Adam Serwer Quotes (1982-)

“American religious pluralism, however imperfectly practiced, is centuries older than the European commitment to purging anti-Semitism, which is younger than Israel itself. (p 222 "The Jewish Divide")”

“The anti-political correctness types are really just trying to enforce their own standards of acceptable discourse and are furious at their inability to do so”

“Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another…Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”

“Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. That’s understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery.”

“In the aftermath of the Ferguson protests, it was fashionable to speak of a "new civil-rights movement." But it is perhaps more illuminating to see Black Lives Matter as a new banner raised on the same field of battle, stained by the blood of generations who came before. The fighters are new, but the conflict is the same one that Frederick Douglass and George Ruby fought, one that goes far beyond policing. (p 302)”

“People were upset about Trump's win in 2016 because he ran a campaign promising to implement policies that targeted racial and ethnic minorities with state violence (and he did not simply because he was mean or rude. In no sense is Biden's campaign comparable. Sorry! Biden won't be banning Christians, arbitrarily revoking the status of white immigrants here because of natural disasters, trying to sell off white populated parts of the country or encouraging police brutality against white people. Your disappointment is not oppression.”

“The artifacts that persist in my memory are the photographs of lynchings. But it’s not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It’s the faces of the white men in the crowd. There’s the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend...Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another... Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”

“Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, viewed the Radical Republican project as an insult to the white men to whom the United States truly belonged.”

“Trump and Barr let the biggest drug dealers in America off with a slap on the wrist. Law and Order indeed.”

“That Trump's supporters believe Omar's sins justify her banishment and Trump's similar transgressions justify his presence in the White House helps illustrate exactly what is going on here. Under Trumpism, no defense of the volk is a betrayal, even if it undermines the republic, and no attack on the volk's hegemony can be legitimate, even if it is a defense of democracy.”

“Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free; he fought for the preservation of slavery; his army kidnapped free black people at gunpoint and made them unfree—but all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for black Americans. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass’s admonition that “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.””

“Some of the worst violence in American history occurred during the period of low partisan polarization stretching from the late Progressive era to the late 1970s-the moment for which Joe Biden waxed nostalgic. In Ivy League debate rooms and the Senate cloakroom, white men could discuss the most divisive issues of the day with all the politeness befitting what was for them a low-stakes conflict. Outside, the people whose rights were actually at stake were fighting and dying to have those rights recognized.”

“The Republican Party has grown more racially and religiously homogeneous and its politics more dependent on manufacturing threats to the status of white Christians. This is why Trump frequently and falsely implies that Americans were afraid to say "Merry Christmas" before he was elected, and why Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham warn Fox News viewers that nonwhite immigrants are stealing America. For both the Republican Party and conservative media, wielding power and influence depends on making white Americans feel threatened by the growing political influence of those who are different from them.”

“I found disturbing echoes of Trump's rhetorical style in Hannah Arendt's description of Stalinist and Nazi apparatchiks in The Origins of Totalitarianism”

“The leftist writer Barbara Ehrenreich posted on Facebook that Clinton was "an elitist snob who writes off about a quarter of the American electorate as pond scum."”

“I hope people who should have known better then, understand now that Giuliani succeeding Dinkins was an outcome of similar forces that led to Trump succeeding Obama.”

“I hope people who should have known better then, understand now that Giuliani succeeding Dinkins was an outcome of similar forces that led to Trump succeeding Obama.”

“The uncomfortable truth is that, whether you're Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, economic populism is most effective in American politics when it is paired with appeals to racism.”

“The distinctions between McKinley's call for unity and Biden's are the difference between a party that had already abandoned its multiracial coalition, and a party that remains reliant on one.”

“while critics like Adam Serwer have rightly argued that when it comes to the bond between Trump and his supporters, "the cruelty is the point," my claim is that such cruelty is not only an experience of community and delight; it's fundamentally a return to a particular civic experience.”

“Serwer's writing has been indispensable to understanding the chaotic world around us. Incisive, elegant, and deeply anchored in history, The Cruelty Is the Point is an essential guide to a perilous time in American life.”

“For those of us trying to find our way through the fog of the Trump era, Adam Serwer's essays served as a constant source of illumination and inspiration.”

“The essays in The Cruelty Is the Point combine an unsparing accounting of our history with an astute examination of our present."”

“Serwer's powerful truth-telling grabs us, shakes us, and warns us that as long as we wishfully forget the history of American cruelty, we will fail to see it coming for all that we hold dear.”

“No journalist has done more to advance our understanding of American power abuse in the age of Donald Trump than Adam Serwer.”