extremely cursed screenshot

Lemme guess: this is the Very Serious Discussion by Very Serious Intellectuals at a Very Serious Publication of that Helen Andrews essay.

The way all of these people convinced themselves that Mamdani is antisemitic is a subject far more worthy of media examination than any of the ‘groupthink on campuses!’ thinkpieces we’ve been subjected to

It strikes me that the past 20 years in American politics have been defined by the quest for a realignment election on the scale of 1932/1936 or 1980/1984 and that simply has not happened.

One of the quickest ways to build trust with undergraduates is to just be open and honest with them about the pettiness of academic politics and academic grudges while still recommending good work to them.

At the risk of sounding petty, calls for Democratic unity going forward are all well and good, but let’s not forget that the reason Cuomo ran against Mamdani in the first place was a last-ditch effort by the New York Democratic Party to ratfuck their duly elected nominee.

“Free enterprise is at risk.” Hmm, where have I heard that before. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

No wonder MSNBC is rebranding

Huge, huge night for the left in particular but the Democratic Party in general; terrible night for MAGA and their crypto-allies within the Democratic Party and the media. But this is just the beginning of a long and intense struggle. 2017 and 2018 were bad years for MAGA, too.

not to bring the vibe down, but my guess is that after tonight Trump will probably double down on gerrymandering, voter suppression, and intimidation as tactics to disincentivize Dem turnout ahead of next year‘s midterms. (with margins like these, it won’t matter, but it’s a time to be vigilant)

Woke 2.0 is going to look a lot more like the Bernie Bros than the KHive, and this is a good thing.

But populist socialism was *not* an instant win button in New York. This is the culmination of over a decade of organizing work that built the socialist movement in the city into a viable political force for the first time in almost a century.

So what's the vibe on here right now?

Cheney Death Twitter just doesn’t have the energy of Kissinger Death Twitter, probably because everyone is far more excited about the Muslim guy being elected as New York City mayor. Seems to be the same on Bluesky.

I voted for Spanberger today but if she vetoes repealing right-to-work I will do everything in my limited power to ensure that her administration is a failure.

My essay – "What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Political Violence" – is in the new print issue of Boston Review. I hope you'll subscribe to what's unquestionably one of the best magazines, and perhaps the best political magazine, in the country. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

Thanks, @gregsargent.bsky.social for having me on, and hopefully I was coherent despite running a 100-degree fever while we were recording!

What the Tucker/Nick Fuentes fiasco really reveals is that the "white nationalist wing of the GOP" is "a major force within internal GOP politics," says @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social. On the pod, David is so good on the GOP's 50-year refusal to police its extremists: newrepublic.com/article/2026...

Another point we get into is how the Tucker/Fuentes fiasco previews the coming struggle over MAGA after Trump. We also discuss how JD Vance is already carefully navigating these tensions w/that comment about his wife and Christianity. You'll learn a lot from @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social here:

This is a good, short listen on the Tucker Carlson - Nick Fuentes interview, and the divisions on the MAGA right over just how Nazi is too Nazi. @gregsargent.bsky.social and @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social also make interesting points about 20th century history, and the current divisions over Israel.

I understand why the GOP freakout over Fuentes is happening—it’s the first shot in the struggle for a post-Trump MAGA—but it’s still grimly funny that eight years after Unite The Right Republicans are only just now expressing concerns about their Nazi problem.

At the risk of self-aggrandizement, I literally wrote the book on the intertwined history of the conservative movement and the far right using an innovative and overlooked source base and I published it before anyone else. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Pleased to announce that I am bedridden with a 101 degree fever but at least it isn't COVID.

She's creeping up on "best to ever do it" territory! If you don't keep up w Turtle Diaries, you should change that now & subscribe if you can afford it. You're probably already familiar w her investigative work from [being jacked by corporate outlets all the fucking time]. www.turtlediaries.net

The basic problem facing the American right today is that the young radical critiques of the U.S.-Israel special relationship are substantively correct but unlike the left the modern right cannot use the language of universalism and hence you get the antisemitism.

*sips coffee* Anyway the last week in conservative politics has really underlined how pointless the fascism debate was.

The problem with these analyses is that while they may be strictly true on their merits -- your average GOP voter from suburban Pittsburgh isn't a white nationalist or Nazi -- they tell very little about the actual trajectory of the Republican Party over the past decade.

Does it make me a Halloween grinch if I just left a candy bowl out on the steps so I don't have to make chitchat?

The thing about the groyperfication of the GOP is that practically every single major American Jewish institution dedicated to fighting antisemitism has spent the past two years enabling the far right because of the Gaza genocide.

I don’t typically consider myself an introvert, but when I am on my 25th conversation of the day sometimes I wonder.

I lowkey kind of hope Trump prosecutes Garland because the guy definitely has it coming.

Platner still having a pretty commanding lead in the Maine primary should tell us all a lot about how much ordinary voters fucking hate the Democratic establishment.

🗣️ PLEASE SHARE 🗣️ I'm writing an intro & sourcebook on late ancient Gazan literature for Dar al-Kalima University Press. The press and I plan to produce an Arabic translation to make Gazan literature more accessible to Palestinians. Help me compensate the Gazan translator! spot.fund/dn8t744sc

Re: Fuentes on Tucker (& Tucker, Owens, Kelly, etc. in general): a point is coming where even far right Jews (says this left Jew) can't be in alliance with people who favor their eradication. That's a big fault line for MAGA. I don't know how to exploit it, but worth thinking about.

Karine Jean-Pierre's flopped rollout of her book -- *especially* after her embarrassing interview with Isaac Chotiner -- really confirms that 2010s-style elite deference politics is dead as a political force.

My wife spotted my book in the wild at Powell’s Books in Portland.

Bingo.

The thing I both love and hate about my Vietnamese tailor is that she doesn’t sugarcoat things. “Oh, you need to let your jacket out because you got fat over the summer?”

I think about social class far too much for my own good.

My latest for @bostonreview.bsky.social, where I look at the growing discontent and infighting within the MAGA coalition (h/t to Curt Mills of AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE and Matt McManus at Spelman College for sharing their insights with me!) www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

My absolute favorite thing about this is that the AI made the wifebeater Italian-American.

Thinking about the tenured faculty member I got into a fight with last year because I told him that I could not in good conscience recommend to undergraduate students to pursue an academic career.

I don’t know if this is damning with faint praise or what, but the thing that I hear most consistently from people about TAKING AMERICA BACK is the quality of the archival research.

*sips coffee* It strikes me that a lot of faculty are totally oblivious to the fact that a lot of their students—and not necessarily whom they suspect—are actually extremely right-wing.

Every now and then I see that some random lefty academic has blocked me on here because they think I'm a closet white supremacist. Never change, Bluesky.

To this point being key. The deadline isn’t until October 20 and Texas is still a firm possibility. (Also not completely outside the realm of possibility at UVA, although I think it unlikely.)

re: No King’s Day discourse I have two main things: (1) protests work but not how people think (ie, as a way to get someone in power to “do something”); and (2) it is not at all important that the people mobilizing in protest, especially if they are new to the game, know that

This is sort of what I was getting at with speculating about what Woke 2.0 looks like. Normie lib culture has shifted from worrying about microaggressions to a kind of populism reminiscent of nothing so much as the 2016 Bernie campaign.