Revolutionary love. Civic love. Love.

For Maria Bárbara

Hélène Landemore’s “Politics without politicians: The case for citizen rule” (2026) was a fascinating read, for which David van Reybrouck’s “Against elections” (2016) had opened the way for me. Both share with us recent experiences (in the last three decades) where, inspired by the principles of ancient Athenian democracy, different societies (in Iceland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Canada, the US) tried to reinvent the democratic system of ruling by involving every day citizens in decision-making through sortition.

Cultures and values in Europe

Last month, two events separated by one day marked the EU agenda.

On 17 June, the European Parliament voted to increasing deportations of undocumented people. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a number of right-wing MEPs celebrating the outcome of the vote with raised fists and chants of “Send them back”. According to the Guardian, Amnesty International France described the plans as “absurd, cruel and discriminatory” and 16 UN experts outlined the ways in which the rules could contravene international human rights. The chants heard in the European Parliament bring cruelty and barbarism to a new level. It cannot be normalised. [Only in early July did I see a response from Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament.]

It's the playbook, stupid!

“He was, rather, an opportunistic, America-first, anti-immigrant, anti-labor, racist politician with few scruples, for whom power and popularity mattered more than ideology.”

“He saw how easy it was to garner headlines by attacking progressive plays as “un-American’.”

"He saw that scaring people (your children are being indoctrinated and Black men want to sleep with your daughters) was a lot more effective than the arduous and consensus-building business of legislating.”

Although the mention of America will allow readers to understand which country this is about, I am also sure of two things:

• You wouldn’t guess the year
• Today, all of us, coming from different countries, we can see here the description of a number of populist and also far-right politicians.

This is why it’s called “The Playbook”.

Silent heroes

For Andreia Cunha
For Manuel Sarmento Pizarro

In February this year, American author and activist John Pavlovitz wrote to then Attorney General an open letter: “Dear Pam Bondi (A letter from a father)”.  For almost a year, people from around the world had been witnessing the mean, unintelligent, perverted, arrogant and, at the same time, submissive way Bondi defended her master, the president of the USA – and not The People. Pavlovitz resumed the feelings those repeated spectacles provoked in many of us in a rather simple question: “How does someone become Pam Bondi?”.

Has it become "essential" to control Culture?

 

My article in the Portuguese newspaper "Público" regarding Culture being considered "non essential" by politicians at the same time that they manifest an urgent need to control it. Here's the translated text

Canaries in the coalmine and democracy fitness

Dedicated to good friends and colleagues in
Leiria, Coimbra, Figueira da Foz.

Greek columnist Thodoris Georgakopoulos wondered how do we, the citizens, recognise that a line has been crossed, that we have slipped into a place where democracy has ceased to exist. He was referring to a May article in The New York Times, which I had read too, entitled “How will we know when we have lost our democracy?”. Based on that article, Georgakopoulos questions: “Is a country considered a democracy when the people who govern it hunt down their political opponents and put them in prison? When they are indifferent to solving the country's problems and instead are only concerned with maintaining and strengthening the client state? Is a country democratic in which all the media are owned by financial interests that are financially dependent on the government? Or one in which all state wealth is distributed to regime loyalists?”.

A culture of revolution and some old-fashioned values

Kristin Cabot’s sad, self-aware, penetrating look in a photo in The New York Times reminded me of two things: how upset I felt last summer with the way “the world” (it was indeed the whole world) reacted and treated her when being caught on Jumbotron in the arms of her boss at a Coldplay concert; and how I never thought about them (and her) again after those first few explosive days.