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Michael Macher

@michael-macher.bsky.social

Sub specie aeternitatis

262 Posts565 Follower1273 Folgt
Michael Macher@michael-macher.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"The question I keep returning to is whether you can hold the desire for a political system’s end and grief for its victims at the same time. I think you have to. I think the people who can’t, on either side, are telling you something about what they’ve had to shut off in themselves to survive this"

Hard Feelings

The Iranian diaspora is fracturing in real time, across dinner tables, on WhatsApp, and in the silence of blocked numbers.

nymag.com

Stuart Schrader@stschrader1.bsky.social · 7mo ago

How and why police actually support the federal invasions—I have been working on this article for ~6 months, trying to make sense of Trump’s nationwide surge of DHS officers, how it has evolved, what brought us here, and what will remain after it ends.

The New York Review of Books@nybooks.com · 7mo ago

Stuart Schrader on what Trump’s urban occupations mean for police and the unions that represent them https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/02/14/authoritarianism-from-below-trump-city-takeovers-police/?utm_source=Bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=2026-02-14_Schrader-policing-1

Moira Donegan@moiradonegan.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Need a word for the Soon-to Previn and Ghislane Maxwell types—women who build their identities around their sexual appeal to men and have to make more and more ostentatious rejections of feminist sex politics as they age out of those men’s sexual desire.

Boston Review@bostonreview.bsky.social · 8mo ago

“Scandal came for the company last year when Italian authorities reportedly used Paragon’s spyware to surveil prominent journalists and human rights activists. For the Trump administration, it might have been a proof of concept.” On the surveillance tools now in the hands of ICE:

The Strongman’s Surveillance State

The Trump administration has unfrozen a Biden-era hold on powerful Israeli-made spyware, now in the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

bostonreview.net

Seth Cotlar@sethcotlar.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Today's factoid from the history of US fascism: the guy who hatched the idea to publish Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative in 1960 (the ur-text of US conservatism) was Leo Reardon. In the 1930s Reardon was Father Coughlin's manager & he'd traveled to Nazi Germany as Coughlin's representative.

Reardon arrived in Germany in the second week of January 1939 and made appointments to see both Goebbels and Hitler's Foreign Office head, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Reardon was initially received by a deputy official, Richard Sallet, who had served several years in the German embassy in Washington and was very familiar with U.S. politics. According to the official German Foreign Office memorandum, included among documents captured at the end of the war, it was Sallet's task "10 entertain Reardon and talk to him about German problems." According te the report made by State Secretary Ernst Woermann, "Reardon talked against President Roosevelt and against the Jews, and conveyed Cough-lin's suggestion that Hitler personally make some sort of statement that the Nazis were supporters of Christian religion." Woermann noted that "after spending a few days with Sallet, Reardon saw Ribbentrop. To Ribbentrop he repeated the things he had told Sallet." Ribbentrop replied in vague terms that "they would do the best they could on it. At the closeof the interview, Ribbentrop said: 'Give my regards to Father Coughlin. I have a high regard for him.' »57 On January 21, Goebbels personally replied to criticisms of German treatment of Jews coming from across the Atlantic. In a speech entitled "What Does America Actually Want?" he decried the "distorted picture of Germany that was given by a Jewish-dominated press which did not represent the true views of Americans."58 His diary for January 24 records: The manager of Father Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio priest in America, tells us that America is basically more anti-Semitic than we give it credit for. He would like us to take a more positive attitude toward Christianity. I tell the Führer about this. He intends to touch on the question in his speech to the Reichstag. He intends to put out feelings to the Americans and give an outline of Germany's general posi-tion. I believe that this speech will be very important. 59 On the testimony of Joseph Goebbels, it would appear that Reardon not only encouraged a theme in a speech by Adolf Hitler but had potentially encouraged "feelers" of growing anti-Semitism in the United States. 60Human Events Played a Part In the spring of 1958, at one of book ever written by a political figure Human Events' periodic staff meetings who had not yet become President with political leaders, James L. Wick, Following publication of the book, executive editor of Human Events, said a youth movement for Goldwater-now to Barry Goldwater: "We would like called "Young Americans For Free to see States ,you President of the United dom"-sprang up over the country. By the thousands-spontaneously— The senator, then in his first term, they travelled to the 1960 convention replied: "Oh no! Nothing like that can in Chicago and started a presidential happen. It will be a long time before boom. But Goldwater withdrew his the nation will elect a President with name and insisted that conservatives a Jewish name like Goldwater." support the Nixon-Lodge ticket. In its July 1, 1959 issue, Human In his speech to the convention, Events definitely proposed Goldwater he said: for President, adding that: "...Nomi "Let's grow up, conservatives. nation of candidates from small-popu-lation states (with only a limited num- Let's, if we want to, take this party back-and I think we can someday. ber of delegates to the convention) are Let's get to work." unprecedented- -but these are times of realignment of parties, political flux After Kennedy's victory in the No and crumbling of party traditions. In vember election, Goldwater took his thebe skange times, precedent may well own advice. He "went to work." He spent a large part of his time building Soon after, Leo Reardon, represent- up the conservative strength. ing the obscure Victor Publishing Co. He became the biggest drawing card of Shepherdsville, Ky., persuaded the at college and university assemblies. senator to write a book expressing his views. Aided by Brent Bozell, the sena- He was the principal speaker at four tor rewrote his speeches, Human Events Political Action Con- releases and statements of the previous five years. ferences. He…
Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 8mo ago

"If we have Venezuela’s people (which we shouldn’t have), they have our oil (which they shouldn’t have)... Trump's latest regime reimagines and remakes the borders of American state power, collapsing the foreign and the domestic in a single domain of impunity: call it ‘Homeland Empire’."

Trump has dispensed with the old legitimation strategies that were characterised by a dual commitment to rule-bound international order (with exceptions) and equal protection inside US national boundaries. Instead, he conflates immigrants, drugs and free trade as sources of weakness coming from outside, “poisoning the blood of our country”. At the same time, he inverts settled conceptions of external and internal: if we have Venezuela’s people (which we shouldn’t have), they have our oil (which they shouldn’t have). In turn, his administration invokes emergency war powers at home, to arrest and remove unauthorised immigrants – and discretionary police powers abroad, to arrest foreign leaders (and seize foreign assets) under US law. Trump’s real innovation has been to marry the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors. What distinguishes his latest regime is its effort to reimagine and remake the borders of American state power, collapsing the foreign and the domestic in a single domain of impunity: call it ‘Homeland Empire’. The Trump administration envisions “reshoring” national security in a lasting way, drawing on the dubious norms and legalities of the War on Terror and the rancid infrastructures and policing capacities of America’s domestic penal complex. If George W. Bush helped invent the concept of ‘homeland security’ in order to “fight the terrorists over there” rather than here, Trump seeks to bring the war to “OUR hemisphere”. From Caracas to Minneapolis, legal authority and institutional power are being redirected toward an overriding end: governing populations as subjects rather than citizens.
katya schwenk@katyaschwenk.bsky.social · 8mo ago

while ICE has slashed training requirements for new recruits, it's also bringing in sketchy private security firms to train its elite tactical units (like the one Jonathan Ross is a member of) on "advanced techniques once exclusive to military protection units" www.levernews.com/shadow-contr...

Shadow Contractors Are Training ICE’s Attack Teams

ICE is spending big on firearms, munitions, and politically connected weapons training firms to further militarize its forces.

levernews.com

404 Media@404media.co · 8mo ago

SCOOP: Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. Inside the app called ELITE—what ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid.

‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid

Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activit...

404media.co