ONLINE FIRST In this new TSQ article, Cihan Tuğal (@cihantugal.bsky.social), Jonathan Smucker, and Kip Roberts examine how emotions shape boundary work among populists and anti-populists within the Republican and Democratic parties. Read more at bit.ly/4cg6ir2

My tribute to and critical analysis of Michael Burawoy, published as the lead article in Sociologia. The heart of the piece is a discussion of 1) why/how Burawoy transitioned from his early, “labor process”-focused research programme to a “counter-market” one; ++ ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/So...

"state terror" Springsteen's wording here reminds us of a basic fact: Despite their frequent vitriol against "terrorists," empires and states are the greatest terrorists in human history.

Syria's HTS is gearing up for its third round of ethnic cleansing with full Western guardianship. For a discussion of the first two rounds, and a sociological explanation of why Western powers would support such murderous forces, see this essay:

Our article on populism is published in @socquarterly.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Based on 52 interviews with populists and anti-populists during Trump’s first presidency, we make the following contributions 1) We demonstrate the centrality of emotions in anti-populist politics

Great article on why radicalization in the 1960s and 1970s produced very different results for the American Left and Right. Grumbach problematizes the widely held belief that polarization is bad for all parties involved. If you have the organization + journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

“Social sciences” are predominantly studies of Western behavior rather than human behavior. Example? With the exception of Likud, the strongest far-right parties are outside the West: the AKP in Turkey, BJP in India, etc. But theorizations of the far right largely ignore them. +

Happy 2026 everyone! 2025 was horrible but here are a few things to appreciate about the first 26 years of the 21st century (yes, including 2025): · “Fascist” is still a curse word, despite the rise of the far right throughout the globe. They are still ashamed of who they are. 1/

On my reading list for early 2026: The International Sociological Association's magazine just published a special issue on Michael Burawoy globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/uploads/imge...

Erdoğan’s AKP had absorbed Brotherhood-type Islamism both into Turkey’s institutional system and into the world order. Can the cooperation between the Syrian HTS and the Turkish AKP tame salafism too and make it serve global capitalism more smoothly? I discuss this question here:

The Political Education Committee of @dsaeastbay.bsky.social wraps up the Socialist Fundamentals Series with this panel. In the spirit of Marx's third thesis on Feuerbach, the audience educates the educators during this meeting. Bagels + community + fierce debate! www.eastbaydsa.org/events/4716/...

Bourdieusian theorizations of populism are long overdue. I am putting this article on my reading list. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My essay on Syria, Islamism, and capitalist geopolitics has been translated to Indonesian. indoprogress.com/2025/12/evol...

Küresel cihatçıların küresel kapitalizmle ilişkisi (Video) - Medyascope medyascope.tv/2025/12/07/p... @cihantugal.bsky.social

ICYMI: @cihantugal.bsky.social 's analysis on the movement dynamics of HTS and Syria's current political conjunction is still live on our website.

Check out this new article by CRWS faculty affiliate @cihantugal.bsky.social, "The Evolution of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Syria’s Future: The Interplay between Islamism and Capitalist Geopolitics."

"Fourteen years ago, Syrians rose up with democratic demands. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the West sought to hijack these demands for capital accumulation and empire-making. But a major unexpected winner of this process might instead, or along with these actors, be a new kind of Islamism."

November is in the books! Thanks to Keith Rosenthal, Ralf Ruckus, @yige-dong.bsky.social , John Mullen, and @cihantugal.bsky.social for letting us put your work on the web. And thanks to all the contributors to our twelfth issue! Links in thread 👇🏽 🧵

The HTS regime in Damascus is the culmination of a long process of theo-political maturation and salafism’s integration into world capitalism. Violently militant forms of salafism constitute a relatively recent development in Islamic theology. They first crystallized through a differentiation 1/4

The point is not that "al-Jolani has not changed," but that those changes are mostly in line with the interests of world capitalism rather than Syrians' democratic struggles. Moreover, there are strong signs that he retains important elements of his original mission. +

My analysis of Syria’s ongoing transformation, based on sources in Turkish, Arabic, English.🧵 1) After the defeat of the democratic revolution, the transformation has been guided by capitalist geopolitics and the remaking of the global field of Islamism. spectrejournal.com/the-evolutio...

It was great to work with Spectre again!

The theory of populism needs to be reconstructed by attention to some of the cases neglected in generalizing debates: India, Turkey, South Africa, China, and Iran. I point out in this article that the dominant theories of populism are based on the West 1/ www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

We won. Every union representing workers at the University of California sued the Trump administration in September. Today, judge Rita Lin issued a preliminary injunction barring Trump’s attempts to extort political leverage from public higher education. democracyforward.org/updates/cour...

Observations from the @dsaeastbay.bsky.social general meeting today: The organizers opened the event by stating that electing socialists to office is only the beginning. The power holders will fight every socialist-hued policy they attempt. The people will need to mobilize to counterbalance those 1/

DSA meetings in the coming weeks will be essential to building a mass movement across the nation. We have Zohran's energy and the @socialists.nyc victory filling our sails. This is the moment to participate in @demsocialists.bsky.social meetings wherever you are. Check your local chapter's calendar!

