Mitch Trachtenberg

I’ve never been much of a history student, but lately I’ve been reading up on fascism, prepping for a course I’ll be delivering through Cal Poly Humboldt’s OLLI program for people 50 and older. Here are the basics of what I’ve learned. Much of this is from Robert O. Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism. Lest […]

The pandemic has brought forth the language of war: We must fight back against the virus, engage in battles, attack the enemy. It’s nonsense: Pandemics are biochemistry. Perhaps treating them as such will help depoliticize them. Viruses are on the border between biology and chemistry; they rely on biological organisms for the “infrastructure” to reproduce […]

I grew up in a neighborhood in Queens, New York, which was probably about a quarter Jewish, a quarter Catholic, a quarter Protestant and a quarter other. I didn’t realize what a tiny minority Jews were until I left New York. And I never had people react with surprise when I told them I was […]

Editor’s note: This is one in a series of opinion pieces solicited by the Journal. In the immediate aftermath of Nov. 8, it became very clear that people need safe spaces to discuss their ideas and feelings, and generally process what was the ugliest and most vitriolic presidential contest in generations. To that end, we […]