Had a blast synergising @deconspirator.bsky.social and ARM project with @mariellew.bsky.social at the @clingendael.bsky.social REKA conference. Discussed current approaches to #FIMI and the challenges European democracies face. Despite our happy faces, we were not always optimistic...

🚨 Publication alert 🚨 I went to the depths of despair and analyZed Russian pro-war poetry with Alsu Buiting: "Teaching to Love the Mother(land): Russian Z-poetry, Gendered Rhetoric and the Legitimization of War" in link.springer.com/book/10.1007... A quick 🧵 on our main findings

Here is a little story 🧵 about a late night satirical show cancellation for some reason #Colbert

For no discernible reason, I will be re-reading this excellent article “Cucktales: Race, Sex, and Enjoyment in the Reactionary Memescape” by @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

Tested out a Russian (pre-war) “patriotic education” board game with my students, but they didn’t come away loving the Motherland too much. What I am doing wrong?* *that was sarcasm. I know what I’m doing

It's eugenics. It's all eugenics, folks.

Kremlin trolls are posting about kefir these days! Resurrecting my #EatingIdentity hashtag

3) Moving right on immigration normalizes the radical right, their positions and rhetoric. Normalization is a key precondition for electoral expansion of the radical right. Programmatic accommodation and collaboration normalize the radical right and open new segments of the electorate for it.

I love how finding out the head of HHS doesn't believe in germs isn't the craziest part of that fucking sentence

AG Bondi: “In accordance with Due Process, we gave the toddler 24 hours to file a habeas corpus petition.”

Geen studentensportvoorzieningen meer. Geen studium generale meer. Geen universiteitsmuseum meer. Geen publiekslezingen meer. Geen hortus meer. Dan ook geen Bildung meer. Geen universiteit meer. Eppo maakt echt alles kapot. 🤬 delta.tudelft.nl/article/kabi...

Gisteren staakte Wageningen tegen de roekeloze bezuinigingen op het hoger onderwijs, en morgen gaat de estafettestaking door in Maastricht! Laat ook je stem horen, vóór de toekomst van Limburg, om 12:30 op het Vrijthof. Zie ik je daar? #KabinetSlooptHogerOnderwijs #WOinActie

I’m sorry but if your students use AI to write papers and you use AI to grade them zero school is happening. You are running together on a hamster wheel

It’s a deeply authoritarian mindset to think that people don’t protest for free. Putin also thinks that all protests in Russia have been paid by the State Department!

Great discussion last night! @seldridge.com talked about his new book and engaged the audience with provocative questions about the role of journalism in a fractured society, followed by a panel w/ @lisares.bsky.social & @sikkom.bsky.social’s Willem Groeneveld, moderated by @joelleswart.bsky.social.

The logic of filling in public swimming pools with dirt or cement instead of racially integrating them, applied to the whole country

New blog post in @ecprtheloop.bsky.social! @lisares.bsky.social and I evaluate the cult-like devotion of MAGA loyalists. We argue that Trump's charisma and his 'carnivalesque behaviour' play a role in creating loyal support among his followers. We also draw parallels to darker times in US history.

Well...THAT's certainly a great image. Nothing historically reminiscent going on there.

The 66-year-old woman kicking this guy’s ass is a retired professor of medicine with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar Goals

Als je wil weten hoe belangrijk vrije wetenschap is voor democratie, hoef je maar te kijken naar hoe belangrijk autoritaire regimes t vinden om universiteiten onder de knoet te krijgen. Zie als voorbode daarvan ook de radicaal-rechtse omgang met universiteiten daar waar ze (nog) niet almachtig zijn

Exactly! We (existing NL scholars) are apparently not “excellent” enough to get proper funding. If they really valued science and talent they wouldn’t have tried to destroy the Dutch education system.

OUT NOW Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance by @jeremymorris.bsky.social "Brilliantly demonstrates that ordinary people's lives can be intensely political" - Alexei Yurchak 📕 www.bloomsbury.com/9781350509313 #Russia #Politics #Ukraine #Micropolitics

Groningen strikes

Caught doing a teach out!

