authors
- Javier Ezkurdia
- James Anderson
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1155Keywords:
Censorship, right-wing extremism, oppression, hegemonic transition, surveillance, world systemsAbstract
The online censorship and subsequent arrest of scholar-activist Walden Bello is the latest example of a disturbing trend at a time of hegemonic crisis. To understand how a respected scholar ended up in prison and in serious legal trouble on a very weak bill, we need to dissect the full implications of this case and relate it to the ongoing structural changes within the world system—namely, the decline of the United States as a global hegemon, the rise of far-right authoritarianism as a popular political framework, and the use of institutions and technologies developed by authoritarian regimes under liberal-democratic rule for the purpose of social control in a time of change. The crisis offers an opportunity to reconfigure systemic arrangements through coordinated networks of solidarity characterized by forms of organization and relationships that embody prerogatives and values distinct from those that prevail in the modern world system and from those that reproduce the world capitalist economy ; most likely to have authoritarian tendencies in the coming decades. In conclusion, we offer some of the possibilities that the global left has for the coming decades in terms of grand coalitions aimed at changing the structure of the world system at large.
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2023-03-21
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Ezcurdia, J., & Anderson, J. (2023). Reflections on Walden Bello: The Persecution of the Global Left versus Intermunicipal Solidarity During the Hegemonic Crisis.Journal of World Systems Research,29(1), 193–211. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2023.1155
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Vol. 29 No. 1 (2023): Winter/Spring 2023
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