Return of the False Messiah

Posted on January 18, 2024
Image: Statue of Sabbatai Zevi in Ulcinj, Montenegro, where he was exiled in 1673; THR illustration.

Understanding the extent of the threat posed by Bibi requires a broad historical perspective.

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Artisans of Words

Posted on January 10, 2024
Image: THR illustration/Adobe Stock.

The emptiness of words, and our shared resignation to meaning manipulation, is no small matter.

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Taking the Long View

Posted on December 29, 2023
Image: THR illustration (Bonki Studio/Shutterstock).

The historical novel strives to recreate not only the material dimensions of a past age but also its mindset.

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Presentation and Power

Posted on December 20, 2023
Image: Signs at the site of an Occupy DC protest, 2011, Shutterstock.

The protests and protest candidates failed because they lacked organizational structures and concrete policies.

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Self-Censorship and Don Quixote

Posted on December 14, 2023
Image: The Lion, illustration for Don Quixote, 1902, by William Strang, National Galleries of Scotland.

The language of self-censorship removes the question from the moral realm in which it properly belongs.

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Autocracy Rising

Posted on December 12, 2023
Image: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a rally in Izmir in May 2023; Shutterstock..

Turkey presents an inversion of the usual presumptions about the current global struggle between liberalism and conservatism.

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