The Ideas Letter
The historian Greg Grandin has had an illustrious career smashing the shibboleths of Latin American history, especially as they relate to El Norte. His recent book, America, América, a five-century history of the Western Hemisphere, argues that a US national identity was forged not only in relation to Europe but “facing south,” in interaction and conflict with Latin America. The Argentine social and environmental historian Ernesto Semán—also a full-fledged ”salmonist” these days (you’ll need to ask him)—offers a critical appraisal and personal reckoning of Grandin’s take on the intertwined histories of imperialism and resistance.
Next, the Cambridge University sinologist Christian Sorace offers a critique of the now-common tendency within the punditocracy to analogize Donald Trump to Mao Zedong—and Trumpism to Maoism. Sorace explains that such historical analogies, though rhetorically appealing, obscure more than they clarify. They flatten political nuances, misrepresent mass politics, and reinforce liberal complacency rather than encourage new forms of democratic thought and action.
There has been a common thread to the work in exile of Anna Narinskaya, a displaced Russophone journalist who spent years at the publications Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta, bearing witness to the Kremlin’s normalization of cruelty. This essay—an account of the transformation of defendants’ “last words” in Russian political trials into a new form of underground literature—interweaves documentation, history, and reflection to reveal how the courtroom, a space of state repression, paradoxically became the last refuge of truth-telling.
Our curated section kicks off with the literary critic Terry Eagleton, better known as the father of our frequently featured writer/editor Oliver Eagleton, who pens a very funny and appropriately sour text on Schopenhauer in the LRB.
We follow with a critical meditation in the Hedgehog Review by Antón Barba-Kay on the “meaning” of Curtis Yarvin—his ideas, influence, and style of politics—framed around his debate last year with the Harvard political philosopher Danielle Allen. What exactly is this thing some call the Dark Enlightenment?
Featured Essays
What is The Ideas Letter
Welcome to The Ideas Letter, a publication that prizes the unconventional. We are not in the business of persuading. We won’t try to convince you of anything—other than that the world is complex and reality ever-shifting. We are not here to advocate. What you will find, and we hope embrace, are contributions from across ideological aisles, from a broad range of disciplines and a true cross-section of thinking. If catholicity is your métier, and you are uneasy with banging the drum but would rather hear its many sounds, this is the place for you.
We really like critique. Not the mean-spirited or spiteful kind, but rather commentary that raises tough questions, unpacks assumptions, sometimes calls people on the carpet, and always provides opportunity for discussion. That is what we are really after—facilitating, augmenting, furthering, and bolstering debate around issues of consequence.
You’ll find here articles, essays, and criticism that will challenge you to think. Let us know your thoughts, and make sure to tell a friend. Or even someone with whom you disagree!