@davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social
Historian. Academic Advisor @ University of Virginia. Columnist @ Boston Review. Book: TAKING AMERICA BACK: THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND THE FAR RIGHT // Yale Press // April 2024
I *really* don’t like Ibram Kendi.
Also feels like this is another classic example of the celebrity academic parachuting into a pre-existing field not his own and claim to have made brilliant original insights that scholars who have actually been doing the work have been saying for years.
Frankly, I doubt Ibram Kendi’s ability to be able to write a history of the Great Replacement theory.
fuck me for being this person, i guess, but public universities are a civic good and shouldn’t be run like businesses. and if you’re going to insist on running them like so, at least do some market research. students like their professors; they don’t want MOOCs taught by ChatGPT.
It was 90 degrees in Charlottesville yesterday and now it's snowing.
WHAT THE FUCK.
Speaking as an American, I am more than happy to condemn my country for committing war crimes.
Yes. And not the only reason why Nixon was a traitor!
*takes drag off of cigarette historian-ly*
Well, we had it coming.
My problem is that I'm still ultimately a Popular Fronter at heart, and I don't think the failure of the Popular Front is simply "perfidious liberals betrayed the cause," especially considering how, uh, problematic Stalinism ended up being in practice.
I'm somewhat more sympathetic to the underlying politics of this volume after Gaza -- although I am still angry at Jaeger for borderline plagiarizing me.
But I agree with Joe's thread here. I liked the book, but there are pretty significant blind spots.
This is particularly ironic considering how important the study of the right has become in other disciplines -- in sociology, political science, anthropology, and even (to an extent) in American studies.
History as a discipline -- between Connolly and the racial capitalism folks on the one hand and the "Cold War liberalism is the *real* enemy" stuff on the other -- has completely marginalized the study of the right.
Flashing back to a moment in 2018 when NDB Connolly came to a conference panel I was on and proceeded to be so unrelentingly hostile to our basic intervention of "we should take the right seriously" that Jamelle Bouie came up to us after and asked "what the hell was that about?"
By all means!
This is why it is so, *so* important to emphasize that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and complete destruction of the Kwangtung Army was, at the minimum, just as important as the Bomb in the Japanese decision to surrender.
Generally agree, but not impossible to imagine either Trump or Netanyahu pressing the button.
If Israel uses nukes… what happens? The only countries with the capacity to retaliate who are not already “allied” to Israel are Pakistan, Russia, China, and North Korea, and obviously retaliating against Israel would open up the prospect of a general nuclear war with America.
In a good way, to be clear.
Just did a 20-mile bike ride for the first time in over a year and I feel *terrible.*
Joe McCarthy, for all of his many, *many* flaws, did not whip up paramilitary violence in the United States.
Read the full article here: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
Quoted in @theatlantic.com this morning in a story by @alibreland.bsky.social on the new McCarthyism, which even moreso than the old McCarthyism I think is just straight-up fascism.
Stumbled today on one of the most bizarre scenes ever broadcast on network television: the episode of ROOTS where Alex Haley, played by James Earl Jones, interviews George Lincoln Rockwell, played by... Marlon Brando??? www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Ce...
Can someone give me the tl;dr about what happened with Jamelle? All I know is that he got dogpiled on here and the right-wingers on Twitter are having some kind of circle jerk about it.
I have to say, I'd be very disappointed if Anton's review was NOT absolutely fucking deranged.
I worry that when Trump realizes how weak he looks he’ll drop a nuke.
Ejecting that ATLANTIC reporter was pretty unhinged!
In the newly restored version of Pudd’nhead Wilson, based on Twain’s original “unbissected” manuscript, a pair of conjoined twins run against one another for elected office. And I feel like reading this might be the cure for thinking the problem of two-party system is division & solution is centrism
Didn’t he vote for her? Hell, I fucking hated her and I still (reluctantly) did.
Considering that the Democratic Party is reportedly refusing to release the autopsy of the 2024 election because it shows Harris lost because of Gaza, I don’t think this is quite the slam-dunk case against TAH his critics seem to think it is.
That could of course change if Iran is capable of retaliating on American soil against American civilians. But I doubt they are.