By: Jafe Arnold
Italian anti-globalization activists from La Terra dei Padri bring together Nuova Resistenza – Italia and their own cadre for a presentation from CSS Director J. Flores
n May 6th, 2017 at la Terra dei Padri in Modena, Italy, Joaquin Flores gave a presentation on one of the most discussed – yet least understood – topics in contemporary politics, one that in so many reveals the importance of the nexus between the People and the geopolitical space in which the People dwells – Populism. The presentation focused on the differences between the varying types of populist ideologies and movements in East and West, grounding the discussion in a series of relevant examples of respective practical, contemporary manifestations.
Although, etymologically speaking, the term “Populism” dates back to Roman times, the subjects of the presentation were the modern and contemporary movements emanating from the popular uprisings that stemmed from 1848.
The idea, broken down to its bare essentials, is that – in spite of sharing the same, politically loaded term – Liberal and Communitarian Populism occupy opposite ends of the economic, cultural, and political arena. Continue reading
By: Andrew Korybko
he Center for Syncretic Studies is pleased to present another original academic piece, in full, from our Russian collaborator, Mr. Andrew Korybko. This analytic monograph was a previously in-house submission to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. 
he rise of the protest movement in Donbass (and other regions of historical Novorossiya) which resulted in the proclamation of the People’s Republics, was a reaction to the coup d’etat in Kiev and aggressive Russophobic policies. It is no accident that the first legislative step of the new Ukrainian authorities was abolishing the language law, ratified in 2003 by the Verkhovna Rada in line with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which effectively pushed the Russian language out of the educational and cultural-information space of Ukraine. However, the popular movement in Donbass at the end of winter and spring 2014 also had deeper motives. The proclamation of the people’s republics of Donbass was a logical reaction to the dismantling of Ukrainian statehood as it had been formed in the framework of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The new Ukrainian authorities violated the tacit social contract of loyalty to the existing state in exchange for a guaranteed minimum of cultural-linguistic rights for the regions of the “South-East” (historical Novorossiya).
y including the processes and event-related phenomenon “Russian Spring,” “war,” and “statecraft” in the title of this article, I am by no means implying any kind of intellectual provocation or attempting to realize a political order. On the contrary, the intended position here can be associated with the existence of millions of people who have in one way or another engaged (during wartime) in the creation of a completely distinct region, a will and fate of more than just one century tied to the fate of the Russian world. 
By: Alexander Gegalchiy – translated by Jafe Arnold
n the below, second installment in CSS’ new series exploring syncretic-oriented themes among the “new-old” left, particularly in the Czech Republic, we are joined by Alexander Gegalchiy, who in July 2016 posed a series of hot topics to Czech communist ideologist Dr. Josef Skala to provide his original commentary. The resultant monologue contains a number of pertinent undertones, including a critique of the modern “left”, an approach to a socialist agenda from both a “pan-European” and “sovereigntist” perspective, a recognition of the changing superstructural manifestation of proletarian issues to involve formerly “reactionary” formations of the “right,” as well as a hint that so-called progressive notions as free migration and multiculturalism in fact have quite different origins and consequences for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist motives. 
syncreticstudies.com 