Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), “The Survivors” (charcoal on toned paper) Introductory Note: The article below is adapted from segments of my speech, L’Histoire victimaire comme identité négative (“Victimhood History as Negative Identity”), delivered in October 2007 at the XII Round Table of Terre et Peuple, in Paris-Versailles. Nearly two decades later, I think it is appropriate […]
First published in July 1995 in Chronicles, but still relevant today, To the old popular proverb, “The only good communist is a dead communist,” we should perhaps now add: “Once a communist, forever a communist.” Although as a muscled ideology communism is dead, as a way of life it is still very much alive. Similar to […]
For a new-born state, the quest for identity means a relentless struggle against a rival victimhood. This can be called a pursuit of “negative identity,” requiring the demonization of the Other and a quasi-necrophiliac fixation on its own dead rather than its own living. No people or nation willingly cedes its dead to the competing […]
In the study of politics, two schools of thought converge: the school of stability and the school of change. The former emphasizes dominant political ideas that shape weak or strong leaders, while the latter highlights the role of a charismatic and strong political figure who drives social changes. In reality, these forces interact to shape […]
Greetings, Tom! How are you and your family doing? We are exercising the art of psychic survival amidst our troubled times. Having survived the fraud of communism, there is no reason we cannot survive the deception of liberalism. You have actively followed Trump’s second term and carefully assessed its impact on global politics. Was Trump’s […]
It was two thousand years ago that the Roman writer Juvenal warned us to beware of our dreams coming true. An attractive Roman noblewoman may go to great lengths in her self-adornment only to discover how intensely she is hated by her less physically endowed female companions. Comes the time when the envy of her […]
