Compared with how we’ve ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees – far more, in fact, than we Americans have, even though our population is vastly larger.
ADAM HOCHSCHILDGrowing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism.
More Adam Hochschild Quotes
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Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings
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It sure is a rising tide, and we have a particularly nasty exemplar of it in the U.S., in Donald Trump.
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If your real wages are declining, your job is at risk, you fear your children will be worse off than you are
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In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.
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Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.
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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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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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And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor
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Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about “welfare mothers” – a code phrase for people of colour.
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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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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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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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I think one thing writers can do is point out that you don’t have to say openly racist things, like [Donald] Trump, to be a racist or a xenophobe.
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Hitler and Mussolini jumped in on the side of Francisco Franco and his Spanish nationalists, sent them vast amounts of military aid, airplanes, tanks and Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops as well.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD