On July 2, 2025, the UK House of Commons overwhelmingly approved a motion to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, with 385 MPs voting in favor and just 26 against. The decision was subsequently endorsed by the House of Lords on 3rd July. As a result, the proscription officially came into effect on 5th July, making it a criminal offence to support or be associated with the group under UK law.

Following the designation, the Metropolitan Police updated their official news site with a public statement, titled “Update on policing in London following proscription of Palestine Action.” The statement reads:

“Palestine Action has now been proscribed by the UK Government and expressing support for them is a criminal offence in the UK. There are a number of events taking place in London this weekend, and anyone attending should be aware that officers policing these will act where criminal offences, including those related to support of proscribed groups or organisations, are committed.”

The proscription, under the Terrorism Act 2000, grants police additional powers to intervene where individuals or groups are seen to be endorsing or facilitating a proscribed organization.

The Road to Proscription: From Warnings to Crackdown

Talks of proscribing Palestine Action have been circulating in government circles since late 2023, as the group’s high-profile actions escalated. Their direct-action campaigns, including the occupation of Elbit Systems sites in Leicester and Bristol, and the targeting of weapons factories and offices connected to the Israeli arms trade, drew both media attention and condemnation from officials.

As public support for Palestine surged amid Israel’s escalating military operations in Gaza, government ministers began signaling a harder line. In October 2023, then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman sharply criticized pro-Palestine demonstrations, branding them “hate marches.” She drew no distinction between peaceful protesters and violent ones, stating: “To my mind, there is only one way to describe those marches, they are hate marches.”

Who Are Palestine Action and Why Are They Targeted?

To understand the gravity of the UK government’s recent decision to proscribe Palestine Action, it’s important to consider who the group is and why it has been targeted.

Founded in 2020, Palestine Action is a direct-action network known for its disruptive protests against British complicity in Israel’s military operations, particularly through targeting Elbit Systems UK, a major arms manufacturer supplying drones and weapons to the Israeli military.

The group’s tactics include occupying factory rooftops, damaging equipment, and defacing buildings with red paint to symbolize Palestinian blood. While these methods are confrontational, they are non-violent. Supporters argue the actions are a necessary form of civil disobedience to expose and disrupt what they describe as the UK’s role in human rights abuses in Gaza.

The U.K. government’s move to proscribe Palestine Action came shortly after activists breached a Royal Air Force base in Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, on the 20th June. Members of the group damaged two military aircraft, in which the Police estimated that the damage caused by the incident amounted to approximately £7 million.

The incident marked a sharp escalation in the group’s direct-action tactics and appears to have been a key trigger for the government’s decision to invoke terrorism legislation.

Palestine Action does not use weapons or target civilians; instead, it targets corporate infrastructure linked to international conflict, a distinction now at the heart of a contentious national debate.

The Public Pushback: What’s at Stake?

Since the ban on Palestine Action took effect, the Metropolitan Police, also known as the Met Police or the Met, which is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and crime prevention within Greater London, has cracked down on public displays of support for the group. In Parliament Square, Met Police officers arrested over 20 demonstrators, many holding placards reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Key developments include:

• 29 protesters have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences.
• The group was officially proscribed as a terrorist organization after a last-minute legal challenge to delay the ban at the Court of Appeal failed.
• Palestine Action now joins a list of banned organisations including al-Qaeda, ISIS (Daesh), and Hezbollah.
• Membership or support for the group is a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
• Even wearing a T-shirt or badge with the group’s name can result in a maximum six-month prison sentence.

Among those arrested was Reverend Sue Parfitt, aged 83, an emblematic figure of the broad crackdown.

Leslie Tate, a 76-year-old Green Party councilor, condemned the ban as “the creeping edge of totalitarianism” and called the protests “necessary to defend our democracy.”

What does this mean for future activism in the UK?

The proscription of Palestine Action is not an isolated event but part of a broader democratic challenge facing the UK. Growing emphasis on security concerns is increasingly influencing political discourse, sometimes at the expense of fundamental civil liberties.

