turk mode

someone should give me a column....

Join the Hind Rajab Foundation’s legal mission to fight impunity. Become a monthly sponsor or make a one-time gift. Every contribution comes from individuals like you — who care. → https://bit.ly/hrf-support

Yesterday, the U.S. rep of The @hindrajabfoundation.be, Jake Romm, presented at the final session of the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul — a people’s tribunal of scholars, legal experts, civil society, activists, and students to create a record of and pass popular judgement on Israel's genocide in Gaza.

always cool seeing things in print

For the @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social I wrote about Luca Giordano's St. Michael, but also about art & empire, & airstrikes, & Gaza I feel strongly about this one: it articulates something about art and looking that I'd previously struggled with, & also I think it's my best writing about art)

What a review. “The fascist thug and the refugee are the avatars of our age, but only because the extremity of their situations makes them stand out; those of us fortunate enough not to be either are caught up in the end of history all the same. “

Introducing Turbulence, a new podcast from Séamus Malekafzali, Dylan Saba, and M Ceniza. Dropping October 28. Subscribe today: turbulencepod.substack.com Trailer by @seamus-malekafzali.com

Lmao

this article is the reason he won the Nobel, they told me over the phone

Congrats to friend of the mag László Krasznahorkai for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature -- a well deserved award for someone whom real heads have known for years as a master of neo-modernism. @jakeromm.bsky.social wrote about him for us in 2023. strangematters.coop/chasing-home...

Rand Paul, confirmed Romm Head reason.com/2025/10/08/t...

"As one of the few Jews on [the flotilla]...they asked me if I was Jewish...threw me in front of the Israeli flag... we were strip-searched & zip-tied & blindfolded, & sent to this detention camp." Horrifying testimony to Zeteo from freed activist David Adler: zeteo.com/p/exclusive-...

Further evidence that this supposed legal justification for lethal US strikes in the Caribbean is baseless backfilling: 1) Bondi refused to invoke this justification or any other when asked. 2) Trump himself doesn't invoke it, just jokes about "water drugs." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

reposting for the weekend I wrote about Luca Giordano's 1663 painting "St. Michael", representations of empire and its victims, and Gaza for the new issue of the @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/agai...

+ featuring contributions from @leannareneehieber.bsky.social @urbanhistorya.bsky.social @historyworkshop.org.uk @literaryhub.bsky.social @cliocontemporary.bsky.social @jakeromm.bsky.social & @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social @inverting-vision.bsky.social +

Here it is, my 244th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more in comments below, share as widely as possible, & thanks, all! 🗃️ blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

reposting for the weekend I wrote about Luca Giordano's 1663 painting "St. Michael", representations of empire and its victims, and Gaza for the new issue of the @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/agai...

“Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza” — Biden never made this simple demand, despite 15 months of relentless Israeli slaughter of Palestinians during his presidency

“The dialectic of enlightenment: all this loot, all this beauty, all this murder”

Jake Romm looks at one painting by Luca Giordano – hard, repeatedly – and what an essay he ends up writing

"Every image carries with it the shadow of catastrophe; every image carries with it the calamity of history—look here." Extraordinary essay. lareviewofbooks.org/article/agai...

"there are no victims in hell, only devils"

The transition from the liberal international order created after 1945, that was violated de facto by the USA, to the contorted linguistic and legal justifications for violations from the Great War on Terror, to its abandonment by Trump. www.thenation.com/article/worl...

Essential reading from @jakeromm.bsky.social 👇

SCOOP: Leaked Document Justifies Boat Strikes as “Non-International Armed Conflict” “The Trump administration is saying that one person — the president — now decides if the United States is going to war.” theintercept.com/2025/10/02/v...

“The choice is still there: Follow America and Israel into hell, or push them in along with the rotten old world they helped destroy, and close the gates for good.” Okay, if i can possibly suggest a second must read article of the day, it would be this.

The liberal international order is dying, the culmination of a trend that was put into overdrive by the so-called global war on terror. What’s coming is something worse, unless we stop it My latest for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/worl...

"As we have seen in both American & Israeli discourse, “terrorist” has come to be a racial epithet, attaching to all Palestinians, all Muslims, all Arabs, & now, all migrants (documented or otherwise)—the circular logic becomes a logic of genocide as well." www.thenation.com/article/worl...

The liberal international order is dying, the culmination of a trend that was put into overdrive by the so-called global war on terror. What’s coming is something worse, unless we stop it My latest for @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/worl...

like Jake's other writing, I feel like this is a piece that I'll be thinking about for a long time

This is phenomenal

new article coming out tomorrow so I'll stop incessantly reposting this one soon but for now please read about art and empire and the art museum as a kind of apophatic history of representation of the colonized

This is the only piece on Saint Michael the Archangel that is worth reading right now. lareviewofbooks.org/article/agai...

NEW: Two Unpublished Fragments (On The Tasks of Post-War Marxism) by Horkheimer & Adorno (1946) - On The Relation Between Critical Intellectuals, the Proletariat, and the Communist Party - The Curse of Writing Today ctwgwebsite.github.io/blog/2025/HA...

the entire administration has Hitler strategic goals but youth pastor tactics and charisma

"Centuries before the first aerial bombing, Giordano has given us the visual language of the air strike." Jake Romm navigates artistic depictions of genocide from Renaissance Italy to modern-day Berlin in LARB Quarterly no. 46: Alien. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-the-wound/

The belief that ROE/internat’l humanitarian law are a major restraint on military force is cherished by both liberal hawks and whiny nationalists, for v different reasons. Former think it can cleanse war into a surgical instrument; latter use it as a scapegoat for their dumbass first-order failures

"The Germans extend their right hand to the genocidaires, filled with weapons and messages of support; they use their left to write curatorial texts." Grateful for this explication of a common trope in Christian art, a current exhibition in Berlin, and the genocide in Gaza.

"For the colonial world order, heaven is precisely the absence of the colonized."

Earlier Christian veneration of Saint Michael almost exclusively revolved around his association with the healing powers of fountains and springs. Following Constantine’s victory and the subsequent display of the painting, however, Michael, already “Commander of lareviewofbooks.org/article/agai...

Finished rereading Octavia Butler’s Kindred today (blew threw three quarters of the thing), and as a chaser read this by one of my favorite contemp essayists, and it is a compelling companion piece. Surprised this was published but glad it is.

wrote about a great writer thealexpress.substack.com/p/kaleb-horton