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Ned Richardson-Little

@historyned.bsky.social

Historian of international crime, international law, human rights and the illiberal right in Germany at ZZF Potsdam. Also teaching at FU Berlin. he/him. Principal Investigator: #OtherGlobalGermany and #il_liberal

7,637 Followers  |  3,203 Following  |  2,641 Posts  |  Joined: 07.08.2023  |  1.6966

Latest posts by historyned.bsky.social on Bluesky

NiemΓΆller was asked by his concentration camp cellmate why he had ever supported Hitler and the Nazis. Reportedly, this is what he had to say for himself:

03.08.2025 14:00 β€” πŸ‘ 2466    πŸ” 807    πŸ’¬ 48    πŸ“Œ 72

Why be a wealthy elite under conditions of global capitalism when you can be a much more impoverished feudal lord under conditions of patrimonial quasi-autarky?

04.08.2025 08:06 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Graph - Over two decades 92mn deaths were prevented by USAID
Estimated total deaths averted due to
USAID funding, 2001-21, by specific causes (mn)

Graph - Over two decades 92mn deaths were prevented by USAID Estimated total deaths averted due to USAID funding, 2001-21, by specific causes (mn)

Graph - Over the next five years 14mn people are likely to die as result of the USAID cuts
Estimate of avoidable deaths (mn).
Compares baseline of USAID funding at 2023 level vs projected defunding

Graph - Over the next five years 14mn people are likely to die as result of the USAID cuts Estimate of avoidable deaths (mn). Compares baseline of USAID funding at 2023 level vs projected defunding

Over two decades 92 million deaths were prevented by USAID and over the next five years 14 million people are likely to die as result of the USAID cuts.

Even if these Lancet estimates are a bit wrong, they give a sense of the magnitude
on.ft.com/4ojiRFJ

04.08.2025 06:52 β€” πŸ‘ 99    πŸ” 49    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 6

There is still a rationality to becoming king of the ruins, but I am comfortable saying it is bad.

04.08.2025 07:38 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

To put it another way, when put to the test, many in the center right find that their affinity for cultural grievance is greater that their enthusiasm for the norms of liberal democracy.

04.08.2025 06:53 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Across the West you also have the problem that the center right often genuinely shares their cultural grievances and sees them as natural allies gone astray

04.08.2025 06:35 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Someone lately said that it may be an over generalization but really a gender equality freak out combined with mass social status resentment explains almost all Western politics right now.

03.08.2025 19:45 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

What if the system told you that you have no intelligence or creativity and that your boundless sense of self-regard was based on total delusion? And what if I told you, we have technology that will allow you to realize those delusions by stealing other people's creative and intellectual labour?,

03.08.2025 17:38 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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AI is the sequel to the the obsession by a select class of weirdo about bluechecks on Twitter, who were happy to fork over money to Elon Musk to gain this supposedly elite status only to discover that you can't find a technical solution for social esteem and status earned through achievement.

03.08.2025 17:33 β€” πŸ‘ 52    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 11    πŸ“Œ 1

Ank: Treffen Netzwerk β€žHistoriker:innen fΓΌr eine demokratische Gesellschaftβ€œ (hist4dem)

https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-156601

Bonn, 17.09.2025-17.09.2025, Netzwerk β€žHistoriker:innen fΓΌr eine demokratische Gesellschaftβ€œ

03.08.2025 19:11 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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'Double Shaman Drummer' by Nelson Tarikkiruq, carved from a whale vertebra in 1989.

#shamanism #Inuit #folkart #artsky #magic #folklore

03.08.2025 11:20 β€” πŸ‘ 68    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 6

American Zhdanovism.

03.08.2025 06:14 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

now published:
The Socialization Debate
Revolutionary Confusion after the German Revolution of 1918
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal
Volume 46, Issue 1, 2025, Pages 93-122
doi.org/10.5840/gfpj...

02.08.2025 09:24 β€” πŸ‘ 82    πŸ” 34    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 0
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If you want to know more about the politics of human rights in East Germany and how dissidents reclaimed the idea from the ruling Socialist Unity Party a decade after Helsinki, you can read my book:

01.08.2025 17:05 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
40 Years Later: Rethinking the Helsinki Accords and Human Rights Forty years ago today, 35 countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain signed the Helsinki Accords – the final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. Since the end of the Co…

I wrote more about this for my first ever blog post as a junior postdoc ten years ago back when blogs were still a thing and it was the 40th anniversary of Helsinki historyned.blog/2015/08/01/4...