Democracies depend on dissent, protest, and the freedom to question authority. When protest is criminalized, the balance of power can shift away from citizens toward the state.

Critics caution that equating disruptive but non-violent activism with terrorism risks blurring vital democratic boundaries.

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n September 16, widespread protests erupted in Iran following the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian Mahsa Amini. Protests continue to shake the country with Iranian security forces suppressing the demonstrations with brutal force. Thus far, clashes between protestors and the Iranian security forces have seen around 200 people killed. On October 2, police stormed Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, arresting many students and causing a stir among young, educated Iranians and academia around the world.

Protests spread from universities to high schools where students, especially female ones, organize demonstrations. In the streets, women are taking off their hijabs to challenge the foundational ground of the system (nizam). Protestors target the system’s most fundamental symbols with slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and “No to the Islamic Republic” being chanted to demand regime change in Iran.

As a response to the protests, police and Basij militias use excessive force, and as a precaution, the political authorities have severely restricted the internet inside the country. Protestors use social media along with people who support the protests to disseminate information and videos calling on more people to participate.

The motives behind the protests

Mahsa Amini was detained by the morality police on September 13 for not wearing the hijab properly. Three days later, Amini’s death while in custody was announced. Thereupon, protests started and especially women took to the streets. The slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” marked the protests and became a symbol of women’s struggles.

In fact, the hijab code is not a new development. In Iran, women are required to wear the hijab in public since 1983. But President Raisi’s conservative policy combined with Iran’s chronic problems caused social unrest to grow.

In July, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi issued an order requiring the strict enforcement of the hijab dress code in all public institutions and streets. This move put further pressure on Iranian women and Mahsa Amini’s death in custody ignited the protests.

Although the protests started against the state domination over the female body, there are various motives, such as economic problems, at play. Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018, Iran’s economy has been hit by western sanctions. The Iranian economy further deteriorated due to COVID-19 and global economic problems.

In the last couple of years, there has also been growing skepticism toward the Iranian political system and elites. The latest parliamentary elections in 2020 and presidential elections in 2022 witnessed the lowest turnouts since the Islamic revolution in 1979, and the political elite of the Iranian regime turned a deaf ear to this strong message.

Such insensitiveness has always had a potential to cause protests to become more violent. Iranians, who think that their voices are not heard, resort to non-political means. Despite these warnings, the Raisi government continues to neglect the protestors’ discontent with the Iranian state and political system.

Iran is no stranger to mass protests. After Ahmadinejad’s election as president in 2009, tens of thousands of people participated in protests which lasted for months. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, protests shook the country. But the current protests are different in certain respects as they are distinguished by the spread of the protest wave to the whole country, the high death toll in a short time, and an ideologically motivated, direct opposition to the current political system. Another important aspect is that the protests have spread to regions inhabited by ethnic groups, especially Kurds and Baloch, that are spots of intense conflicts.

European countries did not remain silent about the protests in Iran either. On September 26, the German Foreign Ministry stated on Twitter, “We call on the Iranian authorities to allow peaceful protests and to not deploy further violence.” In her statement, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola stated, “Women. Life. Liberty. Three words that have become a rallying cry for all those standing up for equality, for dignity, and for freedom in Iran.” Metsola emphasized the European Parliament’s support for Iranian women.

The UK has also taken some steps regarding the protests in Iran. On October 10, Iran’s morality police and senior security and political figures were sanctioned by the UK. “These sanctions send a clear message to the Iranian authorities—we will hold you to account for your repression of women and girls and for the shocking violence you have inflicted on your own people,” said UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

Furthermore, while Elon Musk said that he activated Starlink satellites to provide internet access to the protesters, Google stated that they support protestors. In addition, human rights activists and celebrities worldwide such as Angela Davis, Joan Baez, Juliette Binoche, Angelina Jolie, and Bella Hadid expressed their support for Iranian women. The fact that the struggle for women’s rights steers the Iranian protests may be the most crucial factor in winning global support.

