When you are searching the library catalog for books on your topic, "historiography" is a useful keyword, because it is used in Library of Congress Subject Headings. For example:
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historiography , the writing of history , especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination. The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing.
Modern historians aim to reconstruct a record of human activities and to achieve a more profound understanding of them. This conception of their task is quite recent, dating from the development in the late 18th and early 19th centuries of “scientific” history and the simultaneous rise of history as an academic profession. It springs from an outlook that is very new in human experience: the assumption that the study of history is a natural, inevitable human activity. Before the late 18th century, historiography did not stand at the centre of any civilization. History was almost never an important part of regular education , and it never claimed to provide an interpretation of human life as a whole. This larger ambition was more appropriate to religion, philosophy, and perhaps poetry and other imaginative literature .
All human cultures tell stories about the past. Deeds of ancestors, heroes, gods, or animals sacred to particular peoples were chanted and memorized long before there was any writing with which to record them. Their truth was authenticated by the very fact of their continued repetition. History, which may be defined as an account that purports to be true of events and ways of thinking and feeling in some part of the human past, stems from this archetypal human narrative activity.
While sharing a common ancestry with myth , legend , epic poetry , and the novel , history has of course diverged from these forms. Its claim to truth is based in part on the fact that all the persons or events it describes really existed or occurred at some time in the past. Historians can say nothing about these persons or events that cannot be supported, or at least suggested, by some kind of documentary evidence. Such evidence customarily takes the form of something written, such as a letter, a law, an administrative record, or the account of some previous historian. In addition, historians sometimes create their own evidence by interviewing people. In the 20th century the scope of historical evidence was greatly expanded to include, among many other things, aerial photographs, the rings of trees, old coins, clothes, motion pictures, and houses. Modern historians have determined the age of the Shroud of Turin , which purportedly bears the image of Jesus , through carbon-14 dating and have discredited the claim of Anna Anderson to be the grand duchess Anastasia , the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II , through DNA testing
Just as the methods at the disposal of historians have expanded, so have the subjects in they have become interested. Many of the indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Polynesia, for example, were long dismissed by Europeans as having no precolonial history, because they did not keep written records before the arrival of European explorers. However, sophisticated study of oral traditions, combined with advances in archaeology , has made it possible to discover a good deal about the civilizations and empires that flourished in these regions before European contact.
Historians have also studied new social classes . The earliest histories were mostly stories of disasters—floods, famines, and plagues—or of wars, including the statesmen and generals who figured in them. In the 20th century, however, historians shifted their focus from statesmen and generals to ordinary workers and soldiers. Until relatively recent times, however, most men and virtually all women were excluded from history because they were unable to write. Virtually all that was known about them passed through the filter of the attitudes of literate elites. The challenge of seeing through that filter has been met by historians in various ways. One way is to make use of nontraditional sources—for example, personal documents, such as wills or marriage contracts. Another is to look at the records of localities rather than of central governments.
Through these means even the most oppressed peoples—African-American slaves or medieval heretics , for example—have had at least some of their history restored. Since the 20th century some historians have also become interested in psychological repression—i.e., in attitudes and actions that require psychological insight and even diagnosis to recover and understand. For the first time, the claim of historians to deal with the feelings as well as the thoughts of people in any part of the human past has been made good.
None of this is to say that history writing has assumed a perfect or completed form. It will never do so: examination of its past reveals remarkable changes in historical consciousness rather than steady progress toward the standards of research and writing that represent the best that historians can do today. Nevertheless, 21st-century historians understand the pasts of more people more completely and more accurately than their predecessors did. This article demonstrates the scope of that accomplishment and how it came to be achieved.
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Published on February 4, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.
A good introduction paragraph is an essential part of any academic essay . It sets up your argument and tells the reader what to expect.
The main goals of an introduction are to:
This introduction example is taken from our interactive essay example on the history of Braille.
The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.
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Step 1: hook your reader, step 2: give background information, step 3: present your thesis statement, step 4: map your essay’s structure, step 5: check and revise, more examples of essay introductions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.
Your first sentence sets the tone for the whole essay, so spend some time on writing an effective hook.
Avoid long, dense sentences—start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.
The hook should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of the topic you’re writing about and why it’s interesting. Avoid overly broad claims or plain statements of fact.
Take a look at these examples of weak hooks and learn how to improve them.
The first sentence is a dry fact; the second sentence is more interesting, making a bold claim about exactly why the topic is important.
Avoid using a dictionary definition as your hook, especially if it’s an obvious term that everyone knows. The improved example here is still broad, but it gives us a much clearer sense of what the essay will be about.
Instead of just stating a fact that the reader already knows, the improved hook here tells us about the mainstream interpretation of the book, implying that this essay will offer a different interpretation.
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Next, give your reader the context they need to understand your topic and argument. Depending on the subject of your essay, this might include:
The information here should be broad but clearly focused and relevant to your argument. Don’t give too much detail—you can mention points that you will return to later, but save your evidence and interpretation for the main body of the essay.
How much space you need for background depends on your topic and the scope of your essay. In our Braille example, we take a few sentences to introduce the topic and sketch the social context that the essay will address:
Now it’s time to narrow your focus and show exactly what you want to say about the topic. This is your thesis statement —a sentence or two that sums up your overall argument.
This is the most important part of your introduction. A good thesis isn’t just a statement of fact, but a claim that requires evidence and explanation.
The goal is to clearly convey your own position in a debate or your central point about a topic.
Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.
As you research and write, your argument might change focus or direction as you learn more.
For this reason, it’s often a good idea to wait until later in the writing process before you write the introduction paragraph—it can even be the very last thing you write.
When you’ve finished writing the essay body and conclusion , you should return to the introduction and check that it matches the content of the essay.
It’s especially important to make sure your thesis statement accurately represents what you do in the essay. If your argument has gone in a different direction than planned, tweak your thesis statement to match what you actually say.
To polish your writing, you can use something like a paraphrasing tool .
You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.
My first sentence is engaging and relevant.
I have introduced the topic with necessary background information.
I have defined any important terms.
My thesis statement clearly presents my main point or argument.
Everything in the introduction is relevant to the main body of the essay.
You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.
This introduction to an argumentative essay sets up the debate about the internet and education, and then clearly states the position the essay will argue for.
The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.
This introduction to a short expository essay leads into the topic (the invention of the printing press) and states the main point the essay will explain (the effect of this invention on European society).
In many ways, the invention of the printing press marked the end of the Middle Ages. The medieval period in Europe is often remembered as a time of intellectual and political stagnation. Prior to the Renaissance, the average person had very limited access to books and was unlikely to be literate. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed for much less restricted circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.
This introduction to a literary analysis essay , about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , starts by describing a simplistic popular view of the story, and then states how the author will give a more complex analysis of the text’s literary devices.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.
If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!
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Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:
The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .
The “hook” is the first sentence of your essay introduction . It should lead the reader into your essay, giving a sense of why it’s interesting.
To write a good hook, avoid overly broad statements or long, dense sentences. Try to start with something clear, concise and catchy that will spark your reader’s curiosity.
A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.
The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:
Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.
The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.
The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
McCombes, S. (2023, July 23). How to Write an Essay Introduction | 4 Steps & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved June 7, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/introduction/
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Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Indian Culture — American Indians: A History of Resilience and Cultural Richness
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Introduction, historical context, cultural contributions, ongoing challenges and resilience.
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The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.
Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the hatred of or prejudice against Jews, was a basic tenet of Nazi ideology. This prejudice was also widespread throughout Europe.
Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews evolved and became increasingly more radical between 1933 and 1945. This radicalization culminated in the mass murder of six million Jews.
During World War II, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings and gassings, and specially designed killing centers.
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The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. 1 In addition to perpetrating the Holocaust, Nazi Germany also persecuted and murdered millions of other victims .
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as “the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”
By the end of the Holocaust, the Nazi German regime and their allies and collaborators had murdered six million European Jews.
The Nazis targeted Jews because the Nazis were radically antisemitic. This means that they were prejudiced against and hated Jews. In fact, antisemitism was a basic tenet of their ideology and at the foundation of their worldview.
The Nazis falsely accused Jews of causing Germany’s social, economic, political, and cultural problems. In particular, they blamed them for Germany’s defeat in World War I (1914–1918). Some Germans were receptive to these Nazi claims. Anger over the loss of the war and the economic and political crises that followed contributed to increasing antisemitism in German society. The instability of Germany under the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the fear of communism , and the economic shocks of the Great Depression also made many Germans more open to Nazi ideas, including antisemitism.
However, the Nazis did not invent antisemitism. Antisemitism is an old and widespread prejudice that has taken many forms throughout history. In Europe, it dates back to ancient times. In the Middle Ages (500–1400), prejudices against Jews were primarily based in early Christian belief and thought, particularly the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Suspicion and discrimination rooted in religious prejudices continued in early modern Europe (1400–1800). At that time, leaders in much of Christian Europe isolated Jews from most aspects of economic, social, and political life. This exclusion contributed to stereotypes of Jews as outsiders. As Europe became more secular, many places lifted most legal restrictions on Jews. This, however, did not mean the end of antisemitism. In addition to religious antisemitism, other types of antisemitism took hold in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. These new forms included economic, nationalist, and racial antisemitism. In the 19th century, antisemites falsely claimed that Jews were responsible for many social and political ills in modern, industrial society. Theories of race, eugenics , and Social Darwinism falsely justified these hatreds. Nazi prejudice against Jews drew upon all of these elements, but especially racial antisemitism . Racial antisemitism is the discriminatory idea that Jews are a separate and inferior race.
The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people.
The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich ) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate.
But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy . This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.
Nazi Germany’s territorial expansion began in 1938–1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939–1945) by attacking Poland . Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, including western parts of the Soviet Union . Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy , Hungary , Romania , and Bulgaria . It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance , which also included Japan.
By 1942—as a result of annexations, invasions, occupations, and alliances—Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and parts of North Africa. Nazi control brought harsh policies and ultimately mass murder to Jewish civilians across Europe.
The Nazis and their allies and collaborators murdered six million Jews.
Geography of the Holocaust
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators implemented a wide range of anti-Jewish policies and measures. These policies varied from place to place. Thus, not all Jews experienced the Holocaust in the same way. But in all instances, millions of people were persecuted simply because they were identified as Jewish.
Throughout German-controlled and aligned territories, the persecution of Jews took a variety of forms:
Many Jews died as a result of these policies. But before 1941, the systematic mass murder of all Jews was not Nazi policy. Beginning in 1941, however, Nazi leaders decided to implement the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. They referred to this plan as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
The Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (“ Endlösung der Judenfrage ”) was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution" began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period.
The Nazi German regime perpetrated mass shootings of civilians on a scale never seen before. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities. These massacres were often conducted in broad daylight and in full view and earshot of local residents.
Mass shooting operations took place in more than 1,500 cities, towns, and villages across eastern Europe. German units tasked with murdering the local Jewish population moved throughout the region committing horrific massacres. Typically, these units would enter a town and round up the Jewish civilians. They would then take the Jewish residents to the outskirts of the town. Next, they would force them to dig a mass grave or take them to mass graves prepared in advance. Finally, German forces and/or local auxiliary units would shoot all of the men, women, and children into these pits. Sometimes, these massacres involved the use of specially designed mobile gas vans. Perpetrators would use these vans to suffocate victims with carbon monoxide exhaust.
Germans also carried out mass shootings at killing sites in occupied eastern Europe. Typically these were located near large cities. These sites included Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga , and Maly Trostenets near Minsk . At these killing sites, Germans and local collaborators murdered tens of thousands of Jews from the Kovno, Riga, and Minsk ghettos. They also shot tens of thousands of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews at these killing sites. At Maly Trostenets, thousands of victims were also murdered in gas vans.
The German units that perpetrated the mass shootings in eastern Europe included Einsatzgruppen (special task forces of the SS and police), Order Police battalions, and Waffen-SS units. The German military ( Wehrmacht ) provided logistical support and manpower. Some Wehrmacht units also carried out massacres. In many places, local auxiliary units working with the SS and police participated in the mass shootings. These auxiliary units were made up of local civilian, military, and police officials.
As many as 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings or gas vans in territories seized from Soviet forces.
German authorities, with the help of their allies and collaborators, transported Jews from across Europe to these killing centers. They disguised their intentions by calling the transports to the killing centers “resettlement actions” or “evacuation transports.” In English, they are often referred to as “deportations.” Most of these deportations took place by train. In order to efficiently transport Jews to the killing centers, German authorities used the extensive European railroad system , as well as other means of transportation. In many cases the railcars on the trains were freight cars; in other instances they were passenger cars.
The conditions on deportation transports were horrific. German and collaborating local authorities forced Jews of all ages into overcrowded railcars. They often had to stand, sometimes for days, until the train reached its destination. The perpetrators deprived them of food, water, bathrooms, heat, and medical care. Jews frequently died en route from the inhumane conditions.
The vast majority of Jews deported to killing centers were gassed almost immediately after their arrival. Some Jews whom German officials believed to be healthy and strong enough were selected for forced labor.
My mother ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, and she told me "Leibele, I'm not going to see you no more. Take care of your brother." — Leo Schneiderman describing arrival at Auschwitz, selection, and separation from his family
At all five killing centers, German officials forced some Jewish prisoners to assist in the killing process. Among other tasks, these prisoners had to sort through victims’ belongings and remove victims’ bodies from the gas chambers. Special units disposed of the millions of corpses through mass burial, in burning pits, or by burning them in large, specially designed crematoria .
Nearly 2.7 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered at the five killing centers.
Ghettos were areas of cities or towns where German occupiers forced Jews to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. German authorities often enclosed these areas by building walls or other barriers. Guards prevented Jews from leaving without permission. Some ghettos existed for years, but others existed only for months, weeks, or even days as holding sites prior to deportation or murder.
German officials first created ghettos in 1939–1940 in German-occupied Poland. The two largest were located in the occupied Polish cities of Warsaw and Lodz (Łódź). Beginning in June 1941, German officials also established them in newly conquered territories in eastern Europe following the German attack on the Soviet Union. German authorities and their allies and collaborators also established ghettos in other parts of Europe. Notably, in 1944, German and Hungarian authorities created temporary ghettos to centralize and control Jews prior to their deportation from Hungary.
German authorities originally established the ghettos to isolate and control the large local Jewish populations in occupied eastern Europe. Initially, they concentrated Jewish residents from within a city and the surrounding area or region. However, beginning in 1941, German officials also deported Jews from other parts of Europe (including Germany) to some of these ghettos.
