John Keane

published today, my thoughts on the new dangers of demagoguery and despotism, on the 50th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s imposition of emergency rule in India….@IndianExpress indianexpress.com/article/opinio…

delighted to announce that our new and improved 𝐃𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 platform is now live! please visit democracylighthouse.com

just published, my interview with @NikkeiAsia on demagogues, despotism, monitory democracy and digital media resistance: ‘much more than free and fair elections, democracy is the never-ending struggle to monitor, expose and block harmful abuses of power’ (in Japanese and English)

meanwhile, the EC’s antisemitism envoy @kschnurbein says reports of starvation in Gaza and other IDF war crimes are mere ‘rumours’ and ‘bake sales for Gaza’ fuel ‘ambient antisemitism’ @EUAntisemitism euobserver.com/eu-and-the-wor…

Australia’s top investigative journalist @MichaelWestBiz well summarises a just-published official report on #antisemitism - its silence about Israel’s genocide is so brazen that among its possible perverse unintended effects will be to fuel the #antisemitism it decries…

ex-Serbian president @BorisTadic58 summarises the deepening crisis in Serbia: ‘the government [of Vučić] has already overthrown the constitutional order, while the citizens have already declared a state of emergency themselves’ @NedeljnikVreme n1info.rs/english/news/f…

tonight in Melbourne: a conversation about democracy’s troubles, its future, and whether we’re witnessing neo-liberalism’s final act; please join us! crossroadsconversation.com.au/events/in-conv…

Bibi-C censors forced to work overtime @glastonbury - countering Irish ‘terrorism’, keffiyehs, balaclavas and that vast sea of Palestinian flags…come to Sydney @KNEECAPCEOL tiocfaidh ár lá 🙏

‘It’s hard to keep defending yourself against a false accusation’, says @mashagessen ‘It’s logically impossible to prove an absence..[and] it hurts.’ Yes, but @NickRiemer1 and I won’t be backing down in our high-stakes legal battle against weaponised lies nytimes.com/2025/06/24/opi…

yes, the global zeitgeist is changing: the same day @ZohranKMamdani wins the nomination for New York’s mayor, a distinguished, brave Lebanese-Australian journalist critic of Israel’s genocide @antoinette_news wins a high-profile case against unfair dismissal by @ABCaustralia

Hannah Arendt’s final interview (1974) in which she - no lover of ‘nations’ or armed territorial ‘states’ - asks a question of fundamental importance today: has the founding of Israel been good for Jewish people ‘all over the world’?

‘as empires like the United States decline, they grow anxious, paranoid, hubristic and more violent, at home and abroad’; my recent Sydney radio interview…mixcloud.com/michael-lester…

inspired by Benedetto Croce’s famous 1925 anti-fascist letter, here’s why I’ve signed a global letter of concern about our diseased democracies, just published by @el_pais @repubblica @liberation @faznet @clarincom @libe @guardian_us stopreturnfascism.org

‘It’s not true that good only follows from good and evil only from evil; the opposite is often true. Anyone who fails to see this is a political infant’, wrote Max Weber, the leading German social scientist of his generation, who died this day in 1920…

in memory of writer and citizen extraordinary Thomas Paine, who died this day in 1809: ‘More than any other public figure of the eighteenth century’, my biography begins, ‘Tom Paine strikes our times like a trumpet blast from a distant world.’ @BloomsburyBooks @groveatlantic

published this week: my Sorbonne lectures on thinking, uncertainty, civil society, green politics and how democracies die, fast and slow…

‘we repudiate the attempt…to conflate Zionism, a political ideology with Jewish and non-Jewish adherents, with Jewish identity’: a brave and honest statement of support for @NickRiemer1 and me in our current legal battle against apologists of genocide overland.org.au/2025/05/statem…

Master Wizard of Nonsense (Trump) asks: ‘Why are we wasting our time, money and souls..on crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us?’ Reply: don’t host ‘drag shows’, America’s military must ‘spread democracy to everybody around the world, at the point of a gun.’

why old words can’t capture the monstrous barbarity of Israel’s crimes in Palestine: time to speak of the Destruction (al-Ibādah), writes Ghada Ageel aje.io/73jmpz

absurdly priced but a labour of love published soon: my Sorbonne lectures on thinking, and why more thinking about democracy is vital for its global survival and future flourishing…