Bertrand Russell once received letters from Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, inviting him to a debate. Russell not only declined but replied quite generally that “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.” @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

This is among the most important things written this year to describe our moment by the always insightful @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

“It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love,” Freud wrote just three years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, “so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

Hard to choose just one quote from this piercingly articulate essay: www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

Contra to Ezra Klein and David Remnnick, and to a lesser extent Ham Fish, there's this from the excellent @bostonreview.bsky.social and @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social. www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

i implore you all to read this. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

Bertrand Russell once received letters from Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, inviting him to a debate. Russell not only declined but replied quite generally that “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.” @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

I’m posting this again bc holy shit if you read nothing else this year PLEASE READ THIS

Philosopher Richard Rorty would have agreed. He thought conversation in a democracy included shaming and embarrassing those whose anti-democratic statements demean or harm others. In fact, it's all that has really ever worked to limit bigotry and bring the marginalized inside the community.

Worth a read. www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...

Are you looking for something to read to help contextualize Trump's new order on "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence" that he's using to target progressive organizers and prosecute his personal enemies? I've an essay for you. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

From runaway slave lists to Canary Mission, the state has long deputized citizens to enforce its will. - Shiri Pasternak in Boston Review www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-t...

I've been sitting with this piece of @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social for two days, reading it, re-reading it. You should too. #EzraKlein is the avatar of a new kind of liberal indulgence for the worst of the far-right, embracing bad-faith as a practice. www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

An excellent counterpoint to Ezra Klein. "Much about what Klein offers here is objectionable: the appeal to debate as “persuasion,” which confuses the mere appearance of giving and responding to reasons with the substance of good-faith rational inquiry" www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

If you want to oppose “political violence,” then demand the abolition of ICE, the end of an ongoing genocide, and insist Congress stop killing people by forcing for-profit healthcare exclusion on us. If you’re not doing that, spare me the sanctimonious speeches. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

“We are indeed going to have to live with each other, barring apocalyptic violence—but we already have been for quite some time, and doing so has not required revisionist history of the sort we are now witnessing about one Charles James Kirk in particular.”

If you've ever found your name on a list, or feared landing there, you're not alone. Today, doxxing is imbued with terrifying state powers, but it's an old strategy of deputization that has terrorized people for centuries. The power of lists is division, but we can draw from histories of refusal.

This really was outstanding. I think a lot of what Olúfẹ́mi describes here, for *me*, comes from my religious upbringing (which was both healthy and uh, unhealthy). But there are other ways to create societal norms around "dont be a dick and try to act ethically". We could use more of that imo

Another new piece out today at Boston Review. The rate of publication there has picked up considerably at a time when we need this magazine the most. Please read and support them. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-t...

Highly recommend this piece from @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.

From runaway slave lists to Canary Mission, the state has long deputized citizens to enforce its will. New from Shiri Pasternak:

‘“We are people, there is no doubt, who exist solely insofar as we write”’ The @bostonreview.bsky.social on Italo Calvino’s letters, from 2013:

probs time for many of us to move from “oooh I should really subscribe to Boston review” to actually subscribing

This piece by Táíwò is mandatory reading. it's a rebuke of Ezra Klein's delusional bluster, sure. but it's also a master class in deftly braiding the complexities of this moment (and our recent histories) into a compelling narrative path forward. thinking matters, and this piece shows why

This is very good. And not just because I agree with him. I am *constantly* remembering how as recently as the 90s, the GOP did a fairly decent job of keeping the full-on-Nazis away from any levers of power. I mean, Trent Lott got kicked out of politics for saying something nice about segregation.

This is a fantastic essay that speaks directly to the moment. Highly recommended! Bravo @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.

"When a virulent figure like Kirk is canonized as a truth-telling patriot...while his critics are denounced as violent extremists, we are gaslit on a massive scale; the field of political meaning-making narrows until only submission...appears reasonable." www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

“What is repressed is the violence of order itself; what is disavowed is our own entanglement with it and ethical responsibility to confront it. In this scheme, ‘political violence’ can only be what threatens this system, not what the system itself does.” New from @eric-reinhart.com:

An excellent essay on the necessary function of shame in liberal society, from @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Dunno what it says about me or the state of liberalism that I think @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social has a better grasp of liberal values than Ezra Klein or Cass Sunstein.

This is very good and reminds me of a point I always make when people say you can’t shame people out of being bigots. You can’t, but you can make them behave better by not creating a culture of permissiveness when they do

This. (The entire article is required reading, but I especially appreciate this section)

“Today, the orientation is epitomized by data-driven consultancies like David Shor’s Blue Rose Research and election analysis groups like Split Ticket—the latter cofounded by Lakshya Jain, the director of political data at the new self-styled organ of liberalism’s salvation, The Argument.”

Freedom of association, which inherently includes a right to disassociate, is an important part of freedom. In working out the bounds of socially acceptable expression, of which every society has some, shame is useful, a civil alternative to violence. Well done essay by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

This one paragraph just taxonomizes the various modes people have for processing "political correctness"/"wokeness"/communication norms in somehow the most clear terms I've maybe ever seen. I'm going to reference this frequently in the future.

“Liberals’ favorite conservative in 2016 aligned himself with the hard right,” reflecting a core pathology of U.S. politics: “the liberal dream of finding a ‘responsible conservative’ to spar with who will render democracy stable and safe from partisan extremes.” @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social

"...seeing this kind of basic social norm enforcement as fundamentally at odds with living in a free country is deeply delusional." Effing brilliant. Read the entire thing. Slowly. Twice.

This essay is fantastic -- it explains quite succinctly (well, reasonably succinctly) that society has ALWAYS placed some notions beyond the pale of "debate." Debating such notions CAN be helpful when those goalposts have been placed poorly. But the debater's character and goals still matter.

This is very good. I return to the illiberal's epistemic dishonesty: he wishes to participate in liberal discourse yet refuses to play by liberal rules upon which democracy is based: pluralism, empiricism, skepticism, philosophic doubt. For his ultimate authorities are predetermined traditionalisms.

In 1962 Bertrand Russell received a series of letters from Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, inviting him to a debate. Russell not only declined the invitation but replied quite generally that “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.”

Another must-read response to Ezra Klein's "Charlie Kirk did politics the right way" argument, this from @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social in @bostonreview.bsky.social on political correctness, stigma, and shame as fundamental to living together.

a most useful+dialectical philosopher, on shame +decency "seeing this kind of basic social norm enforcement as fundamentally at odds with living in a free country is deeply delusional...shame serves as a robustly liberal alternative to political violence." www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Brilliant piece by @pastpunditry.bsky.social in the Boston Review: "the liberal-heterodox alliance is what has eased the way for the most authoritarian, anti-civil liberties government the United States has seen since the McCarthy era." www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

“A key aspect of the way we lived with each other involved exactly the ‘social shame and cultural pressure’ that Klein and other influential voices now come to condemn.” Our latest from @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social, in the first installment of his new column:

I wrote about strongmen, spyware, and the surveillance state for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

I was born this way. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

The Trump administration has unfrozen a Biden-era hold on powerful Israeli-made spyware, now in the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. @sophiagoodfriend.bsky.social on what the contract portends for escalating strongman rule:

❝ One problem with this account is that it makes polarization seem like something that just happened to politics, sweeping up both parties in its wake. In reality, polarization was done to politics by conservative politicians and activists ⋯ ❞