On strike today! #Doehetniet

Just remembered a mind-boggling thing from #ISA2025 . A prof from an American military academy saying they might not be able to teach about ethnic diversity in Russia because of the “DEI ban”. I was speechless.

Now that the influential bigot who did a Hitler salute publicly claimed that organic protests against his malfeasance are secretly controlled by a list of foreign Jews, some of whom aren’t even alive today, are we allowed to call him a Nazi, or is there something even Nazier we have to wait for?

Normalizing racism was a major goal of the “free speech absolutist” movement and they’ve been wildly successful at their work.

I am a broken record on this one, but gender is an incredibly important part of war legitimation in Russia

I wonder which of my “previous research articles, which are easily accessible online” have qualified me for publishing in “Cattle Practice” 🤔

As a geriatric millennial, I approve this message m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vF2...

Hard agree

Was caught in the act of presenting some of our research for @deconspirator.bsky.social at #ISA2025 . I might have been praying for more data access…

Gestern hat ein deutscher Alexander ein schreckliches Attentat in Mannheim verübt. Gestoppt wurde er von Afzal aus Pakistan. Dass ihr so wenig davon hört liegt daran, dass Vorname und Herkunft für viele offensichtlich nur interessant sind, wenn man das für rechte Hetze missbrauchen kann.

I hope people recognize that the demonization and oppression of the trans population is *also* the tip of the spear for going after the LGB population. And that's not the end of it. And if you're shocked at the relative success of the anti-trans campaign, wait until the Trump regime consolidates.

Good morning Chicago! Made it to #ISA2025 come say hi if you’re up at 8.15 for the panel SA54 on Russian policy.

american masculinity is so amazing. caring about clothes as a man apparently makes you "gay" but our position on geopolitics totally depends on whether you wear a suit

But make no mistake, this is an all out assault on non-politicized knowledge. Autocracies produce ignorance by design. This is what autocracies do. (5/5)

Today marks the start of Karneval - this is your annual reminder to read and share this excellent work on the Trump Carnival, by the great @lisares.bsky.social & Bharath Ganesh (open access) 👹

3 years of Russia’s full-scale of Ukraine. I remember bringing my kid to daycare on that day in tears after a sleepless night and the teacher asked me what was wrong. I said that the war began. “What war?” she asked me.

Translation: Vance is sorry swastikas are banned in Germany! Because that’s the type of free speech he is most concerned about.

(...Honestly I think this is part of why the tech barons are so convinced that currently-existing generative AI is a TOTAL GAME-CHANGER. It can summarize a literature for you, with only moderate hallucinations. Imagine what an upgrade that must be for rich dudes with zero reading comprehension.)

I spent the last eight years freaking out about the woke kids. But I’m writing a very serious piece this week about what a threat Trump is. So you can’t blame me for what’s happening.

History repeats itself, first as Gamergate, second as government.

They want to ban the teaching of the unpleasant facts of American history because people might conclude injustices in the past that contribute to inequalities in the present should be rectified, instead of their belief, which is that some groups of people are inherently superior to others

Sucks when people take your stuff and use it to make their stuff and don’t pay for it, eh?

We actually had the solution: immigration. When Vance talks about boosting the fertility rate, what he really means is boosting the *white* fertility rate.

Absolutely. A lot of people who decry the absence of social media posts do not realize that in authoritarian contexts online visibility is very dangerous. In Russia you can get fined for a freaking emoji reaction to a news article.

The euphemisation of far right politics over decades has led to the inability to call a Nazi salute a Nazi salute and fascist politics fascism The use of populism, Euroscepticism, nationalism/nativism have all played a role in diluting and minimising the threat often based on the FR's own wishes 1/

It never ceases to amaze me that most people are unfamiliar with Elon Musk’s white supremacist views. For them he is just a “socially awkward” billionaire, “environmentalist”, and “scientist” (!!!). Yet another failure in the firehouse of far-right normalization in the media.