Jewish forced labor became a central feature of life in many ghettos. In theory, it was supposed to help pay for the administration of the ghetto as well as support the German war effort. Sometimes, factories and workshops were established nearby in order to exploit the imprisoned Jews for forced labor. The labor was often manual and grueling.
Jews in the ghettos sought to maintain a sense of dignity and community. Schools, libraries, communal welfare services, and religious institutions provided some measure of connection among residents. Attempts to document life in the ghettos, such as the Oneg Shabbat archive and clandestine photography, are powerful examples of spiritual resistance . Many ghettos also had underground movements that carried out armed resistance. The most famous of these is the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943.
Beginning in 1941–1942, Germans and their allies and collaborators murdered ghetto residents en masse and dissolved ghetto administrative structures. They called this process “liquidation.” It was part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” The majority of Jews in the ghettos were murdered either in mass shootings at nearby killing sites or after deportation to killing centers. Most of the killing centers were deliberately located near the large ghettos of German-occupied Poland or on easily-accessible railway routes.
Many people were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust and the Final Solution.
At the highest level, Adolf Hitler inspired, ordered, approved, and supported the genocide of Europe’s Jews. However, Hitler did not act alone. Nor did he lay out an exact plan for the implementation of the Final Solution. Other Nazi leaders were the ones who directly coordinated, planned, and implemented the mass murder. Among them were Hermann Göring , Heinrich Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich , and Adolf Eichmann .
However, millions of Germans and other Europeans participated in the Holocaust. Without their involvement, the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe would not have been possible. Nazi leaders relied upon German institutions and organizations; other Axis powers; local bureaucracies and institutions; and individuals.
As members of these institutions, countless German soldiers , policemen , civil servants , lawyers, judges , businessmen , engineers, and doctors and nurses chose to implement the regime’s policies. Ordinary Germans also participated in the Holocaust in a variety of ways. Some Germans cheered as Jews were beaten or humiliated. Others denounced Jews for disobeying racist laws and regulations. Many Germans bought, took, or looted their Jewish neighbors' belongings and property. These Germans’ participation in the Holocaust was motivated by enthusiasm, careerism, fear, greed, self-interest, antisemitism, and political ideals, among other factors.
Nazi Germany did not perpetrate the Holocaust alone. It relied on the help of its allies and collaborators. In this context, “allies” refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. “Collaborators” refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. Nazi Germany’s allies and collaborators included:
The terms “allies” and “collaborators” can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.
Throughout Europe, individuals who had no governmental or institutional affiliation and did not directly participate in murdering Jews also contributed to the Holocaust.
One of the deadliest things that neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and even friends could do was denounce Jews to Nazi German authorities. An unknown number chose to do so. They revealed Jews’ hiding places, unmasked false Christian identities, and otherwise identified Jews to Nazi officials. In doing so, they brought about their deaths. These individuals’ motivations were wide-ranging: fear, self-interest, greed, revenge, antisemitism, and political and ideological beliefs.
Individuals also profited from the Holocaust. Non-Jews sometimes moved into Jews’ homes, took over Jewish-owned businesses, and stole Jews’ possessions and valuables. This was part of the widespread theft and plunder that accompanied the genocide.
Most often individuals contributed to the Holocaust through inaction and indifference to the plight of their Jewish neighbors. Sometimes these individuals are called bystanders .
The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder . In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality.
The Nazis classified Jews as the priority “enemy.” However, they also targeted other groups as threats to the health, unity, and security of the German people. The first group targeted by the Nazi regime consisted of political opponents . These included officials and members of other political parties and trade union activists. Political opponents also included people simply suspected of opposing or criticizing the Nazi regime. Political enemies were the first to be incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps . Jehovah’s Witnesses were also incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. They were arrested because they refused to swear loyalty to the government or serve in the German military.
The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality , persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilized and persecuted Afro-Germans .
People with disabilities were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Before World War II, Germans considered to have supposedly unhealthy hereditary conditions were forcibly sterilized. Once the war began, Nazi policy radicalized. People with disabilities, especially those living in institutions, were considered both a genetic and a financial burden on Germany. These people were targeted for murder in the so-called Euthanasia Program .
The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilizational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies) , Poles (especially the Polish intelligentsia and elites), Soviet officials , and Soviet prisoners of war . The Nazis perpetrated mass murder against these groups.
But liberation did not bring closure. Many Holocaust survivors faced ongoing threats of violent antisemitism and displacement as they sought to build new lives. Many had lost family members, while others searched for years to locate missing parents, children, and siblings.
Despite Nazi Germany’s efforts to murder all the Jews of Europe, some Jews survived the Holocaust. Survival took a variety of forms. But, in every case, survival was only possible because of an extraordinary confluence of circumstances, choices, help from others (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and sheer luck.
Some Jews survived the Holocaust by escaping German-controlled Europe. Before World War II began, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany despite significant immigration barriers. Those who immigrated to the United States, Great Britain, and other areas that remained beyond German control were safe from Nazi violence. Even after World War II began, some Jews managed to escape German-controlled Europe. For example, approximately 200,000 Polish Jews fled the German occupation of Poland. These Jews survived the war under harsh conditions after Soviet authorities deported them further east into the interior of the Soviet Union.
A smaller number of Jews survived inside German-controlled Europe. They often did so with the help of rescuers. Rescue efforts ranged from the isolated actions of individuals to organized networks, both small and large. Throughout Europe, there were non-Jews who took grave risks to help their Jewish neighbors, friends, and strangers survive. For example, they found hiding places for Jews, procured false papers that offered protective Christian identities, or provided them with food and supplies. Other Jews survived as members of partisan resistance movements . Finally, some Jews managed, against enormous odds, to survive imprisonment in concentration camps, ghettos, and even killing centers.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, those Jews who survived were often confronted with the traumatic reality of having lost their entire families and communities. Some were able to go home and chose to rebuild their lives in Europe. Many others were afraid to do so because of postwar violence and antisemitism . In the immediate postwar period, those who could not or would not return home often found themselves living in displaced persons camps . There, many had to wait years before they were able to immigrate to new homes.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world has struggled to come to terms with the horrors of the genocide, to remember the victims, and to hold perpetrators responsible . These important efforts remain ongoing.
Genocide timeline, series: the holocaust.
Switch series, critical thinking questions.
What can we learn from the massive size and scope of the Holocaust?
Across Europe, the Nazis found countless willing helpers who collaborated or were complicit in their crimes. What motives and pressures led so many individuals to persecute, to murder, or to abandon their fellow human beings?
Were there warning signs of what was to come before the Nazis came to power in 1933? Before the start of mass killing in 1941?
In this context, “allies” refers to Axis countries officially allied with Nazi Germany. “Collaborators” refers to regimes and organizations that cooperated with German authorities in an official or semi-official capacity. These German-backed collaborators included some local police forces, bureaucracies, and paramilitary units. The terms “allies” and “collaborators” can also refer to individuals affiliated with these governments and organizations.
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors .
Doug Chayka
What targeting russia’s wayward billionaires revealed about our own..
Tim Murphy January+February 2024 Issue
When the US targeted Russia’s oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, the trail of assets kept leading to our own backyard. Not only had our nation become a haven for shady foreign money, but we were also incubating a familiar class of yacht-owning, industry-dominating, resource-extracting billionaires. In the January + February 2024 issue of our magazine, we investigate the rise of American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us. You can read all the pieces here .
