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Police Brutality in Albania: “The Revolt Seems Like Something That Was Waiting to Happen”

Although the shooting of an unarmed citizen can be considered an isolated event, there has been an increasing escalation of violence by the police in recent years. We, as activists of Organizata Politike, have witnessed it while protesting alongside chromium miners, oil refinery workers, and students. A very violent intervention by the police took place last year against the artists who were defending the National Theatre against demolition.

This wave of repression also relates to a decision by the Ministry of Interior to send into early retirement more than 1,000 policemen from the older generation, replacing them over three years with younger newcomers in better physical condition but lacking any experience in handling complex situations. Such was the case of the policeman who killed Klodian; a man in his early twenties who had joined the force only recently, and who had been immediately transferred to one of the most infamous police units: “The Eagles.”

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Progressive Patriotism

Translated from the Russian original on Colta.ru by Maxim Edwards. LeftEast publishes this text not by way of unreserved endorsement but rather in an effort to initiate a debate about leftist strategy. In our editorial discussion at least, it generated plenty of questions: Do we need to limit our imagination of political community to the […]

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The Rise of Heteronomous Academia on the EU’s Borderlands

ith the very recent founding of a “streamlined” Family Research Centre, compatible with the government’s political agenda, within the Academy’s Institute of Sociology, heteronomy in academe has reached a new peak. In a context where “family research” serves as a governmental counter-discourse par excellence to bash “gender studies” (generally associated with liberalism, multiculturalism, relativism and the CEU), the foundation of a “family research centre” within the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is not only ethically questionable; it is also a clear sign of governmental policies permeating the consecrated realms of science. The Centre’s official credo propagating “value-neutral” science on its homepage is anything but neutral, given that its creation is inseparable from an evidently over-politicised context. Therefore, “value-neutrality” should be better understood as a justificatory ideology for official sociology that aims “not to realise itself as a science but to realise an official image of science”.

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In the Struggle You’ll Earn Your Rights: Russian Socialist Movement’s Statement on the Proposed Constitutional Reforms and the Change of Russian Government

The presidential announcement and the change of government that immediately followed it on January 15th officially inaugurate the much-awaited succession operation, establishing the mechanisms whereby power will be preserved in the hands of the ruling elite. The key element in this operation is the “continuity” within the framework of personal power. That is, in one […]

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The Arabs Who Can Beat Bibi

Israel’s second election of the year has demonstrated more clearly than ever that the most important oppositional actor in the country is its Palestinian minority. Note from LeftEast editors: We re-post this article from Jacobin, where it was published on 22.09.2019 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it a habit, at times of political exigency, […]

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For a Social and Democratic Coalition in the Moscow City Parliament: Russian Socialist Movement on the Outcome of the Regional Elections of September 2019

Note from the editors: The problem with Russian elections is the same as the problem with elections in most advanced capitalist countries, but simply more extreme: there is nobody on the ballot to vote for. The authorities are prepared to go to great lengths–set up fake opposition parties controlled out of the Presidential administration, disqualify […]

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“Red Tape”: the Labor Crisis in Europe’s Most Unequal Country

Note from LeftEast editors: This is Part I of “Serbia’s Labor Law: a Counter-Proposal” reprinted from the author’s blog with his kind permission. I went to work in the morning and returned late in the evening. And on Sunday I had to go to work. I did not have any free time anymore. The owner […]

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European Progressive Future? Neither Yesterday’s Tsipras nor Today’s Greens

Note from the LeftEast editors: this text was first published on the website SocialistProject.Ca. It has been reprinted by LeftEast with the permission of the author. One cannot and should not turn away from the disastrous results of the recent European Parliament elections, especially considering that Leftist parties across the European Union (EU) expected to […]

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A Fiasco for the Conservative Left: on the Presidential Elections in Slovakia

Originally published in Bulgarian in Baricada.org. Translated for LeftEast by Kamelia Tzeneva. A fiasco for the conservative left The candidate of the extra-parliamentary party “Progressive Slovakia” Zuzana Čaputová is the new president of the country. Despite her victory, the extreme right manages to set the tone for political debate.   The news that Slovakia will […]

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On the “Broad Left” in Russia

In certain circles in Russia, the expression “broad left” has lately become a slur. For example, one article entitled “For a narrow left!” published on the Levoradikal website in 2015, ascribes the following sins to the “broad left”: “tolerance towards non-Marxist, non-Communist theories in socialism,” as well as the neglect of “theoretical struggle” in the […]