Here two types of exaggerations should be avoided: the claim that the protests are purely a conspiracy of foreign powers is as exaggerated and poorly connected to the reality as the claim that foreign powers have no role in them at all.

Not unexpectedly, foreign powers do their best to exploit this situation for their political goals. The head of the CIA has said they are supporting the protesters in Iran. But the grievances that gave rise to the protests are the consequences of Iran’s internal problems that Iranians have been complaining about for decades.

Could protests trigger change in Iran’s political structure?

Iran observers began to make frequent claims that the protests were leading to a political revolution. However, for a revolution to occur in Iran, certain conditions, which do not currently appear, must be met. First and foremost, the protests lack leadership. There is no charismatic leader, nor an elite council, party, or organization to guide the public fury and action. Second, each ethnic group involved in the protests has its own agenda and political demands. Furthermore, there is no prescription to reconcile these demands and turn them into unified political action. 

Third, as in the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the Arab Spring in 2011, the military plays a significant role. For a revolution to succeed, the military must either remain neutral or side with the protestors. However, there is no indication that this is the case. In some videos images show security forces joining protesters, indicating that the police are accompanying the protesters for security reasons.

Finally, for a revolution to take place, there must be nationwide general strikes. Strikes in the oil sector, which is the backbone of the Iranian economy, in particular, may pave the way for a revolution. There have been some developments in this direction; however, these strikes have not yet spread across the country, and it is unclear how long they will last.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is facing mass demonstrations across the country calling for him to step down, in the context of the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and growing allegations of corruption. “Bolsonaro has a knack for creating enemies out of his supporters,” Prof Anthony Pereira was quoted as saying recently, in the context of demonstrations in Brazil against the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

But will the protests be enough to bring Bolsonaro down, especially when the rift between the left wing and the right wing in Brazil remains so pronounced? COVID19 mismanagement might create a common ground, but only within the pandemic context as, behind the scenes, Bolsonaro and his supporters have benefited from his right-wing, neoliberal agenda.

Brazil has the highest COVID19 death toll in Latin America and the second highest globally, exacerbated by an absence of planning and complete disregard for the country’s collapsed healthcare system. It is not merely the inequalities inherent in Brazilian society which have influenced the collapse, but the government’s refusal to consider any measures other than a strategy to achieve herd immunity through infection, under the pretext of curbing people’s freedoms. While Europe is waking up to the complexities of curbed freedom of movement despite available vaccines due to countries pursuing different policies, in Brazil the people are facing a totally different scenario.

Brazil’s former health minister Luis Henrique Mandetta was fired by Bolsonaro after challenging his unscientific approach to the pandemic. With Bolsonaro disregarding health professionals’ advice, and playing a dangerous game regarding the availability of vaccines, which have reduced the death toll especially in the case of the elderly and the vulnerable, Brazilians are concerned about their wellbeing and the government’s refusal to provide for their health.

In March, Brazil sent a delegation to Israel to view the process of an experimental medication being developed for COVID19, with an adviser to Bolsonaro stating the visit would “yield partnerships that will make a difference in combating the health crisis and in the resumption of the Brazilian economy.” By May, Brazil was seeking deals to acquire surplus doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccine from the U.S. and U.K.

Brazilians are concerned about their wellbeing and the government’s refusal to provide for their health.

Since August 2020, Brazil engaged diplomatically with Russia to obtain the Sputnik V vaccine, which was later suspended by the country’s national health service, Anvisa, on account of alleged “lack of consistent and reliable data,” despite favorable reviews in the leading health journal, The Lancet. Reuters has recently reported the definite cancellation of a contract with Russia for 10 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.

However, the coronavirus pandemic has forced a different sort of reckoning among Brazilians, although the process may be temporary until an outcome is achieved. Bolsonaro’s mishandling of the pandemic happened amid growing accusations of corruption. A poll in July revealed that 54 percent of Brazilians would support the impeachment of Bolsonaro, while 51 percent disapproved of him, indicating growing resentment since his tenure started in 2019.