01.08.2025 17:01 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Given the proliferation of grass roots human rights activism in the Eastern Bloc post-Helsinki, the decision of state socialist elites to sign the agreement appears foolish, but in the context of the previous decade's Cold War diplomacy, it was par for the course.

01.08.2025 17:00 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

For elites in the Eastern Bloc and some conservatives in the West, human rights were seen as a symbolic winner for the socialist states and weak point of leveral for the West. In the case of the GDR in particular, the top leaders saw UN terminology as a safeguard against Western intervention.

01.08.2025 16:59 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

In the case of East Germany in particular, human rights were a staple of international diplomacy leading to greater recognition of its existence as a state in the run up to Helsinki including the Basic Treaty with West Germany in 1972 which led to both German states being admitted to the UN in 1973.

01.08.2025 16:56 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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To mark International Human Rights Year in 1968 (an initiative of Jamaica at the UN), the whole of the Eastern Bloc signed on to the UN's human rights covenants seeing them as an extension of anti-imperialism and an affirmation of their self-determination and sovereignty. brill.com/view/journal...

01.08.2025 16:52 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The Making of International Human Rights Cambridge Core - Diplomatic and International History - The Making of International Human Rights

This pre-history to the 1970s human rights boom is very well explained by Steven Jensen: www.cambridge.org/core/books/m...

01.08.2025 16:49 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

While the right to self-determination was cut from the UDHR in 1958, it was the first right in both UN promulgated Human Rights Covenants (the legally binding sequel to the UDHR) in 1966. State sovereignty and non-intervention in internal affairs was central to this right.

01.08.2025 16:48 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Before the rise of transnational liberal democratic NGO activism in the 1970s, international human rights politics was dominated by post-colonial states from the Global South that prioritized the realization of state sovereignty and non-intervention in internal affairs.

01.08.2025 16:47 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Helsinki is seen as a turning point in Cold War human rights politics because the Eastern Bloc famously abstained on the vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (along with Saudi Arabia and South Africa). 1975 is posited as a breakthrough where they finally relented. This is wrong.

01.08.2025 16:45 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

50 years ago, the Helsinki Accords were signed by 35 countries from both sides of the Cold War. The human rights provisions in this agreement are often cited as a key factor in the end of the Cold War. What is widely misunderstood is why Eastern Bloc dictatorships would sign such a treaty 🧡

01.08.2025 16:43 β€” πŸ‘ 36    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

I want to be kind and praise the originality, while also making it clear I think there are excellent reasons why no one has ever tried this before.

01.08.2025 10:46 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
πŸ“Έ TechCrunch: _MG_6154, 2012,  Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

πŸ“Έ TechCrunch: _MG_6154, 2012, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Der Dlf-Podcast β€œDie Peter Thiel Story” hat seit Mai 2025 ΓΌber 3,5 Mio. HΓΆrer*innen erreicht. Florian Hannig kritisiert auf z|o, dass der Podcast den Inszenierungen und ErzΓ€hlungen seines Protagonisten folgt.

➑️ tinyurl.com/4te2h3sv

01.08.2025 09:51 β€” πŸ‘ 58    πŸ” 27    πŸ’¬ 6    πŸ“Œ 7

cw: latent nationalism.

In the end that was rightfully the Canadian occupation zone.

01.08.2025 09:58 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Leute, wir haben schon 45.642 € fΓΌr den Schulbonus gesammelt - vΓΆllig verrΓΌckt! Damit kΓΆnnen wir bereits 304 Kindern den Schulanfang etwas leichter machen.

❀️Ihr habt noch ein paar Euro übrig? Dann unterstützt uns gerne bei der Aktion: sanktionsfrei.de/schulbonus

01.08.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 125    πŸ” 48    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 4
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No idea. I say they go really old school and revive the Universitas Studii Erfordiensis logo. Praise be to Hierana!

01.08.2025 09:23 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Why blame large impersonal structural forces of global capitalism for the collapse of your ostensible value structures when you can blame comp lit professors who annoy you on social media?

01.08.2025 09:06 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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