninety thousand local governments, is the most decentralized in the world save for Switzerland. US states are sovereign entities with substantial independent authority; local governments are creatures of their respective state governments.

The key governmental unit in Crack-Up Capitalism is the zone, a space set apart from a countrys standard taxes and business regulations. The archetypal zone is Hong Kong, a favorite model of Milton Friedman and his Chicago School colleagues. Contrary to laissez-faire nostrums, Friedman appreciated the militant defense of free markets by the Hong Kong government.

There are thousands of zones throughout the world. The United States put its toe in the water in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration, proposing enterprise zones as a solution to urban blight. These have never amounted to much, though not for state and local governments lack of trying. Enterprise zones have mostly been an opportunity for business firms to practice locational arbitrage, moving in operations they would have carried out elsewhere for the sake of tax breaks and lax regulation. In fact, such arbitrage is part of the plan, the idea being to erode state restrictions by presenting competitive advantages in zones.

It turns out there is a vast intellectual history behind this libertarian gambit, which Slobodian ably documents. As you might expect, the Mont Pelerin Society (founded in 1947 by a group of right-wing intellectuals famously worried that socialism would engulf the world) is a key player, and neoliberalism (the subject of Slobodians previous book, Globalists) is shown to be a deeply libertarian project, in the anarcho-capitalist sense.

Its a bit disconcerting to learn that all the tech billionaires, not just Peter Thiel, betray some weakness for this hard-right worldview. Our new economic elites are not your grandpas. As Slobodian notes, A hundred years ago, the robber barons built libraries. Today, they build spaceships.

The idea of a market for government itself, founded on a multitude of locational choices, underlies the libertarian dream. Freedom, in this would-be utopia, flows from the ability of individuals to choose the laws under which they live. Businesses unshackled from government restrictions grow without limit, and citizens prosper. Economic islands of a global archipelago flourish by trading with each other.

Commitment to this hypercapitalist model has been much more concerted in other parts of the world. Crack-Up Capitalism features stories of Singapore, Somalia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and the Bantustans of South Africa. In each case, national governments put substantial weight behind the formation of zones.

Perhaps the most novel form of the zone is one that exists completely in cyberspace. Think about the transformation of Facebook into Meta, or virtual currency like Bitcoin (originally intended to sidestep the government-regulated banking sector). Blockchain technology used for a wide variety of trading and contracting fits the bill too. Virtual zones freedom from government regulation stems from policymakers difficulty in keeping pace with new technologies, as well as the enormous sums of money the tech mammoths can use to influence public decisions.

Returning to planet earth, the joker in the deck of free libertarian enclaves is the absence of competition in the labor market. Zones are rife with exploitation of migrant workers who are taken in but afforded no citizenship rights, shipped to work by buses with barred windows, and returned to residential camps enclosed in barbed wire. The worst cases are found in places where democratic institutions are weak or absent to begin with. The working classes of the world have their hands tied when capital is concentrated in deregulated zones that prohibit labor groups of any kind, even social organizations. Zones snuff out civil society.

Zones are not, cannot be, economic autarchies, completely isolated from commerce with outside economic entities. In particular, as noted above, they rely on imported, captive labor and are largely the location for trade in goods produced elsewhere. (Cryptocurrency and virtual worlds like Meta are based on server farms that operate in metaspace.)

At the same time, zones hollow out the economic basis for welfare states by segregating and shielding capital from taxation. Wages are ground down and themselves provide limited sources of public revenue.

In an important respect, the libertarian bona fides of really existing zones are ambiguous. To be established and defended, zones require states. The governments role in the economies of zones can be considerable. In Singapore, for instance, all land is owned by the state. Elsewhere, enclaves can require protection from the outside world. In China, state direction of economic activity is ubiquitous. Basic infrastructure in some zones essential to economic life is provided by the state.

More broadly, however, beyond nation-states, big international alliances and national governments seem as strong as ever. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is fortifying the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Brazilian states show no sign of dissolution. The same can be said for the European Union. Brexit could be looked at as an attempt to zone the entire UK. It was certainly spoken about in that fashion by Leavers, going back to the leading Euroskeptic, Maggie Thatcher. But the UKs post-Brexit experience has not been a happy one.

We could reconcile this reality with zone fever by pointing out that there is a division of labor in the interests of capital. The top-level alliances maintain fiscal and monetary regimes that block the advance of social democracy. The local zonal authorities prevent democratic agitation at the base. (It doesnt always work, as the uprising against plans for zones in Honduras attests, but similar schemes remain afoot in neighboring crypto-crazy El Salvador.)

