Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general of the United States, made an announcement on March 23 warning Americans of the mounting death rate likely to occur over the next few weeks as COVID-19 spreads throughout the country. He remarked that “this is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our...
Phillip Roth’s 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” has been made into a six-part TV series and shown recently on HBO in the United States and Great Britain. David Simon wrote the script for the television version and directed the production. Simon’s earlier credits include “The Wire,” “Treme” and “Murder:...
The anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, has become a date identified by the UN to commemorate the Holocaust on an annual basis. In the midst of the various ceremonies performed to remember the event, there may be some benefit in recalling exactly what...
The leaders of neo-Nazi and other white nationalist groups in the United States face a major problem, one having to do with their claims of white or Aryan racial superiority. What to do if the groups involved appeal primarily to white men — and some women — who, by most standards, fail...
During the 1980s, Louis Beam — a Vietnam War veteran, Klansman and Aryan Nation activist — wrote what became an influential observation about ways in which racial supremacists could employ violence to get what they wanted. Beam reasoned that it was becoming progressively harder for right-wing extremists to launch attacks...
How should we reconcile the historically low level of Americans’ negative feelings about Jews with the recent surge in attacks? The April 27 attack on the Chabad synagogue in Poway, a suburb of San Diego, California, set off alarms within American Jewish communities. The attack came six months after another...
What should we make of a substantial Jewish presence in Trump’s right-wing administration? One of the apparent curiosities of the Trump presidency is the significant role played by American Jews in his administration and his personal circle of friends, confidants and ex-confidants. To illustrate: The president’s daughter, Ivanka, is married...
Donald Trump’s victory has provoked a sectarian struggle over American Jewish values. The recent, unexpected election of Donald J. Trump to the US presidency has aroused widespread fear, anxiety and, not infrequently, derision on the part of political observers—both at home and abroad. Why? At first, the answers seem obvious...
As US gun sales soar in anticipation of proposed curbs to gun ownership following the Newtown massacre, Leonard Weinberg and Matthew Feldman look at the narratives that fuel far right groups and warn of the potential dangers posed by anti-gun legislation.
