Latest news with #discontent
New York Times
03-08-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
How the George Floyd Protests Changed America, for Better and Worse
SUMMER OF OUR DISCONTENT: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse, by Thomas Chatterton Williams Over the last several decades, the United States has occasionally experienced dramatic transformations during compressed stretches of time. In 1968, the twin assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, separated by merely two months, yielded broad disillusionment. Six years later, as the simmering Watergate scandal boiled over and prompted President Nixon's resignation, many Americans adopted a posture of deep distrust toward elected officials. And, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, inaugurated an enduring era of anxiety over safety and security. In these critical periods, an existing American order declined and a new paradigm ascended. In 'Summer of Our Discontent,' Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that the United States witnessed another such epoch-defining moment five years ago. The inflection point, he contends, arrived on May 25, 2020, when Derek Chauvin slowly extinguished George Floyd's life outside the Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis. The ensuing indignation over Floyd's murder, alongside the then-raging pandemic and extensive lockdown orders, fused to generate the largest protest movement in our country's history. That activism at once marked and marred the American psyche, Williams insists, as 'the residues of the normative revolution of 2020 have lingered.' In his view, a grave shift in mores and attitudes fomented a racialized 'wokeness' on the left that, in turn, generated a ferocious backlash on the right, bequeathing our current, anguished hour. Williams is right that the last several years have brought unusually intense ferment to American racial politics, and that the turmoil packed into what we might call the Long George Floyd Moment — beginning in the Obama years and stretching into Joe Biden's presidency — deserves rigorous scrutiny. A staff writer at The Atlantic and prominent commentator on race and identity, Williams would seem well suited to explore how these recent seismic shifts have jolted American society. Amid a sea of intellectual orthodoxy, he admirably stands out for his willingness to pursue independent lines of thought, no small feat given his combustible topic. Much of his recent journalism can be construed as a broad-gauged expansion of the project initiated in his last book, 'Self-Portrait in Black and White' (2019), which denounced what he viewed as America's pathological fixation on race and racial categories. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Disappointment as Drake's final Wireless show ends after 40 minutes
After gaining social media traction over the weekend, fans quickly realised it signalled the end of a disappointedly short headline set. Drake already fell victim to the 22:30 curfew on Friday night, with organisers cutting both his and Lauryn Hill's microphones off and replacing show graphics with information on local train stations. He did a better job of keeping timings in check during Saturday's show, but it is unknown whether it was his decision to start his Sunday evening set 45 minutes before the event was due to end. Fans around us expressed their discontent as they shuffled to the exits, with many unaware of the strict local curfews that operate in the park. Some even told us they had spent longer queuing to get into the venue than they'd seen Drake perform. Whilst attempting to leave, we were alerted to scenes of distress at the accessible exit. Fans could be seen and heard pleading with security to let them leave after being told they would have to be held in a restrictive space for ten minutes or until other security gave them the green light. This led to hysteria, with fans attacking the barriers, shouting and pleading that they were disabled and needed to leave. Wireless Festival's organisers have been contacted by the BBC for comment.
CNA
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNA
Insight 2025/2026 - Indonesia's Brain Drain
46:47 Min Insight 2025/2026 This year, the hashtag #KaburAjaDulu trended on Indonesian social media. It means "Just Run Away First", a call to young Indonesians to leave the country. What is behind their discontent? Insight 2025/2026 About the show: INSIGHT is a one hour long hard current affairs programme that aims to open the minds of viewers to the political, social and economic realities facing today's societies. Every week, a team of producers will bring forward compelling arguments, impartial analysis and penetrating insights into topical issues of the day. What's on the menu are topics of concerns that have set the region talking as well as changing trends and events which impact Asia and beyond. INSIGHT will get you closer to the heart of the issues with insightful interviews and engaging conversations, bringing to you the real story from behind extraordinary experiences.
CNA
26-06-2025
- Politics
- CNA
What's Coming Up - Insight On Why Some Young Indonesians Want Out of Their Country
This year, the hashtag #KaburAjaDulu trended on Indonesian social media. It means "Just Run Away First", a call to young Indonesians to leave the country. Insight finds out what is behind their discontent.
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Why does Nigel Farage get to play British politics on easy mode?
In today's rundown, discontented Britain, politics is supposed to be hard. Deep national problems need to be solved, but voters are impatient and often contemptuous of politicians. Past mistakes are rarely forgiven. Promises are treated with scepticism. The costs of policies are scrutinised and often resented. Attempts to set out priorities, such as the government's spending review this week, face endless questioning. Disagreements inside political parties, meanwhile, are seen as signs of weakness and division. MPs with outside interests are seen as greedy and uncommitted. As for the minority who survive these pressures long enough to have a significant career – the electorate usually grows bored with them. Few retain its interest beyond a dozen or so years. Nigel Farage first became an elected politician in 1999. Since then, disillusionment with his profession has intensified to probably unprecedented levels. Yet few, if any, of the unforgiving rules of British politics seem to apply to him, or to his latest vehicle, Reform UK. They appear to be playing politics on easy mode. His Commons appearances are infrequent, his extracurricular activities prolific, his party's internal culture chaotic and its plans to 'fix' Britain largely theoretical and uncosted. His one concrete policy achievement is Brexit, now widely considered disastrous or disappointing. In a country often said to have had enough of metropolitan privilege, he is a wealthy, privately educated southern Englishman who used to work in the City of London. In a country supposedly sick of political rancour, he consistently falls out with colleagues. In a country that supposedly wants politicians to be more modest and better at apologies, his public manner is self-satisfied and unrepentant. Yet since winning only five seats at last year's election, Reform UK has increasingly dominated the political conversation. Farage's constant speeches and press conferences, complete with self-congratulatory smiles and jokes, receive huge coverage for a tiny Westminster party. Few Labour or Tory policies feel designed without actual or potential Reform voters in mind. And as the traditional main parties have fallen back in the polls, Reform has overtaken them. Winning power has become a possibility. No new British party has ever done this. Even Labour, with the trade union movement behind it, took a quarter of a century from its foundation to reach government. Why is Reform seemingly finding politics so easy? The usual way of explaining its rise is through the troubled state of the country, the main parties' inadequacies and Farage's talent for exploiting political and social crises. These have all played a big part, but so have less examined factors. The design of our political system is one of them. Supposedly hostile to new parties, it can, in fact, be too hospitable to them if their popularity is not yet reflected in parliament, and they can, therefore, avoid taking on tricky Commons roles. Because Reform is not the official opposition, Farage doesn't have to ask regular prime minister's questions, and doesn't have to build a coherent critique of the government – and thus also expose himself to its potentially damaging counterattacks. While Kemi Badenoch struggles to rubbish Keir Starmer's government, and Starmer rubbishes past Tory governments in reply, Farage can sit back, seemingly above the Westminster squabbles many voters dislike. An MP for just a year, he barely has a Commons or constituency record that opponents can attack. He and Reform can act as the opposition in an amorphous and potent rather than narrowly parliamentary sense: as a repository for the hopes and fantasies of a wide range of voters that the country can be rescued – 'reformed' – by a radically different government. Something a little like this has happened before, with the creation and brief ascendancy of the Social Democratic party (SDP) in the early 1980s. Allied with the Liberals, the SDP won byelections and surged ahead of Labour and the Tories in the polls. Some predicted the SDP would replace Labour, as some predict Reform will replace the Tories now. Yet unlike Reform, the SDP had been founded by familiar Commons figures, all former Labour ministers, and this connection to the mainstream meant that its fresh, insurgent feel could not be sustained. Its popularity faded. Less associated with Westminster, Reform may prove harder for the established parties to suppress or co-opt. Farage also enjoys an advantage not available to the SDP: strong rightwing media support. In order to get the politics it wants, or to obstruct the politics it doesn't want, this historically dominant part of the media almost always backs a rightwing party. With the Tories' deep unpopularity, poor current leadership and terrible recent record in government, Reform seems a better prospect. While it presents itself as a revolt against the established order, in reality its anti-immigration and anti-diversity policies seek to protect or restore traditional social structures. It's an easy cause for conservative journalists to support. What might make Reform's life harder? Possibly, having to run the councils it won in May's local elections, during a period of tight public spending. Yet given Reform's ability to evade responsibility, it's also possible that problems at its councils will be blamed on the government instead. Farage may finally start to age, politically speaking, as he becomes more of a Westminster fixture, and also engages with – or ignores – the problems of his deprived constituency, Clacton in Essex. His 21 years as a member of the European parliament to an extent preserved his novelty – like his movement's metamorphosis from the UK Independence party to the Brexit party to Reform UK – since few Britons followed its proceedings. Now, as a purely domestic politician, he gets more constant publicity. Although he seems to relish it, it could bring overexposure. In the most recent polls, Reform's popularity had stopped rising. But waiting for him and his party to lose their novelty is a risky and passive strategy for Reform's opponents, with the next election at most four years away. Anxious Labour activists and election strategists increasingly talk about promoting a 'stop Reform' message. Yet with Labour having weakened its anti-Reform credentials by sometimes echoing its language and policies, that message might only resonate with enough voters if Labour forms some kind of electoral alliance with more consistently anti-Reform forces: the Greens and Liberal Democrats, perhaps even Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party and leftwing independents. That would be uncharted territory for the tribal Labour party. But with Reform enjoying an ascendancy that our political and electoral systems never anticipated, we are in uncharted territory already. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
