Seva

it has a certain lenin in the display case charm

my favorite daytime activity is a sudden 10-part sneezing fit. it lets me know i'm alive, or possibly dying

The German armaments industry

like, out of habit?

touche

I mean he did want a multipolar order

or even, say, 2000s me

putin's most impressive accomplishment is getting europe to cheer for German rearmament

romanticizing suicide is a classic fascist pastime. another case of following their leader

I think the discussion at the end here about the relationship to global capitalism is important. Whichever term we pick (neo-feudal or neo-royal), we need to consider contemporary authoritarianism as enmeshed with and facilitated by the existing global economic order, rather than threatened by it

Taking Global Politics Personally welcome to the age of Omnipotent Toddlers

welcome to the age of Omnipotent Toddlers. new post
hegemon.substack.com/p/taking-glo...

The Personalist Global Order When individual whims drive great-power policy.

In a personalist global system, the most important decisions “rest on the whims of men who have systematically discarded anyone willing to tell them no,” write @seva.bsky.social and @semuhi.bsky.social.

I made it in gemini

the world’s most powerful states are now ruled by leaders who ignore formal institutions and govern through inner circles of sycophants, making policy based on private fixations rather than national interests. (free access link) www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/r...

the russian judicial system in two headlines

Do you honestly think people in the civil rights movement and other nonviolent movements faced no violence themselves? They practiced nonviolence because it works, because the oppressor wants a shooting war, which is the war it will win

Worse than Kent State, really than any episode I can think of probably dating back to Reconstruc & earlier b/c

1. continuing, not 1 off.
2. organized, not individual ofcrs losing it
3. literally at hand of federal government, which is
4. immediately lying & circling the wagons to prevent inves.

they're executing moms and nurses in the street. they're using preschoolers as bait. they're stealing people's dads and grandmas and children. they're tear gassing babies. they're staking out schools. there is no remedy but abolition. any proposal that doesn't start there is an act of violence.

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step.

1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish.

2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

[wiping the gunpowder from my hands] now THAT is a high-quality petard! I feel sorry for whoever ends up getting hoist by that thing!

Seeing a bunch of normal ass midwestern moms and dads marching in -20 degrees knowing they might be tear gassed or worse really drives home what a cowardly lot of people the pundit class is

Good piece by @seva.bsky.social.

The cyclical nature of US betrayal of Kurds does seem to suggest a structural explanation of how/why.

“And the lesson is not just for the Kurds or Iranians to be skeptical, but for the American public to stop being duped by their own presidential moralizing.”

it’s the part people overlook in Fukuyama’s End of History and the Last Man.

apparently not for some people!

now who's playing semantics. If your explanation can't generate any expectations about other cases it becomes nice and unfalsifiable. but it sounds like you're more interested in being glib so that figures

yeah to me the best stuff combines both. there's no atheoretical history anyway

I like it

I mean if you discard prediction and generalization what's left, post-hoc explanation? that doesn't seem satisfying to me, but maybe this is a disciplinary divide after all

it's funny that this old debate still gets you going after all this time. one way to judge if an argument is productive is whether it correctly predicts new facts, and in that sense ganz' argument has been much more productive than the people who take offense at liberal semantics, including tooze

whatever he knows or doesn't know, his analysis has not been helpful in this regard, unlike ganz