For the last 18 months one of the most opulent and unnecessary vessels ever constructed has been floating in a narrow channel next to a jungle gym and a fleet of industrial cranes at the Port of San Diego. Built in Germany, and formerly managed by a firm in Monaco and flagged to the Cayman Islands, the superyacht Amadea is 348 feet long, with a helipad, a swimming pool, two baby grand pianos, and a 5-ton stainless steel art-deco albatross that extends outward from the prow like a bird reenacting Titanic . It can accommodate 16 guests and 36 crew, and costs $1 million a month just to maintain. Who, exactly, has been picking up that tab in the past is a matter of some dispute, tangled up in a web of trusts and LLCs, code names and NDAs, and legal proceedings in two countries. But the ship’s current owner is a bit less ambiguous: Congratulations— it’s you .
The Amadea ended up in California after a family vacation gone wrong. In 2022, after a long summer in Italy and the south of France, the ship refueled in Gibraltar and crossed the Atlantic, arriving in the Caribbean just in time for Christmas. There, according to emails between the ship’s captain and its management company that were later submitted in court by the Department of Justice, deckhands were to be joined by the children and grandchildren of a wealthy Russian national—four adults, three kids, as well as a coterie of bodyguards and nannies. Crew members were preparing for a cruise to Antigua, a sojourn in Mexico, and a visit to the Galapagos. They had picked up new scuba gear for their rarefied passengers.
But a few weeks into the trip, the Amadea abruptly changed its plans. All large boats, from pleasure craft to container ships, are required by the International Maritime Organization to signal their location at regular intervals, except in the case of emergencies. When Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the Amadea dropped off the map for days, according to court documents. In Panama, the captain alerted the management company that government inspectors had collected information on the ship’s Russian VIPs. In Mexico, the yacht took on a quarter of a million dollars of diesel fuel and left. The Galapagos were off. The Amadea was heading west.
When the vessel arrived in Fiji, more than 6,000 miles later, local authorities searched the ship at the request of US investigators. Inside, they found what appeared to be a Fabergé egg , and paperwork stating that the yacht belonged to an LLC owned by a trust controlled by a Russian businessman named Eduard Khudainatov. The egg was likely a fake. And according to the US government, the records were too.
Khudainatov, the Justice Department argued in court filings , was a “second-tier oligarch (at best)” who lacked the means to own such a ship. Agents concluded that the Amadea was fleeing to Russia at the behest of Suleiman Kerimov, a billionaire who made a fortune in aluminum and gold, serves as a senator in the Russian parliament, and once tried to build a global soccer powerhouse in Dagestan. Kerimov has been barred from doing business in the US since 2018 , because of his position in Putin’s government. The feds, calling Khudainatov a “straw owner,” seized the ship for violating US sanctions, replaced the crew, and sent it to California.
Khudainatov, who has not been sanctioned by the US, has been appealing the decision ever since. His lawyers—and Kerimov’s—assert that the second-tier oligarch really did spend most of his reported net worth on two of the world’s largest yachts. They even deny that the ship ever went dark; any confusion over its ownership or whereabouts was just a matter of shoddy policing. But in the meantime, the US has been systematically unspooling Kerimov’s wealth. The government added his wife and three kids to its sanctions list, as part of a crackdown on “those who support sanctioned Russian persons.” It targeted a private-jet company the Kerimovs used, and the yacht managers too. And not long after the Amadea arrived in San Diego, the Treasury Department froze a far more valuable asset with considerably less fanfare: a $1 billion family trust . The Kerimovs had allegedly sought a safe harbor for this asset too, beyond the reach of hostile governments, in a place where for decades the wealth of the world’s ultrarich has pooled in blissful anonymity.
Not Fiji—Delaware.
The capture of the Amadea was perhaps the most spectacular piece of a larger international reckoning. In the nearly two years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies have blocked, seized, or frozen more than $280 billion in assets from hundreds of sanctioned Russian businessmen, politicians, family members, and fixers. They have taken boats, planes, and helicopters; artwork by Diego Rivera and Marc Chagall ; and some of the most coveted real estate on Earth. By putting the squeeze on what the Treasury Department called Putin’s “enablers,” the thinking goes, these governments can hit him where it hurts, isolate his regime, and pressure Russia to wind down the war.
The Biden administration has embraced these stories of decadent Russians, burning their corrupt spoils in Bond-villain excess. “Let’s get to the juicy stuff—the yachts,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told an audience at (of all places) the Aspen Security Forum in July 2022, where she discussed the work of the DOJ’s Task Force KleptoCapture. The seized ships are not just assets but morality tales—the overripe fruit of a society in which the levers of government have been turned to the enrichment of a few. You are supposed to gawk, less with envy than with an air of self-satisfaction, at people like the Kerimovs, lounging offshore in their teak-floored cocoon, drinking warm milk—according to court records—out of Hermès mugs . In the language of political messaging, “oligarch” is code for Second World and seedy.
But underpinning the sordid Russian saga was an inescapably American one. As investigators pored over bank statements and real estate records, they added new layers to a map journalists and watchdogs have been piecing together for years—of a sometimes underground but often wholly legal international network in which the wealth of autocratic regimes was funneled through the firms, markets, and institutions of places that fashion themselves as the antithesis of Putin’s Russia. Through a labyrinth of corporations, trusts, and false fronts, oligarch money made its way into the hands of nannies in California, fracking firms in Texas, wealth managers in New York, startups in Silicon Valley, and factory workers in the Midwest .
Pay enough attention to this robust American infrastructure of wealth, secrecy, and tax avoidance, and you might find yourself asking an uncomfortable question: If the Amadea is a symbol of a failed political and economic system, what exactly does that make all of our superyachts?
“We talk all the time about Putin and his oligarchic friends,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told me recently. “But for obvious reasons we don’t talk about oligarchy in the United States.”
Increasingly, though, a wide range of voices on the left and right are speaking in exactly those terms. Steve Bannon has complained that his party had been hijacked by “ oligarchs ” such as Rupert Murdoch and hedge-funder Ken Griffin. A bestselling book described Bannon’s former bosses, the Trumps, as American Oligarchs . Donald Trump Jr., for his part, complained that China controls “America’s oligarchs.” A group of congressional Democrats is pushing the OLIGARCH Act to tax and audit the wealth of the richest Americans. “We’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch,” Paul Krugman wrote recently, in reference to Elon Musk. Pick any billionaire with a media company—or any billionaire who’s tried to bankrupt one—and chances are you can find a prominent critic lambasting them in language once reserved for upwardly mobile ex-Soviets.
Some of these voices, like Sanders, are quite serious about how we’ve gotten into this new Gilded Age, and how we can get out of it again. Others are just seriously messed up. But this rhetorical shift is driven by a common awareness that all is not well: The same tools and systems that have made the United States a safe space for the world’s hoarded wealth have frayed our own social contract, broken our domestic politics, and incubated a new class of ultrawealthy barons in its place. It’s the age of American Oligarchy.
America’s oligarchs, like Russia’s, are both the results of a system failure, and active engineers of that failure. They hang in many of the same circles. They dock their boats at the same marinas, compete for the same real estate and works of art, and stash their money under the same couch cushions. Their worlds converge on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, and in the corridors of power. There has been so much Russian oligarchic money sloshing around the United States, in fact, that it is sometimes hard to say where exactly one system ends and another begins.
