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Rick Perlstein

@rickperlstein.bsky.social
31K followers 33 following 4.7K posts

"O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet..."

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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 2h
University of Michigan today. The most tipping-point image I've seen to exemplify our fascist descent. And the surrender was won with the weapon of false antisemitism charges against people protesting genocide--making administrations complicit in genocide. A moral nadir. This is how republics die.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Very important observations here. Important stuff to mentally assimilate if you think that Democrats getting many more votes than Republicans in November is the whole ballgame.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Can these videos possibly be real? www.facebook.com/share/r/1FCK...
facebook.com
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Wrong platform. Subscribe here! www.patreon.com/franklin17/p...
patreon.com
A Year After Operation Midway Blitz | Frank The Turtle
This is 22-year-old Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, an asylum seeker from Somalia. He’s currently being held at Guantanamo Bay by the Trump administr
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One of my favorite front-line reporters on the fascist assault wants to cover the planned action tomorrow at the Broadview ICE facility but can only afford to do so if she gets ten more Substack subscribers. Hasten thither! substack.com/@noturtlesou...
substack.com
Amanda Moore | Substack
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Hope no one tells him about what's going on in the FBI...
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Some serious Woodward and Bernstein energy... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/n...
nytimes.com
Mamdani Aides Give City Council Little Insight Into Influencer Effort
At a New York City Council hearing, frustration grew as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s representatives were unable to answer questions about the mayor’s use of influencers.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
May do.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I am so there for Kash under the lights at this Senate hearing. You thought the bestiality was a good? www.nbcnews.com/tech/securit...
nbcnews.com
FBI investigating hacking group’s claim of massive breach of agent info
ShinyHunters, a cyber-extortion outfit, said it hacked into the FBI’s jobs portal and used that access to steal a major tranche of sensitive files.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Spending these days fact-checking and endnoting, I've been Googling at industrial scale, which has given my a brain-melting lesson in how fucked we are as a civilization. In today's installment, a quote from Geo W. Bush's 2nd inaugural in 2005 is depicted—why not?—as one from Obama's in 2013.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A financial death star was assembled by the "rules based international order" to pin outlaw states, with the U.S. at the controls. Now it is being deployed by the outlaw running the U.S., against the "rules based international order." Aimé Césaire's imperial boomerang. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Trump Ramps Up Bid to Dismantle International Criminal Court
The U.S. administration is preparing sweeping sanctions that would cut the court off from much of the global financial system.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Good times.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
We're staking our economy on forcing a technology down people's throats that outputs misinformation as a matter of course. Someone asked me about my interview with Gil Duran. This is happened when I googled our names together. I have not interviewed Gil Duran. This path: civilizational death.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
If you don't mind, I'm going to do a little political organizing here. If this gets to, say, ten million hearts, the message could have a discernible effect on defeating fascism before it devours us. Pls forward.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Laboratory evidence: the gender attitudes of the typical Texas third-grade middle-class male in 1964 are identical to those of the people controlling the Republican Party and White House. More at 11. rickperlstein.substack.com/p/greatest-h...
rickperlstein.substack.com
Greatest Hits, Vol. III
Read it for the pictures.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Disappointingly lawyerly: "Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said." What are they trying to say, what can't they say, etc.? www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
More U.S. troops have died amid Iran war than Pentagon has disclosed publicly
Officials who spoke with The Post expressed frustration that the additional loss of life in the Middle East is not reflected in the Defense Department’s casualty database.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Suspicious. Sheriff shuts down program compensating damages to small businesses from last year's fascist invasion, claiming overwhelming fraud, but... www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/ne...
cbsnews.com
Scammers target Hennepin County fund meant to aid businesses impacted by ICE surge
Data shows small businesses lost hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during Operation Metro Surge. A Hennepin County program launched to help them ended up shutting down. Nearly half of the app...
