“She was dealt a bad hand.” “She took a poisoned chalice.” From a great distance, it is possible to feel sorry for British Prime Minister Theresa May. She seems so dignified. She seems to be trying so hard. The circles beneath her eyes have grown so much deeper since she became prime minister back in …
Theresa May isn’t the adult in the room. She’s part of the problem. Read More »
It begins with humor. The alt-right’s jokes, a teenage friend assures me, are genuinely funny: They ridicule the pomposities of “mainstream” culture, laugh at political correctness and create ridiculous memes mocking everything, including themselves. And once you’ve laughed at the jokes, there is a whole amusing, darkly ironic, alternative world out there, only a couple …
Radicalism kills. Why do we only care about one kind? Read More »
In Madrid last week, a senior politician told me that he was watching the Brexit crisis with growing astonishment. “England, the mother of parliaments,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve looked up to them for so long.” Meanwhile an Italian friend who arrived in London on a delayed train — French customs officers are having …
Brexit has devastated Britain’s international reputation — and respect for its democracy Read More »
Yes, the details were engrossing. The photograph of the empty lunch table where President Trump and Kim Jong Un were supposed to celebrate the deal they never signed. The menu of the meal that they did consume: grilled steak with pear kimchi and hot chocolate lava cake, surely the worst of two cultures combined. The …
Forget Hanoi. Trump has already done irreparable damage to America’s reputation. Read More »
George Washington thought they were “potent engines” easily abused by “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men.” The English poet Alexander Pope thought they manipulated “the madness of the many, for the gain of a few.” Neither man was unusual: Plenty of political thinkers in the 18th century — the era that gave birth to modern democracy in …
Even inside a hotel so secure that it has body scanners at the entrance and snipers on the roof, Vice President Pence travels with a vast security detail. Its main function, it seems, is to elbow people out of the way so that the vice president and his unsmiling wife can walk through a lobby, …
An off-key Pence sings from the Trump hymnal to a stony European reception Read More »
Because I write books about Soviet history, and because I often speak about them to U.S. or European audiences, I am frequently forced to confront the problem of Western indifference. Why, I am asked over and over, did British diplomats who knew about the man-made Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 do nothing to stop it? The …
In recent months, academics, columnists and analysts have spilled gallons of ink analyzing the so-called “populists” who are winning elections, or coming close to winning them, in so many countries. Mea culpa: I, too, have sought to explain why so many people are suddenly using xenophobic language, attacking “elites” and heaping scorn on international institutions …
It’s not xenophobia that links the ‘new populists.’ It’s hypocrisy. Read More »
Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth. Each day, the hero of George Orwell’s “1984” “corrects” old newspapers to make sure that the information is in still accord with the current Party line. After rewriting history, he puts each “incorrect” story into a “memory hole” — a slit in the wall — and it …
The new censors won’t delete your words — they’ll drown them out Read More »
Tents, generators, and portable toilets had transformed an old police barracks on the outskirts of a Polish village. Inside the tents, men speaking different languages sat on folding chairs at long tables, typing on military-grade laptops. A map of Europe’s Baltic coast was projected onto a large screen above them.
