Coming up this Friday - register now.
02.02.2026 17:00 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“Boats Against the Current”: Industrial Memorials and The ‘Half-Life’ of Deindustrialisation in Port Glasgow, Scotland’ – Deindustrialization
February's blog from the "Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time" (DePOT) project comes from University of Glasgow PhD student Dylan Brewerton-Harper, part of a wider thesis on working-class cultural responses to deindustrialization.
deindustrialization.org/boats-agains...
01.02.2026 16:07 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
Interesting upcoming event here in Montreal.
30.01.2026 18:31 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Martin Shuster
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So apparently on Sunday Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in a press conference that "we have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside ... many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
Then on Monday--one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day--the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted in response that: "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges."
As someone who spent a year at the Museum as a fellow doing research, I feel embarrassed for the institution. First, it is very clear that Walz wasn't drawing an equivalence, he was drawing an analogy. So this kind of response reminds me of the atrocious positions that the ADL has started to carve out, and why it has become mostly a sycophantic joke, now seemingly mostly geared towards currying favor with MAGA.
![Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime).
We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ybkylffhwhn2an2ic2lxh76k/bafkreifucubotcz54scclzmnpxlnv6x5olf2zb6ow5xufzdyqbflhuzcn4@jpeg)
Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime).
We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century.
In noting this, let me be clear that this does not erase or make less relevant the centuries of European antisemitism that fed into the Nazi project. That's the whole point: these are all related phenomena. European antisemitism influenced the way in which European colonialism and imperialism operated against indigenous populations in the Americas. Strikingly, as innovations mounted in "administering" the Americas, antisemitic policies also evolved in Europe. Administrators (oppressors) would sometimes even move from one sphere to the other and back. They were all synergistic (a brilliant examination of some of this is María Elena Martínez's _Genealogical Fictions_). (And one could, btw, also tell an important story about the development of Islamophobia in this very same orbit, since policies stumbled on in the Americas came back to oppress both Jews and Muslims in Europe).
This is all to say: Walz's analogy is not at all far fetched. The history of oppression doesn't move in any kind of neat or purely linear fashion. It is oftentimes recursive, shifting, necessarily granular. Neither is it a competitive history. It is, in the words of Michael Rothberg, a *multidirectional* history. Drawing these analogies in fact *helps* us understand all the involved phenomena better.
At least this is what "Never Again" has meant and means to me: it does not mean only never again for me or other Jews. And it does not mean never again only something that looks exactly like the Nazi genocide. I think also, btw, that this is what it meant for Otto Frank, who spent time *editing* his daughter's diary so that it could be available to anyone, not only to Jews.
For ultimately the Nazi genocide--any genocide--is a highly mediated phenomenon: it consists of many diffuse events, marshals an immense amount of people and institutions, relies on sometimes conflicting or contradictory cross-sections of society, and, indeed, emerges out of a process that does not neatly, especially as its happening, have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but rather arranges for itself a kind of constellation that harnesses a range of actors, perspectives, and also histories (this is one way to understand how German colonial projects or anti-communism or ableism were no less crucial to Nazism than European antisemitism). The genocidal outcomes emerge from the structural forms society adopts. And all of this without in any way eliding the special role that Jews played in the apocalyptic Nazi worldview.
Please read this extremely thoughtful & careful post on Tim Walz, Anne Frank, & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from Martin Shuster, philosopher, Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, former Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow, & scholar of genocide, the Holocaust, & authoritarianism:
30.01.2026 01:23 — 👍 976 🔁 467 💬 2 📌 0
Still the only boss worth listening to.
28.01.2026 18:03 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Dans une semaine Alessandro Portelli sera à 16h à l'humathèque pour présenter son livre. Ce n'est pas tous les jours qu'on a l'occasion de l'entendre !
26.01.2026 11:45 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Seeing a lot of courage in the streets of Minneapolis. The city deserves the Nobel peace prize (not those willing to give theirs away to curry favor from this tyrant).
25.01.2026 16:33 — 👍 8 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
I don't disagree with your point. Domestically, we see ample evidence of this. And he is not questioning the insulation of the market (trade and investment) from democratic interference, quite the opposite. But his use of Havel has real edge, challenging those that lament what was.
21.01.2026 12:05 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
It is much more than that. Carney spoke of the lie of the old order, where the 'rules based order" never applied to the big powers. It is an essential critique. Also speaks of extreme global integration designed to benefit some over others, critiquing neoliberalism.
21.01.2026 11:38 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Carney's speech declares the 'rules based order' dead, and even goes so far to call it a lie, as great powers always did what they wanted anyways. I wish the NDP could rise to this moment.
21.01.2026 01:29 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
Canada draws up military defense strategy if US invades modelled on Afghan defense against Russia. Meanwhile two Canadian provinces are on the road to sovereignty referenda.
20.01.2026 13:31 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Laurentian University academic staff on strike - CAUT
Members of LUFA have taken to the picket lines to achieve a fair contract, following months of negotiations.
Members of @lufappul.bsky.social have taken to the picket lines following months of negotiations.
LUFA members have endured years of instability and made extraordinary sacrifices following the university’s unprecedented use of the CCAA.
Read more: www.caut.ca/news/laurent...
19.01.2026 19:57 — 👍 11 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
Some mornings you wake up, shake your head, and wonder about the future of humanity. This is the man entrusted with the nuclear codes. Then there is the person beside him, which makes me shake my head some more.
16.01.2026 12:53 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Companies have long used their control over geography against trade unions. Anti-unionism has been a primary driver of deindustrialization, as work is purposefully moved elsewhere. My next book is on precisely this topic.
15.01.2026 13:07 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
The occupational mix of a party caucus (or leadership) reveals a great deal. Studies of the Obama administration showed just how high % of White House staff/advisors were graduates of a handful of Ivy League schools (another key indicator).
13.01.2026 12:40 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Roundtable: Political Abandonment Silencing and Absence
Join us for the March Roundtable to discuss Political Abandonment Silencing and Absence in deindustrialization
You can also sign up for our March 12th virtual round-table on "Political Abandonment, Silencing and Absence in Deindustrialization." Papers focus on Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe and North America.
12.01.2026 19:33 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Roundtable: (In)Justice and Heritage After Industry
Join DePOT for this new roundtable as we talk about the aftermath of industry!
Register online for our next @deindustrialpol.bsky.social virtual roundtable on "(In)Justice and Heritage After Industry" which will be held on February 20th @ 9h30 (Eastern Time). Great line-up!
12.01.2026 19:16 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
