No socialist movement in the US will succeed in obtaining a majority without 90%+ of Black Americans behind it. I suspect the hand-wringing over "racial capitalism" on X is a way of not dealing with the practical politics of winning this overwhelmingly working class constituency.
Elite capture of social movements is a serious problem. But to be the annoying historian, I think we should remember that capture is only the second half of the story. The first is elite compromise (sometimes capitulation) in the face of struggles by marginalized people who haven't become elites.
There is a really awful discourse on racial capitalism on the other site, and everyone you would think is involved with it is.
Russell Jacoby is a legend and I am always happy to see his byline. It is depressing, though, that he was made to read Gabriel Rockhill's balderdash in his golden years.
This is such an embittered exchange between colleagues. And I do not use the word colleague in a broad sense—Connelly and Slezkine are in the same department.
Almost certain it's him. The date overlaps with his time at Duke. He must have had an undergrad job in special collections.
The Young Turks? More like the Middle-aged Anti-Dreyfussards.
When you're scheduling an archive appointment at Duke and you make the mistake of looking at the collection processing history.
John Ganz academia rapprochement
Absolute boss move by Ofer Cassif to use Jeffrey Herf’s old (and very good) scholarship to make this point.
As I wrote last month, beneath all the alarm about antisemitism from organizational US Jewry there is an incredibly naive faith in the American state under its most illiberal regime.
Before 1967, it was the norm for American Jewish leaders (then, like now, self-appointed) to insist on the autonomy of American Jewry vis-a-vis Israel. These people were politically pro-Israel, as Geoffrey Levin has shown, but they were not hubristic like Jonathan Greenblatt and David Harris.
Polarized into buying this book before I have any time to read it.
Yeah, but I would never watch The Animal.
Hungary has chosen cultural suicide? Is the nation collectively watching Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo?
Why So Many Protestants Are Done with the Modern Papacy
By Henry VIII
I'm so happy George Soros lived to see the day.
Reminder: Iran is not a threat to the United States. They are only an annoyance insofar as the US has ambitions to be a global hegemon, including in the Middle East. Maybe it's time to fold that project up. Israel's enemies do not have to be ours.
>loses a war in Persia
>builds massive triumphal arch
New Yorker this week: "In the 90s, William F. Buckley had tried to keep paleocons like Brimelow and Buchanan out of mainstream conservatism by banning such ideas from the pages of National Review."
Brimelow was a senior editor of NR in the 90s and wrote many articles including cover stories.
I didn't realize anyone thought that Eric Swalwell was some sort of major talent who can't be thrown under the bus. I have always found him annoying and glib.
It’s been several years since I identified with J Street’s politics, but as a matter of recent historical fact they enabled and legitimized progressive Democrats’ moving away from the formerly “bipartisan” AIPAC Israel dead-ender position. Now J Street being pushed leftward. Let’s try to take the W.
I would not have predicted J Street endorsing an end to US aid to Israel, especially including funding for the Iron Dome. J Street once touted the Iron Dome as a liberal Zionist accomplishment, conceived by Labor's Amir Peretz and championed by Barack Obama. We're really on new political terrain.
Anecdotally, this is my experience with my Jewish students. The ones who might want to talk about real antisemitism on campus are being dissuaded by the fact that they do not want to feed the destruction of higher education as a whole, and now by the fear of ending up on the admin's Jew list.
The AHA is not wrong about this, but the US and Israel are bombing Iranian universities and putting our colleagues in danger. It might be worth saying something about that too.
Why do I have to align with them? They can fight their battles, most of which are decidedly not mine, on their own.
When you purge metaphysics ("the Islamic Republic is evil") and Western chauvinism from your worldview, it's very clear the US and Israel are the bad actors in this war. Iran is acting defensively in the Strait of Hormuz. We are here because of the US and Israeli war of aggression.