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🇨🇦 thimbles.bsky.social 🇨🇦 @thimbles.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
So I jumped into this documentary on Netflix expecting stories of movies from the 70's. www.netflix.com/us/title/819... Got a ton of informative social commentary on US society from folks ranging from Seth Rogen to @jamesrisen.bsky.social to @rickperlstein.bsky.social. Take an hourish and watch.
netflix.com
Watch Breakdown: 1975 | Netflix Official Site
America, 1975. An era of social and political upheaval inspires a wave of groundbreaking movies in this documentary from Oscar winner Morgan Neville.
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Derrell Durrett @derrelldurrett.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Try reading this from @rickperlstein.bsky.social. Nearly did a spit-take when I got to Newt Gingrich complaining that Megan Kelly was "fascinated with sex and [doesn't] care about public policy" because she pointed out Trump's history as a serial predator. rickperlstein.substack.com/p/greatest-h...
rickperlstein.substack.com
Greatest Hits, Vol. II
Rise and Fall of American Civilization edition
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
More fun with "AI." I Googled a famous quote from the guy who, for saying this, Rahm Emanuel sent a dead fish, and got this output back.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
At a certain point, people are going to look back on garden-variety 2026 right-wing discourse and describe it like we currently describe Holocaust denial. (Excepting the possibility humans become extinct first.)
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Amazing discovery for fans of the cat who made the ARP Odyssey monosynth his Stradivarius, George Duke. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6jk...
youtube.com
FLORA PURIM WITH FRIENDS / LIVE AT TERMINAL ISLAND FEDERAL PRISON 1975
YouTube video by Chiidang's RIM (Rare Live Music)
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
So fascinating. Who'da thunk. The WSJ serves the plutocracy what they need to know on the news page, and the proaganda line on the op-ed page. News coverage means: DSA is a real-deal contender for power. A blessed event for the prospects of liberty, no matter the all-too-human flaws of some of DSA.
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Kat Abughazaleh @katmabu.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Thinking about how a girl at Christian summer camp asked me if my dad was in Al Qaeda and I got in trouble for asking if her dad was a Klansman bc “her question was understandable”
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Oops, VICTROLA. Gramps is on the fritz.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Gramps is doing endnotes. Gather around the Victoria, kids, and I'll tell you a story of a time when, if you typed a string of words at a website called Google and enclosed them inside quotation marks, it obedient coughed up every time those words appeared together on the Internet, without comment.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Literally happened the first fucking day of his administration. Remember "alternative facts"?
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Almost always, terrorists think their propaganda of the deed will inspire the masses to join their crusade. That fallacy was the theme of a novel a lot of smart people read and discussed after 9/11, Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent."
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
For Substack subscribers, I've posted pages from a chapter called "The 9/11 Lobotomy" from my forthcoming book, THE INFERNAL TRIANGLE: HOW AMERICA GOT THIS WAY. rickperlstein.substack.com/p/the-911-lo...
rickperlstein.substack.com
The 9/11 Lobotomy
Twenty-five years later, four pages from my forthcoming book.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Sheesh. The bots aren't "asking" about anything. They are pattern-repeaters, so output grammatical sentences that repeat what every AI in every science fiction story does, ever. Talk about machines like they are people, and you do the tech bros' propaganda work for them.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Another Steinem point: the kind of self-esteem promotion she ("Revolution fool Within"), and Oprah, did, is potentially FANTASTIC for the left. Making people non-neurotic makes them ready to entertain values--
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The dumbest part of lefty purity around a figure like Steinem is not grasping that people liberated from authoritarian thinking and families, by liberals like Steinem or liberalism generally, are OPPPRTUNITIES for the left. "You like that? Have you heard about this?" Etc. Not complicated.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This one holds up.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Many gifts I have received this Birthday Week, but the best came from the Universe. A new recording of one of my musical heroes, one whom, if you know, you know...has only ever been recorded with his own bands maybe a half dozen times, and never during this period. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jGn...
youtube.com
Lyle Mays Trio/EJ's, Atlanta, GA 1981.8.22.
