The world is undergoing a profound set of digital disruptions that are changing the nature of how governments counter dissent and assert control over their countries. While increasing numbers of people rely primarily or exclusively on online platforms, authoritarian regimes have concurrently developed a formidable array of technological capabilities to constrain and repress their citizens. In The Rise of Digital Repression, Steven Feldstein documents how the emergence of advanced digital tools bring new dimensions to political repression. Presenting new field research from Thailand, the Philippines, and Ethiopia, he investigates the goals, motivations, and drivers of these digital tactics. Feldstein further highlights how governments pursue digital strategies based on a range of factors: ongoing levels of repression, political leadership, state capacity, and technological development. The international community, he argues, is already seeing glimpses of what the frontiers of repression look like. For instance, Chinese authorities have brought together mass surveillance, censorship, DNA collection, and artificial intelligence to enforce their directives in Xinjiang. As many of these trends go global, Feldstein shows how this has major implications for democracies and civil society activists around the world. A compelling synthesis of how anti-democratic leaders harness powerful technology to advance their political objectives, The Rise of Digital Repression concludes by laying out innovative ideas and strategies for civil society and opposition movements to respond to the digital autocratic wave.

'Soros has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy' Financial Times George Soros - universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics and investment success, and now under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites around the world - gives an impassioned defence of his core belief in open society. George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

Since the 1970s, there have been three challenges to traditional, homogeneous 'national' identities across the Western world: political and socioeconomic inequality; neoliberal globalisation; and more diverse, multicultural societies. As in the US and elsewhere in Western Europe, the decline of an old, masculinised national identity has now begun to open a new, dark era for Britain. Since the 'war on terror' was added to the mix, 'others' in Britain have been brutally demonised. Muslims, routinely presented as the source of society's ills, are subjected to both symbolic and actual violence. Deep- seated and structurally racialised norms amplify the isolation and alienation impeding Muslim integration. Both these 'left-behind' Muslims and white-British groups who perceive themselves as the true nation are under pressure from ongoing geopolitical concerns in the Muslim world, as well as widening divisions at home. Tahir Abbas argues that, in this context, the symbiotic intersections between Islamophobia and radicalisation intensify and expand. His book is a warning of the world that results: a rise in hate crime, the institutionalisation of Islamophobia, and the normalisation of war and conflict.

This is an in-depth study of the ethnic German minority in the Serbian Banat (Southeast Europe) and its experiences under German occupation in World War II. Mirna Zakic argues that the Banat Germans exercised great agency within the constraints imposed on them by Nazi ideology, with its expectations that ethnic Germans would collaborate with the invading Nazis. The book examines the incentives that the Nazis offered to collaboration and social dynamics within the Banat German community - between their Nazified leadership and the rank and file - as well as the various and ever-more damning forms collaboration took. The Banat Germans provided administrative and economic aid to the Nazi war effort, and took part in Nazi military operations in Yugoslav lands, the Holocaust and Aryanization. They ruled the Banat on the Nazis' behalf between 1941 and 1944, yet their wartime choices led ultimately to their disenfranchisement and persecution following the Nazis' defeat.

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Niqi Thomas, a young Czech Australian woman, returns with her father to Prague, to visit her ancestral city and to discover her grandfather, who was always 'present' in the family, but whom she had never met -- Karel Goliath-Gorovsky, the Czech Solzhenitsyn. For Niqi, it became a journey of self-discovery, through discovery of her grandfather. A rebel from birth, Czech lawyer, Karel Goliath-Gorovsky, was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag north of the Arctic Circle, because of his relentless political idealism. His potent black humour enabled him to survive those seventeen darkest years of his political life, which spanned from the brutal excesses of Stalin to the liberating hope of Dubcek. His son, abandoned by his father at the age of one, developed his own black humour to survive Mischling status under the Nazi occupation, the Stalinist regime in his homeland, Czechoslovakia, and flight to Australia -- his new land of opportunity where some people crossed the street when they saw a 'wog' approaching. This family narrative includes a subversive retake on the biblical Goliath, who appears several times through the book, connecting Goliath-Gorovsky with the biblical character, who paradoxically, was killed by his Hebrew ancestors. This is a literary treatment of national and personal history, which explores the effect of war and displacement upon the exiled individuals and their families. Throughout the book, the continually reinforced image is of the individual standing against the juggernaut of dictatorship and bureaucracy, and resolutely refusing to fear.

Recent revelations about government surveillance of citizens have led to questions about whether there should be better defined boundaries around privacy. Should government officials have the right to specifically target certain groups for extended surveillance? United States municipal, territorial, and federal agencies have investigated religious groups since the nineteenth century. While critics of contemporary mass surveillance tend to invoke the infringement of privacy, the mutual protection of religion and public expression by the First Amendment positions them, along with religious expression, comfortably within in the public sphere. This book analyzes government monitoring of Mormons of the Territory of Utah in the 1870s and 1880s for polygamy, Quakers of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from the 1940s to the 1960s for communist infiltration, and Muslims of Brooklyn, New York, from 2002 to 2013 for suspected terrorism. Government agencies in these case studies attempted to understand how their religious beliefs might shape their actions in the public sphere. It follows that government agents did not just observe these communities, but they probed precisely what constituted religion itself alongside shifting legal and political definitions relative to their respective time periods. Together, these case studies form a new framework for discussions of the historical and contemporary monitoring of religion. They show that government surveillance is less predictable and monolithic than we might assume. Therefore, this book will be of great interest to scholars of United States religion, history, and politics, as well as surveillance and communication studies.

'I thought I had a pretty good sense of how colonialism shapes modern society, but Dr Davy has shown me that understanding these things is a lifetime's work. In the absence of time to read everything, you could not ask for a more eloquent guide than this book. Essential' - Sathnam Sanghera An eye-opening book about how societies are designed to support the status of those in power at the destructive expense of those without it. Read it and take responsibility. ECOLOGICAL OPPRESSION In 1958, China declared war on sparrows, destroying its own crops and contributing to the deaths of more than 10 million people. ECONOMIC OPPRESSION In the nineteenth century, the Shuar people of Ecuador were driven by economic necessity to procure shrunken heads for the Western curio market. The bloody wars that ensued nearly destroyed their society. EDUCATIONAL OPPRESSION There have been fifty-five prime ministers of Great Britain, of whom forty-eight have been privately educated, creating a society built by and for the privileged. These are just some of the stories in this remarkable book that illustrate the key factors that allow societies to create and sustain oppressive systems. Some are historical. Others have played out right before our eyes over the last decade. All are rooted in the systems in which we all participate. Together they represent the layers of systematic, often insidious oppression that make up the world today.

The United Nations has called violence against women "the most pervasive, yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world" and there is a long-established history of the systematic victimization of women by the state during times of peace and conflict. This book contributes to the established literature on women, gender and crime and the growing research on state crime and extends the discussion of violence against women to include the role and extent of crime and violence perpetrated by the state. State Crime, Women and Gender examines state-perpetrated violence against women in all its various forms. Drawing on case studies from around the world, patterns of state-perpetrated violence are examined as it relates to women's victimization, their role as perpetrators, resistors of state violence, as well as their engagement as professionals in the international criminal justice system. From the direct involvement of Condaleeza Rice in the United States-led war on terror, to the women of Egypt's Arab Spring Uprising, to Afghani poetry as a means to resist state-sanctioned patriarchal control, case examples are used to highlight the pervasive and enduring problem of state-perpetrated violence against women. The exploration of topics that have not previously been addressed in the criminological literature, such as women as perpetrators of state violence and their role as willing consumers who reinforce and replicate the existing state-sanctioned patriarchal status quo, makes State Crime, Women and Gender a must-read for students and scholars engaged in the study of state crime, victimology and feminist criminology.

