Subterms
The triumph of Nazism in the years following the election of 1933 that brought Adolf Hitler to power represents arguably the greatest human catastrophe of the 20th century — a century rich in human catastrophes. Until today, historians, social scientists and writers, from Primo Levy to Jonathan Littell, the author of “Les Bienveillantes,” and filmmakers, from […] More
On March 9, I wrote that the British government is not just failing to safeguard its people, but is willing to trade lives for economic stability and an air of normality. Since then, the number of reported infections and deaths has risen to 5,863 and 289 respectively at the time of writing, and the government […] More
Donald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements. For a man who relished the adulation and bombast of campaigning, it should have surprised no one that he charged out of the starting gate so quickly for 2020 […] More
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has a prodigious output and, indeed, it takes a prodigious effort to keep up with it. No sooner had I completed reading the latest trio of her books than a new one was signaled, many of the recent works being based on her delivery of prestigious guest lectures at universities around […] More
Jazz is a musical art form that cultivates complex and highly disciplined improvisational skills. In its brief history — hardly more than a century — jazz has always floated between being perceived as a style of popular, crowd-pleasing music or as a sophisticated art form produced by exceptionally creative artists and daring musical geniuses. There […] More
“The trenchocracy is the aristocracy of the trenches,” declared Benito Mussolini on the pages of Il Popolo d’Italia in December 1917. Reflecting on the new type of man emerging from the war, he went on: “What an immense moral force is contained in the patriotic spirit of those who come back from the front … […] More
Recent developments in Turkish politics have left many baffled. More and more Kurdish parents in southeast Turkey are now rising up against the secessionist the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its political wing, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), to reclaim their children the PKK forcibly enlisted. At the same time, the main opposition, the secular […] More
On January 31, Gary Grappo, a former diplomat and Fair Observer’s chairman of the Board, grudgingly came to the defense of the Trump administration’s “deal of the century” that many feel has abusively been referred to as a “peace plan.” Grappo begins by admitting that it is unambiguously “an Israeli plan.” His reasoning nevertheless echoes […] More
