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Daily Bafflements
March 14, 2017
LD50, the London gallery with alt-right leanings, has been closed. Last week Megan Nolan wrote about the way mystification in the supposedly apolitical art world enables the spread of reactionary ideas: "I have seen it said by antifa that LD50 is not a story about art, but about ...

Organizing in Pence Country
March 14, 2017
To those who say that strike is only the luxury of the privileged, that is bullshit. Strike is the most basic form of resistance for the most vulnerable women. It is precisely the most vulnerable women that have come out and demanded their rights over the history of modernity ...

Accessorized for the Apocalypse
March 13, 2017
In prepping scenes, the sheer weight and volume of things, an essential part of the North American experience for a while now, is recorded and imagined in a different time. Things are arced from abundance to scarcity, reinvented with meaning, imparted with an aura that they do ...

The Betrayal of Democracy
March 13, 2017
The globalized power elite that may feel more at home in Taiwan or Singapore isn’t objectionable because its members may be in thrall to some sinister, unpatriotic economic loyalties, as Bannon and his retinue of Trump enablers tirelessly insist. No, the members of the ...

Our Better Ban
March 07, 2017
My brother went to medical school at a state-run university in Pakistan. You had to be brilliant to get in, not just really smart but brilliant in the sense of perfect to the final percentage point. The list of admitted students was published on a bulletin board outside the ...

Framed Narrative
March 06, 2017
It is hard these days for even Israel’s most diehard supporters to pretend that something has not gone seriously wrong. A case in point: the sentencing last month of Elor Azaria, a twenty-year-old Israeli army medic caught on video putting a bullet in the head of a wounded ...

The Unhappy Medium
March 06, 2017
In every society of every kind, there is a simple technique available to reasonable moderates wishing to prove that the left and the right are actually the same, and therefore discredit the seriousness of their politics by association. The exercise relies on tautological ...

De-Muslimization
February 27, 2017
In Trump’s America, that “terrorist” label is cast in indelible ink. The previous precautions would not suffice, I realized. It was not just what was visible, but everything that was searchable that was now at play. A reversal had taken place. If before my possessions ...

Pax Trumplandia
February 15, 2017
Welcome to This American Carnage, your weekly slice of life from the country of Trump. Another February, another Munich Security Conference, a.k.a. the “world’s most prestigious geopolitical gathering.” This time, though, the conference will take place as a ...

Is Trump a Populist?
February 15, 2017
People relate “rightwing populism” to the excoriation of immigrants, demonization of the poor, and railing about high finance on the campaign trail. That criticism never amounts to any actual policies when the candidate is in office. What’s left is simply xenophobia and ...