In his book, Occidentalism, Ian Buruma shows that the dehumanising picture of the West painted by its enemies is not a new phenomenon, though it cannot be attributed solely to either the right or left, nor to an Islamic source.

Buruma discussed with authors Ziauddin Sardar and Jon Ronson how these longstanding stereotypes fuel the hatred at the heart of movements such as Al Qaeda. They also explored the links between anti-American, anti- Western and antisemitic ideas.

Having inherited a cache of thousands of letters between his grandparents, Ian Buruma, author of Year Zero, has interwoven his voice with theirs to bring to life a remarkable sixty-year marriage that survived many shocks and the span of two world wars.  In Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War, Buruma pays homage to achievements that included helping twelve Jewish children to escape Nazi Germany and find new lives in Britain. His spellbin...

A Hasidic Jew fixer, a Manchu princess and Himmler’s masseur; each regarded as both heroes and villains due to their wartime acts. Friedrich Weinreb took money from fellow Jews in a deportation-avoiding scam, but is known by supporters as ‘the Dutch Dreyfus’. Kawashima Yoshiko spied for the Japanese secret police in China. Felix Kersten became indispensable to the SS commander but after the war presented himself as a resistance hero. Historian and former New York Review of Books...