Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

A review of Steven Zipperstein’s new book

Steven Zipperstein’s new book, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History, is uncannily timely: today in particular we might appreciate the irony of fate that American anti-racism can trace one line of origin to a backwoods region of the Russian Empire. This region, Bessarabia, is among those parts of Eastern Europe ...
Read More
Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

“No Gods, No Masters”

Antisemitic tropes and utopian ideals in imagining and resisting capitalism

This piece was prepared for a short talk as part of “Navigating finance and the imagination: A collaborative theoretical walking tour ”, an event organized by Max Haiven and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, that took place in London in April 2018. Participants in this interdisciplinary event drew on Cornelius Castoriadis’ work to explore ...
Read More
“No Gods, No Masters”

Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

The Jewish part of Poland’s 1968

This piece is being simultaneously published in Polish by Kultura Liberalna. At its recent commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1968 protests at Warsaw University, the Law and Justice (PiS, in Polish abbreviation) government of Poland presented its official line: that 1968 was a “Polish national social movement against communism,” ...
Read More
Anti-Semitism Was Not Just a Smokescreen

Consonance, Dissonance, Harmony

Itinerary of some thoughts on thinking politically

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington This is my fourteenth “Blue Monday” column. In but a few weeks, I have already written over forty thousand words in this virtual space. It’s not as if I don’t have a life. The column is not ...
Read More
Consonance, Dissonance, Harmony

The Political Chill of Snow

Anti-Semitism, Populism, and the Present

In New Hampshire -- where I live -- decisions to cancel classes are based more on what time the snow stops falling rather than how much snow is expected to fall. If it stops early enough the night before, school will be open the next day, whether the snow gauge ...
Read More
The Political Chill of Snow

On Free Speech

An appeal to leverage the 1st Amendment as it stands

Don’t shut it down. Don’t look to qualify what is meant and protected by the right to free speech by making an exception to the rule for hate speech. Don’t move to make hate speech illegal. Take a step back and let your cooler head prevail. The First Amendment was written to protect minority ...
Read More
On Free Speech

Misrepresentation and Misrecognition

Steve King’s American Exceptionalism and its Ties to the “Slaves were Immigrants, too” Thesis

I don’t want to spend much time on King’s comments themselves, but let’s note here the way that “American civilization” is equated with “Western civilization”. Let’s also note that other civilizations are inferior to this civilization, precisely because other civilizations “produce very little freedom,” while “our” superior civilization produces more. ...
Read More
Placeholder

Trump and his Recent Denunciation of Anti-semitism

11 Theses

2. This is a very bad thing for Jewish-Americans, for minorities of all kinds, for all citizens who care about the rights of individuals and the importance of constitutional democracy, and for all human beings who care about human dignity and respect. 3. It is imperative that this anti-semitism is denounced ...
Read More
Placeholder

Of Honor and Despair in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt on Stefan Zweig

In 1943, with confirmation of the Nazis’ implementation of what the ossified bureaucratic language called Endlösung (the final solution) -- the extermination of all European Jews -- Hannah Arendt published an essay in the émigré journal Aufbau (printed in New York) on Stefan Zweig and the bygone world of yesterday, ...

Read More
Of Honor and Despair in Dark Times

Why Iran is Afraid of Daniel Barenboim

Dischords instead of overtures

No Art of the Fugue in the land of a thousand centrifuges: Iran has informed Daniel Barenboim that his intended concert with the Berlin orchestra in Tehran has been cancelled. There will be no overture during the long-anticipated easing following the nuclear deal. This is a blow for Barenboim as ...

Read More
Why Iran is Afraid of Daniel Barenboim