Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out

What 20th-century fascists can teach us about the need for truth in the 21st-century

In a bizarre 46-minute address, given from the White House and posted to social media on December 2, Donald Trump gave (in his words) “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” Intended to describe the means by which the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, and supplemented with graphs that ...
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Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out

How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

An ethical and aesthetic defense of Indigenous sovereignty

It has become fashionable for some academics at some universities in North America to place at the end of their email signatures a nod to the Indigenous land that their institutions now occupy. Some concerned faculty write a statement of their own. Others—I think this is a better option—compose their statements ...
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How Should We Acknowledge the Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples?

On Repression and Resistance

I would like to start by thanking the New University in Exile Consortium, particularly the Consortium's marvelous director, Prof. Arien Mack. Thanks to Arien's persistent efforts, uprooted academics from all over the world find their voice in a new community of like-minded scholars. I would also like to thank Prof. ...
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On Repression and Resistance

Donald Trump’s Lies

Why presidential falsehoods are part of United States political history

Do Americans think presidential lying no longer matters? Perhaps a better question, journalist and historian Eric Alterman asks in his new book, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump is Worse (Basic Books, 2020), is whether it ever mattered to voters. Following in the tradition of Isadore F. “Izzy” ...
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QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism

How a conspiracy theory was born in the Great War and made its way into the 21st century

For the past three years, someone using the alias “Q” has been posting updates to internet forums, supposedly from within the so-called “deep state.” The posts allege a conspiracy: Donald Trump, they say, is fighting a secret war against a cabal of pedophiles and Satanists entrenched in the government. Soon, ...
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QAnon Will Outlast Trumpism

Migration as a Claim for Reparations

The connections between political agency and migration

In October 2016, Hussein and I met over coffee at a Tunisian pastry shop in the north of Paris to follow up on his administrative battle with the French government. We had spent months filing paperwork together, building the strongest possible case for his asylum application. Hussein had fled Sudan ...
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Migration as a Claim for Reparations

The Models We Need

Forty years ago this week, four U.S. women were killed in El Salvador. It’s taken this long to understand the meaning of their deaths — and their lives

This week in the mountains of El Salvador people who survived that nation's civil war and its violent aftermath walked solemnly into the plaza of the town of San Antonio Los Ranchos, carrying aloft portraits of four Catholic missionaries who were killed 40 years ago. The women are remembered in ...
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The Models We Need

Yes, Democracy Can Survive Trump

When conservative officeholders and judges had to choose between party and country, some chose our country

The day after Thanksgiving, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals pulled yet another rug out from under Donald Trump’s serial attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected the claims made in the campaign’s brief as specious and excoriated ongoing attempts to exclude legitimate votes from ...
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Yes, Democracy Can Survive Trump

How to Head Off the Coming Neo-Trumpian Movement

Focus on defending democracy, not trying to appeal to racist and sexist Republican voters

“As the count currently stands, nearly 80 million Americans voted for Joe Biden,” Senator Bernie Sanders recently remarked: “With this vote against the authoritarian bigotry of Donald Trump, the world can breathe a collective sigh of relief.”  But how did Trump’s bigotry triumph in the first place?  Sanders has an answer similar ...
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How to Head Off the Coming Neo-Trumpian Movement

Joe Biden’s Masculinity Is Anything But Toxic

How republican virtue is part of manliness

“Virtue-signaling” is the idea that people say they believe something but don’t really believe it. They’re saying it to seem impressive to people they desire to impress. Everyone does this to some degree, and everyone deserves some degree of takedown. But if anyone has a corner on the market of ...
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Joe Biden’s Masculinity Is Anything But Toxic

None Dare Call It Treason

Is calling for a military coup Michael Flynn’s payback for his pardon?

On the evening of December 2, Trump’s disgraced former National Security Advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn-- whom Trump recently pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office-- retweeted a news release from ...
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None Dare Call It Treason