In which Habermas "regards the Frankfurt School tradition as 'more alive' in the US than in Germany."

Do I start my nephew’s teen existential crisis off early by giving him this for Christmas?

In @thediasporist.bsky.social, @dirkmoses.bsky.social asks whether Holocaust memory has run its course: "If anyone has killed belief in Holocaust memory, it is Western political classes whose misuse of it to justify an undeniable evil have destroyed its currency." thediasporist.de/is-holocaust...

Senator Bernie Sanders will administer the oath of office to New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani during his public swearing-in ceremony at City Hall on January 1. trib.al/ylTzosO

Grateful for this gift from my wonderful colleague Lisa Cerami! She saw me use this New Yorker illustration in a presentation on my catastrophe project a few weeks ago and decided to blow it up into matching posters for our offices.

In the latest piece I edited for our @jhideas.bsky.social Blog forum on political economy & intellectual history, Alec Israeli looks to "the historical intertwining of ideas and commodities" by reading Marx together with reports on the iron industry in the 19th c. US www.jhiblog.org/2025/12/22/m...

Those seeking to blame the global rise in antisemitism and despicable attack at Bondi Beach on the “genocide libel” of Palestine solidarity should first look to the dangerous conflation and co-optation of Judaism with Israel’s militarism and genocidal campaign by the Zionist right.

In a new piece I helped edit in our JHI forum on intellectual history and political economy, @lottelist.bsky.social complicates Koselleck’s rosy view of liberal economist Adam Smith as “sober” and free from the ideological blinders of utopian continental progressive philosophies of history

Part II of this interview about Federico Marcon’s new book covers its relation to the recent “Fascism Debate," debts to Frankfurt School critical theory and other forms of historical semantics, impact on the conceptual historian's craft, and more. @joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

I've arrived in DC for the @jewishstudies.bsky.social conference to speak on the breakdown of Holocaust memory after October 7 into universalist and particularist strands on the panel "Modern Jewish Thought in Question: Typologies, Legacies, and Political Stakes." Friends, say hello! #AJS2025

“With memory culture routinely used to justify genocide abroad and securitization at home – and a climate in which explicit dissent from Germany’s policy dogmas triggers cancellations or even police interventions – they described a society sliding into a kind of intellectual paralysis.”

Since we’re on the topic of tearing down buildings, I got the author copies of my book (!!). Real in the world December 2 TL;DR: Detroiters have a lot to teach us about how material conditions reproduce white supremacy w/o racist people and policies. Tearing things down isn’t a clean slate

Thinking of my New School friends whose programs have been closed (~30 of them), whose PhD programs have been indefinitely halted, and who are now receiving invitations to resign + accept severance payments — with the threat of 🪓 if not enough folks take the offer. A ✨-if-imperfect place ruined 😥

What is living and what is dead in the work of Hannah Arendt? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/b...

Hannah Arendt died on this day 50 years ago. A few years back I turned the invitation to review the major exhibition on her life and work at the Deutsches Historisches Museum into a long reflection on her career and legacy. I hope it still holds up! literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/hannah-arend...

Two truths and a lie!

Glad to be part of this symposium honoring the life and work of my Doktorvater Anson Rabinbach next week at NYU! as.nyu.edu/research-cen...

In part 2 of my interview with Federico Marcon, he explains how the use of a generic concept of fascism obscures the way “Italian Fascism and German National Socialism grew within and developed into regimes that remained largely parasitical upon the preexisting institutions of liberal democracy.”

Grateful for late capitalism

Thanksgiving proofs 🤗 🦃 👨🏻‍🏫

Part 1 of a recent interview with my thoughts on the authoritarian turn in contemporary Germany - Staatsräson, the repression of pro-Palestine protests and the overall undermining of democracy

Today on the blog, Jon Catlin interviews Federico Marcon on his latest book, "Fascism: History of a Word," which uses semiotics to chart fascism’s changing political and heuristic meanings from its invention in Italy in 1919 to the present. @joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

‘Germany has become a laboratory for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine, testing how far it can go in suppressing free speech, banning protest, and bending the constitutional framework until it is almost unrecognisable.’ new report @tninstitute.bsky.social www.tni.org/en/publicati...

The special issue of New German Critique on "German Memory Politics at a Crossroads," which I co-edited with Andreas Huyssen and the late Anson Rabinbach, is finally starting to look real! It will be out in February 2026. ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....

Meron Mendel: Right-wing German politicians do not “love Jews.” “They hate Jews, but they hate Muslims more.” So they say, “we are for Israel” to  “justify discriminating against Muslims for a ‘good cause’ – the cause of fighting antisemitism.” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

Excited that my paper ‘Staatsräson as State Racism’ is part of this forthc. issue on ‘German Memory Politics at a Crossroads’ thanks to @joncatlin.bsky.social for including me along fantastic colleagues @danielloick.bsky.social, @vethompson.bsky.social & others! ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....

