Articles by Ian Buruma



Football Belongs to the People, Not Plutocrats

Who would have thought it? There they were, Brazilians, protesting outside football stadiums against their country hosting the World Cup in 2014 — and this even as their national team was thrashing Spain in the final of the Confederations Cup.

The Class Struggle Behind the 'Turkish Spring'

The current unrest in Turkey is less of a religious conflict as it is a class-based one.

Tsarnaev Brothers and America's Enemy Within

Exaggerated fear of outside enemies has always been a part of the political landscape of the United States.

North Korean Threats Could Lead to Apocalypse

North Korean rulers managed to survive only by playing one foreign power off another.

I'll Take Political Clowns Over Populists Any Day

When too many Italians voted late last month for either a louche and discredited business tycoon or a comedian, European stock markets plummeted. With no public trust in the political class, Italy might become ungovernable.

Why North Koreans Cried

Can an entire people go mad? Sometimes it certainly seems so.
Images of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans howling with grief over Kim Jong Il's death suggest something very disturbing. Was this an exercise in mass delusion? A ritual of collective masochism?

Mladic's Ethnic Cleansing Was Not Genocide

It will give most of us a feeling of warm satisfaction to know that Ratko Mladic has finally been arrested in the Serbian village of Lazarevo. Yet the forthcoming trial of Mladic raises certain uncomfortable questions.


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