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Category: History/Archeology

The forgotten history of Hitler’s establishment enablers

The forgotten history of Hitler’s establishment enablers

Adam Gopnik writes: Hitler is so fully imagined a subject—so obsessively present on our televisions and in our bookstores—that to reimagine him seems pointless. As with the Hollywood fascination with Charles Manson, speculative curiosity gives retrospective glamour to evil. Hitler created a world in which women were transported with their children for days in closed train cars and then had to watch those children die alongside them, naked, gasping for breath in a gas chamber. To ask whether the man…

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The Trump regime’s assault on science feels eerily Soviet

The Trump regime’s assault on science feels eerily Soviet

Lois Parshley writes: In the fall of 1925, agronomist Trofim Lysenko arrived on the dusty plains of what is now Azerbaijan, hoping to keep cows from starving to death over the winter. The young scientist, who learned to read as a teenager during the Russian Revolution, dismissed the rapidly advancing field of genetics. He believed nature could be bent to human will. Lysenko denounced the idea that genes pass traits down as a “degradation of bourgeois culture,” and couldn’t understand…

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Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism — the reason Trump defends it at all costs

Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism — the reason Trump defends it at all costs

Kyle J Anderson writes: How do we explain this alliance between the seemingly antisemitic Maga movement and Israel? Analysts usually point to two major factors. First is the power and influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups, donors, media figures and political operatives, famously analysed by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Second is the role of Christian Zionists in the Maga movement, including prominent figures like the current American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee has explicitly stated that his…

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Trump regime asserts power to rewrite history at Smithsonian

Trump regime asserts power to rewrite history at Smithsonian

The Guardian reports: The Trump administration is evidently extending its control of cultural representation at the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex. In a letter obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the White House told the Smithsonian that it plans a wide review of exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations in 2026. The letter to Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, from Trump administration officials said the White House wants the…

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The history and future of societal collapse

The history and future of societal collapse

Damian Carrington writes: “We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. “I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and…

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The controlled demolition of American science

The controlled demolition of American science

Ross Andersen writes: Roald Sagdeev has already watched one scientific empire rot from the inside. When Sagdeev began his career, in 1955, science in the Soviet Union was nearing its apex. At the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, he studied the thermonuclear reactions that occur inside of stars. A few lab tables away, Andrei Sakharov was developing the hydrogen bomb. The Soviet space program would soon astonish the world by lofting the first satellite, and then the first human being, into…

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The psychology of belief explains America’s ongoing war against evolution

The psychology of belief explains America’s ongoing war against evolution

By Edward White, Kingston University One hundred years after a Tennessee teacher named John Scopes started a legal battle over what the state’s schools can teach children, Americans are still divided over evolution. Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee law by teaching evolution, in a highly publicised July 1925 trial that led to national debate over evolution and education. The trial tested whether a law introduced that year really could punish teachers over evolution lessons. It could and did: Scopes…

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Trump is building concentration camps faster than Hitler did

Trump is building concentration camps faster than Hitler did

Will Bunch writes: When it comes to the topic of concentration camps, Andrea Pitzer wrote the book — literally. The Washington, D.C.-area writer’s own personal curiosity about the origins and history of this inhumane practice — and her sense that many people view the subject too narrowly through the lens of Nazi Germany or Joseph Stalin’s USSR — sparked her 2017 book, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. Although her book traces the long arc of cruel…

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National Park Service dragged into Trump’s effort to cover up America’s ugly past

National Park Service dragged into Trump’s effort to cover up America’s ugly past

The New York Times reports: At Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, the Trump administration is set to review, and possibly remove or alter, signs about how climate change is causing sea levels to rise. At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the administration will soon decide whether to take down exhibits on the brutality of slavery. And at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida, Trump officials are scrutinizing language about the imprisonment of Native Americans inside…

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Unholy alliance: How Hitler forged unity between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants

Unholy alliance: How Hitler forged unity between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants

Udi Greenberg writes: In the middle of the 20th century, a prolonged animosity came to an end. For more than four centuries, the enmity between Catholics and Protestants, known to theologians as the two confessions, had been one of the organising principles of European life. But, then, it stopped. To grasp just how revolutionary this inter-Christian peace was, it’s worth remembering what came before it. Because the mutual hatred between the confessions shaped not only the early modern era, when…

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The Trump regime’s contempt for the rule of law has roots in America’s pre-civil rights era

The Trump regime’s contempt for the rule of law has roots in America’s pre-civil rights era

Steve Chapman writes: America is supposed to be the land of the brave, but under the second administration of Donald Trump, it’s fallen under a climate of fear. Universities and law firms have been punished for their perceived disloyalty. Foreigners have been abducted by masked agents and shipped to foreign gulags without due process. News organizations have been bullied for performing honest journalism. Federal employees have been cashiered by the thousands. Corporations harmed by his trade policies have been vilified for telling the truth…

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Does Pakistan’s Lawyers’ Movement hold lessons for the United States?

Does Pakistan’s Lawyers’ Movement hold lessons for the United States?

  Yes, Pakistan’s Lawyers’ Movement holds valuable lessons for the United States, particularly regarding the importance of judicial independence, the power of collective action, and the role of civil society in challenging political power. The movement demonstrates how a professional group can mobilize and exert significant influence on political and legal systems. Here’s a more detailed look at the lessons: • Importance of Judicial Independence: The Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan highlighted the critical role of an independent judiciary in a…

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Gaza and the undoing of Zionism

Gaza and the undoing of Zionism

Yakov M. Rabkin writes: During a sabbatical I spent in West Jerusalem in the late 1980s, my 7-year-old daughter was enrolled in an Israeli school. One day, she came home and could not find her tricycle anywhere. “Arabs must have stolen it,” she said. We later found the tricycle behind the building, but her immediate assumption gave me pause. Just a few months in, an Israeli school had already planted seeds of anti-Arab prejudice in her young mind. In response,…

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Roman gravestones hint that ancient economies still shape the present

Roman gravestones hint that ancient economies still shape the present

Science reports: There’s a lot more than just raw materials within the medicines in your bathroom cabinet or the watch on your wrist. These objects are also packed with knowledge, which is why they can only be produced by complex economies with the right mix of know-how, infrastructure, and technology. A new analysis of Roman gravestones, presented at the NetSci conference in Maastricht, Netherlands, on 4 June, suggests this kind of knowledge tends to stick in place—even over thousands of…

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The perils of Middle East triumphalism

The perils of Middle East triumphalism

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write: To many outside the Middle East, the American and Israeli war with Iran reads like a linear narrative: the two allies’ formidable militaries and intelligence agencies arrayed against their adversary, poised to prevail, on the cusp of indisputable, decisive triumph. The fight and its expected outcome are viewed through the prism of familiar antecedents: Hitler’s Germany overwhelmed, defeated, willing to acquiesce to the victor’s demands; Japan following suit. When proponents of this war speak…

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Trump is trying to minimize, ignore or even erase the experiences and history of Black people in the U.S.

Trump is trying to minimize, ignore or even erase the experiences and history of Black people in the U.S.

The New York Times reports: On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists. “Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work. The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black…

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