If I was still on 'X', I'd tag all the 'counter-critical' authors mentioned in this article. But I'm not - and I don't think they're here. Maybe someone can let them know. For the sake of debate, like. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

lots of talk about the "people who get up early in the morning" in the Irish far right media sphere. Ganley comparing "anti-Western net Zero" to "Nazism" and "Marxism". Waters calling the government "terrorists". And all this before we get to even the second verse of The Fields of Athenry

🚨New article🚨 What if the misguided construction of 'right-wing populism' has prevented us from holding the elite accountable and rejuvenate democracy? This is what @alexyates2000.bsky.social and I explore in our new article: 'There is no such thing as ‘right-wing populism’' 1/ shorturl.at/jptiu

The antipathy of the city to "the farmers" is a defining memory of 1980s Ireland. From a scan of X, it seems like a tractor love-in on O'Connell St at the moment. Eddie Hobbs xox-popping on site, "the people" finally finding their voice. Looks like an Irish yellow vest moment to me

I have genuinely felt like a Cold War baby today, living the afterlife of the 9 year old kid who wondered if nuclear war had just kicked off (in rural Tipperary!) when they would hear some weird machinic noise in the distance when trying to fall asleep. Fuck Trumpian fascism and its many enablers.

Trump’s genocidal campaign, exists in continuity with the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and in continuity with the genocidal terror that underpins colonialism and imperialism. culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/04/a-wh...

Imagine having a foreign minister who when asked to comment on Trump's threat to kill a "whole civilisation" immediately deflects by critiquing those who are "heightening" and bringing attention to the comments. The submissiveness of NZ's foreign policy under this government has no limit #nzpol

can anyone recommend any good articles on how Ross Douthat's "Interesting Times" podcast at the NYT has become a vehicle for laundering far right discourses and talking points?

Introducing NOVA by Tim Corballis, publishing 11 June 2026! 🪐 Formally inventive, unabashedly brainy, and — as Alice Miller says — 'strangely joyful.' This is Tim Corballis's first novel since Our Future Is in the Air, and we think it's something special. Cover: Todd Atticus

I seem to have accidentally deleted my pinned tweet, so I'm sending this again. It is on the concept of reactionary watchdogs - a shorthand for far right discourses that appropriate the accountability tropes of fourth estate journalism www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IMBKX...

Give the guy's fantasmatic obsession with "wokeness" and the like, I do think that it might take a truly monstrous act of American violence to change his mind. Notwithstanding all the opportunism and bullshitting, the foreign policy and domestic policy seem too closely aligned

the performative politeness and civility of these Sunday morning news rituals, in the face of an obscene expression of American violence and solipsism, always floors me

We will take some hope, thanks, even if this piece reminds us of some of the extraordinary things Orbán has gotten away with as PM of an EU country since 2010.

Urbi et Orbi message from Roberto Unger everyone... "How can we live in such a way that we die only once? How can we organise a society that gives us a better chance to be fully alive?"

apparently Wikipedia has more rigorous standards than every university on the planet, university administrators, edtech enthusiasts, (certainly more than) AI bros, several prominent academic journals, and too many professors and teachers

for those of us who lament the disciplinary (and worse sub-disciplinary) fetishism and parochialism of large parts of communication studies, reading John Durham Peters is always helpful

Maybe wikipedia can liberate us from the "here-are-more-shiny-new-tools-to-help-you-create-even-more-AI-slop" people who now dominate our universities

Great work by @aurelmondon.com and his co-authors. Even the repressive line that "there is no alternative" suggests a polity that *desires* an alternative. And we urgently need to find new ways that enable the flourishing of these desires in our public culture

we need, for starters, a revival of sing-along pop songs that scare the shit out of us www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwg...

Cheer yourselves up by listening to this 3-part conversation between David Runciman & S M Amadae about nuclear war. The analogies to AI are striking - another case of humans inventing technologies w/ monstrously destructive potential that we cannot easily control www.ppfideas.com/episodes/whe...

I'm currently reworking all my old lecture notes about the "discursive construction of everything"

The propaganda around the Critical Minerals Agreement that Luxon is negotiating with Trump says its about minerals for renewable energy. Really? You think Trump wants critical minerals for renewable energy, the same energy he vilifies and blocks at every step? It's about minerals for weapons of war.

