Fintan O’Toole

Our Hypocrisy on War Crimes

The US’s history of moral evasiveness around wartime atrocities undermines the very institution that might eventually bring Putin and his subordinates to justice: the International Criminal Court.

The Last of Her Kind

Angela Merkel emerged from the ruins of the Eastern bloc as a spectacular example of the way the collapse of an old regime might create a much more benign sense of opportunity.

Scenes of the Crime

In his new novels, John Banville is writing the kind of history that is the novelist’s proper concern—the history of a trauma that’s fully contained within the character he has invented.

‘Arum Arum Araaaaaagh’

Boris Johnson’s clownishness has become both mortifyingly infantile and, for those who have to live in the pandemic-stricken country he governs, quite scary.

Ireland’s Coming of Age and Mine

For a Dublin kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the whole experience was mirrored in the nation’s quest for identity.

The Lie of Nation Building

From the very beginning, the problem with the US involvement in Afghanistan lay essentially in the deficits in American democracy.

A Younger Robert Penn Warren

Freedom for Sale

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.

Theater, Politics, and Critic

“The way the personal and the political overlap in certain public lives can be illuminating for both arenas.”

The King of Little England

Boris Johnson, unlike Trump, does not want never-ending disarray. The difficulty is that, having delivered him a string of political successes, Brexit will not go away.

To Hell with Unity

Biden’s ability to govern depends on abandoning any hope of reconciliation with the GOP.

The Trump Inheritance

Trumpism has always been here, it was waiting only to be named. What does this mean for the Biden presidency?

Democracy’s Afterlife

Trump, the GOP, and the rise of zombie politics.

William Barr: Enabler in Chief

The attorney general exemplifies the growing influence of right-wing Catholicism under Trump.

A Moral Witness

Martha Gellhorn’s letters to her lovers and intimate friends involve a remarkable feat of reportage on the war within Gellhorn herself

Night and Day

Democrats are gambling that abhorrence of Trump is sufficiently strong to motivate voters, and Biden and Harris can offer comfort and empathy instead.

Unpresidented

Toxic residues from the Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the so-called war on terror continue to flow into American politics.

Vector in Chief

To understand Trump’s incoherence, we have to take into account two contradictory impulses within the right-wing mindset: paranoia and risk.

The Outsider

In his presidential campaigns Bernie Sanders has radically altered the meaning of inside and outside.

Trump’s Show Trial

Republican senators are now quite openly behaving as courtiers. It is impertinent for courtiers even to go through the motions of putting the monarch on trial.