The term “hatriotism” was coined much earlier than the 1940s (Samuel G Freedman, 7 August). The first mention in Google Books appears in the September 1923 issue of the Advocate: America’s Jewish Journal, based in Chicago, where it was used to describe antisemitism in Germany. The Advocate article suggests that Dr Gerson B Levi had strong views on the term. Levi was a prominent Chicago rabbi who spoke at the Republican national convention, so he would have been in a position to make the term more widely known.
Dr Christine Harlen
School of politics and international studies, University of Leeds
• I am fascinated by the reference in your editorial (10 August) to “Brexit rapture”. Does this mean that we can expect, on 1 November, that Cummings, Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al will be whisked up to heaven, leaving the rest of us to manage as best we can down here on earth? I am starting to find that quite an attractive prospect.
Tim Gossling
Cambridge
• If there are a few Conservative MPs spending their holidays wondering about putting country before career and some manage to ensure that we have not left the EU on Halloween, they might like to remember that the following day is All Saints’ Day. They may lose the whip and become non-persons in today’s Tory party, but they will get their reward in heaven and their names shall live for evermore.
Geoff Reid
Bradford
• Adrian Chiles (How do I know I’m past it? A man offered me a seat on the tube, G2, 8 August) has a way to go yet. I knew that I was over the hill when the young lady who had kindly given me her seat later offered to help me up when I got to my destination.
John Bartholomew
Norbury, London
• Any sentence that starts “Men think that ...” (Letters, 7 August) raises my hackles. Why should I read to the end? This is gender stereotyping. As a woman, I am more likely than a man to be on the receiving end of it and to come off worse for it.
Fiona Monroe
London
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