Those familiar with Syria before the conflict would recognize that xenophobic sentiments are contrary to the cultural DNA of Syria. But fears of difference have become much more entrenched as a result of the bloody conflict and the absence of a just authority.   

In this concluding piece of the re-birth of the nation series, the debate’s editor asks what these articles tell us about the left’s troubled relationship with ‘the nation’. How might these arguments inform efforts to develop a thinking politics outside of the party system?

The political establishment has a decisive role in determining the place of hatreds in society; with adequate rules, laws and institutions it can marginalise and neutralise or, on the contrary, tolerate and encourage them. 

Ikaria is everything that our society, our obsessive consumerism, our corporate madness, our worship of technology, the IMF, the Eurosceptics, the EU, Angela Merkel and the rest despise.

The Modi camp seems to have studied Chinese success in keeping saturation control over the media. But Indians are split along caste, language, dialect, regional, religion, not to speak of class. India is vastly different from Germany.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a seemingly trivial administrative issue ignited an unprecedented movement of civic resistance across the country's old dividing lines. Understanding the message of defiance was directed against them all, politicians tried the old trick of 'divide and rule' – only to be ridiculed by protesters.

Steven Pinker claims to prove scientifically that the world is now more peaceful, accusing some critics of succumbing to myth. The author argues that Pinker is promoting a fictitious, colonialist image of a backward ‘Brutal Savage’, which pushes the debate back over a century and is still used to destroy tribes. (Long review)

It is a sad state of affairs when an elected official is likened to a modern-day Ottoman sultan; however, the comparison is both startling and striking.

Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Why use violence against peaceful protesters?