The statistics reflect a possible turning to the left, which is not impossible especially with the return of former president Lula da Silva to the political scene. Polls indicate a probable win for Lula in the forthcoming presidential elections. and Bolsonaro has already accused the Supreme Court of favoring his opponent.

Given the rise of the left in Latin America – Chile is the most prevalent example at the moment of the right wing’s spectacular fall – Bolsonaro is guaranteed U.S. support for the time being. In July, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns met with Bolsonaro to discuss the political situation in Latin America, and the Brazilian leader specifically mentioned Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina in comments discussing the visit.

COVID19 might trigger more widespread displeasure among Brazilians, but the military, as well as Bolsonaro’s neoliberal policies favoring privatization are also a force to be reckoned with. For a definite shift to occur, the left will have to continue leading the mobilization struggle in Brazil, which would then encourage the already occurring decrease in support for Bolsonaro, who has exploited the masses for the interests of the privileged.

But there are indications that, across Brazil, a more profound reckoning might be happening. Just as in Chile, the rise in transport fares triggered a vast outcry against right-wing President Sebastian Pinera, resulting in drastic losses for the right-wing and the rewriting of a new constitution to replace that of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, Brazilians may want to reconnect politically with their past.

The burning down of the statue of Borba Gato by a group of demonstrators recently; a memorial which represents the colonial violence which ravaged Brazil’s indigenous people, is a case in point. The action was intended to ignite debate about Brazil’s past and the glorification of the colonizers, but the action itself was powerful enough to steer political thought towards opposing Bolsonaro’s dictatorship nostalgia.

Brazil lags behind in terms of dictatorship memory and justice, and despite not having the highest death toll when it comes to dictatorship victims, 50,000 people were imprisoned and 10,000 forced into exile. Bolsonaro’s government abused the democratic mandate to recreate dictatorship oppression. COVID19 may well be the moment for political change in Brazil, yet the pandemic must not obscure the reasons behind the Brazilian people’s dissent.

There are different societal undercurrents at play in the United States today. On the one hand, there is the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other, the growing radicalism of white-supremacist groups, who recently invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Nihan Duran interviewed Sundiata Cha-Jua, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois on how to understand the fault lines of American society and politics given the concurrently rising movements: BLM activism and the white-supremacism.

َQHow do you evaluate the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., following the global reactions to the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020? Have the Black struggles for justice and equality re-surfaced as a political force in the 21st century?

The COINTELPRO destruction of the radical stream of the Black Power movement in the late 1970s produced a prolonged period of relative quietude in the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). Around 2010, the movement began to resurge. Activists introduced several tactical innovations, such as the initiation of the #hastag for organizing in response to the killing and murder of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin. Cell phone footage of Grant’s killing, for example, went viral on the then four-year-old YouTube platform, as it was watched by 500,000 people in four days.

Q. What impact did such a reach-out have on the acceleration of the movement?

The national response to the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 accelerated the use of online petitions as an innovative movement organizing tactic. Martin’s murder also gave rise to #hashtag BlackLivesMatter, which has also made an impact as activists used another relatively new social media format, Twitter to mobilize protests. Consequently, new organizations sprung up and older groups were reenergized. New youth-led and oriented groups such as the Dream Defenders, the former Million Hoodies Movements (now Brighter Days for Justice), and the Black Youth Project (BYP-100) emerged.

Since Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson in 2014, a new phase of struggle in the Black Liberation movement focused on police killing and criminal justice has swept the U.S. and, in the summer of 2020, surged beyond the borders of the U.S.

Q. You mentioned that there is a “shift in emphasis.” What does that “shift” indicate when the long tradition of Black liberation movements in the U.S. is considered.

