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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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The Canceling of Adolph Reed
Roger BerkowitzAdolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.
08-16-2020
When Joe Biden Wrote to Hannah Arendt
Roger BerkowitzOn May 28, 1975, then Senator Joe Biden wrote a letter to Hannah Arendt.
Dear Miss Arendt, I read in a recent article by Tom Wicker of a paper that you read at the Boston Bicentennial Forum. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, I am most interested in receiving a copy of your paper. Thank you. Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden Jr. United State Senator.
08-16-2020
Seeing What Is: “White Privilege,” “Antiracism,” The Police – Lessons from a Losing Culture on the Authority of Language at a time of Movement
Nikita Nelin“We got engaged, preparing for a summer wedding, and started talking about kids. Then the pandemic hit. My industry crumbled and hers pressurized. Social distancing left us sheltered in place in our new neighborhood, as we watched the world outside first shudder, and then take to the streets, while we tried to reconcile our place in it with the disappearance our own dream.”
08-13-2020
The Call of the Wild
Roger BerkowitzIn the 1950s, the Dutch drained an area of wetland and a new province called Flevoland rose up from the sea. Part of that province witnessed the emergence of a wetland ecosystem and an ecologist Frans Vera sought to turn the nearly 15,000 acres into an experiment in bringing back a wild world. This area is called Oostvaardersplassen, or OVP, and it is the center of a battle over the idea of “rewilding,” a term that means to “limit the human empire” in the so-called Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch that begins with human activity’s first significant impacts on the planet.”
08-12-2020
Disinformation and Democracy
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt argues that the distinction between truth and lie can be eroded, over time, by "continual lying." When political leaders, institutions, the press, and respected figures habitually and continually state alternative facts, their lies—even if they are neither intended to be believed nor are believed—attack the very foundations of what Arendt calls the common world.
08-06-2020
A Spray of Good News
Roger BerkowitzThe ingenuity of scientists who have developed dozens of vaccines that may be ready in late 2020 or early 2021 is now matched by a group of scientists at UCSF who have developed a potential way to stop the spread of Covid-19 through aerosolized nanobodies inspired by llamas.
08-06-2020
The Hellscape That is Facebook
Roger BerkowitzScott Galloway and Kara Swisher interview Rick Wilson, the former Republican consultant behind the Lincoln Project. Amidst a wide-ranging discussion, Wilson explains why Facebook is the most important and most destructive political tool for political manipulation ever invented.
08-06-2020
Heinrich Bluecher
Ringo RoesenerHannah Arendt’s husband Heinrich Bluecher was an exceptional and much admired teacher of philosophy at the New School for Social Research and Bard College. Bluecher came from a different generation. He never earned a doctorate, or published. He was what Arendt called a “Socratic character.”
08-03-2020
Fascist Tactics
Roger BerkowitzThe United States is not currently a fascist country. It is unlikely that it will become one. But Jason Stanley rightly points out that we should not ignore the rise of fascist tactics increasingly being used by the President and his administration while they are also excused by members of the President’s Republican Party.
08-01-2020