When I read Paul Heideman’s Rogue Elephant: How Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos in manuscript last year, I instantly recognized it as the most probing, and, likely to be, lasting, analysis of the rise of Donald Trump. The reason is simple. Unlike many analyses of Trump and the right, Heideman takes the political economy and history of big business seriously. Not capitalism, not the working class, though Heideman, as a good democratic socialist cares a great deal about both, but big business. Like no one else thus far, Heideman sees just how fractious are the divisions with the business class and how delicate are the threads binding these factions together, and how that […]
If you were to cast your gaze across the America of a hundred years ago, the America of 1925, you would have had many reasons for despair. That was the year that the Second KKK reached its all-time high in membership. The previous year, immigration to the US from all Asian countries was banned, and immigration from southern and eastern Europe (home of Italians, Jews, Poles, and other undesirables) was drastically limited. And behind all that stood the Red Scare, in which Jews, Italians, anarchists, socialists, communists were drummed out of American life in an orgy of violence, mass arrests, and deportations. Just ten years later, those same forces that had been put on their back feet in the 1920s […]
We’re coming up, in two years, on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Albert Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Some of you may know of Hirschman as one of the main characters in that not-so-good, pulpy Netflix series Transatlantic, which depicts the efforts of Hirschman and others to rescue European Jewish intellectuals from the Nazis in France. If you’re a political scientist or sociologist, you may know of Hirschman for his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. If you’re a theorist, you may know his Rhetoric of Reaction. If you’re an economist or a Latin Americanist, you might know of his work in development economics. But, for me, Hirschman will always be […]
One of the elements of Du Bois’s argument in Black Reconstruction that surprised me most the last time, or maybe the time before that, that I taught it, was just how much attention he pays to the Radical Republican’ vision of congressional power and congressional government over and against a Constitution based on presidential power and presidential government. Du Bois even suggests that had the Radicals won, we might have had a system more like the parliamentary democracies of Europe, or at least of Britain, where the chief executive is simply the leader of the party in parliament, and not an office completely apart from that party and that parliament. For Du Bois, that vision of parliamentary government, as opposed […]
Reading this morning’s report on a meeting of the Northwestern faculty with its interim president Henry Bienen, I was struck by the language Bienen uses to set out his stance toward Trump: I want to do a deal with the federal government. I don’t want to get into suits with the federal government. Set aside the substance of what he’s saying. I’m more startled by the effluence of such Trumpian language—not just “deal” but “I want to do a deal”—from the mouth of a university president. Not, “I think we might come to a prudent arrangement with the federal government.” Not “I think a path of compromise is always more productive than one of confrontation.” Not “the law and the […]
Reading this New York Times report on Eric Adams’ dropping out of the race—where Adams is described, with no sense of irony, as “politically moderate” and is quoted as warning against Mamdani’s desire to “destroy the very system we built together over generations” while Cuomo is quoted as saying, “We are facing an existential threat in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it”—it dawns on me that we on the left are being presented with a golden opportunity. An opportunity that reminds me, seriously, of something only Lincoln was able to pull off. Zohran Mamdani is running now against Andrew Cuomo, a corrupt sexual harasser, who has been aided from the start by […]
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Economies, Law, The Left, The Right
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Tags Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump, Eric Adams, Greg Grandin, James Oakes, Matt Karp, Zohran Mamdani
I had a long conversation with Ezra Klein about the current moment, its parallels and divergences from the Second Red Scare of the McCarthy era, and three recommendations for books to read. I chose one book of poetry, which I hope you will all ready, one book of history, and one book of political theory. Klein had nice things to say about my book The Reactionary Mind: “in my opinion,” he said, it’s “one of the most insightful books you can read on the Trumpist right and what is behind it.” He read it twice, and I could see all the notes he had taken on it. The funnest part of the interview happened off-screen. I wore my “city workers […]
I hate to be that guy on the left, but I’m going to be that guy on the left. One of the arguments Republicans are making tonight about the firing of Jimmy Kimmel is that while they’re unhappy and uncomfortable with the head of the FCC’s threatening to pull ABC’s license, they’d be absolutely fine if the network simply made its own decision, sans government pressure, to fire Kimmel. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said to NBC, “Well, my preference would always be to let the companies make economic market decisions.” Senator Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota, said, “I understand that right now it’s an employer-employee issue, and that’s the way I would approach it.” As if there were […]
It’s a strange and disorienting experience to read Mark Lilla’s review of Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley in the current issues of the New York Review of Books. Long-time readers of this blog will know that many years ago, when Lilla reviewed my book on conservatism in the same publication, he excoriated me as a cretin—I don’t think that’s too strong—for flattening the fine distinctions, built up over the decades by conservatives and liberals alike, between conservatives and reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. Several times in his review, Lilla held up Buckley as Exhibit A of the former type, the true conservative, as against my portrait of the conservative as reactionary counterrevolutionary. Even though I had direct evidence to […]