#Black Lives Matter’s slogan “we are not your grandparent’s revolution” links it to a divisive strategy more reminiscent of the Yippies, “don’t trust anyone over 30,” than the intergenerational legacy of Black liberation movement organizing. That is not to deny Frantz Fanon’s observation that “each generation must discover its mission and either fulfill or betray it.”

The point is that older more experienced activists have always played a mentoring role in the Black Liberation movement. The cutting edge of the 1960s movements, specifically the organizations, strategic visions, and political analyses still relevant come from the nationalistic Black Power wave, not the liberal integrationist Civil Rights movement.

So, the infantile divisive generational politics are doubly irresponsible, because it erases the Black Power movement. M4BL has reversed that error. It has adopted the symbolism of the Black Power movement- the fist-and centered its programmatic initiatives on a five-year plan under the slogan “Black Power Rising 2024!”

Q. What does white people’s involvement in America in the BLM movement indicate?

The involvement of such a large number of Euro-Americans evidences the Black Liberation movement’s ability to convince a broad sector of the U.S. public that systemic racism accurately describes American society. However, white engagement would be better utilized if they built solidarity, created a constituency inside white communities and civic associations that practiced the politics of the Black Panther Party’s rainbow coalition. I am also quite mindful of A. Phillip Randolph’s 1940 admonishment that “where you get your money you also get your ideas and control. We need white ‘allies’ to organize support for Black self-determination, and a pro-labor, pro-socialist movement” in white neighborhoods and social spaces.

Q. Do you think that Black politics can find its way to move from merely a critical progressive to mainstream American politics?

Why not? Since the 1830s, the Black Liberation movement has demonstrated its ability to intrude into and shape U.S. politics. The Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movement are examples of moments in which the Black Liberation movement seized the center stage and focused the eyes of the empire on us. C.L.R. James powerfully made this argument more than 70 years ago in the “Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Question” (1948).

Since the Ferguson Uprising and particularly this past summer, Black people reaffirmed their capacity to boldly reshape both social movement and electoral politics in the U.S. Perhaps, the best example of the power of the Black Liberation to remake U.S. politics is the rise of the African American reparations movement. Before the end of the 20th century, the Black reparations movement was virtually unknown to the U.S. public.

In the last six years, the African American reparations movement has gone from a fringe movement in U.S. politics to a strategy endorsed by all leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, though largely through some universal policy scheme. Nonetheless, there have now been two congressional hearings and several cities have passed reparations resolutions and few, notably Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina have enacted legislation.

Q. You mean that politically as well, the U.S. has come to acknowledge the persistent predicament of its Black people?

Definitely. Millions of people in 200 cities, domestic and abroad took to the streets to protest the police murder of Black men, women, and children. The Black Liberation movement has forced American society to admit the existence of systemic racism, which I prefer to call racial oppression and to “commit” to its elimination from U.S. institutional life in colleges and universities, corporations, and government agencies.

Q. Despite growing awareness, what is the possibility or limitations of a “post-racial” America? Especially today, when we witness the white-supremacist undercurrent getting more and more visible both on the social and political scenery.

Sorry but the “post-racial” idea is ridiculous and odious. It is rooted in a colorblind racial ideology that denies structural racial oppression. It insidiously contrasts the success of the meager Black elite to the assumed failures of the working-class Black majority. That the election of Barack Obama sparked the rise of right-wing social movements such as the Tea Party and that his administration was followed by Trumpist fascism that used racist appeals and policies to pursue the neoliberal agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization, all exposing that the postracial ideal is fallacious.

Q. What about the U.S. Capitol siege on January 6 then? What did make this possible? Was Donald Trump the chief responsible for this or only a symptom of undercurrents?

Ultimately, we can trace the rise of contemporary fascism that culminated in the January 6 assault of the U.S. Capitol building to the economic crisis caused by the transition to a financialized global racial capitalism, but it would be a grave error to underestimate the central role played by anti-Black racial oppression. The dislocations and alienation caused by the new structure of capital accumulation is the foundational cause but Donald Trump’s rhetoric, policy agenda, and explicit xenophobic and racist appeals mobilized white supremacists and nationalists. He recruited and weaponized them into an anti-democratic battering ram against egalitarian public policies.

