iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Today I found out that Umberto Eco crafted a version of this meme in the 1980s…

Beware the
alibi of photocopies ! Photocopies are indis-
pensable instruments. They allow you to keep with you a text you have already read in the library, and to take home a text you have not read yet. But a set of photocopies can become an alibi. A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many. Defend yourself from this trap: as soon as you have the photocopy, read it and annotate it immediately. If you are not in a great hurry, do not photocopy something new before you own (that is, before you have read and annotated) the previous set of photocopies. There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.

Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

My uni office has a lot of primary sources which are much more organised, so I can locate stuff for myself or other researchers working on radical political history.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I also wrote this chapter for my recent book with @d-j-frost.bsky.social, 'In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left from 1956'. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526179593/

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Looking for a reviewer for this book for the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History @jich.bsky.social Please email me at Evan [dot] smith [at] Adelaide [dot] edu [dot] au. hkupress.hku.hk/Governor_Tra...

Cover of Graham Hutchings, Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy: The Career of Sir Cecil Clementi
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
ISBN 978-988-8946-84-6

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A reading pile for those interested in the history of anti-fascism in Britain

A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League - Geoff Brown
Physical Resistance - Dave Hann
Our Flag Stays Red - Phil Piratin
London Jews and British Communism 1933-1945 Henry Felix Srbernik
When We Touched the Sky - David Renton
Black Star - Anandi Ramamurthy
Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider - Satnam Virdee
British Antifascism and the Holocaust, 1945-79 - Joshua Cohen
Never Again - David Renton
Say it Loud - edited by Brian Richardson
Beating the Fascists - Sean Birchall
No Platform - Evan Smith
The 43 Group - Morris Beckman
No Free Speech for Fascists - David Renton
Remembering Cable Street - edited by Tony Kushner & Nadia Valman
We Fight Fascists - Daniel Sonabend
Anti-Fascism in Britain - Nigel Copsey

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Got a Google alert that some of my publications had been recently cited and saw that my citations had now reached over 1000 (according to Google Scholar). As someone who has been in and out of academia many times and in a field (History) which is slower to acquire citations, that's pretty neat.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"true stories about the past"

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There must be a German word for the feeling that historians get when they realise that a hard copy source that they used extensively in their past research is now digitised and easily searchable/accessible. Spent so many hours looking through old copies of THES. Now it’s all online!

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Moving house and office at same time back in 2023, I finally decided to get rid of all my ‘just in case’ books I’d acquired, mainly because I thought I might need them for teaching. Put them all out in the office corridor to be taken and they all went. I haven’t regretted giving away any of them!

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The only acceptable iced coffee to rock up to a job interview with

Two litre bottle of Farmers Union Iced Coffee

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Whenever Lachie Neale pops up today

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Coming up on TalkSport, does the Thucydides Trap still have a place in modern geopolitical discourse?

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This week 75 years ago, a referendum was held as to whether the Communist Party of Australia could be banned, which was narrowly defeated. I published this article on how the attempt to ban the CPA fit within other anti-communist measures in the Anglophone world. www.academia.edu/34350672/Pol...

Britain and the World 10.2 (2017): 170-196
DOI: 10.3366/brw.2017.0274 © Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/brw
EVAN SMITH
Policing Communism Across the
'White Man's World': Anti-Communist Co-operation between Australia, South Africa and Britain in the
Early Cold War

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

When you realise you might have to cut one of your favourite Stuart Hall quotes to make the article word count

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This week 49 years ago (Sep 1977) students at Melbourne University protested against lectures given by psychologists Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen, who falsely argued that there was a link between race and IQ. The protests led to much discourse about a free speech crisis at Australian universities.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So #historians, I might ask again - what are your weird archival finds? On the National Archives of Australia website, I found this digitised WWII-era letter to the Prime Minister complaining about enemy aliens in Australia, which then goes into rant about women smoking. #archives #history 🗃️

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Would anyone be interested in reviewing this OA book for The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History? Usually with OA books, a hard copy cannot be provided, but it is free to download. If interested, please get in touch! @jich.bsky.social www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

He instigated the first reply all frenzy. Each time a new email popped in his inbox, he sent another email saying ‘I’m the starman, stop replying all!’.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Love the A-League, but one of the funniest things is that the Central Coast Mariners have two massive inflatable sauce bottles at one end of their stadium.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

To overcome AI, all history courses require students to travel back through time and collect figures from history for a final presentation. And they must remember to wind their watch.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

On 9 September 1934, tens of thousands people turned out to protest against Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in Hyde Park, described as ‘a great blow to fascism’. It concluded a summer of anti-fascism that year which challenged the violence of the BUF. hatfulofhistory.com/2018/09/09/f...

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The following day, Alan Nicholls in The Argus claimed to have been told by the Registrar at Melbourne University that Kerensky never applied for a lectureship there. trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/re...

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I have heard similar! In 1951, The Argus published a translated article from a Swiss newspaper about Australia being an anti-intellectual country, which included an anecdote that Kerensky was turned down for a lectureship by Melb and it was given to an Australian. trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/re...