Three (3! Count 'em) job opportunities for post-docs to work with an excellent lead researching "Mainstream Song, Class, and Culture 1520-2020.

Half the Answer #71: Caitlin and Trent talk with Aurelien Mondon about his recent political science paper outlining the limitations of considering all politics through the lens of "polarization." They discuss the pitfalls of the term and how "polarizing" events and speech can sometimes be positive.

of course, New Zealand never left "the 1980s path", did it?

..."our ontology" will save us. And "we are at the core of everything"...

The lack of leadership in Aotearoa-NZ is staggering. Our foreign minister has MAGA brain rot. No one is preparing the country for what the next 6 months of a full crisis will look like. Not politicians or journalists. The coverage of Amerisraeli aggression has been extremely muted.

Action station petition to respect Cuba sovereignty and end US oil blockade #nzpol our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/ca...

it's hardly news. But the difference between what we write as academics and what the same writing gets cited for can be ridiculous. And things are only going to get more farcical as more and more people outsource their "reading" to AI tools #academicsky

This is a sad story. And a symptom of a society where the gap between the official national mythology and actuality is profound www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Since I have recently vowed to make my already "brilliantly lucid" book (I believe self praise is actually the highest praise of all) even more "readable", maybe I might try this...

I think this is right. Even publishing op-eds, which invite readers to think beyond the terms of "the given" in publications with a decent visibility, is getting harder to do in today's media ecology

yeah, and "good comms" for this government on foreign policy is basically Peters blustering about how we are living through the most dangerous period in decades, that he has talked to lots of important people in the Middle East and that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot #NZpol

Hartmut Rosa's critique of the family, as a potential "harbour of resonance", is remarkably insightful

I'm so old that I can remember when this guy had a mystique that excited the pundit class - not yet even in Parliament, but already spoken of as a potential future PM, who is now destined to be remembered as little more than the David Brent of #nzpol

From LibsOfTikTok to Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson, reactionary watchdogs play a big role in digital politics. A great concept from @sean-phelan.bsky.social

Political theorist William E. Connolly passed last week, leaving behind an influential body of work studying democracy, capitalism & culture To celebrate his legacy, we're unlocking his contributions to our journals thru 31 March on Project MUSE press.jhu.edu/newsro... 1/3

Sad to read about the passing of the great William Connolly. A wonderfully creative political theorist who has left us with such a rich body of work. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at Essex in 2008 & chat with him afterwards. The family death notice is lovely www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

I think William E. Connolly is so important he deserves an obit in the New York Times. He passed away overnight at 87 and I am thinking of Jane, his family, friends, students and colleagues who have such wonderful memories of his teaching and friendship. Rigour and bravery in his words.

@islates.bsky.social great messaging, eh

..and never one to be outdone on the bullshit front, Netanyahu is issuing statements cheering on Trump's "leadership of the free world"

“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.." What extraordinary dangerous bullshit. Reenact the hubris of 2003. And don't even bother giving the American people a heads up this time www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

This is as bad a symptom of political despair and nihilism as I've read. A tech company trying to give vague expression to some concept of the public good and the ethical, in opposition to a state regime that couldn't care less www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/t...

"I don’t think I’ve ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words & phrases, each genetically engineered, in whole or in part, to make any sentient being stop paying attention" coreyrobin.com/2026/02/26/o...

I'm all for a culture of (blah blah blah) "agonistic respect" @aurelmondon.com, but in this instance the only reasonable response would be to grab the microphone from this fucker, scream to the heavens and slap him in the face

Peters is such a grade A bullshitter - the love and affection he generates among so many New Zealanders, even people who would never vote for him, seems symptomatic of something very fucked up. "But have you ever heard him speak in Parliament", someone said to me recently. "He's like Churchill"

Roberto Unger has some piercing lines: Mathematics has been the most powerful instrument of natural science, the torch illuminating what otherwise seems impossible to retrieve from the shadows of the perceived world. But it offers natural science a poisoned gift: the idea of timeless laws of nature

@maxsoar.bsky.social in case you haven't seen

"The High Court judgement [on Palestine Action] is very good news for democracy, but it is further evidence of the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the current Labour Party" Interesting piece by Martin O'Neill - on how Rawls was cited in judgement martinoneillyork.substack.com/p/on-john-ra...

Documenting the hate infrastructure of the Free Speech Union. It is an entire ecosystem of Neo Nazis and white supremacists. culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/02/free...