But there is something new at work here. This American oligarchy offers a twist on the pilfering of the commons that produced Russia’s. It is built on a different kind of resource, not nickel or potash, but you—your data, your attention, your money, your public square. These men (mostly) exult in their almost godlike status over the politicians they fund, the platforms they own, and the industries they’ve effectively monopolized. They are prone to grandiose proclamations about outer space and immortality . But the day-to-day effect of their power is felt less in the glitter than in the gravity it exerts on everything else—the accumulated burden and strain that hardening political and economic inequality puts on public services, on policy, and on the places we live and work. This world ropes you in with its yachts and private jets, but the story of American oligarchy is not just about the spoils. It’s about what everyone else is losing in the process.
Fear of an out-of-control oligarchy was once as American as Appomattox. In the runup to the Civil War, abolitionists routinely condemned the “oligarchs” of the planter class, who used their grip on slave states to dominate national politics until even the courts worked for them. The idea that an aspiring democracy had adopted the wrong Greek political system represented an existential crisis. Campaigning for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Charles Sumner invoked “Slave Oligarchy” more than 20 times in one speech. They had “entered into and possessed the National Government,” he said , “like an Evil Spirit.”
Reconstruction was an attempt, among other things, to break the structures of oligarchy. But in the century that followed, the term took on a now-familiar hue—provincial, elemental, and foreign. “The word captures the archaic, slightly feudal nature of social relations,” the New York Times suggested in 1981, “in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala.” Or it connoted the backroom politics of bureaucrats and bosses . Oligarchy marked a primitive state. It wasn’t something you became. Then, in 1996, Boris Berezovsky went to Davos.
Boastful and balding, with a background in applied mathematics, Berezovsky was part of the new breed of Russian businessmen, a little bit grifty and a little bit thrifty, who were building huge fortunes as President Boris Yeltsin privatized the former Soviet state. In a bonanza known as “ loans for shares ,” Yeltsin agreed to quietly unload a dozen government-owned companies for cents on the dollar. But the deal would only go through if he won a second term. So between sessions at the World Economic Forum, Berezovsky and his allies hatched a plan to use their wealth and control of the media to save Yeltsin. After the election, Berezovsky took a victory lap. The seven men who had joined forces, he boasted (with more than a little exaggeration), now held 50 percent of Russia’s wealth.
The defining trait of this “new class of oligarchs”—as the postelection coverage dubbed them —was that they seemed to want people to know they were oligarchs. Berezovsky called his system “corporate government.”
This oligarchy could not have existed if Russia were not Russia, but it also bore the imprimatur of Harvard and Wall Street. In the early 1990s, American lawyers, bankers, and academics descended on Moscow to mold the post-Soviet landscape in their image, helping to set up markets, draft laws, and cut deals. The Russian businessmen who thrived in this new system, for their part, “adopted the style and methods of the great robber barons,” the journalist David Hoffman observed in his 2002 book, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia . They studied tycoons like Rupert Murdoch. They were even influenced by a text about the American Gilded Age that had once been used to scare Soviets away from capitalism—Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier , in which the protagonist, Hoffman wrote, “exploited banks, the state, and investors, manipulated the whole stock market and gobbled up companies.”
That form of oligarchy was short-lived. When Putin took office a few years later, he demanded fealty from the moguls, and Berezovsky later died in exile. But if Putin inverted the power structure, the effect was the same: Russia remained a place where an elite few grew rich off a rigged economy, while funneling their money outside the country for safekeeping. Wealthy Russians transferred as much as $150 billion out of the country in the 1990s. By the time Trump took office, Russia’s ultrawealthy were storing 60 percent of their holdings offshore. Much of the money made its way to the same country that helped shape the Russian system in the first place. It was as if an invisible pipeline suddenly switched on.
The spoils of Russia and other countries flowed to the United States not just because of its stability, but because the American political and financial system put up a big flashing sign inviting the world’s wealth hoarders to come and stay a while. Here, they could achieve near-total anonymity if they purchased real estate in cash or routed the transaction through a shell company or a trust—which were increasingly based in decidedly onshore US jurisdictions such as Wyoming and South Dakota . In New York and Miami, gleaming new high-rises sat empty; a penthouse, for the asset-hoarding class, was not a home but a different kind of bank.
This great transnational wealth transfer was eased along by the booming, multitrillion-dollar American private-investment industry. If a foreign investor wanted to put money in a US-based financial institution or publicly traded company, notes Gary Kalman, the executive director of Transparency International US, those shops are required to perform due diligence. But hedge funds, venture capital, and private equity are bound by no such rules and have fought efforts to impose them.
“The reason we haven’t crippled the oligarchs as much as we would like, or the sanctions haven’t been quite as effective as we had hoped,” Kalman told me, “is because a bunch of these assets are hiding, likely in Western democracies, in everything from anonymous companies to anonymous trusts funneled into investment structures that are largely hidden from law enforcement.”
Through shell companies and middlemen, ultrawealthy Russians funneled huge sums of money into American investments. The Delaware trust linked to the Kerimovs pumped $28 million into Silicon Valley firms, according to court records , including a venture capital fund, a self-driving car company, and a “startup temple” for young disrupters that was housed in a San Francisco church previously slated to become a homeless shelter. Roman Abramovich, who bought a state oil company with Berezovsky and later sold it for a 5,100 percent profit, reportedly directed billions of dollars to a boutique investment manager in New York’s Hudson Valley. According to a complaint the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against the company in September for allegedly violating registration rules, the firm managed more than $7 billion in assets for just one client, an unnamed wealthy Russian politician and businessman who made a fortune in privatization and sure sounds a lot like Abramovich. While some of those funds reportedly made their way to heavyweights like the Carlyle Group and BlackRock , Abramovich also backstopped a private ambulance company and a fracking startup, and gave $225 million in seed money to what is now the weed dispensary chain Curaleaf. (Abramovich, who did not respond to a request for comment, has not been accused of wrongdoing by the SEC or sanctioned by the United States.)
A succession of government investigations found that lax regulations also made the American investment and real estate markets magnets for money laundering, but the US was in no rush to tighten its rules. Cashing in on the Russian exodus was a boon for American budgets and American business. Prior to getting elected president, it was practically Donald Trump’s entire job .
Just as telling as the money that was secret was all the money that wasn’t. Aluminum magnate Viktor Vekselberg, a star in the tech sector , made large donations on his own or through his company to MIT, MoMA, and the Clinton Foundation. Others sprinkled their money to the Kennedy Center, the Mayo Clinic, and the Guggenheim. With big parties and large checks, they courted America’s gatekeepers. What is so much money good for, after all, if you can’t buy acceptance?
One night in 2013, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York City, held a soiree at an Italian restaurant on Park Avenue on behalf of Abramovich and his then-wife, Dasha Zhukova, who would soon unveil plans to turn four adjoining townhouses on the Upper East Side into the city’s largest private home. For months that spring, Abramovich’s 533-foot yacht, Eclipse , had docked on the Hudson, drawing spectators to marvel at its pools and helipads, and wedding-cake deck. Photos of the ship have a surreptitious quality, like a hasty snapshot of a rare woodpecker; a sophisticated network of lasers had reportedly been deployed, to deter the paparazzi.
At the party, according to HuffPost , Jared Kushner rubbed shoulders with Wendi Deng Murdoch and Leonardo DiCaprio. The media mogul Barry Diller, who once warned that corporate consolidation was creating an “oligarchy” in his industry, showed up, and Gayle King too. When it was time to speak, Bloomberg praised the guests of honor for their philanthropy, and announced that he was naming Abramovich an honorary citizen of New York.
