This critique is accurate but misses the main point - as so many accounts of politics do: the ideological context. These consultants are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. They are only so powerful because neoliberal ideology has captured our universities. 1/2

New Yorkers, join us in the first ever Mayor’s Municipal Madness: a competition of city fixes where everyone wins. Pick your fix and vote here: nyc.gov/madness

If we made the green energy transition this war would be unthinkable and these authoritarians wouldn’t be in power — not in the US, not in Iran, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Russia. Hydrocarbons are killing our freedom and just plain killing us.

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96.

So to review: Oil > $100 a barrel, ~30% increase at pump. Mortgages >6%. We replaced one Supreme Leader with his more hardline son, whose whole family we killed. We murdered ~160 girls. Everybody in world but Bibi is pissed at us. Spent more in 1 week on war than USAID costed for 6 months.

⭐ Exemplary, Profound, Innovative ⭐ 🎉Congratulations to @sabinedvolk.bsky.social on winning the 2025 Rising Star Award, praised by the jury for her exceptional academic achievements in #PolSci 👏 Read more buff.ly/JuN5qVr #ECPRPrizes @ameliahadfield1.bsky.social

🎉 New publication 😍 The 4th wave of the #farright is marked by #mainstreaming & #normalisation - but how can we distinguish between them? In our new article, @gefjonoff.bsky.social and I map the existing literature, introduce a conceptual framework & outline research avenues. doi.org/10.1017/S147...

lol

Today I had a meeting about funding I received for a November 2025 (!) presentation. Part of the agreement requires me to present the talk at a university-wide event in March 2026. I was told today I could either censor/change my talk’s title and receive the funding, or withdraw. I withdrew.

When you're in social science. #AcademicChatter

Not too shocking from an extremist like Fuentes. What worries me is how seemingly harmless debates about collapsing birthrates from your favourite podcast bro (Williams, Bartlett et al.) increasingly appear to be pipelines to more anti-feminist, misogynist, even far-right great replacement ideas. 1/

A Europe-led NATO would be very French.

Together, we are America. Well done, Bad Bunny.

Yesterday marked 10 years since C‑REX was founded. This thread highlight what the center has done — research, PhDs, datasets, events, policy engagement and international partnerships. THREAD 🧵 www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/

Great discussions are happening here at @hhu.de with the annual Graduate Conference on Party Research. Always great to present some work and connect with peers who geek out over party politics. #PolSci #Parties

The ultimate establishment post. Criticizing everyone else for using "fascism" for years and when you finally use it yourself, calling everyone who doesn't "perverse". Fuck you, The Atlantic! You normalized their message with your endless paranoid scare campaign against so-called "wokeness".

Yes, I am single-issue posting. Because, here in the U.S., the regime's ICE attack on the country is the main story. No one is safe here as long as heavily armed gangs of thugs are roaming the streets and the regime is covering their crimes with lies.

Board of Peace - Season 1

🍿 If you’re looking to understand what’s happening inside the Dutch far right, today is a great day to read this paper in @epsrjournal.bsky.social on the evolution of populist radical right party organization in the Netherlands. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Transphobia destroys your capacity to evaluate the world and politicians. This is what it leads to: voting for a man who hates you, because he swears to destroy those queers you despise.

Utterly extraordinary. Trump is clearly very serious about using every tool at his disposal to help his far-right allies abroad. This would ordinarily surely be grounds for revoking the culprits' diplomatic credentials.

Portuguese presidential election yields 2nd round between center left Seguro & far right Ventura. Honestly shocking that the main center right party (PSD) fails to endorse Seguro. They would benefit from reading @dziblatt.bsky.social’s historical work on the topic www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Bateu mal ou devolveu de propósito? Brahim Diaz foi de cavadinha e perdeu o pênalti

Woah - we're deep in injury time at the end of the Afcon final, Morocco are given a soft VAR penalty... and Senegal's manager has taken his players off the pitch in protest!

