An urgent and compelling report on the clear and present danger of proto-fascism in the U.S.
After becoming a victim of unhinged anti-Semitic hatred, trolled and cyberstalked by fringe-right bigots, a journalist delivers his forceful response.
Weisman (No. 4 Imperial Lane, 2015), the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, once reported on the activities of a neoconservative, journalism that provoked alt-right activists on social media. Under the cover of “free speech,” they openly expressed their prejudice against Jews in general and the author in particular. Certainly, the author notes, anti-Semitism in the U.S. is hardly new. He recalls the lynching of Leo Frank, the bile spewed by Charles Lindbergh, and other examples. Erstwhile good feelings engendered during the civil rights movement eventually collapsed, and Judaism and its adherents became conflated with the State of Israel. Now, anti-Semitism is flourishing in the Trump era, and what was unacceptable once now swims in the mainstream. With reportorial skill, the author brings us up to date on activities of current hate groups and their leaders. The titular meme—three parentheses (“echoes”) around a proper noun—is a dog whistle signaling, for those attuned to it, “Jew.” Today, marchers in Nazi regalia parade, and swastikas and graffiti abound; harassment, trolling, and cyberstalking are essential tools in the alt-right kit. So what can be done? What should American Jews do? Weisman issues a call to arms in defense of truth. We must organize and fight, he urges, using the internet and social media. Jews, the “Other,” must ally with other Others like African-Americans and immigrants. The author also recommends toning down the obsession with Israel and supporting organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The moral response is imperative,” writes Weisman. “Morality can inform tactics.” For now, though, the value of his brief text remains the light he shines on the current state of bigotry.
An urgent and compelling report on the clear and present danger of proto-fascism in the U.S.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-16993-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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