Quillette Weekly

Thanks to all who came to our Quillette Social London on Friday night, especially those who had travelled long distances to be there. We had a marvellous time inside the warm walls of the Old Queen Street Café and were fortunate enough to host several special guests, including Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson, Rob Henderson, and the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge, Nathan Cofnas.

Several Australians were in attendance, including the courageous Moira Deeming MP and former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John Anderson; we wish to extend special thanks to him for delivering some rousing remarks and supporting the event through his podcast. (John's YouTube channel now boasts over 407,000 subscribers, so if you are not already subscribed, make sure you check it out and consider subscribing.)

In our weekly round-up this week, Jon Kay speaks to Israeli historian Benny Morris on the podcast about the Israel-Hamas war. Additionally, we feature a translated review from Paul Berman about the ideology of Islamism and its relationship with death—a perspective completely different from Western secularism.

In other essays, Dan Kowalski provides a gripping account of a true crime in "Murder in Namibia." And Zachary Robert Caverley makes some provocative arguments about the way science is funded.

I hope you enjoy this week's round-up, and make sure you become a paid subscriber so you don't miss out on any future Quillette Socials.

Warmly,
Claire

True Crime

A Murder in Namibia

How two bungling American assassins travelled over 7,000 miles to settle a grudge, and then turned their trial into a nine-year circus.

QuilletteDan Kowalski

Israel-Hamas War

A Different Concept of Death

An interview with author and intellectual Paul Berman about Hamas’s ideology and Western blindness.

QuillettePaul Berman

Podcast #227: The October 7 Terrorist Attacks: a Historical Perspective

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay talks to influential Israeli historian Benny Morris about Hamas’ acts of mass murder, the Israeli response, and the future of Gaza.

QuilletteQuillette

Antisemitism: The Sinister Pattern

The enemies of the Jews are the enemies of Enlightenment.

QuilletteBrett Hall

Whose Genocide Is It Anyway?

The libel that Israel is engaged in genocide attempts to do the unthinkable—to link the Jewish state with Nazi Germany. This cynical calculus is as wrong as it is obscene.

QuilletteZachary R. Goldsmith

Faking Hope: AI Art as Propaganda

There is a new contender for the most effective weapon in the propaganda wars: photorealistic, generative AI art.

QuilletteJulia Friedman

Queers for Palestine: Identity Politics at Its Most Absurd

In Palestine, they’d be killed.

QuilletteArmin Navabi

Science

Who Should Fund Science?

The notion that governments should fund science is built on falsehoods.

QuilletteZachary Robert Caverley

Destiny of Earth

Muthukrishna’s new book presents a fundamentally optimistic narrative, brimming with ideas and concepts.

QuilletteRazib Khan

World Affairs

A Failure to Communicate

Jeff Sharlet’s new book is a stark and dispiriting dispatch from Trump country.

QuilletteMatt Hanson

Brexit and The Voice: Two Ill-Conceived Referenda

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a grave error of judgement. If he had paid more attention to the polarisation created by Brexit, he might have done things differently.

QuilletteHelen Pluckrose

China’s Female Revolt

How sexist violence killed the Chinese Dream.

QuilletteAaron Sarin

The So-Called Dark Ages

A Roman Trauma

In the fourth instalment of ‘The So-Called Dark Ages,’ podcaster Herbert Bushman describes the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410 C.E.

QuilletteHerbert Bushman

From the Archives

Roya Hakakian and How to Speak About What No One Wants to Hear

I. Roya Hakakian is an American writer from Iran who commands a distinctive ability to speak about large and horrific events in a chipper tone that appears to underplay the horrific quality and, by apparently underplaying, ends up subtly underlining. It is an artful tone. It is cagey, charming, dis…

QuillettePaul Berman

Free Speech and Islam — In Defense of Sam Harris

Harris had been carefully explaining the linguistic bait-and-switch inherent in the word “Islamophobia” as “intellectually ridiculous,” in that “every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people.”

QuilletteJeffrey Tayler

From Around the Web

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