During the 1980s hundreds of thousands of refugees fled civil wars and death squads in Central America, seeking safe haven in the United States. Instead, thousands found themselves incarcerated in immigration prisons--abused by their jailors and deprived of the most basic legal and human rights. Drawing on declassified government documents and interviews with prison officials, INS staff, and more than 3,000 Central American refugees, Robert S. Kahn reveals how the Department of Justice and its dependent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, intentionally violated federal laws and regulations to deny protection to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala who were fleeing wars financed by U.S. military aid.Kahn portrays the chilling reality of daily life in immigration prisons in Texas, Arizona, and Louisiana. Behind the razor-topped prison walls, refugees were not simply denied political asylum; they were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, and sometimes tortured by prison guards."Other People's Blood" traces the ten-year legal struggle by volunteer prison workers and attorneys to stop the abuse of refugees and to force the Justice Department to concede in court that its treatment of immigrants had violated U.S. laws and the Geneva Convention for over a decade. Yet the case of "American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh, " which overturned more judicial decisions than any other case in U.S. history, is still virtually unknown in the United States, and today the debate over illegal immigration is being carried on with little awareness of the government policies that contributed so shamefully to this country's immigration problems.

This book examines the human consequences (individual, social, cultural, and economic) of civil war and political repression in Castilleja del Campo, a town in southern Spain with barely more than 600 inhabitants today. The narrow geographical focus allows for a coherent chronological narrative with relevance to current public issues such as the unequal distribution of wealth, political polarisation, the violation of human rights, government surveillance of civilian populations, and extra-legal detentions, torture and executions. The declarations of eyewitnesses are complemented by personal documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, and documents from the town's municipal archive and other archives in the province of Seville. The work presents the events from the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931 onward from multiple points of view and analyses the interactions among a gallery of characters: Republican and pro-Franco mayors and councilmen; union leaders and affiliates; members of the fascist-inspired Spanish Falange; the schoolteacher; the priest; widows and orphans of the men who were shot; administrators and managers of the estates of the nobles; shaved women paraded through the streets; combatants; day labourers; civil guards; black marketeers; prisoners. Placing these characters and events in their provincial, regional, and national context, the town becomes a microcosm that reflects the experience of Spain during those traumatic years. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

Prison on Wheels is a remarkable diary kept by a young Hungarian woman, Eva Danos, during sixteen horror-filled days and nights of deportation by the Nazis in 1945. It is an eyewitness report of a 700-kilometer rail journey from Ravensbruck, north of Berlin, to Burgau, near Munich, one of the countless such operations that took place within Nazi Germany's vast network of labor- and concentration camps. What makes this account of particular interest is the fact that the author had been a member of a small, underground group in Budapest led by Gitta Mallasz (Talking with Angels), and her fellow-prisoners included some of these same comrades. Their humanity helped to sustain them.

'The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was ground-breaking in the UK and this book marks the fiftieth anniversary of its successful path to the statute book. The act was not without controversy and was fiercely fought over by the likes of Mary Whitehouse and right-wing reactionary Tories who in typical style fought to impose their narrow-minded blue-rinse views. Now, in 2017, Western Europe leads the way in LGBT rights. Thirteen out of the twenty one countries that have legalised same-sex marriage worldwide are situated in Europe; a further thirteen European countries have legalised civil unions or other forms of recognition for same-sex couples. This civilised state of affairs was not always the case and in Politics, Society and Homosexuality in Post-War Britain: The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 and its Significance Keith Dockray charts in a short and pithy manner the difficult path the Bill followed and records those who supported it and were against it.

A FAMILY STORY AND THE TALE OF A NATION. Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - weaves a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own life and that of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. 'Engrossing...a remarkable story' Sunday Times Here, through the sweeping lens of his own and his father's life, Ai Weiwei tells an epic tale of China over the last 100 years, from the Cultural Revolution to the modern-day Chinese Communist Party. Here is the story of a childhood spent in desolate exile after his father, Ai Qing, once China's most celebrated poet, fell foul of the authorities. Here is his move to America as a young man and his return to China, his rise from unknown to art-world superstar and international rights activist. Here is his extraordinary account of how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. It's the story of a father and a son, of exceptional creativity and passionate belief, and of how two indomitable spirits enabled the world to understand their country. 'A story of inherited resilience and self-determination' Observer 'A majestic and exquisitely serious masterpiece about his China... One of the great voices of our time' Andrew Solomon 'Intimate, unflinching...an instant classic' Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition

