Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about “welfare mothers” – a code phrase for people of colour.
ADAM HOCHSCHILDHow many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth
More Adam Hochschild Quotes
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You know, by 1936, Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east.
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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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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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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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I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II.
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Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today’s wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium
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So people at the time really saw fascism not just as an evil but as an aggressive evil that seemed to be spreading.
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One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game.
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Mussolini, in 1935, went and then in the next year, conquered Ethiopia, acquiring himself a colony.
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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.
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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.
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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 think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.
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And American soldiers were the victims of these things in Spain, American volunteers. So this war was really a testing ground for Hitler.
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You’ve got politicians in power or vying for power who are taking tactics and elements of their appeal from the playbook of fascism.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD