There are, in my view, 25 things everyone needs to understand in light of recent events: 1) Those out in our communities last night were not protestors, but organised far right extremists. 2) Their actions align with fascist ideologies. 3) So yes: these are fascist practices on our streets. 🧵

Most importantly: as a cis woman; a feminist; a historian - this will *never* be in my name. Then: an equalities body that chooses to exclude a specific group; chooses to limit human rights of one community - it is an equalities body that has already dismantled itself and any legitimacy with it.

The state of things. A thread 🧵

It’s easy to say that this is the last desperate hurrah of a dying party, but can we be clear: Trump’s ICE agents are literally kidnapping people, detaining them without due process in concentration camps (yes, this is the right term) and 1000s have disappeared. These are fascist practices.

When I was a teenager there was a bus direct from my hometown in Germany to London - we had a British army base, and this direct bus connection was one of the benefits of that. One summer I went on that bus to go volunteer in an old people's home in Southend-on-Sea. I had just turned 18 and was... 🧵

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

You are a "citizen of nowhere", they said. A "queue-jumper", they said. Now I am a "squalid chapter", they say. A risk as I might make this an "island of strangers", they say. I am "pulling the country apart", they say.

Just out! Our peer-reviewed critique of the Cass Review has been published by BMC Medical Research Methodology. Please read and share. We show that the Cass Review is fatally flawed and should not be the basis for policy or practice in transgender healthcare. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As a German I will forever be grateful to all who fought for the liberation of Europe. But as a historian I am looking at front pages today and must wonder: What is the point of remembering #VEDay 80 years on, what is the point of our thanks, when we are failing to protect the sacrifices made? 🧵

Essentially *all* research and expert assessments show that this does not work. It will not counter Farage, but literally push votes towards Reform. It genuinely is impossible to overstate how profoundly stupid and strategically illiterate this decision is. You cannot out-Reform Reform.

While so many continue to pretend that it’s not fascism that we’re seeing in the US, here’s Trump continuing his policies of Gleichschaltung. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I know we all love a dose of hopium, especially now. But the take, which I see all across here, that the far right was defeated in Germany tonight because 80% of Germans voted for other parties is very misleading and unhelpful. Understanding this really matters. 🧵

This isn’t some rant saying “Germany has learned nothing from its past” - the reality is more subtle than that. Middle-class Germans live and travel with an incredible amount of ease and comfort, and they just got…sleepy. Many of them dismissed the far-right’s rage as just another set of complaints.

As an immigrant who chose to make my home in the UK—but also as someone who is a migration historian and researches the impact of dog-whistle politics—there is no way for me to overstate how wrong and disgusting these ads by the UK Labour Party are. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

If you don’t think this is exactly what we’re up against, then you haven’t been paying attention.

It is not an overstatement when I say that I could genuinely weep: this is 100% the *exact opposite* of what they need to do: you cannot out-Reform the Reform Party. The only thing this will do is drive more voters to Reform: voters always choose the original. *Every* bit of research shows that. 🧵

"You are an abuser of women": The searing email that Pete Hegseth's own mother sent him in 2018 accusing him of sleeping around, cheating on his wife and debasing and belittling women. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/u...

Let me state this is bluntly as I can, as a biographer of both Donald Trump and Elon Musk: Vladimir Putin is now inside the U.S. government, with visibility into absolutely everything. He has that access through Trump, Musk, and David Sacks. We are fully infiltrated. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/u...

A quick social experiment. The same tweet, posted at the same time on here and on Twitter, commenting on @joannahs.bsky.social’s brilliant piece on the exodus of criminal barristers. Bluesky replies on the left. Twitter on the right.

I cannot tell you how truly bizarre it feels to not have crypto ads and porn bots and foreign trolls and people who hate Jews in any of my comment fields here And also, simultaneously, to not to feel like political content is being throttled Bluesky is feeling very breath-of-fresh-air-y right now

The rate at which Bluesky is growing is absolutely astonishing

What's gonna happen, if they really believe that unis have no quality audit, that they 'bank' money, that the lack of a general numbers cap is the problem, is that they'll crash the entire system and then go 'wail wail why is this happening no-one told us'. (2/2) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Still appalled by this piece from the w/end. If civil servants and Ministers believe this funhouse mirror version of reality, topsy-turvey, upsy-downy and almost wholly false, they are going to get into deep, deep trouble. You can't help some people, but 😬. (1/2) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I posted a last thread on Twitter which I think is worth sharing an adapted version of here: ❗️ Democracy does not actually die in darkness: it dies in broad daylight because of the choices people make. Historians have been telling you that since forever. FFS: Listen more to your historians!

They’re not even bothering to hide it now: Jack Posobiec at CPAC: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.” America, please don’t treat this election as normal politics.

It would be a good use of five minutes of your time to read the speech given by Daria Navalnaya to the European Parliament in December 2021 when she received the Sakharov Prize on behalf of her father, Aleksei Navalny. Note the date, two months before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Weekend reading: I wrote about Republicans lusting for civil war or “national divorce.” It’s a manifestation of the Right’s radical rejection of pluralism. They’ll have their “real America” - or none. Short thread, based on the piece below: 🧵/1

I wasn’t going to swear here but bloody hell what the actual f and all that … Depraved. Completely rotten to the core. Who even thinks of betting on the lives of people??? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

No anti-migrant policy—not in the UK, not anywhere else in Europe—will benefit the local population. If anything, the opposite is true. And yet, politicians keep pursuing anti-migrant policies because it’s easy to do: ‘the other’ is always a great distraction. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/j...

If you understand German: I highly recommend this new documentary. One of the contributors told me that it might be made available in English too — hopefully, as it’s very important history. “Forbidden Love - Queer Victims of the Nazi Dictatorship”. 🔗 www.zdf.de/dokumentatio...

At last some coverage of the major cyber attack at the British Library and the impact this has had on researchers. It is a critical piece of national infrastructure. Worrying if they will have to spend 40% of their reserves on rebuilding their digital services on.ft.com/48FCP4T

The Conservatives — limiting your future further every single day.

I wrote about Policy Exchange's laughable and error-ridden "report" on academic freedom (which claimed among other nonsense that someone was sacked for "failing to approve" of a photo of Jeremy Corbyn) here www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This morning I wrote to UKRI to inform them of my resignation from the UKRI Talent PRC with immediate effect. My decision to resign is a direct result of the letter from the UKRI CEO published here www.ukri.org/news/respons... yesterday. I attach my resignation letter for information.

Still ‘living’ in the alternate universe that is book writing, so not much from me here yet. But this wee robin (no hidden nod to birdsite!) I managed to capture is too lovely not to share. Birds are of course also a great symbol of migration, so very fitting. Anyway: hello folks …more coming soon!