Jennifer Szalai
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Jennifer Szalai
@jenszalai.bsky.social
2.3K followers 130 following 96 posts
https://www.nytimes.com/by/jennifer-szalai
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Jennifer Szalai @jenszalai.bsky.social · Jul 18
I wrote about something that's contested nowadays: empathy.
How Empathy Became a Threat
www.nytimes.com
jenszalai.bsky.social
What Clara said. Always struck by how so many smart people — who otherwise decry the deterioration of the discourse — will take the (rage) bait.
clarajeffery.bsky.social Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 1d
I know it is hard. I fail at this too. But instead of reacting to somebody else’s take on an article, try reading it yourself first.
November 25, 2025 at 1:09 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Wrote about the argument that cultural stagnation allowed r-w reactionaries to fill in the vacuum. And now that some of them are at the center of power, what comes next?

What might look edgy in the recesses of 4chan looks craven when blasted out from official U.S. government accounts.
Pop Culture Got Stale. Counterculture Went Right-Wing.
www.nytimes.com
November 23, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
flakphoto.news
“With creators no longer required to pursue artistic excellence,” Marx writes, “culture became a lowest-common-denominator battle for attention.”
@jenszalai.bsky.social
@wdavidmarx.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/b...
Pop Culture Got Stale. Counterculture Went Right-Wing.
www.nytimes.com
November 21, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
jpschmader.bsky.social
“What might look edgy in the recesses of 4chan looks craven when blasted from official U.S. government accounts.” @jenszalai.bsky.social
Pop Culture Got Stale. Counterculture Went Right-Wing.
www.nytimes.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:29 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Even better:
November 11, 2025 at 2:46 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Sometimes a bare recitation of the facts yields a devastating parenthetical:
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/u...
At the center of his bet is that the currency of Argentina — a debt-ridden country whose economy has required more than 20 bailouts — is undervalued.
October 17, 2025 at 6:05 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
An insightful essay. A few years ago I wrote about the literature of shame, including questions about shamelessness, salutary kinds of shame and what shaming can (and cannot) be for:
www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/b...
But we shouldn't ignore how shame has also been used as a force for positive change, O'Neil says. She quotes what Frederick Douglass said he hoped to do for America: to use "the public exposition of the contaminating and degrading influence of Slavery" in order to "shame her out of her adhesion to a system so abhorrent to Christianity and to her republican institutions." At a time when slavery was still legally sanctioned, Douglass couldn't appeal to government authority, but he could appeal to its ostensible ideals. "In some cases, shaming is all we have, Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental studies, writes in "Is Shame Necessary?" (2015). Shame is powerful and also wildly imprecise, meaning it must be deployed "shrewdly," she says, with "scrupulous implementation." Overzealous deployment can backfire, making the target feel victimized and even more isolated. "As with antibiotics, if shaming is abused, we might all end up as victims," she writes. O'Neil and Jacquet encourage readers to try to think more deeply not just about what shame is but what it might be for. If it's for sheer punishment - for banishing someone out of the circle of concern forever — then there's no need for forbearance or mercy. But this can also sound like a nonviolent (and still extremely painful) form of sadism. Both books suggest that shame can help teach us how to live among one another, inculcate shared values and achieve mutual respect. O'Neil gives the example of Hopi "shame clowns," who poke fun at transgressors in a ritual that offers "ridicule and then redemption." The purpose of the ritual is reintegration, not ostracism: "The people they mock remain members of the community."
October 15, 2025 at 2:41 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
And one more thing: It’s good to see a Hungarian who isn’t Orbán make international news.
lrb.co.uk London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Oct 9
‘His books concern people on the margins, at the edges of empire or of their sanity, and the great powers and promises that exert their centripetal pull.’

Jennifer Szalai on László Krasznahorkai’s Hungarianness, from 2012

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
Jennifer Szalai · Where Forty-Eight Avenue joins Petőfi Square: László Krasznahorkai
www.lrb.co.uk
October 9, 2025 at 3:11 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
I said this when Krasznahorkai won a National Book Award for translation several years ago, and I’ll say it again: This can only encourage Americans to learn how to pronounce the “sz“ sound, and I am here for it!
October 9, 2025 at 12:01 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel! Here’s an essay I wrote about him in 2012:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
Jennifer Szalai · Where Forty-Eight Avenue joins Petőfi Square: László Krasznahorkai
www.lrb.co.uk
October 9, 2025 at 11:40 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
I was struck by that line too. I reviewed Walter’s book “How Civil Wars Start” when it was published way back in 2022. her analysis was incisive; I was hoping it wouldn’t be prescient:
www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/b...
October 8, 2025 at 12:45 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Philippe Sands‘s excellent new book traces the links between the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and an old Nazi named Walter Rauff — two men who embraced the deployment of state power to torture and murder human beings.
Pinochet - who issued an amnesty law in 1978 to immunize himself and his government from prosecution - blamed the people below, insisting he could not control their "excesses"; Rauff blamed the people above, insisting that he was only following orders.
October 5, 2025 at 5:40 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
I highly recommend Philippe Sands’s absorbing new book about Pinochet, a Nazi hiding out in Patagonia, and impunity:

