Francis Wade

Journalism In An Age Of Authoritarianism | NOEMA The media needs to rethink its role in protecting democracy — rather than just chronicling its demise.

Glad to commission this from @peterpomerantsev.bsky.social on his long-term study of the techniques journalists can (and now must) use to counter authoritarian propaganda.

— @noemamag.com

www.noemamag.com/journalism-i...

**Call for pitches** 👇

agrowingculture 3 hours ago 2/5 This morning, Israeli forces raided and demolished the Seed Multiplication Unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees' (UAWC) national seed bank in Hebron. Using bulldozers and heavy machinery, the Israeli army destroyed the storage warehouses and infrastructure where essential equipment, seed materials, and tools for indigenous seed reproduction were kept. This is not just an attack on a building-its an attack on Palestinian food sovereignty, biodiversity and cultural memory.

Israel destroyed a Palestinian seed bank today. This is such a specific kind of evil, targeting literal hope for the future. Attempting to further alienate Palestinians from their home and land. So much destroyed just for the sake of destroying. It's awful.

Seeds of another world The nexus of radical inequality, social atomization and male victimhood has been exploited before. But why now, on such a scale? To understand the appeal of the far-right today we need to examine the...

To understand the appeal of the far-right today we need to examine the origins of the fascist myth of primordial male kinship.
New essay, out today @eurozine.bsky.social
www.eurozine.com/seeds-of-ano...

The Idea of the Nation-State Is Synonymous With Genocide A conversation with political theorist Mahmood Mamdani on the inherent violence at the heart of a nation-building project, the war in Gaza, and the changing meaning of homeland.

Zohran Mamdani comes from good intellectual stock. My interview with his father, the political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, in @thenation.com

www.thenation.com/article/cult...

The War to Remake Myanmar | Francis Wade Over the eighty years since Myanmar’s independence from Britain, war between the state and armed rebel groups has been so constant as to seem like the

“Many of the forces fighting the junta” in Myanmar, writes Francis Wade, “want nothing less than to fundamentally transform the country’s political structure to favor local dominion and autonomy.”

The War to Remake Myanmar | Francis Wade Over the eighty years since Myanmar’s independence from Britain, war between the state and armed rebel groups has been so constant as to seem like the

I have an essay in @nybooks.com on the revolution in Myanmar and the efforts by resistance groups to fundamentally transform the structure of the state.

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Tyranny of Language | Francis Wade Thirty years after graduating from his missionary-run high school near Nairobi, the Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o had gained enough distance to reflect on the lasting effect of colonial education po...

"To control a people's culture," Ngũgĩ wrote, "is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others."

Rest in power.

lnkd.in/ePr-JtKk @nybooks.com

www.nybooks.com/online/2018/...

Francis Wade | Myanmar after the Earthquake The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck central Myanmar on 28 March, followed minutes later by one almost as big, was...

‘Immediately after the earthquake, the US Geological Survey forecast between 10,000 and 100,000 deaths. It’s a wide window – but no one knows how many more lives will be taken by the military.’

Francis Wade on the aftermath of the Myanmar earthquake, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

Unable to DM but have a query. Can you please drop me an email (address in bio) or follow/DM me?

Francis Wade | Myanmar after the Earthquake The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck central Myanmar on 28 March, followed minutes later by one almost as big, was...

On the Myanmar earthquake, the bombing raids that followed, and the aid dilemma. The message from the junta seems clear: Even those who made it through the quake should not be confident of their survival. @lrb.co.uk

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...

The Cult Of The American Lawn | NOEMA Manicured grass yards are ecological dead zones. So why are they being forced on people by their neighbors and homeowner associations?

“The typical suburban lawn is zealously mown, raked & bombarded with chemicals.”

What if we gave up the cult of green grass & instead embraced a bounty of biodiversity in our yards? Oliver Milman explores how a cultural reset would benefit us all.

#grass #lawn #biodiversity #garden #pollinators

If anyone can show me how you grow the economy by targeting people who need assistance to wash below their waist, please reply.

