The United States is the land of conspiracy theories, not least when it’s busy electing a president. Such theories are a secular version of the idea of a malevolent God, for which the world is a sinister place but at …
In defence of showing Nazi art
Slightly bedraggled, a Royal British Legion poppy wreath hangs on the railings outside Museum Arnhem. In the pretty sculpture garden that overlooks the Rhine as it flows into the Netherlands from Germany stands a monument to the soldiers of the …
Paperclipped Nazis and Stay-behind Gladios (2008)
FROM 2008: In the waning days of WWII, as the cold war began to freeze Europe, as the Iron Curtain was erected, intelligence agencies began a mad scramble to recruit the best and brightest minds from Nazi Germany. Learn more …
The four thinkers who took on the mob
What is the formative connection between the private self and other people? Or, as the architect of libertarianism Ayn Rand once put it, how should we order “the two principles fighting within human consciousness — the individual and the collective, …
Humanism is a heresy
“There is nothing particular about man. He is but a part of this world.”
This observation on the pretensions of humanity — cool, disillusioned, unsparing of sentimentality — was made in the Forties, midway between our own time and the …
Stop talking about American ‘fascism’
In the Forties, Dorothy Thompson posed the question “Who Goes Nazi?” Our version today, endlessly asked, is “Who Goes Fascist?” The unfortunate answer seems to be: everybody. Over the past few months, I’ve seen the “fascism” tag applied without a …
Philip Larkin was a filthy genius
If literary reputations can be likened to a stock market, fluctuating on the tides of taste and time, Philip Larkin crashed in 1991. Until then he had been a strong buy, the unofficial post-war laureate, more synonymous with his time …