Who Killed My Father is the story of a tough guy - the story of the little boy I never was. The story of my father. 'What a beautiful book' MAX PORTER In Who Killed My Father, Edouard Louis explores key moments in his father's life, and the tenderness and disconnects in their relationship. Told with the fire of a writer determined on social justice, and with the compassion of a loving son, the book urgently and brilliantly engages with issues surrounding masculinity, class, homophobia, shame and social poverty. It unflinchingly takes aim at systems that disadvantage those they seek to exclude - those who have their expectations, hopes and passions crushed by a society which gives them little thought. 'Edouard Louis is the vanguard of France's new generation of political writers' Evening Standard

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, uncovers a systematic campaign to persecute Assange. He reveals that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.

North Korea is Orwell's 1984 made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity.

After the death of the country's great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, famine descended: people stumbled over dead bodies in the street and ate tree bark to survive. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea's third largest city.

From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country.

Endorsement In this study on the evolution of the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay (centred around the city of Port Elizabeth), Mcebisi Ndletyana presents a cogent analysis of how a liberation movement is impacted upon by transition into political office. The reader is taken into the interplay among issues such as pedestrian efforts to meet popular aspirations, organisational inertia and the impact of personalities. Beyond 'the what' and 'the how', this book uniquely delves into the reasons behind the ignominious decline of the ANC in a region historically endowed with an excellent corps of cadres. If 'sins of incumbency' may sound cliched, this book brings it to life through an analysis of the greed of a political leadership without scruples and the rapacious impact of procurement-based capitalist class formation. The rot originates in ANC structures - akin to suicidal conduct, even after electoral defeat. Ndletyana's canvass may be local; but the lessons are universal. The book is as much about the past as it is about future. -Joel Netshitenzhe, Executive Director and Board Vice-Chairperson of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has undergone dramatic changes over the last thirty years. Historically a hotbed of political activism, Port Elizabeth is an illuminating site. In 2016, observers greeted with shock the ANC's loss of the city, one of its crown jewels and a party stronghold. Yet, as this book shows through its analysis of power and politics in Port Elizabeth, the party's political decline was authored by its own hand. This book studies the ANC at a local level over a 28-year period and informs what is now playing out at a national level. The book traces four stages that characterise the party's post-1990 life in Port Elizabeth: rebuilding; ascension to political office; political decline; and adaptation to new contexts where its power was lost or is under threat. Ironically, the efforts to rebuild the ANC post-unbanning lie at the root of the decline, because they were misdirected. Buoyed to office by their party's heroic stature, the book shows how some party leaders in Port Elizabeth abused power for financial gain. A generally weak regulatory environment allowed abuse to become endemic. Service delivery failed, and corrosion of moral leadership set in. As the party failed to stem the morass, internal democracy gave way to a strongman syndrome and the party deteriorated into an instrument that provided access to, and dispensed, patronage. Stunningly, electoral loss did not trigger reforms. As the ANC battled to re-make itself outside of government, some leaders even recruited the underworld to settle contests and secure access to patronage. Port Elizabeth did not see a 'new dawn'. This evidence-based book is an enthralling account of how the ANC rebuilt itself into a governing organisation, but failed to cohere into an institution of democracy, becoming instead an amalgam of competing factions for patronage. Readers will judge how much Port Elizabeth is a microcosm of the entire ANC.

The war on terror has brought to light troubling actions by the United States government which many claim amount to torture. But as this book shows, state-sanctioned violence and degrading, cruel, and unusual punishments have a long and contentious history in the nation.

Organized around five broad thematic periods in American history--colonial America and the early republic; slavery and the frontier; imperialism, Jim Crow, and World Wars I and II; the Cold War, Vietnam, and police torture; and the war on terror--this annotated documentary history traces the low and high points of official attitudes toward state violence. Robert M. Pallitto provides a critical introduction, historical context, and brief commentary and then lets the documents speak for themselves. The result is a nearly 400-year history that traces the continuities and changes in debates over the meaning of torture and state violence in the U.S. and shows where state actions and policies have pushed and exceeded constitutional and international normative limits.

