Fred Litwin Journalist Profile

Articles

American Assassinations

Jul 21, 2024 | quillette.com | Thomas Doherty |Greg Koabel |Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin

Killing the right person can change history. Even scholars with a disciplinary commitment to the idea that technological determinants, Marxist dialectics, and other impersonal forces inexorably shape the course of human events have to reckon with the transformative impact of a single life that, once snuffed out, derails a timeline and leaves the survivors to ponder the might-have-beens. Would the better angels of our nature have prevailed had the derringer of John Wilkes Booth jammed?
Dutchmen on the Hudson

Jul 19, 2024 | quillette.com | Greg Koabel |Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin |Jeffrey Herf

What follows is the twenty-first instalment of The Nations of Canada, a serialised Quillette project adapted from Greg Koabel’s ongoing podcast of the same name. While this series is called “Nations of Canada,” readers will have noticed that many of the events being described did not take place in what is now Canada. There are two reasons for these excursions.
The Man Who Wasn’t There

Jul 19, 2024 | quillette.com | Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin |Jeffrey Herf |Jason Andrew Garshfield

A review of Nick Drake: The Life by Richard Morton Jack; 576 pages; John Murray Press (June 2024)I first heard Nick Drake’s music in a Volkswagen commercial, of all things, during the late 1990s. A couple gazed at each other in a moonlit car while an English voice crooned about a pink moon over a wistfully strummed guitar. The product didn’t interest me, but that commercial sparked my lifelong devotion to Drake’s music.
A Conversation with Lahav Harkov

Jul 19, 2024 | quillette.com | Pamela Paresky |Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin |Jeffrey Herf

In an interview by Pamela Paresky, Lahav Harkov, a journalist and political analyst, discusses the Israeli parliamentary system, highlighting the challenges of forming coalitions and the voter’s role in selecting parties over individual candidates. She examines the tension between ultra-Orthodox Jews, exempt from military service, and the secular community, emphasising the need for mutual recognition in achieving peace agreements.
It’s the Narrative, Stupid!

Jul 17, 2024 | quillette.com | Fred Litwin |Jeffrey Herf |Jason Andrew Garshfield |Brian Stewart

This just might be the hundredth article you’ve seen on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody thinks they have something of value to add to the conversation. Far too many people have awful opinions. For instance, have a look at this:Dr Karen Pinder teaches at the University of British Columbia Medical School. Her X account has since been deleted.
Queen of the Gender Crits

Apr 11, 2024 | quillette.com | Joan Smith |Greg Koabel |Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin

Every time there is a shooting, everybody turns to their narrative. We all want our stories to be vindicated, and we are perplexed if the expected pattern does not emerge.
What We Can Create on Mars

Mar 18, 2024 | quillette.com | Robert Zubrin |Greg Koabel |Matt Hanson |Fred Litwin

Every time there is a shooting, everybody turns to their narrative. We all want our stories to be vindicated, and we are perplexed if the expected pattern does not emerge.
Israel in the hours before an uncertain dawn.

Jan 30, 2024 | therealstory.substack.com | Terry Glavin |Fred Litwin

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. - from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem. It is, whether we want to admit this or not, a world war. It is directed from Tehran and Moscow, its quartermaster is Beijing.
A reckoning is long past due.

Oct 18, 2023 | therealstory.substack.com | Fred Litwin |Terry Glavin

And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. . . that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years. . . and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. -Albert Camus, The Plague.
Paul Landis HSCA Outside Contact Report

Sep 29, 2023 | onthetrailofdelusion.com | Fred Litwin

Landis spoke to the HSCA on February 17, 1979. He only told them there were two shots from different directions. Nothing about finding a bullet or finding a bullet fragment. Here is my transcription:Asked what happened 22ndSaid he heard shots, different in sound ∴ [therefore] different in direction. 1st behind, 2nd in front right. Report written on 30th (CX 1024)w/o reading newspapers. What I remembered – not consensus of what all of us thought.