How do you protect democracy - Diversity & Democracy

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Yascha Mounk


Yascha Mounk (born 10 June 1982) is a German-American political scientist. He is currently Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C.

Early life

Mounk was born and raised in Munich. His mother was Jewish and a socialist and was forced to leave Poland in 1969 due to antisemitism. He wrote that much of his mother's side of the family was killed in the Holocaust.[1] He has said he felt like a stranger in Germany and though German is his native language, he never felt accepted as a "true German" by his peers.[2] Mounk received a BA degree in history from Trinity College (Cambridge). He then received a PhD from Harvard University in the United States. He remained in the U.S. as a lecturer on government and was named a senior fellow in the Political Reform Program at the think tank New America.[3] Mounk became an American citizen in 2017.

Career

He was executive director of the Renewing the Centre team at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. As a freelance journalist he has written for the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and Slate. He runs a podcast called The Good Fight. His dissertation on the role of personal responsibility in contemporary politics and philosophy has been published by Harvard University Press.

In July 2020, he founded Persuasion, an online magazine devoted to defending the values of free societies.

Political views

Mounk joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as a teenager. In 2015 he resigned from the party, doing so by publishing an open letter to then-chairman Sigmar Gabriel. He cited the lack of helpfulness of German institutions to refugees, the passive attitude of SPD leaders and other parts of the party during the Crimea crisis in 2014, and the SPD's policy on Greece, which he called a "betrayal of the social democratic dream of a united Europe".

In a February 2018 interview that was published in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Mounk stated that he had changed his position on nationalism. He initially considered it a relic of the past that must be overcome, but he now advocates an "inclusive nationalism" to head off the threat of aggressive nationalism. On the German television newscast Tagesthemen, he stated that Germany is on a "historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one." In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mounk advised the "liberal camp" to adopt this inclusive nationalism, to foster a multi-ethnic and democratic society. "The key... is the adoption of the populist demand that people and nations should again feel they have control of their lives or their destiny."

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Pieter

The video featuring the Journalist, Anne Applebaum was quite very reveling of her grasp of both reality and facts, in this case, the currant Ukrainian/Russian conflict. This in contrast to many others with vested interest with splashy reporting to gain interest with their editors.

Ms. Applebaum appears in reality of her back ground to very well see beyond the smoke and mirrors, of the intent of Russian military plans of taking over The Ukraine through violent means of military action. This in contrast to the vast speculations vastly proposed by many journalist trying to pass this off as fact that have been observed in past.

A short review of back ground of Ms. Applebaum as follows:

{Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is a Polish-American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about Marxism–Leninism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
Wikipedia}

Karl

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