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...
How to Get Away With Crimes Against Humanity
www.nytimes.com
October 3, 2025 at 3:11 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Took a break from writing about political memoirs to review a big new biography of Bruce Lee [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/b...
Bruce Lee Died Young, but He Changed the Look of Movies Forever
www.nytimes.com
October 1, 2025 at 12:06 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
“But the right did not learn cancel culture from the left; the modern right in America emerged as a censorious movement. It took decades for its free-speech faction to develop, and even then, it has only ever been a minority part of the coalition.” — Nicole Hemmer www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...
Opinion | The Right Didn’t Catch Cancel Culture From the Left
www.nytimes.com
September 30, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
jasonzinoman.bsky.social
I thought Ross Douthat's recent explanation of how late night became more political was off. So I dug into the history. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/a...
How Did Late-Night Get So Political? It Didn’t Start With Trump
www.nytimes.com
September 24, 2025 at 1:11 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
Sporting a few piercings and tattoos, Lee says he used to have more subdermal piercings. Unlike regular piercings in ear lobes, these piercings cannot be removed by hand. If a wearer needs or wants them removed, they must consult a doctor or professional piercer. "An officer had been taking me to this room and he said: 'You aren't allowed to have those. • He pointed at my piercings," he recalls. "Next thing I knew I was being shackled again. Chains around my ankles, my wrists. They brought me to a hospital in Miami. "They made me stand with all of these people looking at me like I was some sort of murderer. It was so degrading. They brought me into a room. They told the doctors to cut out all of my piercings. "I had already been there for almost a month. I didn't understand why this was suddenly an issue. I just feel like everything was done to intimidate and torture. "I told the nurses specifically: 'I do not consent to this.' But they put lidocaine [for numbing] on my face and on the back of my neck. The thing is it is only supposed to work for 40 minutes; I was lying there for well over an hour and they just started doing it. I was shackled to the bed. I couldn't move.
September 10, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
jasonzinoman.bsky.social
"Any personal details we do get are titrated just so." @jenszalai.bsky.social on Amy Coney Barrett. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/b...
Amy Coney Barrett’s Memoir Is as Careful and Disciplined as Its Author
www.nytimes.com
September 9, 2025 at 4:21 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
The agent asked whether Mr. Gavidia was American, and he said he was. The agent then asked what hospital Mr. Gavidia had been born in, and he said he did not know. According to the lawsuit, the agent and a colleague proceeded to slam Mr. Gavidia against a metal gate, twist his arm and seize his phone. “Fearing for his life, Gavidia offered to show the agents his ID,” the lawsuit said. “The agents took the ID, and about 20 minutes later, returned Gavidia’s phone and set him free. They never returned his ID.”
September 8, 2025 at 4:37 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
"The use of masks," Mr. Levitsky said, "is without question a bad sign." And it is extremely rare in functional democracies. "I cannot think of a democratic country with a reliable rule of law where security forces mask themselves," Mr. Levitsky said. "It just doesn't happen."
September 5, 2025 at 9:51 PM
jenszalai.bsky.social
He was brought to the US when he was 12, on a green card. Now, at the age of 62, after serving his time, instead of being sent to his birth country of Jamaica—which was willing to repatriate him—he was sent to Eswatini, a country he has no connection to, and where he might be detained indefinitely.
haleaziz.bsky.social Hamed Aleaziz @haleaziz.bsky.social · Sep 2
The Eswatini government at one point requested a half-billion dollars from the United States in exchange for taking in third-country deportees, according to documents obtained by The Times.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/w...
Man Who’d Served His Time in U.S. Is Deported to an African Prison
www.nytimes.com
September 2, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
jwmueller-pu.bsky.social
... and the online proliferation of fake Arendt quotes is one of the earliest and most telling signs of ... what?
August 22, 2025 at 1:23 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
There's an arresting quotation that resurfaces online now and again, usually accompanied by a photograph of a dark- haired woman with an intense gaze: "The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs that a culture is about to fall into barbarism." It's followed by the name of the woman in the picture: the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who fled the barbarism of Nazi Germany. Only there's no record of Arendt ever saying that, or anything like it. The bogus quotation is the kind of artifact that flourishes on the internet in bewildering times - plausible-sounding and politically ominous.
August 22, 2025 at 12:50 AM
jenszalai.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/b...
August 21, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Jennifer Szalai
samadams.bsky.social
this sucks, but it will suck much less when some smart editor snaps up Richard
August 12, 2025 at 5:55 PM