PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump & the Russophobes
The extent to which Trump’s démarche toward Moscow succeeds will be the extent to which the U.S. can transcend a long, regrettable history and finally embrace the 21st century. There is no saying yet whether Donald Trump will succeed in…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: De-Westernizing Ourselves
Embarking on a process of personal, individual “de–Westernization” is absolutely essential if we propose to defend the humanity of humanity. This is an edited version of the second of two lectures the author gave recently on “Defending the Humanity of…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Defending Humanity
In the face of the dangerous U.S. determination to prolong its global primacy, a reform movement to reconstruct our long-abused global institutions merits serious attention. Anyone taking up the question of our shared humanity in the late summer of 2024 must begin…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Ðiên Biên Phú at 70
How did the Vietnamese prevail at that world-historical moment? The answers shed light on the world we see outside our windows now. I had the most salutary email the other day, a reviving lift amid these, humanity’s darkest days, surely, in…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Europe’s Identity Crisis
As European leaders continue to import a version of U.S. militarism, rearmament will cost the Continent its postwar social contract. It is many years now since the French, bless them, revolted as Disneyland Paris arose near the previously uninvaded village…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Authorized Atrocities
Israel’s lawlessness has a history that those in the West share with the apartheid state. It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Gaza & Confronting Power
The American state, broadly defined, is well on its way toward a form of apple-pie absolutism, forcing distorted meanings not merely on three university administrators but on all of us. The events of the past seven days are sobering no…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Banality of Propaganda
The annals of the awful art — Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, Japan’s and America’s during World War II — show that it does not have to be sophisticated. The Israeli president’s display of Mein Kampf just proved that again. I watched a video clip Sunday of Isaac Herzog that…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Bad Faith & Blank Checks
All mainstream journalism is “embedded journalism” now, for the battlefield is everywhere, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his new book, Journalists and Their Shadows. Some years ago, as the decline of American media became evident even among those not…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Al-Qaeda Goes to Washington
Al–Sharaa’s White House visit is a reminder of Washington’s longstanding abhorrence of democratic processes and anyone — beyond the perimeter of the West and sometimes within it — who stands for them. I never thought I would see the day, but the…