by Matthew Friedman | Feb 7, 2022 | Commentary, Politics
They came in their thousands – by the tens of thousands, if you believe them – belching diesel fumes and blasting air horns. The Freedom Convoy of big tractor-trailer rigs, semis, and private pickup trucks and vans converged on the Canadian capital of Ottawa from...
by Matthew Friedman | Jan 7, 2022 | Commentary, Politics
On 2 January 2016, a band of armed anti-government extremists occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. Ammon Bundy, the Stetson-wearing leader of a right-wing militia with the anodyne name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, had been addressing an...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 22, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me chills. The film’s hero Brian Roberts (Michael York) and his lover Max von Heune (Helmut Griem) are enjoying a glass of lager at a biergarten in the German countryside in...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 17, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
Writing in the Washington Post this week, Olivier Knox left no doubt that the left wing of the Democratic Party will be held responsible for the party’s loss of Congress in the 2022 midterm election and even – whispered in sotto voce – the return of the Great Satan...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 8, 2021 | Essays, Politics
The man with the megaphone was getting a response. Standing in front of the Wells Fargo Bank at the corner of Broad and Bank in Newark – a Wachovia branch until the subprime mortgage crisis at the beginning of the Great Recession – he was calling out to everyone in...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 3, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
A white man wearing a Stars and Stripes bandana threw a Molotov cocktail into the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters in Austin, TX on Wednesday, and then casually walked away. The bomb did not ignite, and damage was minor. You might not have heard about the...