Marxism tends to dismiss generosity—and charity even more so. In this article, I show that a reconstructed Marxism is necessary for a proper understanding of religious generosity: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1... The article is an offshoot of the book below.

I presented my in-progress book manuscript on right-wing regimes at the University of Chicago's sociology department. The room was packed! I got excellent questions, and thinking about them will make the book better. I got to meet several brilliant graduate students, and caught up with +

Is Bourdieu incompatible with Marxism? No. Analytical demonstration: My book on religious generosity. Field analysis with a world-historical market-making and market-contestation angle. www.routledge.com/Caring-for-t...

Mamdani’s victory against Cuomo-Trump shows: Socialism is the only thing that can defeat the marriage of authoritarianism and corruption. Mamdani didn’t win alone. At least 50K @demsocialists.bsky.social-organized volunteers helped him win. So did unions and other movement organizations. 1/

What is at the root of the historic violence of the last two years in the Middle East? In a recent panel on the Global Turn to the Right, I argued that an integrative analysis of 1) movement dynamics, 2) accumulation regimes, and 3) each nation’s place in inter-imperialist rivalry gives us

The rich are selling out to Trump one by one. It would be very idiotic for the resistance to count on them. Here's a recent piece from the Times, deifying Bill Gates. They might regret this today. But they will soon tell us to rally behind yet another rich hero. Don't fall for it.

7 million marched on Saturday to protest authoritarianism! We participated with the Civil Rights era anthem “We Shall Overcome” and (what in the US has become) the Latinx-Hispanic anthem “El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido.” +

Nancy Chodorow, the great feminist sociologist, passed. Her first book is a must-read for not only social scientists but for everyone. If you are a parent, or ever intend to be one, or if you simply want to be a better person and keep wondering what’s preventing you, make sure to read this classic.

This panel on the global turn to the Right starts in 30 minutes. I am presenting on the violence of the last few years in Syria and Israel/Palestine.

I was invited to deliver the keynote speech for a three-day conference on Michael Burawoy. Another verse of a long goodbye to my dearest colleague, friend, and comrade… Thanks to Portuguese sociologists for organizing this conference. Details of the conference 🧵

University of California professors, students, staff, and workers are resisting higher education's increasing complicity with the Trump administration. A damage to one is damage to all. We will not leave our colleagues, students, and coworkers alone. cucfa.solidarity.tech/academic-fre...

My sociological explanation of the recent surge of violence against Palestinians, Alawites, and the Druze ... coming up as a part of this panel:

In a meeting attended by close to 100 people, @dsaeastbay.bsky.social discussed whether the Trump regime is “fascist,” and what difference that label makes in terms of how we organize. We read texts by Ernest Mandel, Fred Glass, @leninology.bsky.social and me to frame the discussion. 1/

Why is a Polanyian-Gramscian analysis of Gezi still necessary and always “timely”? You’ll find some answers in my review essay on Kaan Ağartan’s book. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... “Capitalism’s endless drive to accumulate has now run against the world’s limits,

Educators, researchers, students, and workers on University of California campuses are fighting for freedom. But their higher administrations are siding with Trump in this fight. It is not Trump, but the system itself that put these administrators in their current positions. +

My talented comrades at @DSAEastBay created this poster. It's more eye-catching than anything else on the UC Berkeley campus. PS: This was produced before the news of the university ratting out its own professors, students, and staff. Next time, we'll have to add: "How does higher education +

Btw, is Trump indeed a fascist? As I have been arguing for years, Trump is a not a fascist leader but fascism *is* a real threat. Even though the actual fascist organizations and individuals are disorganized and disoriented, Trump's use of them is becoming increasingly more systematic. And ++

Centrist liberals call Trump “fascist.” They ask leftists to vote for them against “fascism.” They co-organize meetings and rallies with the left against “fascism.” Then they sell the left to “fascists.” If Trump *is* a fascist, don’t cooperate with him. + www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Belated labor day celebration. @speakoutsocialists.org invited our band Bambáshka and we performed anti-capitalist songs in French, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian. The one below: A song from the 1920s, on fighting the White Army. The much needed spirit of struggle and resilience today.

Join us to talk about Trump and fascism! Labor historian Fred Glass will start the conversation by putting Trumpism in historical and theoretical context. We will then discuss our immediate practical tasks. www.eastbaydsa.org/events/4488/...

Wise words from Du Bois (d. August 27, 1963): "There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital." What is THE book you would add to his list? (On top of the obvious one below)

Unlike just a few weeks ago, most people now admit that Likud-led forces are on the brink of destroying an entire people. Here are Samera Esmeir's reflections on what can and can't be done during "the days before." ctjournal.org/2025/08/21/t...

After a decade of “anti-imperialism,” the Turkish AKP-MHP regime is cooperating with Western powers to restructure Syria. Massacres of Alawites and the Druze are an essential component of this restructuring, rather than an accidental outcome. ++

3 revisions to my Classical Sociological Theory course: I) In line with the Burawoy-Fourcade tradition of teaching Soc 101 at our department, I am starting the semester with Adam Smith for the first time. Over the years, I have increasingly emphasized how not only Marx & Engels, but also Weber 1/