Adam Hochschild Quotes, War Quotes, Years Quotes

Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend. All over Budapest, statues have been replaced, museum exhibits have been redone, to turn ethnic Hungarians, not Jews, into the prime victims of the Germans during World War II. Five years ago, who would have thought this possible?

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , War Quotes , Years Quotes

If your real wages are declining, your job is at risk, you fear your children will be worse off than you are, it's tempting to want to blame it all on an easily identifiable target: Muslims, immigrants, refugees, blacks, Jews.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Children Quotes

I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Political Differences Quotes

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , War Quotes , Lying Quotes

Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain [during the Spanish Civil War], and it was, by far, the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war. I think they were primarily people who were deeply alarmed by the menace of fascism. They saw this on the horizon. I quote one volunteer, Maury Colow of New York, who said, "for us it was never Franco, it was always Hitler."

5 years ago

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Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about "welfare mothers" - a code phrase for people of colour.

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Mother Quotes , Long Ago Quotes

I think one thing writers can do is point out that you don't have to say openly racist things, like [Donald] Trump, to be a racist or a xenophobe.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Racist Quotes

Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism.

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Compared with how we've ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees - far more, in fact, than we Americans have, even though our population is vastly larger.

5 years ago

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Numbers Quotes , United States Quotes

How many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth; you can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.

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Tags : Adam Hochschild Quotes , Russia Quotes , Political Quotes