Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 10hI think for many ppl in higher ed what is particularly galling about the lenient treatment the Cornell frat bros received is that students standing up for human rights are expelled & gender studies programs that might help students understand patriarchy are being shut down across the country 0173
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserDr ShinyGoth @ghostingdani.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Humanities will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no humanities. 4343114
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026I imagine for some ppl it’s easier and less painful to imagine anti-Zionist Jews are all crypto-Zionists holding back the movement than acknowledge that the entire world has failed to stop a live streamed genocide 2110
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Marx described commodity fetish as the imaginary of capital being more alive, having greater agency, and requiring more deference than the worker who produces it 79431
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026What are “defensive attacks” on Iran, esp coming from a US airbase in the UK? 5448
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026It’s funny how scholars invent whole new theoretical terms to avoid just saying they miss communism: 2122
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Nobody. Nobody in the entire Jewish world Mattel: We made a Hanukkah Barbie, w a shirt in the colors of the Israeli flag Jews, all of them: You did what? Mattel: Oh we gave her a big nose too 2122
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026When i see leftist accounts that seem to exist primarily just to drag other leftists, I’m reminded of that Seinfeld episode in which a dentist converts to Judaism just so he can tell antisemitic jokes 2332
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 26/09/2026One cannot understand much about higher education right now unless one understands that the ppl paid - often large salaries - to manage colleges and universities are deeply contemptuous of the v processes of learning the institutions are organized to support 2238
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Even as Netanyahu calls Mamdani an antisemite it’s good to be reminded that American Jews feel safer w Mamdani than do w Netanyahu 18627
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I have no idea if Mamdani could have realistically arrested Netanyahu. However the level of global institutional failure - in the US, UN, Interpol - that is necessary so that we are depending on a newly elected American mayor to save int’l law and democracy is staggering 5539
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I miss the days when the right just hallucinated White Jesus in olive oil stains 2112
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026What a beautiful and dignified response to the insult of Netanyahu’s presence in NYC 1348
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026one needs to understand poetry in order to understand why LLMs cannot write it 0193
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserKelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Statistics show men are far more likely to leave their wives when they become disabled than the other way around. This man didn’t leave his wife, he just belittled and berated her “obsession” with being sick She felt trapped in a broken body & then her partner disrespected her. Now she’s gone:thesun.co.ukMum, 37, with long Covid left tragic note about 'broken body' before ending lifeA MUM left with long Covid took her own life after leaving a heartbreaking note about her “broken body”, an inquest heard. Emily Parkes was a “happy mother to a beautiful son” but her h… 1934899
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Trump threatened to commit genocide against Iran: is that fact or fiction? 190
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Recalling this banger for no particular reason youtu.be/lOsABwCrn3E?...youtu.be2006: Chavez calls Bush "the devil"YouTube video by CNN 010
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Some critics have posed the reasonable question: why write about radical anti-Zionist Jewish history now, in the light of a genocide of Palestinians? There are complex answers but I’ll answer w a v simple one: bc ppl such as Ungar-Sargon lie about this history repeatedly 3187
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026apparently panopticon and Ministry of Truth were already taken 262
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Sometimes the anti-electoral (& often anti DSA) left sound more orthodox about the market than bankers: under the iron law of wages, nothing under capitalism can change in the slightest to benefit workers. I know it’s not the revolution, but we can actually make things a little better 061
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026I can attest from workers in fields in which AI use is prevalent (including journalism) that AI is, among a number of other bad things, causing a speed-up 051
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026There is something far beyond hypocrisy expressed in the queer camp of Trump admin: hot troops, ballrooms, steamy & lurid affairs. The far right promises to its members not order but transgression, the power to be the racially & class defined exception to the rules the masses must follow 1153
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026For the High Holy Days Tzedek Chicago is raising money w Rabbis for Ceasefire to fund food aid in Gaza. The genocide is not over - indeed the so-called ceasefire is barely a pause. If you have some spare cash please consider donating givebutter.com/5787-tzedaka...givebutter.comHigh Holy Days 5787 Tzedakah CampaignBy Gaza Soup Kitchen 1218
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 20/09/2026An under theorized aspect of generational loyalties to Zionism among Jewish boomers has been the historic way in which Zionism opened up previously elite and exclusively German-Jewish non-profits to parvenu Eastern European ostjuden: nationalism was a great leveler for a generation of U.S. Jews 1/2 1185
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 19/09/2026It occurred to me while reading this that unlike the housing bubble in which any sharp counter of beans could look at a dis-alignment btw mortgage rates & payments - there was still something like a market - AI funding is a black box & profits are speculative w/o a benchmark.. x.com/newleftrevie...x.comNew Left Review (@NewLeftReview) on XFrédéric Lordon on the economics of AI: ‘We are witnessing the great reversal unfolding in real time…’ https://t.co/1ucBfe9Qa1 173
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 19/09/2026It really does feel like the end of an era, the end of an institution-specific Reconstruction: embattled, incomplete & often compromised, ethnic & gender studies were nonetheless attempts to address centuries of erasure. & like Reconstruction, ppl have been waiting a long time to end it 1326
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Not only is this boycott an attempt to bring accountability to the architects of the genocide in Gaza, it also reveals how much we take for granted the cozy relationships among think tanks, Ivy Leagues, & boardrooms w the imperial planners of mass murder www.democracynow.org/2026/9/18/he... 1486
