Inside this week's long reads

Support the Guardian Support us   Fund independent journalism Threats to democracy: the perils of technology and the shadow of Argentina’s dirty war In this week’s newsletter: early warnings about the digital age – and how they were ignored; the leftwing activist who discovered her real history Photograph: Underwood Archives, Inc/Alamy Democracy v the machine: the birth of the digital age and the warnings that were ignored | Jill Lepore Many people in the 20th century who thought deeply about the rise of the internet hoped that it would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but others foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen? Victoria Donda in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Anita Pouchard Serra/The Guardian The long shadow of Argentina’s dictatorship: she wasn’t who she thought she was – neither was her father | Meaghan Beatley A young activist thought her father’s disapproval of her leftwing views was purely political. Then one evening, a kiss goodbye sent her on a remarkable journey that continues today. Inside this week’s long read This week we published an article by the journalist Meaghan Beatley about the remarkable life – or, perhaps, lives – of Victoria Donda, an Argentine human rights activist. We spoke to Meaghan about writing the story and the state of contemporary Argentina. How did you first come across the incredible story of Victoria Donda? I lived in Argentina between 2013 and 2017, when Victoria was serving as a lawmaker, so I was already familiar with the outline of her story. But I started digging into the details later while researching my book, Sex and Dissent, because her story distills one of the book’s throughlines – that dictatorship-era abuses and gender violence share underlying dynamics, and that both are national traumas that societies need to reckon with. Victoria is a well-known figure in Argentina. Did you discover anything researching her story that you felt wasn’t fully known or understood beforehand? I was struck by something that came up in Argentina’s 2018 congressional abortion debate, which was that opponents called abortion “the real forced disappearance” of people in Argentina. The debate exposed the nexus between far-right authoritarianism and attacks on reproductive rights, which is something that Victoria instinctively understood. She read The Handmaid’s Tale during the debate, which Margaret Atwood has said was partly inspired by the Argentine military dictatorship, and argued that today’s barriers to abortion treated women the way the junta had treated her mother: as mere incubators. While that connection was implicitly understood in Argentina, I hadn’t seen it in narrative form, and definitely not in English-language media. The piece briefly mentions Argentina’s current president, Javier Milei. How have human rights defenders and other leftist or progressive groups fared under his rule? Milei has turned leftists into targets of the culture wars and contributed to a resurgence of dictatorship denialism unseen in decades. When it comes to reproductive rights, he campaigned on a promise to hold a referendum on repealing the 2020 abortion law and, while he hasn’t followed through on that, his government has dismantled a programme that had cut teen pregnancy nearly in half, and slashed funding for sex education and access to contraception. Do you think feminist movements in Latin American in particular have something to teach the rest of the world? Absolutely. I believe they are some of the most dynamic and interesting movements challenging the far right today, in part because they see the fight for bodily autonomy as just the first step in a wide-ranging agenda. Instead of relegating gender to a secondary concern – the way that movements on the left have often done historically – they argue feminism should be the glue holding together other progressive fights, including economic inequality, racism, environmental injustice and more. While they’re facing intense backlash, they’ve been extraordinarily successful in effecting legal and cultural change over the past decade. This week’s audio long reads Iraq’s impossible predicament: why the country is trapped between Iran and the US Asian mothers, bad feelings: notes on an all-conquering stereotype Where Duolingo falls down: how I learned to speak Welsh with my mother Listen to the Audio Long Read on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Guardian app From the archive The central pith in a cotton stem. Photograph: Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF Food fraud and counterfeit cotton: the detectives untangling the global supply chain | September 2021 Amid the complex web of international trade, proving the authenticity of a product can be near-impossible. Samanth Subramanian uncovers one company that is taking the search to the atomic level Destruction in Kyiv, 1 March 2022. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images Was it inevitable? A short history of Russia’s war on Ukraine | March 2022 The journalist and writer Keith Gessen argues that, to understand the tragedy of the war – which has now been going on for more than 1,600 days – it is worth going back beyond the history of Ukraine/Russia tensions in the 2010s, and even beyond Vladimir Putin. What else we’ve been reading I’ve thought for a while now that I would love to read something on Natoora, the bougie food brand that “writes London’s menus”. Of course, Vittles was on the case. Yohann Koshy, deputy editor This week I appreciated this excellent piece by our colleague Hugh Muir about the death of Jason Arday and what has followed in its wake. David Wolf, editor   Our journalism is free to say what it wants… but worth paying for. From breaking news to huge investigative projects; from masterfully told features and long reads to reviews, podcasts, videos, lifestyle advice and much more. It’s an incredible amount of valuable journalism, and it costs a lot of money to produce. However, we keep our website free to read because we believe access to quality news is a global public good: a positive force for the health of democracy around the world. For more than 200 years, we’ve been publishing fearless, independent journalism. Now, with a daily readership in the millions, we can bring vital reporting to people all around the world, including newsletters like this, direct to your inbox. 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