So you call yourself an eco-Marxist? @alybatt.bsky.social and her dream team of respondents would love to know why, if capitalism is so good at commodifying everything, it‘s failed to put a price on nature to protect it from destruction. Excited to read her book! @princetonupress.bsky.social

Still reeling from the intellectual richness and political urgency of Dagmar Herzog's talks this week at @urochester.bsky.social! We have a final event on 11/25: A hybrid Zoom event with Kathryn Brackney on her history of Holocaust representation. Register here: events.rochester.edu/event/surrea...

Today is Zygmunt Bauman’s centenary! Born in Poznan, Poland in 1925, he survived the Holocaust by fleeing into the Soviet Union, returning to become a professor of Marxist-Leninism in communist Poland, only to be expelled in the antisemitic campaign in Poland in 1968. jacobin.com/2025/11/zygm...

Thrilled to be hosting the brilliant historian Dagmar Herzog in Rochester this week for events on her two (!) new books, which explore sexuality, racism, and anti-disability politics in 20th century Germany and on the far right today. Details here: events.rochester.edu/search/event...

Fantastic virtual event going on right now (I believe it’s being recorded). Valentina Pisanty: In official, institutionalized Holocaust memory in the West, “Never Again” has become code for “There Is No Alternative” to (failing) capitalist liberal democracy.

At Smith College for the annual Critical Theory Roundtable. My paper, “‘Nichts Ähnliches’: The Uses and Abuses of Adorno in a Time of Genocide,” attempts to map the growing divide between (German) particularist vs. universalist readings of Adorno's "after Auschwitz" after the devastation of Gaza

Brilliant piece by Bartov on how denial has always been an intrinsic component of genocide, from postwar Germany to today: "the reality in which most of the population in Israel lives is founded on layers of denial, amplified by the vast majority of the country’s media"

Omer Bartov, in conversation with @hahauenstein.bsky.social: “After some thinking, I decided that I can’t go to Israel anymore, at least as long as this government is in power.” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

In the name of "fighting antisemitism," Indiana University appointed a Christian scholar to tell Jewish scholars what they can and cannot say - all while they invited Tucker Carlson to speak on campus. www.jta.org/2025/11/07/u...

A sneak peek at the cover of next week’s issue, which celebrates Zohran Mamdani’s historic win. #NewYorkerCovers https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/451hFM

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “If Americans want to challenge their country’s illiberal turn, they need to stop clinging to the recent past,” Sven Beckert says in a guest essay. “Like other economic regimes before it, it is gone. Resurrection is impossible and to aim for it is politically disastrous.”

„Wer verfolgt die Komplizen? Europa und die USA sind für Menschenrechts­verletzungen in Gaza mitverantwortlich. Der Krieg ruft Assoziationen zu den Nürnberger Prozessen wach.“ Nitzan Lebovic (nach langem vor-sich-hin-schieben, wie er berichtet) in der TAZ taz.de/Aufarbeitung...

As of today, five million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust have been identified. www.reuters.com/business/med...

"If, for the supposed safety of Jewish people, one is prepared to unleash a great wave of dehumanization once again because a German majority feels threatened by foreigners, then the consensus is merely the same old German tradition..." @deborahfeldman.bsky.social www.fr.de/kultur/debor...

Jonathan Boyarin: www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/...

Mark Mazower speaks on his new history of the term “antisemitism” and its distortion and abuse in recent years: newbooksnetwork.com/on-antisemit...

Such an important conversation between @mashagessen.bsky.social and Marianne Hirsch about Holocaust memory, genocide, and Palestine. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/o...

Tomorrow!

I wrote about what the Weimar Republic tell us about political violence: time.com/7321664/poli...

Nothing to see here, Volks!

Today on the blog, Sam Franz and Véronique Mickisch interview Edward Baring about his forthcoming book, "Vulgar Marxism," which studies how projects for worker education shaped 20th-c. Marxist thought. @uchicagopress.bsky.social @samfranz.bsky.social

Ominous...

Excited to be hosting historian Doris Bergen at the @urochester.bsky.social Humanities Center on Oct. 29 for a lecture on the collapse of German democracy in the Nazi era. Could there be any parallels to today, I wonder? 🤔 events.rochester.edu/event/how-ea...

My next book has a cover! I Will Not Abandon You is a new history of queer women under Nazism that calls for us to rethink how we understand fascist persecution as well as the very foundations of progressive politics today. You can preorder it anywhere you buy books bookshop.org/p/books/i-wi...