As I’ve mentioned before, many post-Holocaust Jews have bad communal memories about Poland. In this case, when I say ‘memories’ I mean communal beliefs, even among people who’ve never been to Poland or had any personal contact with the events of the 1940s. Of course, that isn’t the entirety of the story or the history. This is why I enjoyed so much Timothy Snyder’s The Reconstruction of Nations, which introduced me to a very different strain of Polish history, one with a deep civic, cosmopolitan heritage and multi-national vision of Polish history and nationhood. I discussed that here and here in this interview with Snyder himself.

The politics of the Polish current government and these rallies we saw over the weekend come out of something very different.

TPM Reader HL shared this background … Read More

In the last couple days I’ve had a few requests for an explanation of what’s going on with Brexit, what is Brexit. I’m no expert on the topic. But I think I can give a broad description of the history and the present. So if you’re interested, here goes. And note I’ll cover ground that many are likely familiar with. Read More

We’re currently watching the House Judiciary Committee debate and vote on issuing a subpoena to get the full Mueller Report and underlying evidence tied to the investigation. You can watch it with us here.

Some sleuthing from TPM Readers has confirmed that the there were a bunch of Polish nationalist rallies around the country on Sunday protesting the new Holocaust restitution legislation, Senate Bill 447.

This article at a site called polishclub.org discusses the rallies around the country. Google translate suggests the language is pretty horrendous. Here’s how Google renders one portion of the first paragraph: “This crisis has also resulted in something positive. In Poland, the era of conspiracy ended, we were shown what Polish-Jewish relations really are and what is really going on in them. We were shown the size of Jewish gratitude, for exposing the lives of Poles helping Jews to avoid death, as well as for sheltering them for the last 800 years.” very idiomatic, pun-filled piece. But very inflammatory, anti-Jewish/antisemitic. Read More

Trump calls vote to release the full Mueller Report a “disgrace” …

Trump: demands for release of the full Mueller report are a "disgrace" pic.twitter.com/dxkC6XL26L

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 2, 2019

Maybe this New York rally I mentioned below wasn’t the only one.

A short time after I wrote my post I received an email from TPM Reader T who pointed me to this press release about the protest which notes that the protests were planned for “New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Hartford and Philadelphia and, in solidarity, in several places around the world.” Read More

Before any more time went by I wanted to flag your attention to something that happened in New York City on Sunday. There was a rally of “Polish nationalists” protesting a bill aimed at the recovery of property confiscated from victims during the Holocaust. I put “Polish nationalists” in quotes here because I don’t want to equate Polish nationalism with the most unreconstructed forms of virulent anti-Semitism and Holocaust-denial which were on display at the event — placards with anti-Semitic attacks, various kinds of Holocaust denial, one demonstrator taunting a group of Jewish counter-protestors by waving a dollar bill in their faces, claims that Jews who died in the Warsaw Ghetto were mainly killed by other Jews, etc., etc., etc. Read More

Don’t worry. President Trump says he’ll have a health care plan that’s even better than Obamacare “right after the election.”

In a battlefield situation the difference between a successful lightning strike into enemy lines and one that strikes deep and then becomes surrounded, cut off and destroyed can come down to a matter of moments. Since a short time after Bill Barr released the First Barr Letter I’ve thought we were looking at something like the latter case.

Bill Barr was installed at the Justice Department to protect the President. His carefully worded letter appeared to do just that. The President declared complete and total vindication and exoneration. All his supporters have rushed to do the same, creating a wild chorus of cheers, demanding Democrats resign, piling on the President’s demands for retribution. Many Democrats, like getting sucker punched two or three times, were stunned and demoralized. Read More

We all know that great swathes of the web are simply garbage – absurd listicles, the detritus of content farms living a zombie existence, abandoned social networks, virtually everything on Twitter. It all has some fascinating value in the future just as scientists and historians learn things from the actual physical garbage of the past. But one of the amazing things about the Internet is that in addition to all the garbage and trash the web contains almost limitless different niches of treasures. One of the ones I’m continually bowled over by is the digitization of archival material in the world’s great archives and research libraries. Take the British Museum or the British Library or the Library of Congress or countless other repositories around the world. Sure, they all have websites, which tell you some information about their holdings. But one of the great projects (multitudes of programs) over the last thirty years is the digitization and digital publication of a great swathe of the historical riches of global civilization. Read More