Worth a revisit in light of Trump's attempts to capture institutes of education and repurpose them as tools for his fascistic project

Gayatri Spivak: ‘The Subaltern Speaks Through Dying’ A conversation on the educational empowerment of rural poor in India, and the evolution of Spivak's thinking about state and citizen.

A while ago I spoke w/ Gayatri Spivak for @thenation.com on the teaching methods she uses to produce, in young children, 'rituals of democratic habits', skepticism of leadership, and the understanding that the state is theirs to claim www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Steve Bannon Is Out of Jail, and He Has a Plan for Trump’s Next Term Bannon, a self-declared general of global populists, wants to break the world order. And he’s tapped into something even bigger than Donald Trump himself.

This is well worth spending time with. The Left has no equivalent to Bannon, and no real answer to the ideology he's helped shape, which draws from multiple (seemingly opposing) strands and yet is coherent and hugely compelling vanityfair.com/news/story/steve-bannon-nato-world-order

Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore The US president’s cuts to health funding could lead to half a million deaths. They’re part of a strategy to condemn and isolate the country

Mbembe and Gilmore on Trump's lethal "strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people," and the hundreds of thousands who'll die as a result www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Oh, and it pays pretty well...

I'm now commissioning longform essays and reported stories for @noemamag.com. If you have have ideas for pieces on climate & the natural world, nations, democracy, AI & tech, or anything else the magazine covers, drop me a DM/email: francis@noemamag.com.

“On the practicalities of ethnic cleansing”

The Languages Lost To Climate Change | NOEMA Climate catastrophes and biodiversity loss are endangering languages across the globe.

"What is left when the things you have words for begin to disappear?"

@jwebsterayuso.bsky.social for @noemamag.com on ecological collapse and the corresponding loss of language www.noemamag.com/the-language...

Tackling the Wreckage of War An archaeologist traces how rubble from World War II bombings helped turn London marshlands into a footballing utopia.

Fun origin story on Hackney Marshes as the "utopia of [London] grassroots football", which owes its existence to the millions of tonnes of rubble leftover after the Blitz www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

A Rohingya youth’s ordeal in the Myanmar military Abul Kalam, a young Rohingya man, has revealed the harrowing details of his forced recruitment into the Myanmar military. His testimony offers a rare glimpse into the brutal tactics employed by the ju...

In my latest feature for Dhaka Tribune, I write about the harrowing experiences of Abul Kalam, a young Rohingya man forcibly recruited into the Myanmar army. His tale highlights his community's experience of exploitation & human rights violations in Arakan

www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/r...

In Myanmar, healthcare and disease prevention are neglected casualties of war Junta restrictions on the delivery of basic medical supplies are leading outbreaks of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, and even HIV, to soar.

Underreported issue for post-coup Myanmar is the sharp rise in disease, w/ TB, malaria and HIV rates all surging at a time when 3.5m ppl are displaced & junta blocking aid. "Myanmar alone could be responsible for reversing progress on malaria globally." www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature...

Investigation by @forensicarchi.bsky.social into destruction of Gaza's farming sector: land turned to dust, greenhouses destroyed/repurposed as IDF bases. The besieged population relies on what it can produce, not import, and productive land is disappearing forensic-architecture.org/investigatio...

Syria’s “Human Debris” - Boston Review The new government’s greatest challenge may be rebuilding a just society in the aftermath of barbaric state violence.

"How do we think about the deep traumas inflicted on populations where violence and fear serve as the currency of the ruling political class and its security apparatus?"

@joelleabirached.bsky.social on Syria's coming reckoning, for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/syr...

Thanks both. But Ma Thibu, the insights were truly Shunlei's, not mine..!

Christmas deep read

Thinzar Shunlei Yi on Myanmar's future The Burmese pro-democracy activist on what it will take to end the world's longest civil war

✨New online:

@franciswade.bsky.social speaks to pro-democracy activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi about Myanmar's future