Italian Universities welcomed Mussolini's Fascist party's takeover of the Government. He returned the favor by appointing Prof. Gentile as Minister of Education. Higher Education received much more funding.
Just as many academics had paved the path to Mussolini's takeover, so too, in Germany, did many Professors promote Nazi ideas. After Hitler came to power, Universities became a great pillar of support for the regime.
Jason Stanley ignores this historical truth. He writes in the Guardian
Why fascists hate universities
Jason Stanley
Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary sites of critique and dissent
No. In totalitarian countries, they were and are primary sites of conformism, careerism, and full throated support of the regime. In Democracies, some students may get involved in politics. Most don't bother though if their own interests are threatened- e.g. if they may be shipped off to Vietnam- they can be just as vocal as any other group.
In Bangladesh, something remarkable has happened.
An elected leader from a traditionally Secular Socialist party was chased into exile after the economy tanked. It is likely that the country will move in a more radically Islamist direction (though this was already happening. Mohammad Yunus, the interim leader of the country, was accused by the Awami League of promoting homosexuality and usury- both illegal under Sharia law).
I should mention that Sheikh Hasina's father had created a one-party Socialist state before his assassination. It was a military dictatorship which first put the country on the path to rising per capita Income and relative (to Pakistan) prosperity. Going further back, the most popular Bengali leader was Shubas Chandra Bose who allied with Hitler and Tojo and would have been installed by the Japanese as the Dictator of India had they defeated the Allies. In other words, there is little evidence that the people of Bangladesh want Democracy. West Bengal remained under Communist rule for 34 years. Their cadres beat the shit out of the opposition. They fell when they tried to grab land from peasants. Now the woman who fought them in the streets is the Chief Minister. Her thugs have kept her in power for 13 years. Mamta may remain in power for another fifteen years and even hand over power to her nephew. However, her thugs- like Sheikh Hasina's thugs or the Left Front's thugs- may suddenly face a popular uprising which, no doubt, will yield another populist who will quickly establish a reign of terror.
Initially in response to a quota system that reserved the majority of government jobs for specific groups, university students initiated large-scale non-violent protests.
Because the Bench reimposed a particular quota which Sheikh Hasina had abolished in 2018. Dr. Shahidul Alam (his PhD was in Chemistry from London University) the great photographer whose arrest in 2018 sparked massive protests, thinks that if Hasina had apologized after the first student demonstrators were killed, she would have been forgiven. Perhaps her sycophants told her that the muscle-men of her own party would easily deal with the rabble. If they had done so, Hasina's position would have been more even more secure.
Bangladesh’s increasingly autocratic prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, responded essentially with “let them eat cake.”
Her mistake was to refer to 'Razakars'- i.e. those who sided with the Pakistani Army in 1971. This made her sound senile and out of touch. She thought her goons on campus would soon beat the protestors into submission. But they proved cowardly. However, it was when the Army too showed the white feather that she had to flee. Incidentally, her niece is a junior Minister in London. But the Brits don't want her.
Instead of calming the protests down, Hasina’s response made the protests grow nationwide.
Hasina's goons weren't as good as the opposition's goons. Mamta does not currently face that problem.
In mid-July, the government responded with extreme violence, with police gunning down hundreds of students and shutting down the internet across the country.
The police mistakenly thought the Army would stay loyal. When this didn't happen, they went on strike till the students assured them there would be no reprisals against them for 'just following orders'.
It must be said, the students showed great civic sense by taking over some of the functions of the police- e.g. directing traffic- when they abandoned their posts.
Scenes of extreme police brutality flooded social media.
not during the five day internet shutdown.
By the end of July, the protests had grown into a nationwide pro-democracy movement. Eventually, the military joined the students,
No. The Army Chief said he thought the troops might refuse shoot-to-kill orders.
and Hasina fled the country. A nationwide student-led democracy movement successfully challenged a violent autocratic leader, and, at least for now, appears to have won.
Instead of an elected government, there is an unelected government. The Chief Justice has been forced to resign. Will elections be held anytime soon? Perhaps. Will they be free and fair? Who can say?
Bangladesh’s non-violent student movement has not gone unnoticed in neighboring countries.
India? Myanmar? Those are its neighbors.
In Pakistan, the popular former prime minister and leader of the opposition party, Imran Khan, was jailed a year ago, an act dictated by Pakistan’s military.
Imran and Hasina say their removal was dictated by Biden.
Media companies were instructed not to mention his name, quote his words, or show his picture. Members of his opposition party were imprisoned. But something astonishing has begun there.
Nope. It is business as usual.
Motivated by the success of the student-led pro-democracy movement in Bangladesh, the Pakistan Students Federation
This was misreported. It is the Insaf Students Federation- i.e. the youth wing of Imran Khan's party.
declared an ultimatum for the government: free Khan by 30 August or face nationwide student protests.
He is still in jail. The Pakistan Army kicks ass. The Bangladesh army- not so much.
What has happened in Bangladesh and now could happen in Pakistan is the nightmare of every autocratic regime.
Not if it is really autocratic. Chairman Xi isn't losing any sleep over kids in Collidge.
Authoritarians and would-be authoritarians are only too aware that universities are primary sites of critique and dissent.
Not in an autocracy which is pro-active in killing people.
Attacks on universities are the canary in the coalmine of fascism.
Not in Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany. Students are easy to kill. Professors tend to run away before that can happen.
Narendra Modi, India’s autocratic Hindu nationalist prime minister, has ruled the country since 2014. Attacking India’s elite universities as “anti-India” is a hallmark of his government.
Indira Gandhi beat the shit out of JNU students. Modi knows that anti-national nutters cause the public to react by voting for the BJP. Why beat those who help you win elections?
