Sara Silverstein
@sarasilverstein.bsky.social
Historian. Writer. Public & global health, rights, internationalism, migration, citizenship & statelessness, Modern & Eastern Europe. Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, Department of History and Human Rights Institute. Views my own.
We were thrilled to have @sarasilverstein.bsky.social join us today, and I want to share her essay that I had missed when it first came out in February. It takes a historical perspective to explain why MAHA is all about the grift, and it is most excellent.
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
snyder.substack.com
Neglecting medical care is dehumanizing. Historically, neglecting standards and policies to protect health and provide healthcare has been one way in which concentration camps or the gulag became spaces where the law did not apply. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Another detainee dies at controversial NYC-area ICE facility
Edwin Lopez Cornejo died Aug. 1, his family said. Cornejo's mother blamed her son's death on him not receiving medications needed to treat his diabetes.
usatoday.com
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where everyone is free. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! ~ Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”
Sara Silverstein@sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 6mo ago"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above." ~ Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” #NoKings
I’m delighted to be reading proofs of my book: “For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health.” Do you ever wonder about how our politics of health took shape? Then this book is for you global.oup.com/academic/pro... Related essay I wrote snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
A book I’m excited to see. I have learned a great deal about the history and politics of health from @sarasilverstein.bsky.social. global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Sara Silverstein@sarasilverstein.bsky.social · 3mo agoI’m delighted to be reading proofs of my book: “For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health.” Do you ever wonder about how our politics of health took shape? Then this book is for you global.oup.com/academic/pro... Related essay I wrote snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
I’m delighted to be reading proofs of my book: “For Your Health and Ours: An Eastern European History of Global Health.” Do you ever wonder about how our politics of health took shape? Then this book is for you global.oup.com/academic/pro... Related essay I wrote snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Another night in Kyiv. In the fifth year of war.
WarTranslated (Dmitri)@wartranslated.bsky.social · 3mo agoFootage of the attack on Kyiv last night.
This morning scrolling Bluesky, there is nothing at all in my feed about Putin’s barbaric attack on the Ukraine’s holiest site, the UNESCO protected Lavra so I’m posting this here.
As we await Hungary's election both for the liberation of its people and as portent for our own, let us recall the role that ridicule, resistance and refusal has played. Yes, elections can be turning points but only if movements make them so.
MAKS 26 👀🇺🇦@maks23.bsky.social · 5mo agoHungary… WOW 🤩🇭🇺
"Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above." ~ Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” #NoKings
"rapidly deteriorating conditions at hospitals and clinics across Cuba were causing deaths that would otherwise be preventable. ...The blockade’s effects are cascading through the system." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/w...
Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say
nytimes.com
Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.
"MAHA, were it a serious movement, would criticize capitalism, or at least the bloated 'health sector' of the American economy. And that would be the right target. But MAHA... diverts profits from one set of businesses to another." snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
snyder.substack.com
"MAHA leadership criticizes the pharmaceutical industry’s profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, which of course also operates according to the profit motive." Here I situate the American health drama in a history of health care. snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
snyder.substack.com
Failure to seriously critique capitalism and commercial medicine will make us all sicker. MAHA instead criticizes pharma's profit motives in order to promote the wellness industry, with its own profit motive. Here I situate this drama in a history of health care. snyder.substack.com/p/consumptiv...
Consumptive Capitalism
On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein
snyder.substack.com
One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim. Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...
Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility
Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."
texastribune.org
“For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.” Conditions in a San Diego concentration camp, via message hurled out in a bottle.
![“Good afternoon. My name is [redacted] and my wife and I have been at OMDC since April 15 2025,” reads a handwritten note, wrapped around a lotion bottle that was thrown by a man held captive inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) on Sunday.
“It’s cold here all the time and the food is poor,” the missive continues. “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tgw3d4hvw3x5ijrxax7lg26u/bafkreiet46krrk7ovnqxsd6vr7ogw2lgame43jsqw25u2ygi5el5i5toom)
I feel so sick reading this. She dedicated her life to helping her immigrant trans siblings, finally got the medical care she sought her whole life, and then a year later ICE tricked her, kidnapped her and used her postoperative status as a weapon to destroy her health. CW for basically everything
She Was Honored With A Human Rights Award. Then She Says ICE Tricked And Arrested Her.
