Section: New Republic (USA)
The Failure to Define Fascism Today
“You can’t define it as good or bad,” Caio Mussolini, great-grandson of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, told reporters on May 8, discussing fascism during his run for the European Parliament. Fascism was a “complicated, nuanced period.”It’s not the first time the dictator’s progeny have defended him. Last October,...
Trump’s Military Threats Aren’t Going to Keep “America First”
A week ago, President Donald Trump was threatening to wipe Iran off the map: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” he tweeted. This week, the president has seemed more moderate, reportedly complaining that National Security Adviser John Bolton has pushed the administration’s policy too far toward military action...
The Enduring Horror of Chernobyl
From the beginning, viewers of HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl know more than the characters themselves about what’s to come—like Titanic, its very name is a spoiler. And so the opening scenes are shocking for what they don’t contain: no deafening boom, no crowds running screaming from a shower of glowing rubble. Instead the...
Make the IRS Great Again
The story of human government is largely the story of tax collection. One of the oldest written records, a 6,000-year-old clay tablet found in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, captures a citizen’s dread about the heavy financial levies imposed upon them. “You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector,”...
Gregor Von Rezzori’s Vast Postwar Masterpiece
If you put a gun to my head and asked me to describe Gregor von Rezzori’s Abel and Cain in three sentences, this is what I would answer: Murder. Murder. Murder. First-, second-, and third-degree: premeditated, unpremeditated, involuntary. Fratricide, sororicide, parricide. Genocide, historicide, deicide.ABEL AND CAIN by Gregor von...
Waiting for Peak Trump
There’s a certain rhythm to Donald Trump’s presidency over the past two years. First he does something even more egregious than usual, like defend violent white nationalists or side with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then he hunkers down for the barrage of public criticism. The wave crests, and things return to normal, or at least...
Democrats Must Make an Example of Bill Barr
The Democrats almost got this right. On Wednesday, they shredded what little credibility Bill Barr had left during a five-hour hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, at times, bordered on a cross examination. By the end of his testimony, Barr’s carefully manicured disdain gave way to thinly veiled wrath. Pushed in the...
Werner Herzog’s Ode to Gorbachev
Werner Herzog is in love. His eyes glimmer, his smile is unforced, and his much-parodied Teutonic drone cannot conceal his affection for his subject, the ailing 87-year-old man who once ruled the largest country on earth and then presided over its dissolution. In Mikhail Gorbachev, Herzog has found a secular saint, a man who was a titan in an age...
The Foolhardy Quest to Define a “Trump Doctrine”
Michael Anton is nothing if not resolute. A former Bush speechwriter and private-equity executive, he has dedicated himself these past few years to a lonely and self-evidently futile goal: to convince America that President Donald Trump is a statesman with a coherent philosophy—or really anything other than an erratic, egomaniacal...
The Canonization of Richard Holbrooke
If anyone questioned the sureness of Richard Holbrooke’s media touch during his lifetime—when he was persona very grata on cable news shows, dated Diane Sawyer, and set-designed the Dayton Accords on a remote U.S. air base to dramatize the inconvenient necessity of American power—the fact that George Packer has produced a 600-page portrait...