Q. What to expect now, after the U.S. Capital Siege? How do you think this will impact the future of U.S. domestic politics?

The Trump regime rolled the rock back and unleashed fascist hordes who now control one of the two corporate parties. The fascists are here to stay. They are likely to elect dozens, if not scores of new congresspersons and continue to control more than a score of state governments.

While the United States focused on its domestic problems – primarily the sociopolitical consequences of the storming of Capitol Hill and Joe Biden’s immediate signing of executive orders and actions – Russian authorities detained the Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny upon his return to Moscow from Germany.

Western reactions to his arrest were relatively moderate, although in the future the “curious” case of Alexey Navalny could have a serious impact not only on relations between Russia and the West, but also on Russian parliamentary elections that should take place no later than September 19.

Throughout history, Russia has been ruled by tsars, monarchs, and boyars members of the highest rank of feudal aristocracies. That was even the case during the Soviet time when the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was a de facto tsar, while members of the Central Committee played the role of boyars. In modern Russia, President Vladimir Putin is often seen as a tsar.

However, Western journalists, analysts, and experts on Russia often neglect the significance of “boyars” – powerful oligarchs and members of the country’s security apparatus.

Alexey Navalny, who allegedly had been poisoned in August 2020 while on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, hardly poses a serious threat to President Putin, especially given that his approval ratings are very low. However, his political activities may significantly jeopardize the positions of certain “boyars” who are centers of power within the Russian ruling elite.

Although the Kremlin accused Navalny of working with the CIA, Russian authorities detained the opposition figure over the alleged violations of his 2014 suspended prison sentence for embezzlement. In other words, the very fact that the Kremlin did not attempt to prove that Navalny is a “foreign agent” clearly suggests that the ultimate goal of the Russian elite may not be to completely eliminate the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner from political life.

This is not the first time that Navalny is behind bars. He already served several stints in jail in recent years for organizing anti-Kremlin protests. For instance, in 2015, he served 15 days for unlawfully distributing leaflets on the Moscow metro, while in February 2014 he was placed under house arrest and prohibited from communicating with anyone other than his family, lawyers, and investigators.

Unlike him, former Russian intelligence officer and the Kremlin critic Vladimir Kvachkov spent nine years in jail after he allegedly attempted to assassinate Russian politician and businessman Anatoly Chubais in 2005. However, given that Kvachkov has been very critical of the West, none of the world leaders have demanded his immediate release.

Vladimir Putin would unlikely benefit from Navalny’s murder, since in the eyes of the West and Russian opposition voters the Kremlin critic would become another “martyr,” or a “victim of the regime” such as whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky and the accomplished journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Still, for the West Putin will likely remain a political boogeyman, and Navalny’s arrest will be used as an additional instrument against Moscow.

New sanctions against Russia from the U.S. and the E.U. are inevitable.

In other words, new sanctions against Russia from the U.S. and the E.U. are inevitable. In the case of the United States, restrictions will be connected not only with Navalny but will likely be constantly expended, since sanctions are part of a permanent process generated by the ongoing new Cold War.

The Kremlin has already said that it will not take notice of calls from a number of Western leaders for the release of Alexey Navalny. Policy-makers in Russia are quite aware that Navalny’s release would mean his de facto victory over the system.

At the same time, it would mean that the Kremlin has succumbed to Western pressure. Thus, if the anti-corruption activist remains in prison, Moscow is expected to face a growing list of demands from the U.S. and the E.U., and it is not improbable that Russia will have to suspend or even cancel the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline due to U.S. sabotage.

Such actions will undoubtedly have an impact on Russian domestic affairs, although they will unlikely seriously affect Putin’s popularity. However, the ruling United Russia party is already widely unpopular, which creates possibilities and additional room for maneuver for Navalny’s Russia of the Future party and other so-called non-systemic opposition groups.

