Jake Romm
By Jake Romm
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Culture Before Trump, Philip Roth Took Aim At The ‘Grotesquerie’ Of Ronald Reagan, Too
Back in January, Philip Roth gave an email interview in the New Yorker in which he was asked to respond to the election of Donald Trump. In a string of fittingly eloquent invective, Roth called Trump “humanly impoverished,” and “incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency.” “It isn’t Trump as…
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Culture WATCH: Why This Twilight Zone Episode Is More Timely Than Ever
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of…
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Culture When Albert Einstein’s Pal Found the Constitutional Flaw That Can Lead to Fascism
As many around the world worry about Donald Trump’s presidency and the potentially fascist future of the United States, it is worth remembering a little known anecdote about the famed mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. You likely know Gödel’s name in relation to the “incompleteness theorems” – two theorems of mathematical logic dealing with axiomatic systems…
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Culture The Batsheva Dance Company’s ‘Last Work’ Is A Revelation
Ohad Naharin, the acclaimed Israeli choreographer of the equally acclaimed Batsheva Dance Company, recently had the New York debut of his most recent work, “Last Work” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The piece is not (let’s hope) Naharin’s final creation, at least there is no indication, either in the press or from the man…
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Culture How Time’s Bannon Cover Shows Us A Stark Vision Of Evil
In December, Time Magazine named Donald Trump the Person of the Year. On their cover they placed that incredible, deeply nuanced, subversive picture. Lurking behind Trump on that photo was an ominous shadow, that, as many viewers pointed out, did not correspond to the lighting, and could only have been the product of Photoshop. It was…
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Culture How Hannah Arendt Is Being Used and Misused in the Age of Trump
Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about authoritarianism, the nature of evil, and power, is having a bit of a moment. Currently circulating the internet (my twitter feed, at least) are two interesting articles regarding the Jewish philosopher’s legacy. First, we have Zoe Williams’ piece for The Guardian, “Totalitarianism in the age of Trump: Lessons from…
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Culture Why Nazi Propaganda Is Not As Relevant As You Might Think
One of the first things viewers see at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” which recently opened at the U.N., is a quote from 1924 by Adolf Hitler: “Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.” And, as the exhibition will show,…
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Culture The Guide To The Alt Right’s Memes That You Wish You Didn’t Need
Last week, Vice published a guide to help you navigate the worst that America has to offer: alt-right/Nazi/fascist/racist memes. As Justin Caffier of Vice points out, “Internet memes are, by and large, the currency in which these young nationalists trade, eschewing the stuffy, articulated treatises of ‘Mein Kampf’ in favor of more virality-friendly catchphrases and…
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