10: Anti-Semitism and the Authoritarian Playbook

Recently, the Polish Senate passed a law that would criminalize any suggestions of complicity by the Polish state in Nazi war crimes, including the Holocaust. In episode 10, V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell talk to the novelist Steve Yarbrough about the nationalist Law and Justice party, which is behind the ban—and how their authoritarian tactics mirror those of the Trump Administration. Yarbrough's new novel, The Unmade World, is set in contemporary Poland and America. Then we talk to the novelist Eileen Pollack about Charlottesville, the history of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and how her 2012 novel, Breaking and Entering, anticipated the rise of the alt-Right. Readings: The Unmade World, by Steve Yarbrough (2018); The Party That Wants to Make Poland Great Again, by James Traub, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 2 2016; 'Orgy of Murder': The Poles who 'Hunted" Jews and Turned Them Over to the Nazis, by Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, Feb. 11, 2017; Breaking and Entering, by Eileen Pollack (2012).

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