Theodoros Ntounias

How do you feel about becoming a political lightning rod? People occasionally just flip [me] off or whatever, but nobody's come up to me and tried to make a statement about anything. Personally, it's kind of dumb. It's just a vehicle. So it's ironic that it would even become a political statement, but nonetheless it is. [Editor’s note: Taylor was arrested and convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He was later pardoned by President Trump.]

www.wired.com/story/owning...

My new op-ed with @lkfazio.bsky.social:

Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain.
Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Our research makes it clear: by capitulating to the right, Labour is driving voters to Reform UK | Tarik Abou-Chadi and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte Mimicking Farage on immigration is senseless. Labour voters feel betrayed; anti-immigration voters see through the ruse, say academics Tarik Abou-Chadi and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte

Our research makes it clear: by capitulating to the right, Labour is driving voters to Reform UK | Tarik Abou-Chadi and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte

When the president deputizes right wing thugs their violence is no longer classified as terrorism. So of course it looks like left wing violence is increasing. Extralegal right wing violence is now just policy. ICE is shooting pepper balls and kidnapping people as I type this.

Still from The Boondocks. R Kelly's lawyer (old white man with balding grey hair) turns smugly to camera and says 'Racism'

Labour: "We are going to combat Reform with a progressive relaunch."

The relaunch:

CRESTRICTED] ORIENTATION FACT SHEET 64 WAR DEPARTMENT-WASHINGTON 25, D. C. • 24 March 1945 FASCISM! Note For This Week's Discussion: Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it. Points to stress are: (1) Fascism is more apt to come to power at a time of economic crisis; (2) fascism inevitably leads to war; (3) it can come to any country; (4) we can best combat it by making our democracy work.

In March of 1945, the US Army issued this "fact sheet" to guide conversations with soldiers on the topic of fascism, paying particular attention to the ongoing threat that domestic fascist movements posed to the US. Their analysis of what a homegrown US fascism would look like is interesting.

trump speeches vary between something from a history textbook about 1930s germany and something from the histories of suetonius about what the emperor calligula supposedly said to his horse while drunk

Getting Yelled at By Dumbasses The defining experience of fascism.

The defining experience of fascism is familiar to anyone who has written stuff on the internet.
www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/getting-ye...

The only acceptable response to this is fuck the fuck off

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn't a promoter of civil discourse. He preached hate, bigotry, and division

I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

UC Berkeley shares 160 names with Trump administration in ‘McCarthy era’ move Prominent professor Judith Butler among students and faculty investigated for ‘alleged antisemitic incidents’

Our universities are administered by Quislings.

In fewer than five years, Bari Weiss managed to parlay her resignation as an NYT columnist into a massive platform on Substack and then into editorial control of CBS News--making a vast fortune along the way--all off the absurd claim she's being silenced. First ballot hall-of-fame grifter.

Science is not, and never will be, apolitical. Like I'm sorry, but you can't make that a true statement when it just isn't. Your research has impacts beyond just discovery. Likewise, the term "useful," is loaded. Who determines what's useful? What is the metric by which they do this?

Vicente Valentim, Elias Dinas, & I came together to do this paper because we have all long shared an intution: mainstream center-right rhetoric shapes democratic norms. The hard part? Showing it empirically. We make some headway in this new paper. Grateful to @bjpols.bsky.social for publishing.

people used to believe that Elon Musk would bring them to mars when, in reality, all he did was make a chatbot Rhodesian.

San Diego #NoKings

The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities | Jason Stanley For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault

Essential reading (by @jasonstanley.bsky.social) for every American. The media, aided by a handful of reactionary academics and compliant university administrations, has sold the public a huge lie about wokeness on college campuses, enabling the extreme right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you're confronted by illegal and immoral violations of rights, by the armed kidnapping and disappearing of people and the first thing you worry about is the windows of a Home Depot you should know you're a terrible fucking person.

Dolores Huerta, a 95 year old labor organizer with deep roots going back even before the Delano Grape Strike in 1965, here in Boyle Heights speaking at a protest. She called the past several days of detainments throughout Los Angeles a “horrible assault.”

This is 10-12 tenure-track assistant professors’ salaries at many places. A whole academic program’s worth of money, pissed away, In Times of Austerity, on rent-a-cops going after students who dared speak. Nobody behind this should have a career.

How can you expect voters to take a party seriously when people who call for Cuomo to resign as governor for being a serial sexual harasser turn around and endorse him for mayor, and people who called Musk a Constitution-breaking Nazi turn around and invite him to the party?

They're literally doing the meme

There has never been a moment when Musk has done more real damage - to the public - and yet he can cultivate a "back to business" PR campaign about how he tried to fix Washington. Shame on every media outlet enabling this rather than raking him over the coals.

it's true mr. secretary. as an urban liberal every day i have to gunkata my way through muggers, thieves, and assassins on the SEPTA trolley, kicking and spinning and shooting and doing flips and shit. please convince mr. trump to give us welfare. my ammo budget is unsustainable

Genuinely dystopian and abhorrent

*International students represent about 15% of all higher ed students.
*They subsidize US students, so expect domestic student costs to increase
*Trump complains about tariffs but he is destroying an industry where the US is a huge net exporter
www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/u...