Showing posts with label Ian Buruma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ian Buruma. Show all posts

Friday, 7 October 2016

Trump’s Deplorables (Ian Buruma, Project-Syndicate)

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic US presidential nominee, recently described supporters of her opponent, Donald Trump, as a “basket of deplorables.” It was neither a tactful nor an elegant phrase, and she later apologized for her remark. But she was more right than wrong. Trump has attracted many supporters whose views on race, for example, are indeed deplorable.

Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Anti-Semitism From the Left (Ian Buruma, Project-Syndicate)

The former London mayor and left-wing Labour politician Ken Livingstone has been suspended from his party for claiming that Hitler was a Zionist in the early 1930s. According to Livingstone, “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews,” Hitler had merely wanted to expel them from their own countries to Palestine. And that, supposedly, made him a Zionist.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/livingstone-left-wing-anti-semitism-by-ian-buruma-2016-05

Friday, 8 April 2016

Gimme Shelter From Dictatorship (Ian Buruma, Project-Syndicate)

Following US President Barack Obama’s trailblazing visit to Cuba, a free concert by the Rolling Stones in Havana might seem like a relatively minor event. Obama revived relations with Cuba after more than a half-century of deep hostility. The septuagenarian Stones just played some very loud music.

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Tuesday, 8 March 2016

The Referendum Charade (Ian Buruma, Project-Syndicate)

Newsart for The Referendum Charade

Referendums are all the rage in Europe. In June, British voters will decide whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union. The Hungarian government has called for a referendum on accepting its quota of refugees set by the EU. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has already said that Hungary would resist letting them in. “All the terrorists are basically migrants,” he said. The referendum is likely to go his way.

Tuesday, 9 February 2016

An Unhinged Democracy in America (Ian Buruma, Project-Syndicate)

Alexis de Tocqueville, a liberal French aristocrat, visited the United States in 1831 ostensibly to write a study of its “enlightened” prison system (locking people up in solitary confinement like penitent monks was the latest modern idea). Out of this trip came de Tocqueville’s masterpiece, Democracy in America, in which he expressed admiration for American civil liberties and compared the world’s first genuine liberal democracy favorably with Old World institutions.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/american-democracy-populist-majority-tyranny-by-ian-buruma-2016-02