Norman Cohen

“Between 1971 and 2013, Conservative Judaism went from being the denominational home of 41 percent of American Jews to representing only 18 percent. Along the way, the career of Jeffrey Myers would suffer the same fortunes as the movement.”
― Mark Oppenheimer, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood

“The pull of fascist politics is powerful. It simplifies human existence, gives us an object, a “them” whose supposed laziness highlights our own virtue and discipline, encourages us to identify with a forceful leader who helps us make sense of the world, whose bluntness regarding the “undeserving” people in the world is refreshing. If democracy looks like a successful business, if the CEO is tough-talking and cares little for democratic institutions, even denigrates them, so much the better. Fascist politics preys on the human frailty that makes our own suffering seem bearable if we know that those we look down upon are being made to suffer more. Navigating the tensions created by living in a state with a democratic sphere of governance, a nondemocratic hierarchical economic sphere, and a rich, complex civil society replete with organizations, associations, and community groups adhering to multiple visions of a good life can be frustrating. Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live.”
― Jason F. Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

“A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there’s a war. When other people start thinking about you, it’s to figure out how to torture you, that and nothing else. The bastards want to see you bleeding, otherwise they’re not interested! Princhard was dead right. In the shadow of the slaughterhouse, you don’t speculate very much about your future, you think about loving in the days you have left, because there’s no other way of forgetting your body that’s about to be skinned alive.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“course if we choose to use a language comprehensible only to law and economics graduates it will be easy to prove that the masses need to have their life run for them. But if we speak in plain language, if we are not obsessed with a perverse determination to confuse the issues and exclude the people, then it will be clear that the masses comprehend all the finer points and every artifice. Resorting to technical language means you are determined to treat the masses as uninitiated. Such language is a poor front for the lecturer's intent to deceive the people and leave them on the sidelines. Language's endeavor to confuse is a mask behind which looms an even greater undertaking to dispossess. The intention is to strip the people of their possessions as well as their sovereignty. You can explain anything to the people provided you really want them to understand. And if you think they can be dispensed with, that on the contrary they would be more of a nuisance to the smooth running of the many private and limited companies whose aim is to push them further into misery, then there is no more to be said.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth