not anywhere near Wellington I'd guess, but that felt like it might have been a big quake somewhere #eqnz
Sean Phelan
@sean-phelan.bsky.social
Teaches media and communication studies at Massey University.
Please consider signing this petition in support of the philosophy programme at Dundee if you haven't seen it already. This is a really bad time to be closing down one of the few remaining programmes in continental philosophy that exist in the UK www.change.org/p/save-the-p...
Sign the Petition
Save the Philosophy Programme at Dundee University
change.org
This new article by @robtoes.bsky.social looks really good: Ambient Extremism in Reactionary Digital Politics journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
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how shocking to hear that the party led by the New Zealand battalion leader of the transnational far-right's war on "wokeness" (who also has a part-time gig as Minister of Foreign Affairs) has its own groyper wing #NZpol www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361...
NZ First youth leader linked to neo-Nazi network
A senior figure in New Zealand First’s youth wing has links to neo-Nazi groups and online accounts praising Adolf Hitler, an investigation by The Press has found.
thepost.co.nz
Good to see an article fact checking Peters' claims, and making explicit the far right nature of these sorts of policies. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361...
Analysis: Winston’s $45k baby bonus may not really be about babies
New Zealand First’s Kiwi Kids grant is an anti-immigration policy dressed up as a baby bonus, writes Jenna Lynch
stuff.co.nz
@mohanjdutt.bsky.social "Name racism here, & you will be told you are divisive, that you are importing someone else’s culture war.. that this is not who we are...It is not impolite to name racism... What is impolite is telling a New Zealander of 30 years to go home" e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-...
We must name racism when it happens | E-Tangata
"It is not impolite to name racism, to document it, or to organise against it. What is impolite is telling a New Zealander of 30 years to go home. What is indecent is a cabinet that shelters him." — M...
e-tangata.co.nz
Fuck "Lao Pi". Great piece by Mengzhu Fu
D Jukic She/her@dejanajuk.bsky.social · 4d ago“Watching Winston Peters shout at Lawrence, his face seemed like the face of every person who has yelled the same words at migrants of colour, repeating the same racist imperative. It is the face of a society that has enabled and normalised racism. It is old skin that refuses to shed.” #nzpol
Heartening to log on to Twitter and find a universe of left discourse that is playing out the polemics of the 1980s with devastating one-liners. Political victory is surely only a matter of time
Good to see the new(ish) independent media outlet @publicinterestnz.bsky.social producing conversations of this quality. Two-part interview with Geoff Bertram on the condition of New Zealand's political economy in our interminable neoliberal age #nzpol www.publicinterest.nz/undercurrent...
Why is New Zealand so expensive? | Undercurrents
YouTube video by Public Interest NZ
youtube.com
It did need some googling. But here's a good one @rosieoverell.bsky.social www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...
Rosie Overell@rosieoverell.bsky.social · 2w agoWithout saying the year you were born, share your fav film from the year you turned 18 #DavidLynch #Film Ping @sean-phelan.bsky.social @brettdn.bsky.social @ojutel.bsky.social which are yours???
"This stupidity is politically effective because it appears with the grammar of intelligence. It speaks fluently, cites carefully, and reasons in complete sentences. This is the stupidity of the conference paper and the op-ed..." www.equator.org/articles/mor...
Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity • EQUATOR
Forty years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continues.
equator.org
A rich methodological insight from @chenchenzhang.net "I want to acknowledge that ordinary people making sense of the world are theory-makers, including producers of reactionary ideologies".
Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻♀️@chenchenzhang.net · 3w agomany thanks to Clyde Wang for engaging with my book and raising generative questions. I really enjoyed this conversation for @madeinchinajournal.com, and I hope you do as well! madeinchinajournal.com/2026/07/14/e...
Very sad to hear Peter Fleming has died. We had some brief interactions when he took part in a TEU conference on academic freedom. His Dark Academia: How Universities Die is a brilliant a/c of academic life today. André Spicer has written a lovely tribute andrespicer.substack.com/p/there-is-h...
There is hope in the past.
A memoir of my overlapping life with Peter Fleming
andrespicer.substack.com
Totally justified takedown of the overrated and self-regarding Spinoff by @mohanjdutt.bsky.social For a notionally "liberal" media outlet, its coverage of the Modi visit mirrors the lack of thought we see in the gushing social media posts of the Labour party MPs #nzpol
Mohan J Dutta@mohanjdutt.bsky.social · 3w agoI have often said this. I find liberals performing “let’s sing kumbaya” whiteness to be some of the greatest enablers in the rise of fascism. Here’s my analysis of The Spinoff’s coverage of Kia Ora Modi. culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/07/beau...