YouTube video by Chiidang's RIM (Rare Live Music)
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
In 1955, only 2% in a Gallop poll strongly disapproved of J. Edgar Hoover. A man who ran quite nearly a fascist enterprise was the most trusted man in America. It's remarkable it took so long to get one in the White House. share.google/m4TNObQqZOWZ...
share.google
Deborah Friedell · Something on Everyone: Hoover’s Secrets
J. Edgar Hoover liked to say he didn’t hire policemen but investigators. Agents were university graduates, only to be...
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Read it. She cracked open everyday oppression in a way none of her critics who fault her for not being a Marxist, or theorizing there world precisely as they do, ever came close. archive.org/details/lett...
archive.org
Letters to Ms., 1972-1987
xix, 264 pages ; 25 cm
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Yeah, pleeeeeeez tell me more about how Gloria Steinem was a crypto-neoliberal CIA cutout...
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
One of my favorite Texans pointed out to me once that, vouchers being useless to those within the the tens of thousands of square miles of the state too rural to support a private school, this is basically a death sentence for all education. prospect.org/2024/04/10/2...
prospect.org
Fascist State - The American Prospect
There are degrees of political insanity. After its recent Republican primary elections, Texas approaches a psychotic break.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This was the kind of lunacy I grew up around in an overwhelmingly Zionist community, and I think my fascination with such epostemological psychosis, as a politically precocious adolescent, was what, unconsciously, turned my into a scholar of phenomenon like the John Birch Society and Q Anon.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This year I called Gloria Steinem's "A Bunny's Tale" a "masterpiece heralding the coming of a 1960s New Journalism, in fact one of the greatest literary accomplishments in the history of journalism, prophetic, politically engaged writing." Rest in power. rickperlstein.substack.com/p/perpetual-...
rickperlstein.substack.com
Perpetual Three Dot Column
Weirdness edition.
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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 01/09/2026
An anonymous federal official warned Congress that a rushed and insufficiently tested Postal Service system could prevent large numbers of Americans from receiving mail ballots this fall if courts approve President Trump’s plans for the midterm elections.
washingtonpost.com
Postal Service plans may keep voters from getting ballots, whistleblower says
An anonymous federal official warns that a rushed USPS portal tied to Trump’s mail-voting order could reject large batches of ballots before the midterms.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
What "two wars"??
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
New musical discovery, now I just want to sit home all day and listen up this cat. youtu.be/xOnZ1-sOCwo?...
youtu.be
Messiaen - Turangalila-symphonie (Dudamel, OSSBdV, Wang, Millar)
YouTube video by hotdogfalo
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
What happens when a stupid country starts a war against a smart country, just saying. luciantruscott.substack.com/p/trump-just...
luciantruscott.substack.com
Trump just shot some missiles at Iran and nobody cared
You knew it was coming. Yesterday, the U.S.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
History will not absolve them.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
New drop coming.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
When Brother Benny gets to the cabin, things do tend to get fonkay.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
In my next book I call this "winning the wrong way, " and provide evidence of cases where leaders of the Democrats' "centrist" wing (actually, bought-and-paid-for wing) expresses a preference to lose. On one page, Cottle gets a name-check for boosting Chris Christie a 2016 presidential comer.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I'm in NYC. Come down to the speaking tomorrow (Tuesday, 8/25) at @DCTV, 87 Lafayette Street at 6:30 (pm, not am).
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In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 24/08/2026
Join @mollycrabapple.bsky.social for a pop-up art show tomorrow night in NYC, in discussion with @rickperlstein.bsky.social, @maximillianalvarez.bsky.social, @bloomekatz.bsky.social, and others, along with a fundraiser supporting independent journalism fighting fascism with every print run.
allyoufascistsboundtolose.com
Protect Free Speech and Support Independent Media with Molly Crabapple and In These Times! — In These Times Events
Join In These Times in New York City on August 25, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. for a special fundraiser supporting independent journalism and the fight to protect free speech. The evening will feature…
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