Income inequality and radical right parties have both been on the rise in Western democracies, yet few studies explore the linkages between the two â despite prominent arguments about voters feeling âleft behindâ. We argue that rising inequality not only intensifies relative deprivation, but also signals a potential threat of social decline, as gaps in the social hierarchy widen. Hence, voters higher up in the social hierarchy may turn to the radical right to defend existing social boundaries. Using International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data from 14 OECD countries over three decades, we find that rising income inequality increases the likelihood of radical right support â most pronouncedly among individuals with high subjective social status and lower-middle incomes. Adding to evidence that the threat of decline, rather than actual deprivation, pushes voters towards the radical right, we highlight income inequality as the crucial factor conditioning perceived threats from a widening social hierarchy.
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Things Katy is reading.
The threat of social decline: income inequality and radical right support
for University of ZurichRFK's pledge to discover the "cause" of autism isn't just a ploy â it's a war on children's health
in SalonKennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues don't just minimize the dangers of the measles, but often slip into talking about this horrific disease as if it's a good thing to put children through. As I wrote about last week, he celebrated families in Texas who chose infection over vaccination, even though two of them lost daughters to measles. His anti-vaccine group had one set of parents explain why that's a good thing because "sheâs better off where she is now." He romanticized measles as a "great week" for kids, because they get to skip school and eat chicken soup. On Fox News on Thursday, he insisted about measles, "We need to do better at treating kids who have this disease, and not just saying the only answer is vaccination."
You don't need to "treat" a disease you don't get, but clearly, Kennedy prefers kids get measles. The "treatments" he recommends have echoes of the Geiers' ugly treatment of children. He's been telling parents to overdose kids with vitamin A, which can cause liver damage. He's been pushing the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin, both of which can have side effects. None of these treatments work, and they all risk making the situation worse.
Kennedy exploits the language of the "wellness" industry, with its misleading emphasis on "natural" health care and "letting" your body heal itself. What's ironic is that's what vaccines do. Vaccines work by stimulating the body's natural immune response, so that it prevents infection using the body's own resources. All these "treatments" Kennedy touts aren't just ineffective, they're not "natural." They're blitzing a child with often overwhelming amounts of medication, which won't work but could make the kid even sicker.
Librarians in UK increasingly asked to remove books, as influence of US pressure groups spreads
in The GuardianMost of the UK challenges appear to come from individuals or small groups, unlike in the US, where 72% of demands to censor books last year were brought forward by organised groups, according to the American Library Association earlier this week.
However, evidence suggests that the work of US action groups is reaching UK libraries too. Alison Hicks, an associate professor in library and information studies at UCL, interviewed 10 UK-based school librarians who had experienced book challenges. One âspoke of finding propaganda from one of these groups left on her deskâ, while another âwas directly targeted by one of these groupsâ. Respondents âalso spoke of being trolled by US pressure groups on social media, for example when responding to free book giveawaysâ.
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Censorship by pupils in UK schools, including âvandalising library material, annotating library books with racist and homophobic slursâ, and damaging posters and displays was identified in Hicksâ study, which she wrote about in the spring issue of the SLAâs journal, The School Librarian. Such censorship âis not something I have seen in the USâ, she said.
The types of books targeted may also differ. âAlmost all the UK attacks reported in my study centred on LGBTQ+ materials, while US attacks appear to target material related to race, ethnicity and social justice as well as LGBTQ+ issues,â said Hicks.
Why speed limits don't matter
for YouTubeWe set speed limits, we put them on signs, and we expect people to follow them. But in reality, it plays out a little differently. People donât really drive based on what a sign tells them. So if signs donât work, what does?
Melbourne students face expulsion in unprecedented repression of Palestine activism
in The New ArabTwo students at the University of Melbourne could be expelled and two others suspended for participating in a pro-Palestine protest last year, in what rights groups are calling an unprecedented crackdown on political activism in Australia.
All four students plan to appeal the penalties if they are enforced, according to a report by The Guardian.
The protest took place in October 2024, when demonstrators briefly occupied the office of a university academic allegedly linked to partnerships with Israel's University of Jerusalem. Protesters called for the university to disclose and divest from collaborations with Israeli institutions, citing Israelâs human rights record and occupation of Palestinian territories in alignment with the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
One student, reportedly facing expulsion, told The Guardian they were present for "no more than 10 minutes" and had not engaged in harassment or intimidation. Nevertheless, the university pushed for expulsion, citing the "seriousness of the breaches" and the student's prior conduct record.
Democrats Will Continue Relentlessly Doing Nothing if You Just Pitch in $5
in The Hard TimesFunny 'cos it's true:
âWe are more dedicated than ever to the American people,â said Schumer. âWe have always fiercely combated fascism. Remember that time I kneeled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds? That ended racism for Bidenâs entire term. But itâs back now because of Trump. Along with all those other isms. Which is why we are rolling out a plan to relentlessly send out fundraising emails and nothing else. Thatâs our promise to the American people. You give us $5, we will never give up on doing nothing for you.â
A top political analyst who has been studying the Democratic Party for decades weighed in on the bold new strategy.
