Episode 2068: Jacob Kushner on the National Socialist Underground's plot to kill German immigrants

Keen On

Is it time to start worrying about the Germans again? Perhaps, at least according to Jacob Kushner, the author of LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants, a book about an eleven year terror campaign by the National Socialist Underground (NSU). Kushner is ambivalent about the broad appeal in Germany of the NSU’s murderous violence against immgrants, but he does suggest that this recent chapter in German history suggests that the country isn’t quite the peaceful haven of toleration that some previous KEEN ON guests, like Peter Gumbel, believe it to be.

Jacob Kushner is an international correspondent who writes magazine and other longform stories from Africa, Germany, and the Caribbean. He reports on migration and human rights, foreign aid and investment, terrorism and violent extremism, science and global health, climate change and wildlife, and press freedom. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Economist, National Geographic, The Nation, VQR, The Atavist, WIRED, Foreign Policy, and VICE. He has photographed for National Geographic and field-produced for VICE on HBO, and PBS NewsHour. He is the author of China’s Congo Plan, which was favorably reviewed in The New York Review of Books.His new book, Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants, is published in May 2024. He teaches International Reporting and Migration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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