The killing of nine congregants at the Emanuel A.M.E. church in South Carolina was a hate crime committed by a young white man influenced by the Council of Conservative Citizens. The CCC began in Mississippi in the 1950s as the Citizens’ Councils of America. It is “a modern reincarnation of the White Citizens’ Councils, […]

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  When Dylann Roof pulled a gun at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, his shots rang through history to the roots of the ideology of white supremacy, which justified genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of black people from Africa. We deny this at our own risk. Roof attacked the Emanuel African […]

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  Switzerland is a great country, if you like mountains, lakes, secret bank accounts, especially at 2,100 meters altitude, with a view of Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn, which I once climbed as a college kid—ages ago in 1948. As it happens, as I write, it is the 150th anniversary in Zermatt of the day […]

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  Seventy years ago today, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico–known from that day in 1945 as the “Trinity Site.” Trinity was the code name for the first detonation, chosen by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the technical director of the Manhattan Project […]

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  Suddenly, with a single flap of the Angel of History’s wings, America has experienced a shuddering change: the American swastika has finally become toxic—a liberation that last month seemed so impossible that we’d forgotten to bother to think about it. One doesn’t waste energy worrying over the fact that America controls over 700 military […]

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