Its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget.
ADAM HOCHSCHILDAfter all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the U.S. entered World War II?
More Adam Hochschild Quotes
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Because they wanted a sympathetic ally in power. So I think it really was the opening act of World War II.
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The Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane for example, the Stuka dive bomber, the 88 millimeter artillery piece, which could be used both for antiaircraft purposes and also shelling on the ground.
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Ditto for her countryman the great playwright Athol Fugard.
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No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush’s Iraq War.
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I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.
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Speaking of Germany in 1933, I don’t think you can remove yourself from politics when, in so many countries – the United States, Poland, Hungary, and many others
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Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism.
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I can certainly sympathize with writers who don’t want to put themselves or their loved ones at risk.
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After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the U.S. entered World War II?
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In the form of man-made global warming; one can’t be neutral at such a moment. It’s like claiming to be neutral if you’re living in Germany in 1933.
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Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War.
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Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend.
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Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain
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To bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today’s globe.
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You can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD