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Category: History/Archeology

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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People were already wrecking the climate 140 years ago — we just lacked the know-how to spot it

People were already wrecking the climate 140 years ago — we just lacked the know-how to spot it

Nature reports: How early in Earth’s history would scientists have been able to detect human-caused climate change if they’d had the proper technology? That’s the subject of a thought experiment published by researchers today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. he answer: “As early as 1885,” says study co-author Benjamin Santer, an independent climate scientist based in Los Angeles, California. That’s when researchers could have “confidently disentangled” a human-caused signal of climate change from natural variations, or noise,…

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‘Who controls the present controls the past’: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ explains about the twisting of history to control the public

‘Who controls the present controls the past’: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ explains about the twisting of history to control the public

George Orwell’s ‘1984’ has some lessons for 2025. NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images By Laura Beers, American University When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign. It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power. It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past. In his second…

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Will Netanyahu drag the U.S. directly into his war against Iran?

Will Netanyahu drag the U.S. directly into his war against Iran?

David Hearst writes: When a delegation from Hamas arrived in Moscow after the 7 October attacks, Putin passed a message of thanks for this “birthday gift”, my sources tell me. Putin was born on the same day in 1952. Would Russia allow Israel, supplied by the US, to topple Iran after the loss of Bashar al-Assad in Syria? It’s a question that Netanyahu and Trump should consider. Trump had a 50-minute talk with Putin over the weekend. Netanyahu should also…

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The man who got the Diggers digging

The man who got the Diggers digging

Rowan Wilson writes: In April 1649, the earth of St George’s Hill in Surrey, England, was disturbed. A group of men and women calling themselves the ‘True Levellers’, known to history as the ‘Diggers’, had taken to the ‘wast[e] ground’ in the parish of Walton to protest enclosure, the process by which common land was parcelled into units of private property, stripping commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. The land was bad – ‘nothing but a bare…

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America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

Jonathan Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Britain, writes: As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies. They may not yet be like Venezuela, Peru, Hungary, Turkey or Russia. But these countries show what can happen when a democracy dies with a whimper, not with a bang. There may not be tanks on the lawns or mobs in the…

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Autocrats don’t act like Hitler or Stalin anymore − instead of governing with violence, they use manipulation

Autocrats don’t act like Hitler or Stalin anymore − instead of governing with violence, they use manipulation

Autocrats today tend to govern by manipulation of the public, among other tactics, rather than solely using violence. Nanzeeba Ibnat/iStock/Getty Images Plus By Daniel Treisman, University of California, Los Angeles President Donald Trump’s critics often accuse him of harboring authoritarian ambitions. Journalists and scholars have drawn parallels between his leadership style and that of strongmen abroad. Some Democrats warn that the U.S. is sliding toward autocracy – a system in which one leader holds unchecked power. Others counter that labeling…

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J. D. Vance warns the federal courts to get in line

J. D. Vance warns the federal courts to get in line

Ruth Marcus writes: Vice-President J. D. Vance offered some unsolicited advice to Chief Justice John Roberts the other day: the federal courts need to be more deferential to Presidential authority, and the Supreme Court must do a better job of keeping lower-court judges in line. Vance was speaking to the New York Times’ Ross Douthat about the Trump Administration’s nearly unbroken string of court losses in immigration-related cases. These setbacks, in Vance’s telling, represent an undemocratic project by some federal…

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Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

In a commencement address given to graduates from U. Cal. Berkeley’s School of Education earlier this week, Robert Reich said: Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Putin and Xi censor the media. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. America’s founders knew this. They saw how easily emperors and kings could mislead uneducated publics. The survival of the new nation required a public…

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