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It’s Political Power, Stupid
Today’s populist revolts against globalization are not only economic in nature—they are fundamentally political. As Hannah Arendt warned, the elevation of economics over politics, especially under imperialism and globalization, leads to the collapse of political judgment and self-determination. Her historical analysis now reads like prophecy: we are witnessing the return of politics in its most raw and terrifying form.04-06-2025
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Friendship and Tolerance
Roger BerkowitzMichael Bloom writes about the importance of Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise, the first play performed in Germany in 1945 after the fall of the Nazis. In discussing the reception of the play, Bloom focuses on two different reactions by Hannah Arendt, who came to see Lessing as the great thinker of political friendship.
04-03-2022
Low Trust Societies
Roger BerkowitzAlexander Beiner interviews N.S. Lyons about the impact of the Russian war in Ukraine on Russia, the West, and China. At one point, Beiner asks, “To what extent is Chinese culture and politics truly collectivist in its outlook?”
04-03-2022
A World Arendt Would Recognize
Roger BerkowitzThe Folio Society has just published the first-ever illustrated edition of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. This two-volume set includes famous propaganda images and documentary photography from the USSR and the Third Reich and also a new introduction by Anne Applebaum.
03-20-2022
The Social Justice Snitch
Roger BerkowitzWhen Laura Kipnis first read about the downfall of Mark Schlissel, “fired after an anonymous complaint about his consensual though “inappropriate” relationship with a subordinate,” she asked herself: Who was the snitch? Amidst her inquiry, Kipnis considers one particular kind of snitching that is rampant today: The Social-Justice snitch.
03-20-2022
The Politics of Inevitability
Roger BerkowitzIn a conversation with Ezra Klein, Timothy Snyder speaks about the politics of inevitability. When pundits and prophets tell us that this or that is going to happen, we are caught up in a means-ends rationality that seduces us to ignore facts that might lead to other conclusions. In such a world, social science analysis can actually influence what happens by making predictions seem inevitable.
03-20-2022
What Shall Finally Happen to the Jews
Roger BerkowitzIt is widely believed that the Final Solution began in German at the Wannsee Conference led by Reinhard Heydrich, deputy to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and superior to Adolf Eichmann. Christopher R. Browning argues that the Wannsee Conference was only one step in an often conflicted and unclear Nazi effort to make good on Hitler’s promise to make all of Europe Judenrein, free of Jews.
03-13-2022
Useless Freedoms
Roger BerkowitzPeter Maguire reminisces about his time at Bard when his “teachers cared about my education, they did not care about my ego.” Maguire reprints some of the comments he received on the end of term criteria sheets that Bard professors still fill out for every student.
03-13-2022
The First TikTok War
Tobias HessThe recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia marks not just a seismic change in the global geopolitical order, but a historiographical shift in how citizens take in the documentation of war.
03-06-2022
A Decade in a Week
Roger BerkowitzIt was Vladimir Lenin who said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” And now it is Vladimir Putin who has punctuated Lenin’s remarks. Our world has changed.
03-06-2022