by Matthew Friedman | May 4, 2022 | Essays, Politics
I can hear my mother’s voice: “You shouldn’t say things like that.” Nancy Salter, who died 16 years ago, was a brilliant writer and editor, a social worker, and an activist committed to social justice and the project of making the world a better place. She was also a...
by Matthew Friedman | Apr 24, 2022 | Commentary, Jewish Life, Politics
The shabby old man was a “loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved.” And he drew the boy, “a young friend of mine” he said, deeper into his clutches. He ensured that the innocent child “was seldom left alone; but was placed in...
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...