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Benjamin Balthaser

@blbalthaser.bsky.social
6.2K followers 2.9K following 3.5K posts

Professor of multiethnic US lit; au of Dedication (2011), Anti-Imperialist Modernism (2016), Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism & the Cultures of the US Jewish Left (2025). He/him. 🕎🌹😷🇵🇸Chicago 🐢 iusb.academia.edu/BenjaminBalthaser

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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 10h
I 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
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Dr ShinyGoth @ghostingdani.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Humanities will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no humanities.
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I 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
JVP is zionist please stop supporting and platforming an org whose prominence is due entirely to their utility to zionism and the racism against Palestinians that prompts westerners to prioritize and defer to "jewish voices" on the subject of Palestine
7:24 PM • 9/25/26 • 14K Views
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Gav O))) from Dublin @birneybau.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Marx described commodity fetish as the imaginary of capital being more alive, having greater agency, and requiring more deference than the worker who produces it
For people who deny Al personhood for any Al model at any point in the future, you're going to need better arguments than this. There are arguments out there, but once agents can solve Navier-Stokes, write music and poetry, and provide people with seemingly fulfilling life advice, this kind of line is just not going to be persuasive. "YOU'RE CRAZY" no longer lands.
Claire Lehmann
@clairlemon • 1d
Thinking Al might be conscious is like thinking that there are real people talking to you from inside the
TV, or that there is a tiny band playing music inside the radio....
Bentham's Bulldog
@Benthamsb...•1d
Why? Do you think it's insane to think Al might be conscious?
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What are “defensive attacks” on Iran, esp coming from a US airbase in the UK?
ELLIOTT: Now remind us what the
connection is to the U.S. military at that base.
FRAYER: Yeah. So RAF Fairford is one of the bases that the British government has long allowed the U.S. to use. The British government opposes the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran but has allowed the U.S. military to use British bases for what it calls defensive attacks on Iran. And Fairford has attracted a lot of attention because of this. I mean, members of the public often gather there to see these big American bombers roll down a runway in the otherwise bucolic Cotswolds.
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s funny how scholars invent whole new theoretical terms to avoid just saying they miss communism:
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Nobody. 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
When 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
One 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Even as Netanyahu calls Mamdani an antisemite it’s good to be reminded that American Jews feel safer w Mamdani than do w Netanyahu
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I miss the days when the right just hallucinated White Jesus in olive oil stains
What's one word that comes to mind when you hear the name James Talarico?

Jeffrey, 34, independent, Latino, school counselor 

Progressive.

Dennis, 62, Republican, white, retired 

Neutral.

Jennifer, 50, Republican, white, stay-at-home parent

Same-sex bathrooms in high schools and grade school.
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
What a beautiful and dignified response to the insult of Netanyahu’s presence in NYC
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
one needs to understand poetry in order to understand why LLMs cannot write it
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
cemeteries full of infants
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Statistics 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.uk
Mum, 37, with long Covid left tragic note about 'broken body' before ending life
A 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…
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Trump threatened to commit genocide against Iran: is that fact or fiction?
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Recalling this banger for no particular reason youtu.be/lOsABwCrn3E?...
youtu.be
2006: Chavez calls Bush "the devil"
YouTube video by CNN
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Some 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
Batya Ungar-Sargon: "Only 13% [of Democrats] stand with Israelis against the Palestinians..."
"The thing that makes this so appalling is that Jews built the left in this country. We built the labor movement. We wrote the New Deal. 70% of the lawyers who worked on civil rights cases were Jews!"
"We've been at the forefront of every liberal and leftist issue in this country!"
X @INFOLIBNEWS
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
apparently panopticon and Ministry of Truth were already taken
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Sometimes 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
There 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
Pentagon demands only fittest and most 'impeccably' groomed troops attend Hegseth speech: report
Joe Sommerlad
Thu, September 17, 2026 at 10:57 AM CDT
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
For 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.com
High Holy Days 5787 Tzedakah Campaign
By Gaza Soup Kitchen
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
An 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
Arguably, this shift also allowed the ADL to move concretely away from its outdated construction as a German Jewish institution (as it had begun already to do in the 194os) to an institution inclusive of upwardly mobile, rightward-moving Eastern European Jews, embracing a more democratic vision of community without diminishing its hold on class and political respectability.
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It 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.com
New Left Review (@NewLeftReview) on X
Frédéric Lordon on the economics of AI: ‘We are witnessing the great reversal unfolding in real time…’ https://t.co/1ucBfe9Qa1
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It 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
UT Austin Axes Several Ethnic, Gender Studies
Majors
Some faculty members consider the decision the next step in a broader effort to gut what remains of ethnic and gender studies at the university.
By Emma Whitford
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Not 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...
"Drop the Genocide 20":
Progressives Target Biden Admin Officials Who Aided Israel's Assault on Gaza
HEADLINE SEP 18, 2026
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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 18/09/2026
Tautologically 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.com
Netanyahu’s anti-Arab campaign has found Gadi Eisenkot’s Achilles’ heel
PM 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...
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
In 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
long covid impacts somewhere btw 6 and 30m Americans, at least
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Sometime 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
An M.I.T. Report Warns A.I. Is Causing 'Cognitive Surrender. Universities Are in a Bind.
As A.l. upends education, university leaders have been all over the map about how to respond. It can be very confusing for students.The worries that artificial intelligence is degrading education have been building for months. Students are using it for everything, including cheating, and a recent report out of M.I.T. said it is triggering "cognitive surrender."
Many university leaders are embracing A.I. with enthusiasm anyway.
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 14/09/2026
Cis 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Oh 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
"Given the accelerating rate of Al capability
development, it's my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if Al becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails."
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
To 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' citizenship
Culture 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 ...
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Since 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.com
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: the future according to end times fascism
In 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
And 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
The future of
retirement? Work until you die.
Social Security, once seen as 'old-age insurance,' will eventually disappear, this author predicts
By Jessica Hall
FOLLOW
Updated Sept. 13, 2026, 3:56 p.m. ET
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Asher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The 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
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Judith A. Miller @1789jam.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
As 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..)
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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Paul 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.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Do 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.
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Having 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
If democracy hadn’t been tested, we wouldn’t know we live in a dictatorship
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I 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.
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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
Report: Humanities Majors Disappearing
Anxiety about job prospects and heavy reading loads have led to dramatic declines in humanities majors since 2012, according to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. https://bit.ly/4gXoVRb
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
At 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
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It’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
Casualties and losses
Per Costs of War Project:
4.5-4.6 million+ people killed note 8][a]
937,000+ direct deaths including 387,000+ civilians, 3.6-3.7 million indirect deaths) [note 9]
[b]
At least 38 million people displaced c]
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Benjamin Balthaser @blbalthaser.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
One 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.com
CIA Marxism and other September 11th Stories
Gabriel Rockhill and his 9.11 origin story
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Boston 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.social
bostonreview.net
In the Lobby of Hope and Change
The Obama Presidential Center monumentalizes a liberalism still incapable of seeing its flaws.
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