We can also apply this framework to the United States. Elite pressure keeps the brakes on social welfare of all types and substitutes culture war battles for elementary needs for health care, education, and the like. A cheap welfare state leaves more income for the wealthy to nourish their own gated communities and central business districts. Meanwhile, the superrich are said to be building luxurious bolt-holes in remote places like New Zealand, when theyre not fantasizing about leaving the planet altogether. It all adds up to economic segregation, which in the United States is also racial segregation. Actually existing libertarianism happens to be pretty racist.

The crack-up of capitalism is really the dissolution of the state and, along with it, the capacity of a democratic polity to engage in collective action against real threats, such as pandemics and climate change. Such a capability is not easily replaced. As Slobodian recounts, that was the ambition of the deeper thinkers behind Donald Trump, such as Steve Bannon, and we could say it is the program of Floridas execrable governor, presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis.

Crack-Up Capitalism is an important guide to the current struggle over how the ruling class rules. And Slobodian ultimately raises the question of whether there are cracks in the system, or whether the cracks are the system.

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Free-Market Idolatry and Hatred of Democracy Go Hand in Hand - Jacobin magazine

MADISON, Wis. The dueling contenders in Wisconsins consequential and costly Supreme Court race collided on Tuesday in their lone debate, a hostile affair that illustrated their stark disagreements over cultural issues and the role of a justice on the states high court.

The candidates, Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, and Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice, have such personal animus that they did not shake hands before or after the debate, repeatedly called each other liars and argued that electing the other would lead to a demise of Wisconsins democracy.

It was an in-person encapsulation of the enduring dynamics of the last two decades of Wisconsin politics, with meaningful factions in both parties convinced of the necessity not merely of winning but of destroying their opponents.

I am running against probably one of the most extreme partisan characters in the history of this state, Judge Protasiewicz said of Justice Kelly, who was ousted in a 2020 election. He is a true threat to our democracy.

Justice Kelly slammed Judge Protasiewicz for making a muscular defense of abortion rights and calling the states gerrymandered legislative maps rigged the two issues that sit at the centerpiece of her campaign.

She just told you that shes going to steal the legislative authority and use that in the courts, Justice Kelly said. Political questions belong in the Legislature we all know that since grade school with Schoolhouse Rock.

For a State Supreme Court debate, even in a race that has become the most expensive judicial election in American history, with $29 million spent on TV ads alone, the event turned into something of a political circus. Outside the debate, which was hosted by the State Bar of Wisconsin in an office park on the east edge of Madison, a woman dressed as a uterus reminded attendees of the stakes of the election: If Judge Protasiewicz wins, the court will be likely to overturn Wisconsins total ban on abortion, which was enacted in 1849.

In the lobby before and after the debate, several current and former Wisconsin Supreme Court members mingled with reporters, lawyers and Madison lobbyists who munched on a spread of cookies, brownies and Rice Krispie treats.

The debate was the only scheduled joint appearance to which the two candidates have agreed during the six-week general election before voting ends on April 4. Early voting began Tuesday morning.

The race is formally nonpartisan, though the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has transferred $2.5 million to the Protasiewicz campaign and has directed its army of volunteers and staff members to turn out the vote for her. Justice Kelly said during the debate that he had refused financial donations from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which lags far behind state Democrats in fund-raising, but that he had accepted in-kind contributions.

Whichever side wins the April 4 election will hold a four-to-three majority on the court, which along with rulings on abortion and gerrymandering is expected to decide an array of voting issues ahead of and during the 2024 presidential election. Judge Protasiewicz holds a single-digit lead over Justice Kelly in private polling conducted by groups on both sides of the race. No public polls have been released.

Justice Kelly agreed this month to participate in 10 other debates and candidate forums across the state, hosted by local news organizations, rotary clubs and county bar associations, but Judge Protasiewicz declined them all while agreeing only to Tuesdays midday debate. That event was set to air on a delay later in the afternoon on television stations in Madison and La Crosse but not in the states other markets, including Milwaukee, the largest by far.

Justice Kellys campaign has accused Judge Protasiewicz of hiding behind what has emerged as her colossal fund-raising advantage.

The Protasiewicz campaign has aired $9.8 million in television advertisements, while Justice Kelly began advertising only this past weekend.

He has spent $415,000, though conservative outside groups have spent $6.4 million on his behalf, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Outside groups backing Judge Protasiewicz have spent an additional $2.6 million.