A HuffPost investigation found how the Trump administration systematically destroyed safeguards for detainees, subjecting them to abuse and neglect.
huffpost.com
One way concentration camps become zones where law doesn't apply is by neglecting policies & standards that would protect health & provide healthcare. You deny laws & norms & dehumanize your victim. Read "Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag" by Alexopoulos www.texastribune.org/2026/02/07/i...
Two tuberculosis cases detected at Camp East Montana ICE facility
Eighteen cases of COVID-19 were also identified. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar on Friday visited the 5,000-bed tent facility on the Fort Bliss Army base and said she saw many "chronic issues."
texastribune.org
"this your mountanish inhumanity" Shakespeare of course had the words to describe attacks on immigrants, writing 400 years ago. (1/7) www.tiktok.com/@colbertlate...
Leave it to Shakespeare and Ian McKellen to so eloquently speak of man's mountainish inhumanity. See Ian McKellan in AN ARK, a new play for mixed reality, at @The Shed now! #Colbert #IanMcKellen #Sh...
TikTok video by colbertlateshow
tiktok.com
Expectant mothers were left so hungry after the U.S. cut foreign food aid that one woman ate clay and charcoal. Her baby struggled to gain weight after being born prematurely. By @annamaria.bsky.social, photos by @storitellah.com & illustrations by Phoebe Ouma
What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid
Photographs tell a story of two mothers determined to help their babies gain enough weight to leave the hospital — only to face little to no food again.
propublica.org
"Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera."
ProPublica@propublica.org · 9mo agoJohn Gai carried his sick father to a nearby clinic in a wheelbarrow, but he died from cholera on the way. Gai then pushed the wheelbarrow for hours through the camp to take him to the cemetery: “Nobody should have to carry a dead body among the living.”
The Soviet gulag is one important comparison. I also keep thinking of the classic question of World War II history: "Did people know?" Did Germans know about concentration camps? Did people living next to the camps and death facilities know? How could they go about their lives if they knew? We know.
Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 9mo agoThe CBS investigation portrays a modern concentration camp, similar to the Soviet GULAG (like CECOT, an acronym): sadistic guards, 24 hour lighting, isolation cells. Americans once opposed this inhumane system. The Trump administration sent innocent people there to suffer.
For an excellent study of medicalizing euphemisms please see Golfo Alexopolous’s history of the Gulag, entitled "Illness and Inhumanity."
“We should be just as outraged by the deaths that take place out of sight” @willbunch.bsky.social
Will Bunch@willbunch.bsky.social · 9mo agoIt's great that the media, Congress is going all Watergate on one of Trump's many crimes, the 'double-tap' murder of 2 Caribbean sailors But the reality is that Trump's death cult has killed hundreds of thousands, mostly through senseless USAID cuts My new column www.inquirer.com/columnists/a...
Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.
Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department. One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone. When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?
Celeste Labedz@celestelabedz.bsky.social · 9mo agoIt's over. Despite the fact that the academic council recommended against it, despite the fact that the program brought in more tuition than it cost, and despite the fact that Nebraskans need & deserve this expertise, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences will be cut. www.dailynebraskan.com/news/adminis...
I’m honored to be part of Ukrainian History Global Initiative’s project. I’m contributing on state forms and statelessness. It’s a privilege to be welcomed into the vibrant community of scholars committed to the humanities and knowledge in the midst of war. I have learned so much from my colleagues.
Timothy Snyder@timothysnyder.bsky.social · 9mo agoWe are told that, under stress, the humanities must be sacrificed. But amidst a war of aggression scholars in Ukraine have undertaken one of the most ambitious knowledge projects of our time. It's a privilege to be involved with Ukrainian History Global Initiative snyder.substack.com/p/ukrainian-...
Journalists and media: stop bothsidesing attacks on childhood vaccines. We look to you to report what is happening and what the effects will be, not repeat the administration’s rhetoric. The effects will be more sickness and more death. That is not something to bothsides. Hold power accountable.