@mohanjdutt.bsky.social helping #nzpol make sense of Modi's visit: "A saffron flag with a war cry flew over Auckland this week, & the political leadership of this country stood inside the arena it pointed toward. NZ should say plainly what it saw" culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/07/jai-...
Jai Shree Ram in Auckland: Two mainstream NZ parties, the Kia Ora Modi Event and Mainstreamed Hindutva
Mohan Dutta, Culture-centered approach, CARE, Massey University, Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Prof Mohan Dutta, Mohan J. Dutta, Communication for social change
culture-centered.blogspot.com
About to put on Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding to get me in the mood
TaraNicRóibín@tararoonies.bsky.social · 4w agoCmonnnn we cannot deprive ourselves of an Argentina v England semi ...what craic that'll be #engvnor
Poor Switzerland...the world will never have been so indifferent to the underdog (already focus-grouped post @tararoonies.bsky.social 😅)
as people rightfully lament some of the press releases being sent out by RNZ on Modi's visit this morning, I was glad to belatedly see that @thepost-nz.bsky.social published this op-ed by my Massey colleague @mohanjdutt.bsky.social last week www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3610...
What is Hindutva and why should New Zealand care?
OPINION: Narendra Modi is coming to Auckland, and with him comes a word most New Zealanders have had no reason to learn: Hindutva, writes Mohan Dutta.
thepost.co.nz
ps thinking of cases where I pointed out these voids in a friendly way in reviews, only to have the author ignore the suggestions. Keep the brand narrative clean, eh
Sean Phelan@sean-phelan.bsky.social · 4w agobrand yourself as "original" the easy way - just don't bother your arse reading anything. Better again, don't even do internet searches
brand yourself as "original" the easy way - just don't bother your arse reading anything. Better again, don't even do internet searches
Charlotte Taylor@proftaylor.bsky.social · 4w agoLinkedIn is wild. Who's going to break the news to the conversation analysts that no-one has yet studied um conversation?
I read through the incredibly long RNZ ‘explainer’ of ‘who is Narendra Modi’ which completely omitted mention of the 2002 Gujurat pogroms and resulting 10yr visa ban in Western countries, or any other specific internationally condemned things he has done to Muslims other than be ‘controversial’
Sassy Little Hobbit@sassypolitico.bsky.social · 4w agoNew Zealand, 7 years ago: they are us. New Zealand, now: let’s invite a person that’s responsible for mass murdering of Muslims! Yay! Trade! Yay yay yay!
the political revolution to come will definitely need its own Teams folder (sigh...maybe the next union meeting should start with everyone dropping acid or something....for some sign of life. Or for Mark Fisher's acid communism...our political desires have no satisfactory channels)
New AP polling of Jewish Americans— Mamdani (+5): 44% Favorable; 39% Unfavorable Netanyahu (-27): 32% Favorable; 59% Unfavorable Trump (-42): 29% Favorable; 71% Unfavorable Where's all the breathless wall-to-wall coverage on Netanyahu & Trump making Jewish people feel unsafe?
The economy for publishing epigraphs, in comparatively low-selling academic books, seems bizarre. Dodgy intermediaries quoting clearance prices based on maximum production figures, including maximum production figures for the ebook edition?? As if the EPUB machine will stop working at a set figure?
Police are re-investigating 54 sexual assault and child abuse cases after concerns about one case triggered a review of almost 1,000 files. The senior officer who managed those files told me the scale of it was “news to me”. He remains under an employment investigation.
Revealed: The Detective Inspector under investigation as police review cases
Police reopen 54 sexual assault and child abuse cases as Detective Inspector Kevan Verry remains under employment investigation
stuff.co.nz
This abstract should be hanging in every #NZPOL newsroom, to both accurately name the radical-right politics of the current government and to heighten awareness of how everyday acts of journalistic naming and framing are part of the story
Petter Törnberg@pettertornberg.com · 4w ago‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
"What people tend to miss about the encyclical is its anthropological stakes, which can be summed up as: the danger is not that machines will become human, but that humans will reduce themselves to machines" Good interview in @equatormag.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/to-...
To Dwell in Possibility • EQUATOR
A Vatican adviser explains how the Pope became the most formidable critic of the algorithmic age
equator.org
We really have reached the point where in a democracy worthy of the name major parties of all political stripes would put up a cordon santiare around NZ First. Inimical to basic democratic norms.
NZ First to campaign on ending voting rights for permanent residents
New Zealand First would seek to change the law so that only New Zealand citizens can vote in general and local elections if returned to government, leader Winston Peters has announced.
stuff.co.nz