Among the political emotions, vengeance may be the most terrible of them all. On the one hand, vengeance is different than justice. It authorizes those who act in its name to do all sorts of things that they would normally not feel themselves authorized or entitled to do. Vengeance has an extraordinarily permissive licensing structure, freeing the vengeful from any and all restraints. On the other hand, as any reading of The Oresteia will show, vengeance contains a strict and stern element of obligation, even injunction: Whatever else you may do, you are not authorized or allowed not to take vengeance. To not avenge—to forgive or acquit, to do anything that might break the link between the iniquitous past and […]
After the killing of Charlie Kirk—as everyone now knows—Ezra Klein made the following two claims: If the following media reports are correct, one of those two claims cannot be true. Reuters: After the fatal shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, U.S. Republicans have a warning for Americans: Mourn him respectfully or suffer the consequences. At least 15 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs after discussing the killing online…The total includes journalists, academic workers and teachers. On Friday, a junior Nasdaq employee was fired over her posts related to Kirk. Others have been subjected to torrents of online abuse or seen their offices flooded with calls demanding they be fired, part of a surge in right-wing rage that […]
Judith Butler is one of 160 faculty, students, and staff members at UC Berkeley whose name the University of California has turned over to the Trump administration to help with the federal government’s investigation into alleged antisemitism on the Berkeley campus. Let’s slow that statement down so we can understand its components more clearly. Since February, Trump’s Department of Education has been investigating universities, including Berkeley and other UC campuses, for their handling of alleged antisemitism on their campuses. In March, the Justice Department announced a separate but parallel investigation of the UC campuses. In July, a House congressional committee called three university leaders to testify about alleged antisemitism on their campuses. One of the summoned was the chancellor of […]
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Education, Labor/Workplace, Law, Media, Palestine and Israel, Repression, The Left, The Right, The State, Violence
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Tags Brooklyn College, CUNY, Ellen Schrecker, James Milliken, Judith Butler, McCarthyism, UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of California, Zohran Mamdani
My wife and I saw the new Leni Riefenstahl documentary this weekend. Compared to the documentary from the early 1990s, “The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl,” the new one falls short. Though stylishly made, it doesn’t break much new ground, and in certain ways, fails to do what the earlier documentary did: Explain why people are so fascinated by Riefenstahl in the first place. The first documentary devotes a good chunk of the film to explaining how pioneering were Riefensthal’s techniques, how innovative her approach to film and propaganda. It’s only by appreciating her filmic achievements that we can wrestle with what a monster she was. The original film quotes her saying something to the effect that people are […]
News from the world that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are making for us.
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Economies, Education, Jews, Labor/Workplace, Palestine and Israel, Repression, The Left, The Right
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Tags Andrew Cuomo, Brooklyn College, Eric Adams, John Deere, Lisa Cook, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Northwestern, Zohran Mamdani
I was amused to read today that in the course of railing against protesters in Washington, DC, Stephen Miller made a repeated point of calling them old and white. Not simply because the base of the Republican party is old and white. But also because he so perfectly illustrates a point I made years ago, in The Reactionary Mind, about how the right so often mimics the left: Conservatives often are the left’s best students. Sometimes, their studies are self-conscious and strategic, as they look to the left for ways to bend new vernaculars, or new media, to their suddenly delegitimated aims….At other times, the education of the conservative is unknowing, happening, as it were, behind his back. By resisting […]
My wife and I saw “An Officer and a Spy” last night, which I highly recommend. Because it’s a Roman Polanski film, it’s not being distributed anywhere in the US. Nor is it available on streaming. But you can see it at Film Forum. It’s a superbly made film, about the Dreyfus Affair. Less about Dreyfus himself than about about Georges Picquart, the French officer who played a critical role in getting Dreyfus exonerated. That frame is problematic in all sorts of ways: as David Bell wrote in an excellent piece from a few years ago, when the film came out, the film dramatically underplays the mobilization of the French Jewish community as well as of the Dreyfusards. The entire […]
The Forward has been running a series of articles about a group in northern Arkansas that owns adjacent tracts of land that Jews and non-whites are forbidden to purchase or live on. On Thursday, the attorney general of Arkansas said this was legal. The details are complicated—mostly focused on the fact that there’s been no purchase or sale or business transaction yet, so nothing formally violating the law—but the significance of this story for thinking about Israel and Zionism is not. The Arkansas group is called Return to the Land, and it is part of a larger national movement. Focusing on people’s proof of “ancestral heritage,” it seeks, according to its mission statement, to “put land [in the United States] […]
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Economies, Jews, Law, Palestine and Israel, Race, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Arkansas, Jewish National Fund, Return to the Land, The Forward
