A thoughtful distillation of research that is sadly relevant to our current political moment.
The factions and personalities behind the so-called alt-right, associated both with a white nationalist resurgence and Donald Trump.
BBC senior broadcast journalist Wendling has experience in investigating political extremism, which familiarized him with the unpleasant online “trolling” culture that seemed central to alt-right politics. He finds the alt-right fascinating due to its amorphous nature, terming it “an incredibly loose set of ideologies held together by what they oppose: feminism, Islam, the Black Lives Matter movement, political correctness, a fuzzy idea they call ‘globalism,’ and establishment politics of both the left and the right.” The author distinguishes between “the so-called ‘alt-light’ and a harder core,” lumping cynical provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos in the former group and the latter, “people who are devoted to the idea of ethno-nationalism.” For both factions, “the heady days between Trump’s victory and his inauguration were the high-water mark for the popularity and cohesiveness of the alt-right.” Wendling narrates the improbable journey of Trump and his acolytes in chapters focused on a particular subgrouping of the alt-right—e.g. “Ordinary Guys,” “Conspiracy Theorists,” “The Violent Fringe.” He first looks at the far-right intellectuals who, disheartened by Barack Obama’s election, termed themselves “paleoconservatives” opposed to multiculturalism and immigration, inspiring white supremacist Richard Spencer to develop “a raw online communications strategy.” A consensus developed among users of the anything-goes message board 4chan and angry mens’ rights activists, pickup artists, and video game fans, evident in the Gamergate movement, which targeted women in gaming for abuse. Meanwhile, media figures like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones normalized conspiracy theories while attacking progressives. All these ugly threads came together in the 2016 election via “a technical and philosophical alliance between the alt-right and pro-Putin activists online.” Wendling writes clearly, bolstering his argument with the words and activities of fringe figures, yet in concluding the alt-right movement has evoked its own obsolescence, he underestimates the violent potential of white supremacy’s mainstreaming.
A thoughtful distillation of research that is sadly relevant to our current political moment.Pub Date: April 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7453-3745-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pluto Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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