We must burn them

Hazel V. Carby: Against the Origin Story, 26 May 2022

The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story 
edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones.
W.H. Allen, 624 pp., £25, November 2021, 978 0 7535 5953 6
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Exterminate All the Brutes 
directed by Raoul Peck.
HBO, April 2021
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... features Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The idea that US supremacy is seen as being ordained by divine providence is underlined by an episode showing American presidents speaking the words ‘So help me God’ when reciting the Oath of Office, immediately followed by an account of the ...

Just Be Grateful

Jamie Martin: Unequal Britain, 23 April 2015

Breadline Britain: The Rise of Mass Poverty 
by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack.
Oneworld, 334 pp., £9.99, February 2015, 978 1 78074 544 2
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Inequality and the 1 Per Cent 
by Danny Dorling.
Verso, 234 pp., £12.99, September 2014, 978 1 78168 585 3
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... of neglect, distribution is a topic of discussion again, and not only as a question of social justice, but as a problem for the economy itself. ‘Relative equality is good for growth,’ Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, stated last summer. Inequality has re-emerged as a factor in electoral politics too. A recent poll in the US claimed ...

The Most Eligible Bachelor on the Planet

Thomas Jones: ‘The President is Missing’, 5 July 2018

The President Is Missing 
by Bill Clinton and James Patterson.
Century, 513 pp., £20, June 2018, 978 1 78089 839 1
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... the terrorists and their nefarious backers in Saudi Arabia and Russia, all in the name of truth, justice and the American way. Duncan’s narrative voice, describing a crucial episode in his presidency barely a month after the event, isn’t his private, inner voice; it’s a public, self-justifying voice, which is perhaps all we can expect from a novel ...

New Unions for Old

Colin Kidd, 4 March 2021

The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Thought in Modern Scotland 
by Ben Jackson.
Cambridge, 210 pp., £18.99, September 2020, 978 1 108 79318 6
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Standing up for Scotland: Nationalist Unionism and Scottish Party Politics, 1884-2014 
by David Torrance.
Edinburgh, 258 pp., £80, May 2020, 978 1 4744 4781 2
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... left-wing politicians would be able to use the full powers of the state to bring about social justice. But well before the referendum votes had been counted, he realised that the UK would vote to stay in. In these circumstances, he believed the interests of Scotland would be best served by being a full member-state of the EEC. In 1976, disenchanted with ...

Breaking Point

Martin Loughlin: Militant Constitutionalism, 25 April 2024

Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn and Forge a Democracy for All 
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
Viking, 368 pp., £20, October 2023, 978 0 241 58620 4
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... Trial by jury, in this context, was to be admired not because of its efficiency in administering justice, but as an effective means of educating the people in the practice of self-government. The social and political role of the legal profession was also important. In a remarkable passage, Tocqueville argued that lawyers provide powerful security against ...

Only Sentences

Ray Monk, 31 October 1996

Wittgenstein’s Place in 20th-Century Analytic Philosophy 
by P.M.S. Hacker.
Blackwell, 368 pp., £50, October 1996, 0 631 20098 3
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Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Vol. IV of an Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’ 
by P.M.S. Hacker.
Blackwell, 742 pp., £90, August 1996, 0 631 18739 1
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... member of the analytical tradition. For those who feel that Dummett has here done less than justice to the spirit of Wittgenstein’s work, a welcome alternative view is provided by Peter Hacker’s new book, Wittgenstein’s Place in 20th-Century Analytic Philosophy. This was written as a synoptic essay to accompany the huge four-part Analytical ...

Capital’s Capital

Christopher Prendergast: Baron Haussmann’s Paris, 3 October 2002

Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris 
by Michel Carmona, translated by Patrick Camiller.
Ivan Dee, 480 pp., £25, June 2002, 9781566634274
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... stands) or as a star figure in the creation of ‘the city as a work of art’ (the title of Donald Olsen’s book on the subject, published in 1988). Aesthetics were not Louis-Napoleon’s strong point. In the eclectic medley of Second Empire styles, his basic preferences were Modernist; he was a glass-and-iron man, as evidenced by his enthusiasm for ...

Vindicated!

David Edgar: The Angry Brigade, 16 December 2004

The Angry Brigade: The Cause and the Case 
by Gordon Carr.
ChristieBooks, 168 pp., £34, July 2003, 1 873976 21 6
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Granny Made Me an Anarchist 
by Stuart Christie.
Scribner, 423 pp., £10.99, September 2004, 0 7432 5918 1
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... converted the newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Six members of the group – among them, its leader, Donald DeFreeze – died in a Los Angeles police shoot-out in May 1974, and a further three (including Hearst) were arrested 14 months later. Escaping arrest, Soliah had gone underground, changed her name to Sara Jane Olson and built a new life for herself as the ...

Why we go to war

Ferdinand Mount, 6 June 2019

... We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedoms.’ The Donald may be no Adolf, but he sings the same Song of the Will. After the worst of wars, there has to be a winding down, a settlement of outstanding grievances, insisted on, whether brutally or charitably, by the victors, and resisted or grudgingly accepted by ...

The Inequality Engine

Geoff Mann, 4 June 2020

Capital and Ideology 
by Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Harvard, 1150 pp., £31.95, March, 978 0 674 98082 2
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... and innovation and substantially reduce the quantity and quality of a nation’s output’ (as Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers put it in an October 2018 report, ‘The Opportunity Costs of Socialism’). This is the same ‘logic’ that Senator Lindsey Graham trotted out to argue against income support for US nurses in the midst of the ...

Capture the Flag

Rory Scothorne: Labour in Scotland, 4 June 2026

A History of the Scottish Labour Party 
by David Torrance.
Edinburgh, 314 pp., £24.99, January, 978 1 3995 4480 1
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... new forum for Scottish nationalism, but filling it with more competition than Labour was used to. Donald Dewar, who steered Labour’s plans for devolution in the 1990s, presented this as a virtue: ‘What we have got to do is persuade Scotland that fear must be conquered and that canny caution be put on one side. The people must decide if they are prepared ...

Dark Tom

Christopher Ricks, 1 December 1983

Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley 1933-1980 
by Nicholas Mosley.
Secker, 323 pp., £8.95, October 1983, 0 436 28852 4
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Rules of the Game: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley 1896-1933 
by Nicholas Mosley.
Fontana, 274 pp., £2.50, October 1983, 0 00 636644 9
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... his father learnt nothing. We reviewers ought to acknowledge that we are not likely to be doing justice to this book, because Sir Oswald will not have it so – Sir Oswald, still peremptory, oppressive, charming, and brutal, is determined to claim more than his share of Limehouse and limelight. The book itself is alive with counterpointings, comic and ...

Cronyism and Clientelism

Peter Geoghegan, 5 November 2020

... by the Serious Fraud Office for misconduct in its electronic tagging service for the Ministry of Justice. The wrongdoing is said to have included charging for offenders who were dead. Deloitte was fined £6.5 million for its role in the scandal (a sum later reduced to £4.2 million because the parties settled). In mid-October, Serco’s share value rose by ...

Who removed Aristide?

Paul Farmer, 15 April 2004

... arrest was greeted with applause by the vast majority of Haitians and by human rights and justice groups in Haiti, the US and Europe. Amnesty International asserted that the arrest ‘could mark a step forward by the Haitian justice system in its struggle against impunity’: ‘the gravity of the human rights ...

That Damn Smooth Stuff

Jefferson Cowie: Louisiana Demagogue, 19 March 2026

American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana 
by Thomas E. Patterson.
Louisiana State, 704 pp., £43, February 2025, 978 0 8071 8299 4
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... where he fought corporate monopolies. William Howard Taft, a former president and later chief justice, called him ‘the most brilliant lawyer who ever practised before the United States Supreme Court’. In 1924, he ran for governor of Louisiana and lost, but he won four years later by highlighting the state’s sharp economic divisions and speaking out ...