How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Part Two: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

Editor’s note: in the first part of her essay on the challenges Polish scholars are confronting in their efforts to bring attention to Polish-responsibility for portions of the Shoah, Wagner discussed origins of – and the rise of resistance to – the New Polish School of the History of Shoah. In this ...
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How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Notre Dame Cathedral, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and the Center for American Progress

Past Present Episode 176

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil discuss the fire at Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral, President Trump’s attacks against Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and the history of liberal think tanks. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The world watched as Paris’ iconic Notre Dame Cathedral was engulfed ...
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Notre Dame Cathedral, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and the Center for American Progress

Mass Psychology of Crisis

For a structural analysis of financialization and against the use of “fascism” as a scare tactic

Mass psychology, new fascism, financialization. The conjunction of these three terms is startling. Its meaning is not immediately transparent. To grasp it requires an imaginative leap. What connects them, for me, is a fourth term, crisis. Not just financial crisis, nor indeed any crisis that is merely sectoral -- whether ecological, economic, social or ...
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Mass Psychology of Crisis

Two Cheers for Impeachment

The political “risks” are not that great, and they are worth taking

In an ideal world, the thought of impeaching Donald Trump would warrant at least three cheers, along with some somersaults and a marching band (my preference would be for a New Orleans Second Line led by Trombone Shorty). Yet in an ideal world Donald Trump would be nothing but a ...
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Two Cheers for Impeachment

Academia, Grassroots Organizations, and Debt

Towards a Genuine Collaboration

What if the president of the United States, along with Congress, cancelled student debt and made public college tuition free? Just a few years ago, these goals would have seemed like the pie-in-the sky dreams of a marginal sect. Today, free public college is supported by major presidential candidates, including ...
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Academia, Grassroots Organizations, and Debt

Reading the Mueller Report

You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime you just might find — you know how to read.

I understand why you wouldn’t want to read the whole thing through: it’s really long, repetitive and dull. But most of all, you will want to react before reading because you just wanted the Trump presidency to be over, right? You wanted Robert Mueller to make the case for why ...
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I’m an Orthodox rabbi who is going to start officiating LGBTQ weddings. Here’s why.

If we don’t, we risk further alienation and falling into an abyss of religious irrelevance by denying these couples their rightful place of belonging.

A queer friend of mine from a haredi Orthodox background had posed a query publicly on social media. She had attended a conference on LGBTQ inclusion. There she learned a practice of certain Catholic priests who described going into gay bars in full clerical garb: They would sit in the ...
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I’m an Orthodox rabbi who is going to start officiating LGBTQ weddings. Here’s why.

New Fascism, Mass Psychology & Financialization: Part 3

Psychoanalytic resources for (anti-) fascist mobilization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koK79g4O-qQ&feature=youtu.be Organized by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (University College London) and Chiara Bottici (New School) What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s 'new fascisms' through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brought together scholars from across disciplines to ...
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New Fascism, Mass Psychology & Financialization: Part 3

Merleau-Ponty’s Doubt

On Rethinking Our Thoughts

As political camps grow increasingly extreme in their messaging – with Democrat and Republican views both turning less nuanced, with the Right and Left seeming to need each other in order to justify their political survival -- it may be helpful to recall a person who tried to make a ...
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Merleau-Ponty’s Doubt

New Fascism, Mass Psychology & Financialization: Part 2

Finance and Populism

Organized by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (University College London) and Chiara Bottici (New School) What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s 'new fascisms' through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brought together scholars from across disciplines to debate ...
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New Fascism, Mass Psychology & Financialization: Part 2

A Quick Thought on ‘No Collusion’: Not!

There may not have been criminal “conspiracy,” but there was obvious collusion and the Mueller Report makes it clear.

Everyone paying attention to the Mueller report and the complex and extremely disturbing conditions surrounding its handling by Attorney General Barr, acting as a clear ally of Trump, is still processing the just-released report and the press conference that preceded it. It is clear that Barr was extremely misleading in ...
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A Quick Thought on ‘No Collusion’: Not!