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the short-lived Provisional Government of Russia in 1917, briefly lived in Brisbane, Australia at the end of the Second World War. trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ar...

herensky In Brisbane Alexander Kerensky, who
was Premier of Russia for a few months after the first re-volation in March. 191T, bat was driven out by the Bolshe-viks, is now in Brisbane with his wife.
They plan to re-
main here for several months.
Mrs.
Kerensky is a •Brisbane
girl (formerly Miss Nelle Trit-tan), the daughter of well known Jocal residents.
She was married
to Mr. Kerensky in New York in 1939.
They went to Paris, and escaped two days before the German occupation, going to Eng-
Innd, and later returning to New York.
The present trip
WAS
made to enable Mrs. Kerensky to tep her parents, whom she had
not seen since 1999.
She
WIS
previously married to M. Nade-Jine, a Russian baritone.
Mr. Kerensky, who has been an exile from Russin since the Bol-shevika seized power.
said that
the main purpose of his life is to explain everywhere that Russia's freedom has been lost only for the time being.
This is his first
vinit to Australia

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This should be a prestige TV series

Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands

The Marxist-Leninist Party of the Netherlands (Dutch: Marxistisch-Leninistische Partij van
Nederland or MLPN) was a fake pro-China communist party in the Netherlands set up by the Dutch secret service BVD to develop contacts with the Chinese government for espionage
purposes. The MLPN existed from 1968 to the early 1990s and was led throughout its existence by Pieter Boevé, who used the pseudonym Chris Petersen.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

When I use BlueSky in Safari, it comes up with a little marker, telling me if the post is part of a thread, with a number of each post in the thread. Is this new? I can't see it in the app version or using Google Chrome.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Everyone to Fremantle right now

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

When the non-fiction book you’re reading doesn’t have any references

Painting of a disgruntled grey cat, with anger in its eyes

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Post something random or you’ll have an awful September

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes

Vyvyan from The Young Ones entering the Cornflakes competition

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Reposting for the weekend, with another chapter from the past! What is an edited book chapter you're particularly proud of, or one you think deserves more readers? #academicsky #celebratebookchapter #historians 🗃️ www.academia.edu/74723919/For... www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Screenshot of chapter title:

For Socialist Revolution or National Liberation? Anti-Colonialism and the Communist Parties of Great Britain, Australia and South Africa in the Era of Decolonisation

Evan Smith

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Welcome to Bluesky. Please familiarize yourself with the following accounts to understand the range of opinions it is acceptable to express

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Others, like Led Zeppelin’s use of the Hindenburg photo or Rage Against the Machine’s use of the photo of the Buddhist monk’s self-immolation protest are different because the photos aren’t significantly altered in the same way. Can people think of other examples of altered photos on album covers?

Led Zeppelin album cover using the Hindenburg disaster photo

Rage Against the Machine album cover using photo of the Buddhist monk’s self-immolation protest in 1960s

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The first image was altered and repurposed for The Smiths album ‘Meat is Murder’ and the second for Killing Joke’s self-titled debut album.

Cover of The Smiths’ Meat is Murder, with soldier in Vietnam. Now ‘Meat is Murder’ is written on the helmet.

Cover of Killing Joke’s self-titled album. The wall now has ‘Killing Joke’ written on it.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I have been thinking about famous photographs that were *altered* and repurposed as album covers. These are two that spring to mind.

Photo of soldier in Vietnamese with ‘Make War Not Love’ written on helmet

Photo of boys on wall escaping CS gas in Northern Ireland during the Troubles

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

One of the infamous incidents was in 1960 when Mosley spoke at a debate about apartheid South Africa at Cambridge University and was hit in the face with a green jelly by a protesting student.

JELLY THROWN AT
SIR O. MOSLEY
INTERRUPTION DURING CAMBRIDGE ADDRESS
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
CAMBRIDGE, APRIL 24
An undergraduate slapped a jelly into the face of Sir Oswald Mosley at the beginning of his address to Cambridge University Conservative Association in the Cambridge Union Society's debating chamber this afternoon. The undergraduate was quickly ushered from the building by three or four other students.

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I have uploaded the introduction to the book to ResearchGate and academia dot edu. It provides at outline of the history of free speech, academic freedom and protest on UK campuses, as well as wider debates. www.researchgate.net/publication/... www.academia.edu/44497710/No_...

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

On this point, here’s a selected quote from the referee report for my edited collection with @d-j-frost.bsky.social, ‘In Solidarity, Under Suspicion’, the third volume in our series on the history of the British far left. Recognising the contribution of our volumes to the historiography.

"Like the previous volumes, this one too will become an indispensable starting point for anyone wanting to research the far left (broadly defined) and an exceptionally useful overview for readers who simply want to learn more about that part of the political spectrum. I don't know of any other volumes quite like this emerging series and it therefore remains exceptionally valuable."

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A month after returning from this wonderful @colmigproject.bsky.social workshop at Lincoln University, I have finally drafted the paper that I presented there. Looking forward to sending my research on Australia, South Africa and border control in the early 1900s out into the world!

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