"Likewise, in the famous 'warning signs of fascism' poster that hangs in the U.S. Holocaust Museum, one of the signs is 'disdain for intellectuals and the arts'. We might condense that down to 'disdain for books'. It’s a short step from not reading books yourself to perceiving them as a threat, precisely because they encourage people to look deeper into issues, challenge conventional ideas, and empathize with people unlike themselves."
#NathanJRobinson, 2024
"[Starbucks] is estimated to have spent some $240 million on union busting. It’s even more appalling given that the new CEO, since starting in September, has been paid approximately $96 million and commutes to work from Southern California to Seattle on a company jet. He’s being paid 10,000 times what the average worker is making: around $30,000 a year for a barista."
#NathanJRobinson, 2025
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/starbucks-is-everything-wrong-with-american-capitalism
#NathanJRobinson: "JHelp me better understand how QAnon could become a thing."
"It's a live action role playing game in which you, somebody who knows nothing about politics, can be involved in the most important things that are happening in the world, in which there is an apocalyptic crescendo at the end.
#RichardSeymour, 2024
#NathanJRobinson is reaching here. Really reaching. There is no similar "analysis" after Biden's entire 2020 campaign -- which lasted a year.
The constraints on Harris' campaign (100 days!) are being willingly forgotten and that's context that MUST be remembered.
https://mastodon.social/@WhistlerInTheDarkAges/113643149428994442
Conservative politics are also a coalition, of course. As an outsider, I confess that I am much less conversant with the internal power-struggles in the GOP and the conservative movement, though I'm trying to remedy that. Books like #NathanJRobinson's *Responding to the Right* present a great overview of various conservative belief-systems:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/14/nathan-robinson/#arguendo
3/
Nathan Robinson lets rip at bullshitters and those who enable them:
"I am consistently aghast at the number of people who manage to be very successful in our society despite extreme levels of ignorance and/or dishonesty."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/12/we-live-in-the-age-of-the-bullshitter
Here's a bruising takedown of the whole concept of cryptocurrencies by an economist called #NathanJRobinson. It goes quite a bit deeper into the economic practicalities than some of the other critiques I've read:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-fraud
#cryptocurrencies # blockchain #economics
Strypey
bsmall2
Bec
Cory Doctorow
Matt Hodgkinson
Johnny ☑