The influx of foreign money had been a “godsend,” he later told New York magazine. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?”
Over the last decade, stories of foreign oligarchs have been a pervasive and insidious presence in national politics. But all of this overseas money sloshing around did not corrupt the American system so much as it made unavoidable the ways in which it was already compromised. Affluent arrivistes did not get special treatment per se; they availed themselves of the services that American elites so often do. Oleg Deripaska’s top lobbyist was Bob Dole . His lawyers worked for the pill-pushing Sackler family. Shady foreign officials store their money in Great Plains trusts just like Pritzkers . The great irony of the post-invasion reckoning is that Putin’s billionaires were escaping a country that is not, in fact, much of an oligarchy anymore, for the comforts of a place that increasingly is.
“We need a translator,” Bloomberg quipped at that 2013 event. “Roman’s going to have a heart attack thinking he has to pay taxes.”
But the defining feature of American wealth today is that our oligarchs don’t really have to. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who built one of the world’s largest companies around a loophole in sales taxes and has raked in millions in tax breaks designed for impoverished communities, paid no income tax at all in 2007 and 2011, according to ProPublica — a period in which he owned part of a mountain range. His rival for the title of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, paid nothing at all in 2018 . (In Cameron County, Texas, where SpaceX has scorched a state park and uprooted a beachfront community, Musk’s company will finally begin paying taxes in 2024.) Peter Thiel has used a loophole in the tax code to stash $5 billion in a Roth IRA. While the IRS targets working-class Black Americans, the list of billionaires who have paid no income tax in recent years is long. Bloomberg could have set his special guest straight—after all, the mayor was one of them .
Taxing labor but not wealth starves state coffers to fill personal ones. Instead of public works and universal programs, you get Big Philanthropy—donor networks and foundations that validate monopolistic fortunes under the pretense of disbursing them. Discretionary giving provides America’s ultrawhite ultrawealthy a kind of agenda-setting, extra-political power to go with their agenda-setting political power: Make enough money and you don’t have to fund essential services; you can run your own projects on your own notions of benevolence, remaking entire sectors of public life. From media to public health to elections to city halls, everyone in a jam wants a billionaire to come plug the suspicious billionaire-sized holes in their budgets. Many of the hospital wings and college libraries our oligarchs choose to build are quite nice. Plenty of the programs they choose to fund are quite well intentioned. But the creator of a Hot-or-Not app for Harvard kids pumping $100 million into a school district—as Mark Zuckerberg once did in Newark —does not support a civil society so much as it supplants one.
Such a system has profound consequences for the rest of us. In a 2009 paper , two Northwestern professors singled out the robust American wealth-protection industry—the one those Russians were eagerly taking advantage of—as both a driver and a symptom of this country’s descent into hyper-minority rule. America’s ultrawealthy, they argued, “hire armies of professional, skilled actors” to “labor as salaried advocates and defenders of core oligarchic interests”—lobbyists, lawyers, think-tankers, and consultants. The political system still maintains many of the trappings of a democracy, in part because the ultrawealthy who fund campaigns disagree about a lot of things. But politics functions within the boundaries defined by this cohort. Another study a few years later put this point more finely: The most determinative factor on whether a policy would become law was how much support it had from “economically elite Americans.” A Supreme Court justice taking a vacation on a billionaire’s yacht isn’t the peak of American oligarchy. That same billionaire using the vacation to reduce his tax bill is.
In 2021, Bezos traveled to the edge of space aboard a vessel called New Shepard . The launch pad, on a ranch in Far West Texas he had purchased with what he called his “winnings,” was not far from the site of another pet project he was building under the guise of a charitable foundation: a $42 million clock inside of a mountain Bezos also owned, which he hoped would last 10,000 years. For a few minutes, 66.4 miles above the Earth, Bezos exalted in his own weightlessness, attempting to catch floating Skittles with his mouth. After landing, still dressed in his custom blue jumpsuit, he took a moment to acknowledge the gravity of the moment.
He wanted to thank “every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer,” he said . “Because you guys paid for all of this.”
It is uncommon for someone in such a position to describe the balance sheet so plainly—to point with a smile to a phallic rocket ship that goes nowhere new and assert that this is what delivery drivers peed in a water bottle for. But this is the nature of oligarchy: Your sweat is their jet fuel.
Perhaps no one has worked harder to make “oligarchy” a feature of American political discourse than Bernie Sanders, the 82-year-old democratic socialist whose two campaigns for president tapped into dissatisfaction with structural inequality. In his most recent book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism , “oligarchy” is the central villain.
Sanders isn’t just throwing out a pejorative. The United States checks all the boxes he’s laid out, he told me—“a system in which a small number of people have enormous power, and they have enormous wealth, and they create a system, which is designed to protect their interests.”
It is not simply about being rich, in this line of thinking. Oligarchy is about people with money using that money to reshape society to their benefit in a way that everyone else feels. Sanders rattles off the basic symptoms: Astronomical inequality. (By one measure , the richest Americans control a greater share of the wealth now than their counterparts did during the Gilded Age.) A political system dominated by ultrawealthy donors and, increasingly, ultrawealthy candidates. And decades of consolidation that has reduced whole industries into a handful of megacorporations.
“You have more concentration of ownership in sector after sector today than we have ever had,” he says. “Whether it is financial services, whether it’s transportation, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s media, you have fewer and fewer large corporate entities controlling those sectors, and that is one of the reasons we’re able to see an incredible amount of corporate greed taking place in recent years.”
When Sanders and I spoke last spring, Elon Musk was in the early stages of a salt-the-earth takeover of Twitter, which seemed to largely entail firing the people who made it work and tweeting “interesting” about the sort of people who are facing jail time in Romania. It was an example of the market concentration Sanders was talking about—of what happens when a single company owns an entire mode of communication, and then that company is acquired by the world’s oldest 14-year-old boy. But Musk’s behavior underscored something else about the American oligarchy. It’s not just about the money they make, but the ways they make it.
For all the chaos, there was a linear kind of logic to the system that made Russians like Kerimov and Abramovich rich—there is money, of course, in precious metals. The information economy, too, is built on natural resources in the traditional sense. Track the supply chains to their end and you’ll find workers toiling in mines , and power plants burning coal to keep the server farms running. Behind the rise of artificial intelligence is an underclass of “ ghost ” workers, filtering abusive content out of chatbots for a few bucks an hour.
But American oligarchy is extractive on a deeper level than the resources it consumes. You “paid for all of this,” as Bezos put it, not just with your hard-earned cash and your labor, but with a little piece of yourself. Shoshana Zuboff, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, has written about a class she calls the “ information oligarchs .” These tech giants like Google and Meta are driven by what she calls the “extraction imperative”—in which the entire scope of operation was built around harvesting your data and attention for the purposes of selling it or tailoring products. Your time is the precarious foundation of the entire internet economy, the basic unit upon which all else is organized. Reed Hastings, the executive chairman of Netflix, once said that his biggest competitor was sleep .