Much of the debate centered on abortion and crime, the two issues that have dominated the television ad campaign in the race. Judge Protasiewicz gave no ground in her defense of abortion rights, even though Justice Kelly and the debates moderators suggested she had already made up her mind on how she would rule on a current legal challenge to the states abortion ban.

Abortion, which became illegal overnight in Wisconsin last summer after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, has become so central to the court campaign that even organizations that focus on other issues have turned to abortion rights.

Everytown, the gun control group funded largely by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, is broadcasting a 30-second TV ad in the state this week that spends half its time attacking Justice Kellys abortion stance before reminding voters he opposed background checks on new gun sales.

I think the electorate deserves to know what a persons values are rather than hiding them, Judge Protasiewicz said at the debate. Ive also been very clear that any decision that I render will be made based solely on the law and the Constitution. She went on, I can tell you that if my opponent is elected I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books.

Justice Kelly, who has been endorsed by Wisconsins leading anti-abortion organizations, argued that his association with them did not mean he would vote in their favor.

You dont know what Im thinking about that abortion ban, you have no idea, he responded. Justice Kelly said the anti-abortion groups had endorsed him after he explained to them his judicial philosophy. He said he made no promises about how he would rule on the case most important to their cause.

I explained to them at length the role of the jurist instead of talking about politics, which is all you do, he said.

Justice Kelly appeared to be a far more skilled debater, delivering prepared attack lines with ease. Judge Protasiewicz was less polished she flubbed her opening statement, instead asking how to decipher the clocks that showed how much time she had left to speak.

After nearly an hour, the moderators asked the two candidates how to best inspire public confidence in the states high court, given the nasty and partisan tone of this years campaign and past ugly headlines that included a 2011 episode in which one justice accused another of choking her during a debate in the courts chambers.

Judge Protasiewicz called for a re-examination of the courts recusal rules, which largely leave the call up to each justice, and more transparency before decisions are delivered.

But for Justice Kelly, the way to improve the Wisconsin Supreme Courts legitimacy was to place him back on it.

First, by winning, he said. When I say that my opponent has told sloppy and irresponsible lies, I mean that in every possible way.

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Wisconsin Court Candidates Clash Over Abortion and Democracy - The New York Times

In partnership with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy will host Brazilian historian and journalist Dr. Thiago Krause and former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Michael McKinley to discuss similarities between the Jan. 8 insurrection in Brazil this year and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. This in-person event will be held on Thursday, March 30, at 6 p.m. at Scarritt Bennett Centers Laskey Great Hall.

Register here to attend; a recording of the event will be made available afterward in English and Portuguese. Celso Castilho, director of Vanderbilt Universitys Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and associate professor in history, will moderate the conversation.

On Jan. 8, 2023, hundreds of election-deniers stormed Brazils Congress building, Supreme Court, and presidential palace following the defeat of Brazils then-president Jair Bolsonaro to demand he had won the election. While this event happened under its own circumstances and within a different context, it begs questions about parallels and connections with the U.S. Jan. 6 insurrection.

Amid this hour-long event, Dr. Krause, Ambassador McKinley, and Dir. Castilho will explore what these two insurrections have in common, dispel misconceptions and help us all understand more clearly how interdependent, threatened, and resilient democracies are throughout our hemisphere.

Register to attend this in-person event.

Read more about the speakers:

Dr. Thiago Krause is a Brazilian historian and journalist. He maintains an important public voice in Brazil, as a writer for the Folha de So Paulo, the Brazilian national paper of record. Dr. Krause is also a reference point for US-based discussions about Brazilian politics.

Ambassador P. Michael McKinley (ret.) served as the US Ambassador to Peru (2007-2010), Colombia (2010-2013), Afghanistan (2014-2016), and Brazil (2017-2018). His final posting was as senior advisor to the Secretary of State in 2018-2019. His earlier assignments included the United Kingdom, Mozambique, Uganda, Bolivia, and Belgium. Ambassador McKinley earned a doctorate from Oxford University in 1982 and is the author of an acclaimed study on colonial Venezuela. He joined The Cohen Group as a Senior Counselor after a 37-year career at the Department of State.

Celso Thomas Castilho is the director of Vanderbilt Universitys Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and an associate professor in the Department of History. Castilhos research focuses on the political, cultural, and intellectual histories of modern Latin America. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley, where he began work on slavery and abolition in Brazil; other interests include the public sphere, literary culture, and Afro-diasporic thought.

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REGISTER: Elections and Insurrections: Attacks on Democracy in ... - Vanderbilt University News