Standalone interesting political articles thread

[flypanam]

Couple of chapters of the Hinterland book now free online here

Neel has written an updated epilogue for the French edition, Brooklyn Rail has it here
The Spiral – The Brooklyn Rail

 

[Wolveryeti]

I liked Rory Stewart's review of the Tom Bower BoJo biography

Boris Johnson: The gambler, by Tom Bower book review

Book review - British Politics - The TLS | Boris Johnson: The gambler by Tom Bower, reviewed by Rory Stewart

www.the-tls.co.uk

 

[flypanam]

There is a whole series of papers here from the Crisis Cities symposium some popular and guardian feted thinkers like Adam Tooze but seems to have some interesting stuff

Crisis Cities Archives - Public Books

Crisis Cities is a public symposium on the 2020 crises and their impact on urban life, co-organized by Public Books and the NYU Cities Collaborative.

www.publicbooks.org

 

[flypanam]

Here's a piece with some very interesting demographic data about the Capitol Hill riot the standout for me is

"Second, a large majority of suspects in the Capitol riot have no connection to existing far-right militias, white-nationalist gangs, or other established violent organizations."

which points to a newly radicalised middle class existing in the exurbs, confirming much of Neel's work

Big metropolitan centers where Biden won overwhelmingly, such as the counties that include New York City, San Francisco, and Dallas, still have hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters. A third of suspected insurrectionists come from such counties; another quarter come from suburban counties of large metro areas.

The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists

We analyzed 193 people arrested in connection with the January 6 riot—and found a new kind of American radicalism.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[flypanam]

The IMF is worried about post pandemic social unrest COVID’s Long Shadow: Social Repercussions of Pandemics

 

[hitmouse]

Union Membership and White Workers’ Racial Attitudes

A new study finds that U.S. union membership lowers white workers’ “racial resentment.” Eric Dirnbach explores what this means for the labor movement and the fight against white nationalism

organizing.work

In this political environment, a paper published last year, “Labor Unions and White Racial Politics,” has gotten some attention because of the interesting findings regarding white union members’ racial attitudes. This paper focuses on one key part of the conservative mix of issues – white resentment toward Black people. They ask an important question – does being a union member change white workers’ politics on race?

The researchers found that white union members are less racially resentful than white non-union members by 4.7 – 6.3% of the racial resentment scale. Racial resentment is a measure of attitudes on race obtained through survey responses to questions that reveal racist attitudes. This paper used data from three large survey projects, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), the American National Election Study (ANES), and the Voter Survey Group...

Now to some extent it could be that white union members happen to be more progressive than non-members since more progressive workers may be likelier to join unions. The researchers looked more closely at this to determine the impact union membership had on the same workers over time after they joined a union. What they found is fascinating. Over the period from 2010 to 2016, becoming a union member reduced white workers’ racial resentment by 4.1 – 5.5% of the scale. They also see similar shifts in increasing support for policies that benefit African Americans, including affirmative action programs. They conclude that all of these are significant shifts and are equal to or greater than other factors such as education or gender, whereas age and income have no impact on racial resentment.

 

[The39thStep]

Review of Catherine Liu’s Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class

“The PMC’s objective class interests,” they observed, “lie in the overthrow of the capitalist class, but not in the triumph of the working class; and their actual attitudes often mix hostility towards the capitalist class with elitism towards the working class”

The New Dangerous Class? The PMC And Virtue Hoarding | Conter

In a review of a new book about the ‘Professional Managerial Class’ , James Foley says middle-class activists dress up conformity as a war on cultural backwardness.

www.conter.co.uk

 

[The39thStep]

Keenan Malik on Unequal Britain, a new study of public attitudes to inequalities published last week by the Policy Institute at King’s College, London.

INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL DIVIDES

Mark Rothko, “Red, Blue Over Black” . This essay, on perceptions of inequality in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 28 February 2021, under the headline &#8…

kenanmalik.com

 

[redsquirrel]

Keenan Malik on Unequal Britain, a new study of public attitudes to inequalities published last week by the Policy Institute at King’s College, London.

INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL DIVIDES

Mark Rothko, “Red, Blue Over Black” . This essay, on perceptions of inequality in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 28 February 2021, under the headline &#8…

kenanmalik.com

Study, and reporting of it, discussed here in case you missed it 39th

 

[hitmouse]

idk how far this is a 'political' article as such but anyway:

The Anxiety of Influencers, by Barrett Swanson

Educating the TikTok generation

harpers.org

 

[hitmouse]

‘Lying down flat’ as passive resistance in China

"You can’t stand up. But you don’t want to kneel down. Then you can only lie down flat."

globalvoices.org

 

[krtek a houby]

Apologies if incorrect forum.

This is something that is so depressingly and terrifyingly global.

Essay: When Football Goes Home

 

[hitmouse]

I've still not read the actual short story itself, but the story about the story's writer is an interesting one:

A sci-fi writer got meta about gender. The internet responded by ruining her life.

Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. A year later, she’s still picking through the wreckage.

www.vox.com

 

[NoXion]

I've still not read the actual short story itself, but the story about the story's writer is an interesting one:

A sci-fi writer got meta about gender. The internet responded by ruining her life.

Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. A year later, she’s still picking through the wreckage.

www.vox.com

My main takeaway from that story is that Twitter is an utterly toxic shithole. It's a platform that seems to all but encourage the kind of outrage spirals that lead to such dramas.

 

[hitmouse]

My main takeaway from that story is that Twitter is an utterly toxic shithole. It's a platform that seems to all but encourage the kind of outrage spirals that lead to such dramas.

Yeah, there's a lot to consider and ponder in there but if you had to sum it up in six words that's a decent summary.

 

[RedRedRose]

After the Lost Cause

Covers the controversy around pulling down Southern statues, the 1619 project and racism.

 

[RedRedRose]

How racist policing took over American cities, explained by a historian

 

[The39thStep]

Never heard Joe Higgins speak tbh

Daniel Finn, The Tributary — Sidecar

Anomalies of Irish Trotskyism.

newleftreview.org

 

[Threshers_Flail]

I've still not read the actual short story itself, but the story about the story's writer is an interesting one:

A sci-fi writer got meta about gender. The internet responded by ruining her life.

Isabel Fall’s sci-fi story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” drew the ire of the internet. A year later, she’s still picking through the wreckage.

www.vox.com

Have you read Sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading? I'm plodding through it now, bit heavy for a Sunday morning.

 

[hitmouse]

Have you read Sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading? I'm plodding through it now, bit heavy for a Sunday morning.

I have not, although between having read Sarah Shulman and Maggie Nelson (and that article) I feel like I've seen a lot of references to it recently. One of those gaps in my reading.

 

[flypanam]

Somewhat interesting piece in TNR on the new intellectual right a self proclaimed elitist and paternalist movement that seeks a permanent culture war and is at odds with the Republican Party.

The Radical Young Intellectuals Who Want to Take Over the American Right

They hate the establishment. They want to destroy the system. Meet the illiberal upstarts trying to remake conservatism.

newrepublic.com

Which is interesting in so far as they could get an audience in the nativist but against social security cuts right wingers that Neel wrote about in Hinterland, unlikely but who knows.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Things could be good

Cynicism and complacency have defined the British spirit for centuries. Rarely have we stopped to consider the possibility that life could be... better?

www.dazeddigital.com

Enjoyed this, mostly because it’s got a sense of lighthearted mockery about it.

I think my politics and cynicism is almost entirely driven by the assumption that the people in charge in this country actively hate the people in it and it’s just become increasingly plain lately. Article chimes well with that

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

This isn't an article, but longer video history of oligarchy in America. This commentator outlines the previous times the US has found itself in a similar situation to today and what happened to pull the US back from the brink:



I don't agree with everything that Hartmann says, but he does seem to know his history.

 

[yield]

What should the action be?
Greg Afinogenov
LRB Vol. 45 No. 9 · 4 May 2023

Russian Populism: A History by Christopher Ely. Bloomsbury, 272 pp., £24.99, February 2022, 978 1 350 09553 3
Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin. Penguin, 320 pp., £9.99, November 2022, 978 0 241 35533 6

The Russian word narod is similar to the German Volk, but while Volkishness became associated with conservative nationalism, narodnichestvo belonged mostly to the left. The post-Petrine state remained firmly committed to the Westernisation that had created it. Even during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-55) – an arch-counterrevolutionary – the embrace of narodnost (sometimes translated as ‘nationality’ but meaning something like ‘being of the people’) remained relatively superficial. It was the Slavophiles, a group of Herder-inspired intellectuals based in Moscow, who first developed narodnost into a potentially subversive doctrine. While they rejected revolution or political reform, they believed that the communitarian, pious, localist beliefs they attributed to the Russian peasantry constituted a kind of spiritual alternative to the power-grasping of the imperial bureaucracy and its courtiers.

The Slavophiles, however, were themselves serf-owning educated elites just like the people they criticised, and their direct experience with the world of the narod was largely limited to interactions with people they owned. In this sense Slavophilism was not very different from neo-Confederate Lost Cause ideology in the US, with its paternalistic emphasis on traditional agricultural communities in contrast to the unfeeling rationalism of capitalist modernity. Unlike the Confederates, however, the aristocratic critics of the Russian state were sceptical of their own social legitimacy. The central object of fascination for the Slavophiles was the peasant agricultural commune, or mir, which they believed to be the opposite of everything individualistic and corrupt about the modern world.

 

[bcuster]

 

[krtek a houby]

On the homeless community versus the settled community in a New York street. Added shitty landlord for grrr factor.

Radical bookstore offering Narcan and a toilet faces eviction

Bluestockings, on New York’s Lower East Side, is at the center of a battle over outreach to local residents dependent on drugs

www.theguardian.com

 

[ska invita]

Just a little 400 word thing but spot on... I do like Dan Evans' writing...this about how people often have chaotic/contradictory politics

Forget everything you thought you knew about British politics. In 2024, we’re in the age of chaos | Dan Evans

‘Essex man’, ‘Stevenage woman’, ‘red wall’ – labelling voters like this is completely misguided, says author Dan Evans

www.theguardian.com

 

[hitmouse]

On the homeless community versus the settled community in a New York street. Added shitty landlord for grrr factor.

Radical bookstore offering Narcan and a toilet faces eviction

Bluestockings, on New York’s Lower East Side, is at the center of a battle over outreach to local residents dependent on drugs

www.theguardian.com

I get the impression this is quite a big issue in the US at the moment, places providing services to the homeless being attacked in the hope that'll make homelessness go away - last few weeks have also seen a garden being destroyed in Seattle for having too many homeless people around and two people arrested and one tasered while feeding homeless people in Houston.

 

[NoXion]

Republicans are fucking monsters:

Republicans Push To Legalize ‘Property Owners’ Killing Homeless People in Kentucky

In Kentucky, politicians are preparing to vote on a law that would authorize the use of force against unhoused people who are found to be camping on private property.

www.vice.com

 

[petee]

Republicans are fucking monsters:

yes they are

Arizona Republican says state lawmakers, not voters, should pick president

State senator Anthony Kern, who was a fake pro-Trump elector in 2020, says legislature should choose electors

www.google.com

until the democrats get ahold of the legislature ...