hunchback from sardinia

don't just be anti-fascist, be anti-nationalist.

the left ended up ceding so much ground on nationalism (in the name of supporting liberation struggles) that most of the left now is firmly indoctrinated into the nation-state ideology. (to the point where the idea of the nation-state is rarely even questioned.)

one of the worst things to happen to the left has been their embrace of liberation struggles that are fought under the banner of nationalism.

your assumption was correct in this case

on the antisemitism i think the causality runs in the opposite direction. people's antisemitism gets activated in response to the left's focus on israel's settler colonial project, as opposed to antisemitism motivating their critique of israel. that's my sense.

hope this doesn't get interpreted as minimizing the colonial powers' divide and rule project, which fuelled power struggles for control of the state.

more a comment on the idea that african nation-states are incoherent (which gets implicitly contrasted with a "coherent" europe, which is nonsense)

it would seem that the drawing of borders and the imposition of nationalism is what causes conflict and bloodshed and not so much how you draw those borders...

the common view that african nation-states "don't make sense" and that they were poorly constructed (on purpose) by colonial powers which has led to decades of conflict and bloodshed bugs me insofar as europe had a very similar bloody process of nation-state formation

the modern left has basically nothing to say about the conflict in sudan, because it does not fit neatly into these prepackaged mental models. it's not a good sign.

the reason the left almost exclusively focuses on israel/palestine at the expense other conflicts is not because of anti-semitism, it's because israel is the last remaining active settler-colonial state. which is itself evidence of how the left is stuck in mental models of the world from the 1960s

actually just found this book for free on my campus, and picked it up. planning on reading it soon! but yeah, i'm a fan of brown and been wanting to read this book for a while

nah, will check it out. thanks!

every region in the world where nation-states have emerged have seen both minor and major episodes of genocide, that were directly fueled by nationalism

the emergence and continued contestation and consolidation of the nation state has been responsible for the greatest episodes of mass violence in human history

people use the shorthand, "it's because of capitalism" to explain why our modern condition is so fucked, but i think "it's because of nationalism" might be equally if not more accurate

go do it, other person that isn't me!

so yeah, write a book connecting greek democracy and roman republicanism to these cultural revolutions that arose due to sailors, merchants, enslaved people moving around the mediterranean!

but what were the political implications of those revolutions is what remains largely invisible, aside from in greece and rome

what *is* visible indicates that such revolutions in culture were occurring, as seen in the spread, integration, and adaptation of religious practices or in the spread, integration and adaptation of writing, or the same for different art forms

not hard to see how the phoenicians and the greeks could have produced similar conditions to those you observe in the early modern and belle epoque periods, and that that would have unleashed a myriad of local cultural and political revolutions (that are largely invisible to us today)

some books i am thinking about are linebaugh and rediker's "the many-headed hydra" and denning's "noise uprising." current work on iron age mediterranean has gotten closer to these ideas (via a focus on broad cultural hybridity and globalization) but i have not seen this specific connection drawn

really think there's an opening for someone to write a great book that takes existing theories of how sailors, pirates, merchants and enslaved people moving from port to port created the conditions for revolution in the 18th century (and 20th century) and apply it to the iron age mediterranean

people confuse being a know-it-all snob with being on the left, when the two are antithetical

i would HATE being a defender with these VAR offside rules. you play the attacker offside but then have to run like hell to get back and keep playing until the play is over, only for the sideline referee to raise his flag AFTER the play is done

gender roles, racial hierarchies, "might makes right", etc. are all examples

the ultimate triumph of an ideology is when it is understood as being imposed on by "nature"

if you view coaches are dictators (or figures of authority that impose their formation on the group), then what real madrid are achieving is a good thing?

not sure if it's a good thing or bad thing that real madrid does better the worse their coach is. they're an uncoachable team that thrives on individualistic brilliance. and it's a model that has worked for them for decades

from the amarna letters to the epstein emails: a history of ruling class culture through elite correspondence

my 13 year old niece just told me there's some song memorializing charlie kirk that every kid knows by heart...kill me now