âBased on the plans Iâve seen, this really is a big deal and itâs going to create a lot of change. I mean, itâs a huge step up from their past policy of doing very little for $5,â said Maria Devenzo, who runs the left-leaning think tank Moving Progess. âThey used to occasionally pass legislation. To promise to continue relentlessly ask hardworking citizens for money while making absolutely no concrete promises in return is a bold new era.â
On 21 April, Germany will deport me â an EU citizen convicted of no crime â for standing with Palestine
in The GuardianIn the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since Iâm a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from another EU country is practically impossible. I contacted a lawyer and, given the lack of substantial legal reasoning behind the order, we filed a lawsuit against it, after which I didnât think much of it.
I later found out that three other people active in the Palestine movement in Berlin, Roberta Murray, Shane OâBrien and Cooper Longbottom, received the same letters. Murray and OâBrien are Irish nationals, Longbottom is American. We understood this as yet another intimidation tactic from the state, which has also violently suppressed protests and arrested activists, and expected a long and dreary but not at all urgent process of fighting our deportation orders.
Then, at the beginning of March, each of our lawyers received on our behalf another letter, declaring that we are to be given until 21 April to voluntarily leave the country or we will be forcibly removed.
The letters cite charges arising from our involvement in protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of the charges have yet led to a court hearing, yet the deportation letters conclude that we are a threat to public order and national security. There has been no legal process for this decision, and none of us have a criminal record. The reasoning in the letters continues with vague and unfounded accusations of âantisemitismâ and supporting âterrorist organisationsâ â referring to Hamas â as well as its supposed âfront organisations in Germany and Europeâ.
This is not the first instance of Germany weaponising migration law. Since October 2023, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has unlawfully frozen the processing of all asylum seekers from Gaza. And on 16 April 2025 a federal administrative court in Germany will reportedly decide on a case that could set a precedent for the German state to increase deportations of asylum seekers to Greece.
These extreme measures are not a sudden shift or solely a fringe rightwing position. They are the result of a more than year-long campaign by the liberal Ampel coalition â the Social Democratic party (SPD), the Free Democratic party (FDP) and the Greens â and the German media, calling for mass deportations, widely seen as a response to the growing pro-Palestinian movement, and targeted predominantly at the Arab and Muslim German population.
Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador
in Rolling StoneLegal experts agree that sending American citizens to prison in El Salvador would be flagrantly illegal under both U.S. and international law â and that the idea itself is shockingly authoritarian, with few parallels in our nationâs history.
The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador.
âYou canât deport U.S. citizens. Thereâs no emergency exception, thereâs no special wartime authority, thereâs no secret clause. You just canât deport citizens,â says Steve Vladeck, a legal commentator and law professor at Georgetown. âWhatever grounds they try to come up with for denaturalization or expatriation, the one thing that is absolutely undeniable is that people are entitled to individualized processes, before that process can be effectuated.â
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Trump, for his part, suggested Friday evening on Air Force One that he would follow the Supreme Courtâs ruling to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. âIf the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that,â Trump said. âI respect the Supreme Court.â
To this point, his administration has not yet followed the high courtâs order to âfacilitateâ return of a man whom, by the governmentâs own admission, it wrongfully deported and imprisoned in a foreign gulag.
âThe problem that weâve seen over the last week is a series of Supreme Court rulings that have gone out of their way to not endorse what Trump is doing, but also created these procedural artifices that have in some respects thwarted what the lower courts are doing,â Vladeck explains. âAt this point, what is it going to take for a majority of the Supreme Court to treat the governmentâs behavior with the kind of contempt that the government is treating the lower courts?
The rise of end times fascism
in The GuardianAlive to our era of genuine existential danger â from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI â but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future. The average voter is offered only remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others.
And so we have the Trump administrationâs dedication to releasing its steady stream of real and AI-generated propaganda designed solely for these pornographic purposes. Footage of shackled immigrants being loaded on to deportation flights, set to the sounds of clanking chains and locking cuffs, which the official White House X account labeled âASMRâ, a reference to audio designed to calm the nervous system. Or the same account sharing news of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident who was active in Columbia Universityâs pro-Palestinian encampment, with the gloating words: âSHALOM, MAHMOUD.â Or any number of homeland security secretary Kristi Noemâs sadism-chic photo ops (atop a horse at the US-Mexican border, in front of a crowded prison cell in El Salvador, slinging a machine gun while arresting immigrants in Arizona âŠ).
The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.
It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale â to bank on your bunker â is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.
Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.
Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature
in The GuardianDemocracy, we are told, allows people a voice in politics. But only, it seems, if they have a few million to give to a political party. As the political scientist Prof Martin Gilens notes in his book Affluence and Influence: âUnder most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesnât adopt.â GDP growth was strong under Joe Biden, but as the economics professor Jason Furman points out: âFrom 2019 to 2023, inflation-adjusted household income fell, and the poverty rate rose.â GDP and social improvement are no longer connected.
All those good things? Sorry, theyâre not for you. If you feel an urge to tear it all down, to burn the whole stinking, hypocritical, exclusive system to the ground, Trump is your man. Or so he claims. In reality his entire performance is both a distraction from and an accelerant of spiralling inequality. He can hardly lose: the more he exacerbates inequality, the more he triggers an urge for revenge against his scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, scientists, teachers, China.
But such killer clowns canât pull this off by themselves. Their most effective recruiters are centrist parties paralysed in the face of economic power. In hock to rich funders, terrified of the billionaire media, for decades they have been unable even to name the problem, let alone address it. Hence the spectacular uselessness of the Democratsâ response to Trump. As the US journalist Hamilton Nolan remarks: âOne party is out to kill, and the other is waiting for its leaders to die.â