Last summer, long before the election and inauguration of Trump 2.0, I wrote a piece in The New Yorker, arguing that American Jews were returning to a form of politics they had perfected in Europe but abandoned in the United States. Surveying what happened on college campuses during the last year of Biden’s presidency, I warned that we were reverting to a kind of politics from the Middle Ages and early modern era that betrayed the democratic traditions of Jewish politics in the United States: Instead of organizing or joining democratic movements to fight racism, defend immigration, and build social democracy, Jewish leaders and donors supplicate sovereigns or would-be sovereigns who are antisemitic, or aligned with antisemitism, yet promise special protection for the Jews at home or in Israel. The […]
On Tuesday night, Alexandra Schwartz, a critic at The New Yorker, posted a piece criticizing the young supporters of Bernie Sanders. Ordinarily, I’d be mildly irritated by an article titled “Should Millennials Get Over Bernie Sanders?” In this instance, I’m grateful. It clarifies the dividing line between Sanders’s supporters in the electorate and the liberal journalists who can’t abide them. First, some context. Exit polls from Iowa, according to Vox, show that “Sanders absolutely dominated young adult voters, in a way that even Barack Obama couldn’t in 2008.” Eighty-four percent of voters under 30, and 58% of voters between 30 and 44, cast their ballots for Sanders. More generally, as countless articles have noted, younger voters are shifting left, embracing ancient taboos like socialism and other […]
Last month, New Yorker reporter Jon Lee Anderson turned twelve shades of red when he was challenged on Twitter about his claim in The New Yorker that Venezuela was “one of the world’s most oil-rich but socially unequal countries.” A lowly rube named Mitch Lake had tweeted, “Venezuela is 2nd least unequal country in the Americas, I don’t know wtf @jonleeanderson is talking about.” Anderson tweeted back: “You, little twerp, are someone who has sent 25,700 Tweets for a grand total of 169 followers. Get a life.” Gawker was all over it. What got lost in the story though is just how wrong Anderson’s claim is. In fact, just how wrong many of his claims about Venezuela are. Luckily, Keane Bhatt, an […]