Popular wisdom may be popular, but sometimes it’s downright wrong. Five stories from The Conversation’s 2018 politics coverage interrogate popular wisdom – and find it lacking.
A memorial outside Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 29, 2018, erected after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the temple.
AP/Gene J. Puskar)
American anti-Semitism took an organized form in the 20th century. The German American Bund and the Silver Legion developed a unique culture of hatred for Jews that persists today in alt-right groups.
The delegations signing the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors.
Helen Johns Kirtland (1890-1979) and Lucian Swift Kirtland (died 1965), US National Archives
Whenever we apply that political or moral comparison, we set the bar for inhumanity as high as possible. Should the abyss of World War II really be the main measure for all things political?
Donald Trump’s policies represent a particular attack on American youth and children, particularly those who are disadvantaged.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Chaplin’s 1940 film ‘The Great Dictator’ mocks Hitler’s absurdity and overweening vanity, while highlighting Germany’s psychological captivity to a political fraud.
Leo Frank, 1884-1915.
Library of Congress Online Catalog, Prints and Photographs Division
Fake news has been used in the past to feed into people’s fears and prejudices. A particularly poignant story from 1913 relates to the wrongful conviction of an innocent man named Leo Frank.
A woman stands near an exhibit of photographs of victims of the Holocaust called the ‘Klarsfeld Pillars’ in New York.
Mike Segar/Reuters
Can the Nazis be forgiven? A rabbi explains why this question needs a more profound examination of some of Judaism’s deepest ethical mores and theological beliefs
Million of Germans gather to show faith in the Hitler regime, 1933.
AP Photo
When anti Jewish rhetoric emerges into the light, it is worth reminding ourselves of the dark history at its root.
Even if you’ve never read or seen any of Shakespeare’s works, his influence has touched your life.
Photo credits, clockwise from top: Kevin Lamarque, public domain, public domain, public domain, public domain, Mike Tsikas, 20th Century Fox, Mike Hutchings
In the almost 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, his words have been enlisted by an extraordinary range of historical figures. Even the Nazis tried to claim him as a ‘Germanic’ writer.