By Gabriel Noah Brahm · Friday, January 19, 2024 Collin May’s essay “Critical Theory as an Anti-Emancipatory Project” appeared earlier this week in TelosScope.
 Collin May would not seem like an ideal target for cancelation—if by that one means someone relatively defenseless, inarticulate or unable to speak for himself, lacking in intellectual resources to understand his predicament, uncredentialed, without elite professional training in the subject he is accused of mishandling, or ready access to legal counsel. Or if by that one means someone accused of having done something wrong under murky circumstances, in any way nebulous, difficult to check, or hard to prove one way or the other.
To the contrary. May is himself a lawyer, trained philosopher, theologian, and scholar of Islam. Yet he ran afoul of the powers of “woke” that be, over the publication of an academic book review on the subject of Islamic history, published years ago in a prestigious outlet, just when he had stepped into a prominent role as a Canadian civil servant.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, August 26, 2020 The following interview was conducted by Moritz Schwarz and appeared in Junge Freiheit, on August 14, 2020. Published with permission. Translated by Russell A. Berman, who has written a separate note here.
Dr. Maaßen, the Mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, has warned against a “world of prohibitions” in Germany, in which “moral condemnation” could follow the smallest mistake. This would “destroy liberal democracy.” Is he right?
Hans-Georg Maaßen: I am a jurist, out of passion, and that’s why I am frightened to have to agree with him in part. I am deeply concerned that our legal state—the rule of law—is being more and more undermined by the rule of morality.
Bärbel Bohley’s disappointed phrase is well known: “We wanted justice, but all we got is the rule of law.” Isn’t morality the better and ethically higher good?
Maaßen: No. It is true that the law only provides a moral minimum. Yet that is precisely the precondition of freedom.
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Politicians who warn us against the New Right have been speaking about “Weimar conditions.” Isn’t the comparison with the pre-Hitler era exaggerated?
Not as far as the surprise attack dynamic is concerned. One is in fact reminded of the speed with which the National Socialist party gained political ground in the Weimar Republic. First it had 18%, then suddenly 30%, and soon governing without it became practically impossible. Let’s be honest: Today no one knows where the AfD will reach its limit. In Austria, the candidate of the right-wing populist FPÖ got half the votes. Not that long ago, who would have thought this possible?
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By Telos Press · Thursday, August 27, 2015 In a new interview with Karmel Melamed in the Jewish Journal, Matthias Küntzel discusses the history of antisemitism in Iran, a topic he explores in detail in his new book Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold. Purchase your copy of the book in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Friday, March 21, 2014 Telos Editorial Associate Jay Gupta recently spoke with C.S. Soong on Pacifica Radio’s Against the Grain, a show about politics, society, and ideas. Their conversation turned to ethics, objective vs. subjective truth, and the manner in which war is reported in the media. Listen the full interview at the Against the Grain website here.
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