The Ideas Letter

I asked the excellent journalist and Columbia professor Keith Gessen, who has long written cogently on the Russian condition, a question. I had been surprised at the ability of several prominent Russian liberals to pivot, essentially overnight, and emerge as full-throated apologists for Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. Is there something particular to the Russian experience that inspired such a radical volte-face? Gessen uses the example of one such supposed turncoat, Dimitri Simes, to tell a larger story about the ambiguities and contradictions of this complicated period of Russian history.

For a different perspective on a fascistic moment, Adam Greenfield suggestively points to the reactionary roots of environmental movements. A writer on technology and the climate crisis, Greenfield probes the dark side of environmentalism and how “deep ecology” has been appropriated by far-right Great Replacement conspiracists. Those familiar with the Nazis’ complicated relationship to ecology won’t be shocked by Greenfield’s findings.

Our curated content this issue is rich: We begin with a wonderful historical tour d’horizon of the power and urgency of magazines in the so-called Global South.  Stefan Borg’s dissection of the foreign policy of the New Right follows. In the wake of Trump’s victory—Trumpism was hardly a fluke—getting analytical purchase on the post-liberal approach to global affairs is imperative.  

We then spotlight a spirited roundtable discussion around Joël Glasman’s 2020 book on statistics and the humanitarian field. Can his findings shift how quantitative instruments are used in a sector both politicized and vulnerable?

A LitHouse podcast from Oslo brings us a wide-ranging discussion with Felwine Sarr, the Senegalese writer and activist, on his book about (and conception of) Afrotopia. It bears listening to Sarr’s commitments as they both align with and depart from Pan-African renderings.