From Hong Kong to Kashmir to the US, Authoritarianism Is Rising

https://truthout.org/articles/from-hong-kong-to-kashmir-to-the-us-authoritarianism-is-rising/"Over the past couple weeks, the global pattern of authoritarianism has become particularly visible, and particularly gut-wrenching. Global politics is changing quickly, with political discourse becoming increasingly degraded and dangerous in one country after the next.  In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party boasted of the mass book burning and destruction that it has, apparently, carried out since the failed coup in 2016, trying to literally eliminate the words of its political opponents. The numbers are staggering: Over 300,000 books have been removed from schools and libraries in order to be physically destroyed.  In China, the crackdown against protests in Hong Kong, in which huge numbers of residents have protested an attempt to impose an extradition treaty with the Chinese mainland government, intensified. Gangs, presumably working with a nod-and-a-wink of approval from China’s central authorities, descended on protesters and beat them indiscriminately. Then, as the protests continued apace, the People’s Liberation Army released a training video which, in great specificity, detailed how it was prepared to crush urban protests. Reports began surfacing at about that same time of thousands of Chinese troops amassed on Hong Kong’s borders, ready for the order to begin operations against the island dissenters — though the veracity of those claims remains unclear."