Jim Hicks

Q. When is anti-fascism illegal? A. Under fascism.
Time for a Spartacus moment here, folks. Join the chorus.
I'M ANTIFA!

Searing testimonials from the We Are Not Numbers project, out today with Interlink Publishing. Just published a review on the Mass Review site:
massreview.org/2025/09/02/a...

So let's give them some help. From now on, I submit, we should only refer to what used to be called "anti-DEI" by its proper, positive terms. What they want is clear: they stand for HPE. Homogeneity, Privilege, and Exclusion.

Let's help them get the word out.

Republicans tend to be good at branding: they find catchy, positive terms for their policy initiatives.

Oddly, their anti-DEI rampage doesn't fit into that camp. So far they haven't found a positive term for what they stand for, just a misapplied misnomer for what they're against.

The absurd thing is that David Grossman could not say this at Columbia or else he would be accused of antisemitism.

Time’s ticking for American authors to get on the right side of opposing genocide.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

New Yorkers! (#DidntKnowNeedToKnow):
"This film series sheds light on the little known and rarely explored cooperation in film and TV between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the two Germanies during the last decades of the Cold War. www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screeni...

As Ice deports children, what futures do we lose? | Ariel Dorfman I was forced to flee my homeland as a child; so were my own children. So the horror can be grasped by our celebrity-driven society: are we removing the next Mozart?

When I last taught my War Stories course at UMass, I explained to my students that, since we had studied Ariel Dorfman, they at least would know what to expect, because they'd seen what happens when a government declares war on its own people. Read him now: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In an online discussion yesterday, I was asked what I like most about editing. My answer? I too often find myself speechless, so what could be better than finding others who aren't? None speak more clearly about the unspeakable today than Huda Fakhreddine: modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...

Six Publishers Shortlisted for 2025 IPA Prix Voltaire – International Publishers Association At the Festival du Livre de Paris, the International Publishers Association (IPA) has announced six publishers from Algeria, Belarus, Lebanon, Russia and the USA as the shortlist for the association’s...

No US writer or publisher has ever received the IPA's Prix Voltaire award, bc, well, the US used to believe in this silly thing called the First Amendment. Today, alas, it's time to bring this prize home, and no one deserves it more than Michel Moushabeck. internationalpublishers.org/six-publishe...

In the interest of governmental efficiency, here's a modest proposal for the NEH: recycle statues from the monument graveyards in Moscow, Tallinn, or Budapest. Won't be too tough, especially today, to morph those old boys into today's "American Heroes!" (photo by S. Rodovnichenko)

Rutgers Senate Proposes Big Ten 'Mutual Defense Compact' to Block Trump's Campus Attacks | Common Dreams Rutgers University Senate takes a stand against Trump's attacks on First Amendment rights, forming a mutual defense compact with other Big Ten schools. Will this bold move inspire other institutions t...

Princeton also told them to kick rocks, along with a coalition with Rutgers. www.commondreams.org/news/rutgers...

MIT following Harvard's lead here

Glover, Jonathan. Humanity : A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Yale University Press, 2012.

... It seems to be more a device by which businessmen and technicians do not have to face up to precisely what they are doing. It is a defensive flippancy, enabling the torment they are preparing for other people to be referred to without being taken seriously.”

... The British company who installed [a] torture chamber [in Dubai] were reported as calling it the 'House of Fun'. This use of the cold joke is not an extra cruelty, nor is it a display of power...

... we the interrogators are a group who share a joke at the expense of you the victims. It is also a display of hardness: we are so little troubled by feelings of sympathy that we can laugh at your torment; but the display may be a clue that suppression of sympathy is not so easy and needs help...

Re: "home-growns": “The cold joke mocks the victims. It is an added cruelty and it is also a display of power: we can put you through hell merely for our mild amusement. It adds emphasis to the difference between 'us' and 'them'...

We traded Europe for a guy that builds concentration camps for profit.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Bought Market Dip Before Trump Paused Tariffs, Profiting From the Rally The Georgia congresswoman purchased at least tens of thousands of dollars in stock the day before and the day of President Trump’s pause of a sweeping set of tariffs that sent the market soaring.

Of course she did.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/u...