Rigorously researched--and sometimes chilling--this volume is the first comprehensive reference work on state violence and torture in the U.S.

Since Henry James there have been many impressions of an American abroad and we have become used to seeing the world 'under western eyes'. But what about seeing the world from a very different perspective - not from the standpoint of an affluent westerner, or even an anglicised foreigner like Conrad, but through the eyes of an Iranian who has not had the privilege of taking freedom for granted. Iran itself comes under close scrutiny as the author tries to come to terms with daily life in a country where freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom to wear the clothing of one's choice does not exist. Imagine, for instance, visiting a tourist town for a holiday break and being picked up by the police because you are not a local, and then inadvertently finding yourself with a rope around your neck in a public execution? The book is a real page-turner as one follows the author's frequent bids for freedom, finding himself repeatedly in a prison cell, punting across a turbulent river to enter Greece without a visa, finding temporary solace and comfort in the arms of a young prostitute in Bulgaria, suffering the indignity of being treated as a slave by the high-minded bosses in Japan, and running away from the regular police raids in Cyprus. But not all is doom and gloom - by no means, for apart from the author's downright honesty, sharing and confiding his innermost thoughts, there is his irresistible humour that never fails to see the funny side in the events and the people that he describes. With its unique perspective of what it is like to be down and out, and sometimes affluent too, in Iran and the countries the author visits, this book provides an unforgettable experience.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account of the unforgettable events since his release that produced at last a free, multiracial democracy in South Africa. To millions of people around the world, Nelson Mandela stands, as no other living figure does, for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil.

'Soros has become a standard bearer for liberal democracy' Financial Times George Soros - universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics and investment success, and now under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites around the world - gives an impassioned defence of his core belief in open society. George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

George Soros is among the world's most prominent public figures. He is one of the history's most successful investors and his philanthropy, led by the Open Society Foundations, has donated over $14 billion to promote democracy and human rights in more than 120 countries. But in recent years, Soros has become the focus of sustained right-wing attacks in the United States and around the world based on his commitment to open society, progressive politics and his Jewish background. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros offers a compendium of his philosophy, a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of an open society: freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea. In this age of nationalism, populism, anti-Semitism, and the spread of authoritarian governments, Soros's mission to support open societies is as urgent as it is important.

Protectors of Pluralism argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups from purification campaigns. Robert Braun utilizes a geo-referenced dataset of Jewish evasion in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Holocaust to assess the minority hypothesis. Spatial statistics and archival work reveal that Protestants were more likely to rescue Jews in Catholic regions of the Low Countries, while Catholics facilitated evasion in Protestant areas. Post-war testimonies and secondary literature demonstrate the importance of minority groups for rescue in other countries during the Holocaust as well as other episodes of mass violence, underlining how the local position of church communities produces networks of assistance, rather than something inherent to any religion itself. This book makes an important contribution to the literature on political violence, social movements, altruism and religion, applying a range of social science methodologies and theories that shed new light on the Holocaust.

This vivid diary of life in a Japanese internment camp during World War II examines the moral challenges encountered in conditions of confinement and deprivation.

'Beware of Small States' wrote Mikhail Bukanin in 1870. He could have meant Lebanon: a sectarian state no bigger than Wales that has become battleground for one of the defining conflicts of twentieth-century history. Throughout its short existence, it has been attacked, invaded, occupied or interfered with to serve the political interests of foreign powers, resulting a series of devastating wars and crises. To understand Lebanon's history is to understand the history of the entire region - and, with the rise of Hizbullah, it has come to assume a disproportionate, dangerous power of its own. Iran and Israel now face each other in the hills of south Lebanon. David Hirst, author of The Gun and the Olive Branch, is a hugely respected commentator on the Arab-Israeli crisis. In a masterly narrative, he gives a much-needed, comprehensive history of the country and its conflicts, culminating with the recent war in Gaza and its fallout in Lebanon. Powerful and often moving, Beware of Small States is a magisterial book, essential reading for understanding Lebanon or the current political climate of the Middle East.