Matt Steinglass

Foregrounding this reply: a union-organized pension protest in 2004 was apparently bigger bsky.app/profile/herm...

Now that’s the Netherlands I know and love

Massaal protest tegen oorlog in Irak AMSTERDAM - Bijna 70.000 mensen hebben zaterdag in Amsterdam gedemonstreerd tegen de oorlog in Irak. Vanuit het hele land kwamen betogers naar de hoofdstad om hun stem te laten horen. De demonstratie ...

Looks like 70,000 or so www.nu.nl/algemeen/109...

Definitely not bigger than 1983 which drew 550,000. I will check but have a feeling antiwar demos in NL in 2003 were not on this scale.

Sorry, the anti-nuclear-weapons demo in 1983 was bigger and more recent. But I don’t think there’s been a bigger one since. Has there?

Dutch news now reporting this Gaza demo in Amsterdam drew 250,000. If so, I think that makes it the biggest in the Netherlands since the anti-nuclear-missiles demo in 1981.

Met de Hebreeuwse calendar zal het op 14 oktober precies 2 jaar zijn

Not sure I buy 250,000, but it was a lot

Red Line demonstration for Gaza encounters a common Amsterdam problem: very large people in very small spaces

Crowd control have cut the speeches short and ordered the march to start, apparently out of worries there are too many people coming and it could get dangerous in the tight space.

Whole space from Concertgebouw to Rijksmuseum is full and I think must go back several blocks on all sides.

Red Line demonstration for Gaza in Amsterdam today is very big by Dutch standards. Museumplein packed and overfill, certainly tens of thousands. This is just people on the way, and it’s been like this for kilometers.

I am generally pro hypocrisy, do what is needed in the moment and don’t worry too much about what you or an ally said 4 years ago

I guess there’s always pro wrestling?

Good point. Genuinely not sure what avenues would be useful for channeling these guys’ energies, they’d be useless in Ukraine

How many opposition politicians have been arrested?

As someone with a degree in Russian history who has spent years reporting from Eastern Europe as well as authoritarian regimes in Africa and Asia, I am familiar with many other examples

I think we are talking about a different “it”. I don’t think the US is an authoritarian state and I think it’s neither likely nor desirable that power change hands there violently. What I’m interested in is the specific problem of what to do with ICE.

Yeah. Maybe rigorous retraining combined with firing the incorrigible would be better.

I don’t think that is true though I hope so. They are more like Cossacks. Stop paying them and they may launch a pogrom.

Exactly. There’s both an economic and an ideological element you’re trying to abolish. The guys you’re firing will resist and they have already been organized into groups and trained to believe their violence is legitimate.

Maybe militias on the US 1990s scale though—not on the Fallujah scale

Of course the situation is completely different; the basic problem of trying to demobilize the armed wing of a hostile patronage-based political movement is analogous.

The VVD hasn’t been that party for several years, at least. The Democrats would be D66.

Hope so. But it’s still a lot of angry, lawless, not very employable guys with a propensity for violence and a desire to demonstrate higher caste status.

Not anymore it wouldn’t

A-OK

At this point if Democrats return to power and abolish ICE they’re going to have the same problem the US faced in Iraq after disbanding the Baath armed forces.

As a side note: nice nod to better aspects of Bidenomics, which was on balance pretty solid in an unlucky macro environment and with a too-old guy at the top.

The rise of America’s hard left Economic populists offer an alternative to the authoritarian right, but they have to balance the righteous with the practical

Very good piece by @ranaforoohar.bsky.social. Seems silly to decry the rise of some new socialist thinking on the left, it’s inevitable as a response to MAGA. The important thing is for it to be smart and reality-based, not dreamy and counterproductive. on.ft.com/475Pznj