The Right doesn't seem to agree on whether starting a war in Iran which guts the global economy is, uh, good or bad. Spoiler alert: We do not, in fact, have to hand it to the ones who think it's bad. Listen to @rstromolsen.bsky.social and I break it down! rolfstromolsen.substack.com/p/ep-08-the-...
Check out my review of Calum Matheson's "Post-Weird: Fragmentation, Community, and the Decline of the Mainstream," an excellent book of psychoanalytic rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and overall anti-rhetorical weirdness if I do say so myself! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
New article dropped! In Critical Studies in Media Communication, I write about how trans people have made 4chan their own and how queer media scholars should deal with online queer subcultures when they fail to show up as icons of progress. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
@reedvanschenck.bsky.social and I popped another red pill and suffered mild neurological damage by reading more Curtis Yarvin. This time, we look at his views on climate change, Keynesianism, and race - and how they are surfacing as policy.
rolfstromolsen.substack.com/p/ep-06-curt...
Rolf and I are on a roll! Everything you never wanted to know about Curtis Yarvin, the cartoonishly-evil thinker behind the tech right with even more cartoonish ideas about U.S. history.
Reed @reedvanschenck.bsky.social and I have been reading Curtis Yarvin for our podcast so you don't have to. The first part looks at all the reasons why you should be thankful for that. rolfstromolsen.substack.com/p/ep-04-curt...
"Who's city is it Chief?
Bovino: "It's our fucking city."
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. It is not a democracy when men with guns and uniforms believe they have more control over a city than its residents.
I'm very proud to announce that "Digital Platforms and Agency" is live! Check out the special section published by Lateral, the journal of the Cultural Studies Association. My colleague Elaine and I worked very hard to curate this selection of essays.
csalateral.org/archive/sect...
Grab your free copy of "Gamer Publics," one of my recent publications about live-streamed debate and argument among gamers. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QSI6X...
I'm going live at the top of the hour to discuss queer critical challenges to/through AI on Breaking Culture! Join us www.youtube.com/@BreakingCul.... Or if you want to join the Zoom to ask a question, DM me.
In our latest podcast episode, @reedvanschenck.bsky.social and I look at Shmitt's "The Concept of the Political" and explore how his idea of the Friend/Enemy dynamic is increasingly relevant to the volatile polarization in our modern democracies. rolfstromolsen.substack.com/p/179403645?
It's finally live! Listen to "While Our Students Are Sleeping." Join me and Rolf as we dissect political theory for our students. Our first few episodes are about Carl Schmitt, trad-cath Nazi jurist. All relation to current events is strictly non-coincidential. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
In IE Insights today, I write that Europe needs to de-risk from the U.S. or face a major, digitally-mediated identity crisis. www.ie.edu/insights/art...
New article just dropped! "Christian Nationalism as Media" explores how the political identity of Christian Nationalism retrieves racist and sexist ideas of the human through its obsession with owning and controlling the media. ijoc.org/index.php/ij...
Just pasted the whole book in 1 word doc. I only have to trim a minimum of 800 words! I'd like to thank my 10th grade English teacher.
They are priming themselves to lead MAGA after Trump, a kind of fascist theocracy.
In 2019 Nick Fuentes' neo-Nazi "Groypers" engaged in a systematic campaign to harass Charlie Kirk at his events for not being racist enough. He responded by becoming more racist.
www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-gr...
Check out this resource library NCA has launched! "Addressing Authoritarianism" is a resource to enable successful pedagogical, research, creative, and administrative interventions into authoritarianism and fascism. www.natcom.org/addressing-a...
Check out my review of @transform6789.bsky.social's fascinating and all-too-timely book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege. And if that doesn't sound like too much nausea for a summer, read the book!!! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
"This silence has made a mockery of the slogan 'Never again,' transforming its meaning from an assertion of resistance to inhumanity wherever it is perpetrated to an excuse, an apology, indeed, even a carte blanche for destroying others by invoking one’s own past victimhood."
Reed Van Schenck, comm scholar, wearing a patterned shirt, in front of a lecturn, gesturing to a PowerPoint slide featuring white nationalist content found on Telegram
Wow @reedvanschenck.bsky.social absolutely killing it on the top papers of ethnicity race & comm panel w their paper on white supremacists, Telegram, and interfaces
Ding ding ding
Both! The first sense begets the second. For instance, that the platform based web is structured like a network (but centralized in the Global North) lends itself to the silly idea that the internet is democratic, which in turn gives credence to free speech complaints.
I just signed a book contract!
The Reactionary Web is a book about why white supremacists manage to stay online, and what that teaches us about the racist conceits of the internet at large.
Coming in 2026 from @brisunipress.bsky.social
This happened a couple years ago, and the group that did it has not fared well since, but the point stands.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Israel,
"We do not trade with a genocidal state"