If you asked me what I believe is one of the biggest threats to European democracies today, I’d say it's the self-proclaimed political centre, which is either too dumb, too ignorant, or too hypocritical to admit that they themselves are constantly doing the far right’s work.

New blog post! Joshua Farrell-Molloy explains how Irish #far-right groups use #masculinity and republican symbols to frame themselves as defenders of #Ireland. www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/englis...

I wanted to see how many friends the President of Peace has made during his first and second term, so I made a map of countries he has threatened both economically and militarily, banned citizens from, and bombed. Some things are up for discussion, so a bit on methodology below.

Farage: "I believe in vaccinations when they're vaccinations. I don't think what happened with Covid were vaccinations. You have to keep having them every 6 months." Conspiratorial nonsense. Some vaccinations like Covid shots require multiple/seasonal doses because immunity fades & viruses change.

If we end up in a large European war, it will be somewhat funny to write the story of how we sleepwalked into it. How many people preferred to obsessively ramble about "trans women in bathrooms" as the supposedly most important issue at hand, while the Russian threat so obviously kept growing.

A decade long transatlantic panic about the civilizational threat of left-wing cancel culture and we now have an "anti-woke" censorship campaign taking out Plato at a major American university. Absolutely pathetic.

An article from December 1996 warns that Bulgaria has no chance of joining Europe and the euro would replace the lev only after the second coming of Christ. Brace yourselves, the euro replaces the lev tonight at midnight! 🤣(and, of course, Bulgaria did join the EU in 2007).

Not exactly a Xmas merrymaking post, but I wrote something on the changing environment for international academics in the Netherlands and how it has changed over the last 10 years: open.substack.com/pub/alexandr...

How white nationalists dream of Christmas. "Remigration" -- thin ethnonationalist code for "purifying" the nation by expelling ethnic and cultural "undesirables". Fash fantasies for the holidays.

🌳 Thrilled to launch The PopulisTree — a new website covering decades of populism in Europe (both national and European elections) using a new taxonomy and dataset. 🔗 populistree.org 📄 More in my brand new article in European Union Politics: 🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I propose the following next recipients of FIFA peace prize: MBS Whoever is running UAE these days Xi Ramzan Kadyrow Bibi Some African dude in military uniform, they all kind of blend together

We might actually be at war with the Russians before Trump's term is over. Trump is determined to abandon Europe, and Putin is delusional enough to think he could conquer Europe.

Also a great pic for 🇳🇱 polsci memes…

New #episode! 🇪🇺 Gabriel and I break down local elections in 🇪🇪 and 🇩🇰, plus the contentious parliamentary vote in 🇳🇱. We also look at political shifts in 🇮🇪 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 and the 🇪🇺 level. 🎧 Brought to you by @europeelects.bsky.social 🚀

🪑🗓️ Founding fathers and others: Messrs Janša, Fico, Kaczynski & Orbán meet Messrs Wilders and Åkesson in this chart of long-serving leaders of political parties of consequence in the EU. There are other veteran party leaders, even in Slovakia. But their parties have been less consequential.

Amazing work!

🚨 New Publication! 🚨 In this piece, I examine both the extreme and the more “moderate” factions within the AfD 🇩🇪 and compare their positions on 🇺🇦/🇷🇺 with their stances on 🇮🇱/🇵🇸. Key insights and findings👇🏻 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📣 New publication! The second article of my postdoc project on the far right and anti-gender mobilization is now out #openaccess in #GermanPolitics doi.org/10.1080/0964... It examines antifeminism in far-right party politics through the case of AfD Key findings: Antifeminism ✅ Radicalization ✅

Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

I don't think we should be under any illusion that any of this will change when Trump is gone. Go browse leftist American political commentators, they are majority pro-Russian. It's best for us to accept the American hostility toward Europe as the new status quo.

You don’t understand how much I love this feature