“Surveillance capitalists know everything about us , whereas their operations are designed to be unknowable to us ,” Zuboff argues in her 2018 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism . “They accumulate vast domains of new knowledge from us , but not for us .” To Zuboff, this represents a challenge not just to democracies—because of the imposition of a new and unaccountable hierarchy—but also to individual autonomy. There is no alternative technological space to turn to; they own a plane of existence. And the rise of AI, powered by the likes of Zuckerberg, is taking this extraction imperative to new levels—mining vast reams of data and written content so that a machine might better take your job or commodify your identity. Tech companies even have a term for the human inputs they use to build their products: “ data exhaust .” Since last July, dozens of writers have filed suit against both Meta and the Microsoft-backed OpenAI, alleging that their respective machine-learning projects are built, in part, on copyrighted materials. (Meta and OpenAI both claim that their reliance on published works was “fair use.”) Musk, who is developing his own line of brain implants, warned last spring that artificial intelligence could bring about “ civilizational destruction ”—before announcing that he, too, would be launching his own AI venture .
The relationship between government and oligarchy is defined by a kind of groveling—the clacking of a dozen mayors begging Musk to build them a simple tunnel. During the bidding war for Amazon’s second headquarters, hundreds of cities and states debased themselves for a shot at the prize. Dallas offered to build an “ Amazon University ” next to City Hall. A city in Georgia offered to change its name to “Amazon.” It was loans-for-shares in reverse: Bezos wasn’t bidding for the state; he’d developed something so big—and had been allowed to develop something so big—that states were bidding for him. The company once set a goal of raising $1 billion in government incentives in a single year; in oligarchic America, taxes pay you.
Even as they get their way with municipalities, these American oligarchs still harbor fantasies of simply running their own. For years, Reid Hoffman, VC billionaire Marc Andreessen, Laurene Powell Jobs, and a handful of other Silicon Valley heavies quietly bought up a huge swath of Northern California to build an entirely new city—one where they could model, as the New York Times put it, “ new forms of governance .” A Thiel-linked fund has invested in an effort to start a new monarcho-capitalist metropolis somewhere on the Mediterranean coast. Musk, who is building a model community outside Austin while tightening control over his South Texas “Starbase,” fantasizes about one day using SpaceX to colonize Mars—of building an entire society as he sees fit, while extending “ the light of consciousness .” Lurking behind his projects is an often explicitly stated desire to reimagine shared spaces. The never-completed Hyperloop, which Musk promised would transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco at 600 miles per hour, was a ploy to stop high-speed rail, according to his first biographer, Ashlee Vance. A critic of public transit, which he says “ sucks ,” Musk envisions a future in which cities will instead devote more and more of their underground and overhead space to his own fleet of self-driving Tesla electric cars, transforming the entire idea of what cities should be. The Musk-owned satellite network, Starlink, controls more than half the satellites in the night sky—giving its owner so much power over communications that he effectively vetoed a Ukrainian military operation. The billionaire’s stewardship of Twitter (which he’s now named X) is uncommonly slapstick compared to the ventures that made him rich, but it does share something essential: He is attempting to commandeer something that was held in common and leave in its place something individualized and worse.
The sum of American oligarchy is not just withering democracy and so much inequality, but a kind of omnipresence: They are something more than rich—oligarchs are the main characters of our timeline. But even as our lives are increasingly subject to the whims of bored kingpins, their spaces are detached from our own. Some can retreat to private islands (Larry Ellison owns Hawaii’s sixth largest). Others live in communities so exclusive that the help has to come from one state away . Embedded in this system is the capacity for escape. They can send their wealth across borders without really moving it. They can choose where they pay taxes, or by which methods they don’t pay them at all. They can insulate themselves from the world they’ve sold for parts. And if all else fails, they can take to the sea.
In the runup to the invasion of Ukraine, Alex Finley, a former CIA officer who is based in Barcelona, began periodically visiting the city’s luxury marina to check on the status of Russian-owned boats. Finley, who had researched the industry for a satirical novel about Putin’s security services, found that vessels that might otherwise spend weeks preparing for a voyage were disappearing overnight. “I went down one day and the Galactica Super Nova was there, and there was no hustle and bustle around it,” she told me, referring to a 230-foot yacht reputed to belong to a Putin-allied Russian petro-billionaire , who was named, a few weeks later, on a UK sanctions list “targeting those who prop up Russian-backed illegal breakaway regions of Ukraine.” “I thought, you’ll see them loading food on it, or they’ll be filling it with gas and water, that type of thing—there was nothing. And then I went down the next day and she was gone.” As oligarch-linked ships made their escape, Finley began tracking their whereabouts using open-source data and writing up their exploits for Whale Hunting , a newsletter dedicated to all things kleptocracy. More than just a novelty, “the yachts are symbols of the corruption which is corroding democracy,” Finley said—and a road map to understanding both the flow of dubious wealth to the West, and the tools that Russian elites deploy to obscure it.
But these days, people aren’t just monitoring the yachts of sanctioned oligarchs. They’re also following the movements of the American ones. While Finley was tracking Putin’s cronies and the Amadea was making its way to San Diego, a long-suffering football fan in Northern Virginia started keeping an eye on the Lady S , the boat belonging to then–Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder. It’s reportedly the first yacht in the world with a 12-seat IMAX theater .
Snyder was a model of what DOJ filings might call a second-tier oligarch—a telemarketing magnate and megadonor who unsuccessfully sued an alt-weekly for $1 million after it caricatured him on its cover. (Snyder promised to use any monetary award to fight homelessness, his lawyers wrote in their complaint —“Mr. Snyder is heavily involved in philanthropy.”) His stewardship of the football team was the embodiment of American capitalism’s perverse gravity—managing to grow his investment sevenfold while presiding over an ever-worsening product that seemed to deliberately insult the people who paid for it. When, in June 2022, the House Oversight Committee asked Snyder to testify about his franchise’s misogynistic culture, the billionaire’s lawyer informed members that the owner had “longstanding plans to be out of the country on business matters.”
Snyder’s unbreakable commitment turned out to be an award show in Cannes for ad-industry execs. Inspired by the Russian yacht-watchers and a Florida college student who had created an account called ElonJet to track Musk’s private planes, the fan decided to look up the Lady S using publicly available data. In the weeks that followed, while the committee unsuccessfully sought to serve the owner with a subpoena, @DanSnydersYacht —the proprietor of which spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of incurring the notoriously vindictive billionaire’s wrath—amassed thousands of followers by tweeting out the whereabouts of the owner’s boat and private jet, as Snyder made his way across the Mediterranean to Israel.
“I think what kind of made it popular…was just, hey, here’s what a billionaire can get away with,” he told me. “If you or I got subpoenaed, we’d be freaking out and have to show up immediately or face consequences. If you’re a billionaire on your yacht, you can dodge a lot of legal consequences for a while.” (Snyder eventually did testify, sans subpoena and via Zoom, where he answered with some variation of I-don’t-recall “ more than 100 times ,” according to the final congressional report.)
There is something kind of subversive about tracking these vessels. It’s a sliver of sunlight in a world that’s designed to keep such things out. But not long after he purchased Twitter, Musk shut down ElonJet. He claimed it had put his family at risk, although the story he first told soon fell apart . The details, in any event, seemed superfluous; that is just what happens when an oligarch buys the platform you use to track the oligarchs.
In the meantime, American oligarchs are eagerly filling the vacuum left by the retreating Russians. The proceeds from sanctioned steel-magnate Dmitry Pumpyansky’s seized yacht went to the bank to whom he owed money— J.P. Morgan . Eric Schmidt paid $67.6 million at auction for a superyacht alleged to belong to a sanctioned Russian fertilizer billionaire—but rescinded the bid after the oligarch’s daughter claimed it was hers all along. Last April, a new boat pulled into the harbor in Mallorca, and tied up at the dock a few hundred feet away from where Viktor Vekselberg’s Tango had been impounded for 13 months. It was Harlan Crow’s Michaela Rose .