Reposted by Benjamin Balthaser#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 18/09/2026Tautologically speaking, if the Israeli Jewish opposition is incapable of making a non-Netanyahu government without the Arab parties but refuses to coalition with them, then they definitionally deserve to lose.timesofisrael.comNetanyahu’s anti-Arab campaign has found Gadi Eisenkot’s Achilles’ heelPM is exploiting prospect of a political partnership with Arab parties to put his main rival on the defensive and drive a wedge between Eisenkot and Liberman; Eisenkot needs to urgently reclaim nation... 424635
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026In claiming the left needs to embrace economic issues and appeal to conservative values of patriotism and the family, the report does not embrace class politics over culture wars, it just embraces one side of the war over another 630157
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026long covid impacts somewhere btw 6 and 30m Americans, at least 213531
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Sometime from the start of the pandemic to now, I’ve gone from thinking university admin are no better or worse than other bourgeois management to thinking they are the most craven, shortsighted, ignorant mfers on earth who, unlike CEOs, hate the actual institution they serve 34811
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserAlejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 14/09/2026Cis people do not understand how much trans people's rights have regressed in just 5 years. 5 years ago, there were none of these restrictions. 19 states banned legal recognition 21 states have bathroom bans 8 states ban gender marker changes on DLs 25 ban gender affirming care for trans youth 11077383605
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Oh no AI might harm things we v rich ppl care about, such as our internet service, not just useless crap, like yr job or education or water supply 070
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026To say it is antisemitic to film Israeli soldiers confessing to things Israeli soldiers did requires a level of cognitive dissonance that is actually quite scary if you think of it: the Israeli state argues antisemitism is the name we give to facts www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...haaretz.com'Treason': Israeli minister formally asks to revoke NAZA directors' citizenshipCulture Minister Miki Zohar requested that legal and security officials examine whether the Israeli creators of the award-winning Gaza documentary 'NAZA' committed acts of treason or aiding the enemy ... 0187
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserNaomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Since it can be hard to believe that political and corporate elites would actively give up on our shared future on this singular planet, we made a short film so folks can hear from the end timers and judge for themselves. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...theguardian.comNaomi Klein and Astra Taylor: the future according to end times fascismIn a new video, Klein and Taylor outline a ominous evolution taking shape on the far right – and how to stay loyal to this planet and each other 341536607
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026And ofc if you can’t work, you can also die: but let us not bother our forward march to progress w a discussion of eugenics, some ppl might get upset 0152
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserAsher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026The best way to understand the American Jewish community is that we are, in the aggregate, a group of liberals whose institutions are largely controlled by a much smaller faction of very well-funded conservatives 10921174
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserJudith A. Miller @1789jam.bsky.social · 13/09/2026As a professor, I embrace the idea that many students have been affected by COVID & long COVID. They don't want to think that they are. I don't believe it's (solely) cell phones. Also, they lost key social skills that develop vocabulary & focus. (As did many adults..) 04814
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserLevi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Paul Vallas would have gleefully bent the knee to Trump in early 2021, betrayed Chicagoans by welcoming ICE with open arms, then claimed that his tough-on-crime policies were responsible for the dramatic drop in crime we’ve seen the past couple of years. 1379
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserDavid Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Do not underestimate the scale of this climate crisis. We are watching feedback loops accelerate, ice sheet collapse, ocean heat content, methane release, that could lock in irreversible warming. We have all witnessed the data, and it is not slowing down. 73724677
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Having bad politics & a GOP coup are not the same; they are not even comparable. One is part of a vibrant democracy & the other literally a crime, subverting even the idea of democracy. That a stolen election matters less than stopping a tiny 3rd party may actually be our problem w democracy 0120
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026If democracy hadn’t been tested, we wouldn’t know we live in a dictatorship 160
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026I often think one part of Zionist’s murderous hatred for Palestinians is a projection of their own lack: in demanding the right to return, Palestinians insist on the v thing Zionists denied themselves, by accepting their expulsion from Europe and MENA. 040
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026“Due to a wave of negative articles and studies misinforming humanities students about their job prospects and draconian state and administrative cuts to humanities programs, humanities programs are now suffering the result of a manufactured crisis.” There fixed it 2114
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026At risk of ridiculousness I am going to make the slightly mystical statement that Rosh Hashanah falling on 9.11 is a sign of renewal, a positive turning away from Manichean & civilizational binaries of good & evil, east & west, & a security state logic that weaponizes both 2122
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026It’s 25 years after 9.11 and we are still waging war on the “Axis of Evil.” The Cost of War Project conservatively estimates that 4.5 million have died as a direct result of America’s Global War on Terror, not including recent conflict w Iran 1101
Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026One of the stranger, and funnier, things about Gabriel Rockhill’s book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, is that it is a September 11th narrative. blbalthaser.substack.com/p/cia-marxis...blbalthaser.substack.comCIA Marxism and other September 11th StoriesGabriel Rockhill and his 9.11 origin story 082
Reposted by Benjamin BalthaserBoston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 08/09/2026“From the AfD in Germany to the Independence Party in the UK, the near victory of Marine Le Pen in France, and beyond, a xenophobic, nationalist populism has gained steam where progressive parties promised to end neoliberalism but in the end were buried by it.” @blbalthaser.bsky.socialbostonreview.netIn the Lobby of Hope and ChangeThe Obama Presidential Center monumentalizes a liberalism still incapable of seeing its flaws. 176