Similarly, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, started a political campaign with an attack on Central European University in Budapest,
funded by Soros. Arthur Finkelstein advised Orban to find an enemy and focus on him. Soros fit the bill. He is a gift which has kept giving- at least to Orban (to whom Soros had given a scholarship)
with demagogic rhetoric directed against its supposed spreading of “gender ideology”. With the use of legislation, Orbán’s government went so far as to drive the university out of the country.
It has gone to Vienna where private universities are looked down upon. Its new rector is an Indian origin lady nobody has heard off. Soros's mistake was not to set up a STEM subject Institution with a kick ass Financial Engineering Dept. The Hungarians wouldn't have wanted to get rid of it.
The situation is structurally the same in the United States – would-be authoritarians and one-party states centrally target universities with the aim of restricting dissent.
No. They whine about woke Professors because this gets them votes. Everybody thinks non-STEM subjects are shite.
Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, is an aspiring autocrat who has
killed his opponents and set up gas chambers for Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Democrats etc.
used the myth of widespread voter fraud to severely restrict minority voting. (Voter fraud practically never happens in the United States; rigorous investigation estimated it as between 0.0003 and 0.0025%.) DeSantis also created an office of election crimes and security, to pursue supposed cases of voter fraud.
Also he isn't too keen on homosexual rapists entering the country illegal. Homophobia is a Fascist trait.
Besides minority voting populations, DeSantis has focused on public and higher education as central targets.
Sheikh Hasina had students shot. DeSantis personally rapes them to death.
According to an AAUP report by the special committee on political interference and academic freedom in Florida’s public education system in May 2023, “academic freedom, tenure and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”
Coz McCarthyism was about inviting Communist professors to tea and then sucking them off if they mentioned that Engels had always provided this service to Marx.
The committee’s final report reveals an atmosphere of intimidation and indeed terror,
many Professors have shat themselves from fear.
as the administrative threat to public university professors has been shown to be very real.
Also they are shitting themselves to death. This is because Neo-Liberalism is very evil.
Even more so than Florida, Tennessee is a one-party state,
No. There are two main parties.
with a Republican governor and a Republican supermajority in the legislature. The Tennessee house and senate passed a resolution to honor the Danube Institute; on the floor of the Tennessee house, the state representative Justin Jones
who does not belong to the ruling Party. This proves Tennessee isn't a one-party state.
questioned why the state was honoring the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán’s thinktank.
Also, why did the Governor not invite undocumented people to rape him repeatedly while burning the American flag?
Tennessee has a state ban on the teaching of “divisive concepts”,
No it doesn't. It merely protects students or employees of public institutions from having to be indoctrinated in that shite. Private colleges can be as woke as they please.
one that includes public universities.
No. It only applies to public educational institutions.
To report a professor for teaching such a concept (such as intersectionality), Tennessee provides an online form.
Thus discriminating against illiterate Professors.
Attacks on voting, and democratic systems generally, almost invariably center on universities, and vice versa.
No. Universities don't matter. It is the Legislature and the Judiciary which you need to target.
The Yale Law School graduate and current Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has claimed that the 2020 election should not have been certified because of suspicion of voter fraud. In a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, Vance also proclaimed, echoing Richard Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.”
Why? It is because the public has a low opinion of non-STEM subject professors.
In the fall of 2023, in response to Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza for Hamas’s terrorist attack, anti-genocide protests erupted in American universities, with the active participation of a significant number of Jewish students.
Sadly, they weren't raped or decapitated. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Collidge boys are all sissies.
These anti-genocide protests were labeled as pro-Hamas and used as a basis to attack elite universities, their students, their professors and their administrations, verbally, politically and physically.
Harvard was burned to the ground by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is not implausible to take the goal to have been, at least largely, a preliminary show of police power to university students.
Nor is it implausible to suggest that Trump will personally fuck them all to death if he gets elected.
In the United States, the Republican party has long been aware of the democratic potential of student movements.
Which is why, when Trump was POTUS, he personally raped to death ten trillion University students.
As it lurches closer and closer to authoritarianism, it will, like all rightwing authoritarian movements worldwide, seek to crush dissent, starting with university students and faculty.
Also, they will set up gas-chambers for all those who are too ugly for Trump to rape to death.
With great courage and determination, the students in Bangladesh have shown that this strategy can be made to backfire.
But those students have ensured that the country will follow an increasingly Islamist path. The big problem facing Yunus is how to manage a shake-out of 'bad banks' and ensure a new round of cronyism does not replace the cronyism of the last administration.
Why did Hasina's regime collapse? I think the answer is that her two children didn't want to spend much time in Bangladesh while her sister wasn't that much younger to her and thus not a credible replacement. Thus there was no clear line of succession and charismatic younger faces to appeal to the students. Her son was supposed to be in charge of a campaign to get graduates jobs in IT but nothing much came of it. Still, it was economic distress, more than anything else, which doomed the regime. Students, in particular, felt that, unless they got a Government job, they would have a very precarious future. This suggests that something like Peter Turchin's 'elite overproduction' thesis was at work. If too many get higher educational credentials but are unable to gain correspondingly remunerated employment, they may rebel against the system and bring it crashing down. Sadly, in a totalitarian country, 'elite overproduction' can be easily dealt with by shooting people or sending them to a Gulag. This explains why, under Biden, American students have not been able to overthrow Neo-Liberalism, destroy Israel, and enforce Sharia Law. Kamala Harris, a notorious Communist, was put in charge of the gas chambers which have sprouted up all over the country. Still, things could get worse. If Trump becomes POTUS ten trillion dissidents will be raped to death. Vance, sadly, will just focus on fucking sofas. This is because sofas come from Iran.
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