And this past summer, while taxpayers were spending big to maintain the Amadea ’s teak deck, a Dutch shipbuilder put the finishing touches on a 417-foot-long ship for its newest client. The Koru , named for a Maori spiraling pattern, was a gleaming, three-masted sailboat, with room for 18 guests and a swimming pool. The company had designed a 246-foot motor-powered support yacht to go with it—with its own helipad to boot. In lieu of an albatross, a wooden carving on the Koru ’s prow was said to bear an uncanny resemblance to the fiancée of a certain Skittle-munching oligarch. The owner may be Jeff Bezos, but you guys all paid for it.
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Historiography means "the writing of history." In a research paper, the writer asks questions about the past, analyzes primary sources, and presents an argument about historical events, people, or societies. ... Like most history papers, the historiography follows a traditional essay structure with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a ...
1. Background sentences. The first two or three sentences of your introduction should provide a general introduction to the historical topic which your essay is about. This is done so that when you state your hypothesis, your reader understands the specific point you are arguing about. Background sentences explain the important historical ...
like an essay according to the topic's internal logic). Some papers are concerned with history (not just what happened, of course, but why and how it happened), and some are interested in historiography (i.e., how other historians have written history, specifically the peculiarities of different works, scholars, or schools of thought).
Lynn Rampolla, whose Pocket Guide to Writing in History has been published in several editions, wrote the goal of a historiographic essay is "to identify, compare, and evaluate the viewpoints of two or more historians writing on the same subject." 1. Notice that a historiographic essay requires evaluation, that is you must . judge
There are several useful strategies for coming up with a topic. The easiest method is to use one of your assigned readings; adopt the topic that the author covers as your own. You can use their bibliography as the starting point for the historiography (especially if they critique previous positions), and branch out from there.
First, select a topic that will sustain your interest not only for the historiographic essay but also for Research and Writing (42.398). In Historiography and Historical Methods (42.298), you study the secondary sources; in Research and Writing, you craft an interpretation predominantly drawing upon primary sources.
A Historiographic Essay (also known as a Historiographic Review or, outside of the history discipline, a Literature Review) is a systematic and comprehensive analysis of books, scholarly articles, and other sources relevant to a specific topic that provides a base of knowledge.Literature reviews are designed to identify and critique the existing literature on a topic, justifying your research ...
1. Narrow your topic and select books and articles accordingly. Consider your specific area of study. Think about what interests you and other researchers in your field. Talk to your professor or TA, brainstorm, and read lecture notes and current issues in periodicals in the field.
The purpose of an historiographic essay is threefold: ... Modern Historiography by Michael Bentley An introduction to the history of historical writing. The text explains the broad philosophical background to the different historians and historical schools of the modern era. In an overview of modern historiography, the book includes surveys on ...
Alternately, a historiography can act as an introduction to a major research paper, in which you will go on to add your own analysis. Thus, a good historiography does the following: ... Examples of historiographic essays. Historiographical essay examples. Historiographical Questions. Questions of historiography include the following:
Introduction History is a discipline based on interpretation, debate, analysis, and synthesis. Because of this, history essays are more than narrative accounts of the past. The purpose of a history essay is to communicate useful conclusions about past events in a purposeful and persuasive manner.
Introductions & Conclusions. The introduction and conclusion serve important roles in a history paper. They are not simply perfunctory additions in academic writing, but are critical to your task of making a persuasive argument. A successful introduction will: draw your readers in. culminate in a thesis statement that clearly states your argument.
To write an effective essay, students should examine the question, understand its focus and requirements, acquire information and evidence through research, then construct a clear and well-organised response. Writing a good history essay should be rigorous and challenging, even for stronger students. As with other skills, essay writing develops ...
Purpose of a Historiographical Essay . A historiographer gives a detailed overview of the . major. pieces of work on one given historical event or topic by doing the following: • Engaging in a historical event from multiple perspectives by examining multiple sources. This is accomplished through summarizing, evaluating, and critiquing the ...
For the purposes of this course, you need to know that a historiographic essay: summarizes the changing ideas and approaches to a particular topic of history ; discusses why those ideas may have changed over time. ... An introduction that includes your thesis and the main argument that you will make.
A sample historiographic essay. Let us assume that the subject of your historiographic essay is the Rape of Nanking, an event discussed in some detail in the Book Reviews section. There, we examine the event as it is described and analyzed by Iris Chang in her bestselling book The Rape of Nanking.To this we now add several other sources, all of which are listed in the Works Cited section at ...
If you understand how each part works and fits into the overall essay, you are well on the way to creating a great assessment piece. Most essays will require you to write: 1 Introduction Paragraph. 3 Body Paragraphs. 1 Concluding Paragraph.
Firstly, avoid procrastination and start early. Secondly, leave yourself plenty of time to brainstorm, outline, research and write. Finally, follow these five tips to make your history essay shine: Write a substantial introduction. Particularly, it's the first impression the professor will have of the paper. State a clear thesis.
Step 5: Draft your historiographical essay. Once you've decided on a plan of attack (how you'll organize the essay), start drafting. If you can't think of a killer opening, skip it for now, and start with the thesis statement. If you don't have the wording perfect, relax.
Body paragraph 1: Introduction to the Historical Context. Provide background information on the historical context of your topic. Highlight key events, figures, or developments leading up to the main focus of your history essay. Body paragraphs 2-4 (or more): Main Arguments and Supporting Evidence.
Finding historiographic essays -- first steps. For topics that are of wide interest, you may be able to find an essay that reviews the literature on that topic, and that sets it in context by discussing how other historians have approached that topic. This kind of essay is invaluable when you are starting a research project.
historiography, the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination.The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing.
Table of contents. Step 1: Hook your reader. Step 2: Give background information. Step 3: Present your thesis statement. Step 4: Map your essay's structure. Step 5: Check and revise. More examples of essay introductions. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about the essay introduction.
This essay aims to explore the rich heritage of American Indian communities, the challenges they have faced throughout history, and their enduring resilience. By examining historical contexts, cultural contributions, and ongoing issues, we can gain a deeper understanding of the unique position American Indians hold within the larger narrative ...
Introduction to the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945. Antisemitism was at the foundation of the Holocaust.
Footnotes Jump to essay-1 U.S. Const. amend. VI. Jump to essay-2 See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68-69 (2004).The Supreme Court in Crawford recognized the existence of two common law Confrontation Clause exceptions that historically permitted the admission of testimonial statements, but it did not expressly approve or disapprove of either.
A bestselling book described Bannon's former bosses, the Trumps, as American Oligarchs. Donald Trump Jr., for his part, complained that China controls "America's oligarchs.". A group of ...
Footnotes Jump to essay-1 See generally Intro.7.2 Separation of Powers Under the Constitution. Jump to essay-2 467 U.S. 837 (1984). Jump to essay-3 Id. at 842-43. Jump to essay-4 Id.The Court further stated: [A] court may not substitute its own construction of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrator of an agency.
Footnotes Jump to essay-1 See, e.g., Kathleen M. Sullivan & Noah Feldman, Constitutional Law (18th ed. 2013). Jump to essay-2 See, e.g., Paul Brest et. al., Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking: Cases and Materials (5th ed. 2006). Jump to essay-3 See Jones v. Helms, 452 U.S. 412, 418-19 (1981) (The right to travel has been described as a privilege of national citizenship, and as an ...
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