Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

HBO’s “Succession” Is a Masterful Demolition of the Absurdity and Cruelty of Our 1 Percent Overlords

The Intercept
August 10, 2019
If you had to sum up decades of financial dystopia in America, you could go with the phrase “Money wins.” The accumulation of insane amounts of wealth by the 1 percent has flattened in its path everything else: the interests of ordinary people and the ...  (Read more)

The Problem at Fox News Is Not Just Tucker Carlson — It’s the Murdochs Who Owns the Network

The Intercept
July 10, 2019
Yes, let’s get furious once again at Tucker Carlson, who has broadcast another segment of racist bilge at Fox News. But let’s not stop there.

In a widely circulated clip that’s getting justifiably walloped by journalists who are not admirers of white nationalism, ...  (Read more)

How James Murdoch Uses Philanthropy to Distance Himself from the Taint of Fox News

The Intercept
June 29, 2019
The mission of Unite America is lofty. As its name implies, the little-known group wants to heal a political system that has become “more divided and dysfunctional with each election cycle.”

Its bipartisan mission is an implied critique of Fox News, which has been identified, ...  (Read more)

What the Concentration Camps of Bosnia Can Teach Us About the Abuse of Immigrants at the U.S. Border

The Intercept
June 27, 2019
How do you investigate human rights abuses at detention centers that are off-limits to outsiders?

I am not one of the on-the-ground reporters covering the Trump administration’s abusive treatment of immigrant children on the border with Mexico, but more than 25 years ago ...  (Read more)

What the Horror of “Chernobyl” Reveals About the Deceit of the Trump Era

The Intercept
June 5, 2019
IMAGINE THIS SCENE: A guilt-stricken official who worked for President Donald Trump sits down late at night to confess his agony. “What is the cost of lies?” the weary official says into a tape recorder, sitting in his dark kitchen. “It’s not that we’ll ...  (Read more)

How Lachlan Murdoch Went From Studying Philosophy to Exploiting White Nationalism at Fox News

The Intercept
March 30, 2019
In 1994, a philosophy student at Princeton University submitted a senior thesis that began with a famous passage from Lord Byron, the romantic poet. The passage reflected the student’s apparent uncertainty about who he was and what he would become after college.

Between ...  (Read more)

Max Boot Is Very Sorry for Backing the GOP and the Iraq Invasion. Why Is He Being Praised for This?

The Intercept
October 13, 2018
THERE IS AN unforgettable passage in Graham Greene’s classic “The Quiet American” in which the title character, a CIA agent named Alden Pyle, admits that Vietnam is much more complicated than he’d imagined. “I had not realized how tribal politics ...  (Read more)