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Making Distinctions in Thinking About Racism
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt is a thinker who insists that we make distinctions. One of Arendt’s most controversial distinctions is that between racism and what she alternatively will call “race thinking” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and then "prejudice" in many of her later essays. In the wake of the shooting in Buffalo last week, John McWhorter made his own distinctions while trying to understand the place of racism in U.S. society. McWhorter argues that we use the word racism today to mean too many things. He states that we need to distinguish between different aspects of what we call racism in order to think more clearly about the problems and prevent such tragedies as the shooting in Buffalo.
05-22-2022
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Hannah Arendt and C.L.R. James
Roger BerkowitzIn 1958 in the second edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt published an Epilogue on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Two years later, the Caribbean intellectual and activist C.L.R. James delivered a series of public lectures in Trinidad that would be published as Modern Politics.
01-29-2021
National Solidarity
Adam Rothman and Barbara J. Fields tell the story of Hannah Fizer, a young woman shot by the police after she was pulled over for running a red light. This is a familiar story today, but for the fact that Fizer was white. This fact does not take away from the fact that there is a problem with racism in law enforcement that needs to be addressed.01-28-2021
The Re-Beginning of American Democracy
Roger BerkowitzThere has been a lot of worry recently about the health of American democracy. What the events of the last two weeks have confirmed, however, is that American democracy is quite robust and healthy. In spite of a President who sought to undermine an election, the system worked. The voters rejected a dangerous and narcissistic and corrupt President by over seven million votes and a large electoral college mandate.
01-21-2021
The Fabric of Reality
Roger BerkowitzTimothy Snyder argues that the abyss of American democracy is fed by a crisis in truth that has left us in a pre-fascist moment. But Snyder recognizes that President Trump never could bring himself to embrace fascism. He alienated the military, on which a fascist government would need to depend. He emboldened militias, but never organized them into a unit. His social media attacks were constant but scattered.
01-14-2021
Our Political Crisis
Michael Lind writes that “Many Democrats claim that Republicans are destroying the republic. Many Republicans claim the reverse. They are both correct.” This is not at all to equate the two sides of our political dystopia, but it is to recognize that there is a feeling of disempowerment and Armageddon on across the political divide. Lind argues that this premonition of imminent destruction maps onto five crises facing the American Republic.01-14-2021
Hope is Necessary
Ann Heberlein has written a new biography of Hannah Arendt, translated from the Swedish as, “On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt.” Anand Giridharadas says that he knew he had to interview Heberlein “when I read these words about what she believes we today can learn from Arendt: “to love the world so much that we think change is possible.”01-14-2021
The Political Uses of Shame
Manu Samnotra argues that shame—an intensely private emotion—can play an important role in political engagement. Building on Hannah Arendt’s writings, Samnotra argues that shame can motivate people to create political spaces and engage in political action.01-14-2021
Change Happens
Neil Roberts called his recently-turned 18 year-old goddaughter after the polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday to congratulate her for voting. One day later, chaos broke out in our nation’s capital. Roberts asks, what he should say now to his goddaughter. 01-09-2021
Trump’s Conspiritualist Army
Jules Evans has written an important and well-researched essay on Jake Agnelli, the self-initiated QAnon Shaman who was so prominent in the mobbing of the Capitol building on Wednesday, January 6th. You’ll recognize Agnelli, who wore a Racoon hat with horns, no shirt, carried an American flag and sported prodigious tattoos on his shirtless torso.01-09-2021