The Yale Medical School and Yale New Haven Hospital announced yesterday that they will no longer prescribe gender-affirming medications for patients under 19. Interestingly enough, much less wealthy and smaller healthcare institutions continue to provide medication and care to trans youth. In conjunction with Columbia’s decision to suspend or expel or revoke the degrees of over 70 pro-Palestine students, it’s hard not to think of Yale’s decision in light of the canonical literatures on sacrifice. In all these cases, these institutions are undoubtedly thinking that they have to sacrifice the smaller, more marginal, and more vulnerable, for the sake of preserving the larger, the more advanced, the whole. 70 pro-Palestine students in return for hundreds of millions of government research […]
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Economies, Education, Palestine and Israel, Political Theory, Repression, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Aeschylus, Arendt, Columbia, Maistre, Wendy Brown, Yale
Two weeks ago, the New York Times ginned up a controversy over Zohran Mamdani’s college application. In his senior year of high school, Mamdani applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked off the boxes for Asian American and African American. He made a point of specifying that by African American he meant that he was from Uganda. Mamdani’s opponents, most notably Eric Adams, and other commentators immediately used the story against him, claiming that Mamdani was trying to game the affirmative action system of higher ed for his personal advantage by falsely claiming he was Black and Asian American. Peter Beinart has an excellent video out this morning, which puts the story in Mamdani’s family context—and […]
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Education, Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The Right, Violence
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Tags Edmund Burke, Eric Adams, Mahmood Mamdani, Mira Nair, Peter Beinart, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zohran Mamdani
I wasn’t going to address the controversy over what Zohran Mamdani did or didn’t say about the phrase “globalize the intifada.” But now that Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader of the Democrats in the House, has decided to weigh in on it, on the Sunday morning talk shows no less—specifically, by invoking the fear that Jewish New Yorkers like me are supposed to be feeling when we hear the phrase being used—I think it’s worth a comment or two. Jeffries claims that Mamdani needs to “clarify his position” on the phrase, which is silly, because the only reason Jeffries is even talking about Mamdani’s position is that he has clarified it. On June 17, Tim Miller, an interviewer for The […]
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Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Andrew Cuomo, Brooklyn College, Edith Wharton, Hakeem Jeffries, Kirsten Gillebrand, Margaret Litvin, Peter Beinart, Zohran Mamdani
People, particularly political scientists, don’t often read Rip Van Winkle anymore, which is a shame because it’s a story about change in America and how it’s perceived. A man falls asleep before the American Revolution, wakes up after it, and discovers the world has been completely transformed, down to the tiniest details of society. Now imagine a man who fell asleep in 2005. A Republican president has been bombing the shit out of a Middle Eastern country that begins with an I. He’s been cutting taxes for rich people. The New York Times has been warning that Social Security cuts are necessary to preserve its solvency. The man wakes up in 2025. And everyone is saying the world has changed.
Where would we be without the market? The stock market, the bond market, the financial markets in general—all of these institutions, journalists tell us, are the ultimate, perhaps only, check on President Trump’s power. Esteemed scholars reassure us of the same—that the world’s oldest constitution is backstopped by Wall Street and the dollar. Investors, the argument goes, need their investments protected. The courts, independent and powerful, can provide that protection. Threaten the courts, and the markets will tumble, and the dollar will drop. It is capitalism, in other words, and not citizens or politicians, that will force the White House into compliance with the courts and the Constitution. This faith in capitalism is both novel and strange. Historically, people have feared that capitalism undermines the sovereignty of the state and […]
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Economies, Labor/Workplace, Law, The Left, The Right, The State, Violence
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Tags Adam Smith, Donald Trump, East India Company, Elon Musk, Michał Kalecki, William Douglas
A few days ago, Michiko Kakutani (I didn’t even know she was still around) had a long piece in the Times on the Silicon Valley power elite’s embrace of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Kakutani expresses repeated puzzlement over Silicon Valley’s besottedness with these texts. Tolkien had a horror of technology and power politics, after all, which is clearly expressed in the trilogy, and his world seems as far away from Silicon Valley as his was from the Norse sagas he drew upon. I find myself puzzled by Kakutani’s puzzlement. It can hardly be a secret that The Lord of the Rings mirrors in many ways Wagner’s Ring Cycle and that Wagner also expressed horror for technology and power politics, […]
We know two things about Trump’s administration. First, it has declared war on trans people. Second, it has declared war on the administrative state. To my knowledge, nobody has yet figured out what the precise relationship between these two wars is. Till now. In this very stylish debut at The New Yorker, Paisley Currah explains why the war on trans people is not just the “opening move in a battle against vulnerable groups” or a crude attempt to “fan the flames of right-wing moral panic.” Instead, in banning a critical yet flexible tool for deciding the sex of individuals and populations, the right understands that it can completely undermine a major portion of the modern state as we know it. […]