The two major systemic opposition parties – the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CP) – are expected to pass the five per cent election threshold easily and keep playing a role of the formal opposition that occasionally criticizes certain Russian officials, but never President Putin. In other words, the regime of “controlled democracy,” whose ultimate goal is elections without a change of power, will almost certainly remain intact.

On the other hand, if Navalny’s Russia of the Future party wins some seats in the Russian Duma (Parliament), Putin will have to make compromises and concessions to Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Gennady Zyuganov, the leaders of the LDPR and CP respectively, in order to neutralize Navalny’s influence in the Duma. However, there is still a long way for the Kremlin’s critic to become part of the Russian mainstream political life.

Since Russia is witnessing another Perestroika, Navalny, even imprisoned, can pose a serious threat not to Vladimir Putin whose approval ratings are still high, but to certain structures within the Russian elite – be they from the security apparatus or from powerful oligarchy – who may aim to redistribute power and wealth.

The number of emails commencing with or entailing the phrase “we live in unprecedented times” or a variation of this has surely mounted to unsustainable levels since the onset of COVID-19 as a global crisis. But it is no exaggeration to say that history has reached a point of imminence, a point where the viral pandemic, the failure of neoliberal democracies, and the smartphone-to-internet-to-media-exposure of police brutality has necessitated a climax that has been building for some centuries. The murder of George Floyd links at the last bolts of a long chain of events that is fastened to the colonial empire.

The problem is now clearly systemic, has always been systemic, but its institutional hold is being foregrounded. The new politics of antiracism is not, in fact, new. In Ibram X Kendi’s 2019 book How To be an Antiracist, an Amazon top-seller on the subject of race, Kendi defines that “‘Racist policy’ says exactly what the problem is and where the problem is. ‘Institutional racism’ and ‘structural racism’ and ‘systemic racism’ are redundant. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic.” The nature of the power-structures that uphold racist policy is not the subject here, but that this policy is as much a problem of cultural weight as political.

Even so, the move for equity in representation is valuable. The movements and decisions of galleries, publishers, and other cultural institutions are in this way no less acts of policy than those of the state. What the galleries, the publishers, the film studios police, is not the rights of individuals in relation to the law, but the way individuals think about their rights. When a gallery or civil building is stocked with neoclassical evocations of Columbus and other colonial figures, with the works of white-American and white-European artists, the presence of “Black artists” and “artists of color” is very often represented in a skewed pop-urban way. And the political dialectic here – of featured guest, of novelty, of difference – has the effect of distancing. If this does not fade when the patron leaves the gallery, when the book is put down, when it continues to govern: it is a cultural policy.

In 2019, Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus was installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. The 43-foot tall cement composite sculpture became one of the most visited installations in the gallery’s 20-year history. Nothing in its curatorship suggested novelty: it was left unadorned by signage in the central space of the hall, an immense monument for the memory of trans-Atlantic slavery, against the legacy of the empires it built. Its presence was calm, quiet, reflective, its message clear. This seems an example of a cultural policy that has moved beyond its blurry definitions, a resolute artistic display without pretense. The artwork was demolished this year.

Black-authored books have surged in sales. Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the first Black-British-authored book to ever top the U.K. bestseller list. But it remains consistently difficult, even in literary circles, to find individuals with an awareness of African authors from a region with such a rich literary output as Nigeria, beyond Chinua Achebe and more recently Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When British and American publishing houses remain predominantly white, it does not take a wide stretch of the imagination to feel a sting of situational profiteering.

As recently as 2018, controversial author Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life also topped bestseller lists. The allegedly reluctant Canadian star-theorist is known for his refutation of postmodern gender politics, and his denial of the concepts of patriarchy, Islamophobia, and white privilege – all points he aims to disprove through philosophical logic. Unsurprisingly, he has often been canonized by the alt-right, a complex, clustered movement defined by narcissism and violent acts of white supremacy.