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@sadhominem.bsky.social
429 followers 592 following 139 posts

philosophy phd haver (they/them) 🏴

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Simulated Chollas @simulatedchollas.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Words from @harshawalia.bsky.social on Ceuta border crossing:
On CEUTA:
Because a lot of what I am going to say will pushback against much of what is out there (against large north american leftist influencer accounts), first to locate myself in this:
If you know any of my work, especially on the ground, you know that I am an anti-imperialist. I am a long time student of and organizer within anti-colonial & internationalist movements, including Palestinian liberation.
I am also a migrant justice organizer, writer, and connected to migrant justice movements in different parts of the world - including some organizations in Ceuta, whose on-the-ground documenting over the past two days influences my thinking.
1) FORTRESS EUROPE:
I have written about Ceuta, Melilla, Canary Islands and EU border externalization for the past 15 years.
In a nutshell: the engineering of Fortress Europe began with the fencing of Melilla and Ceuta in 1993 (enclaves located on the African continent - claimed by Spain who currently holds jurisdiction / Morocco has long demanded their return / both layered upon Amazighen land claims - and form the only land border between Africa and Europe).
Today, the EU externalizes border controls based on three primary routes, with the "western route" traversing the border between Morocco and these enclaves, as well as across the Strait of Gibraltar to the European mainland or across the Atlantic from Morocco or Mauritania to the Canary Islands.
From the 1990's to early 2000's the enclaves were slowly militarized with a spike in monitoring and razor wire fencing.
Spain's history of empire and imbrication with the European civilizational project-constructed upon and against the Muslim world since the Reconquista-has made it an eager participant in physically and conceptually fencing its enclaves on African soil.
Spain's marginal status within the EU has also influenced its migration policies, especially after the Eurozone debt crisis of 2010 and the imposition of EU policies of austerity. Frontex (EU's border agency) act…Pedro Sánchez, congratulated the Spanish and Moroccan forces (Guardia Civil and Auxiliary Forces of Morocco) after declaring the crossing a "violent assault on Spanish soil". Moroccan border officials dug graves for the dead they had beaten up and killed, their bodies never returned to their families. Over 60 migrants were prosecuted for "human trafficking."
2) THEORIES OF US-ISRAELI INVASION
The evidence being pulled up by some major left influencer accounts in north america for this being a US-Israel military maneuver includes hot-takes and clipped videos about most migrants being military aged-men.
This ironically parrots the exact same discourse that has long shaped far-right anti-migrant discourses in Europe.
Actually, the vast majority of migrants (upto 75 percent in some years) for the past twenty years on the western migration routes, especially Ceuta, Melilla,and Canary Islands, has been men aged 18-39.
Such takes also ignore the painful eye witness accounts that suggest that those who did die en route (at least 67 people so far, with many bodies still being recovered) were young children.
Most fundamentally, such takes completely ignore that, across state & imperial geopolitics, migrants do have some degree of agency, that undeniably there were refugees and migrants who crossed, that migrants do otherwise regularly attempt to cross and die crossing at Ceuta, and that migrants in and/or from Morocco are regularly waiting for favourable crossing conditions (whether state or legal or smuggler engineered).
We can't deny that many migrants themselves have reported that they acted based on information (that was unfortunately incorrect) about Spain's recent supreme court ruling regarding expulsions.
Completely erasing the overall dynamics of migration from the conversation is mind-boggling.
Before the latest round of arrivals, at least 27 people died trying to reach Ceuta and overall 247 people have died on the western route since early 2026.
Even if one were to …The current Spanish government is more pro-Palestine than the Moroccan monarchy, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020 and joined Trump's Gaza Peace Board this year.
However, we shouldn't only understand what is happening through the analytic of US hegemony or Israel. In particular, we must hold the centrality of Western Sahara as a struggle for self-determination on it's own terms, rather than as secondary analytic to US-Israeli imperialism.
This is especially true because Spain has actually fluctuated it position on Western Sahara over the years.
In 2021 Spain reversed its position supporting an independent referendum in Western Sahara and ended up backing Morocco's plans for Western Sahara after Morocco eased its border and 8,000 people entered Ceta (Morocco's response to Spain admitting Brahim Ghali of Polisario Front for treatment). Then, Algeria severed it's relationship with Spain because of Spain's reversal on Western Sahara (including cutting off gas pipeline access). At the same time, Spain re-opened the Moroccan-European pipeline (under the same govt of Pedro Sanchez).
Only recently have Algeria and Spain re-established relations, though Spain has yet to reverse it's position on Western Sahara.
Days ago, Morocco named a 1,055km highway cutting over Western Sahara after Trump. But Morocco is not simply a client state of the US or Israel. Morocco is an occupying power with consistent territorial expansion and control over Western Sahara.
It is this context of Western Sahara, and Algerian-Spanish state relations, that is most likely driving Moroccan state interests and their weaponizing migration as a strategic tool of political pressure onto Spain.
4) "MIGRANT FLOOD"
While the far-right stokes the manufactured language of "migrant crisis," some on the left are playing into the idea of migrants being "pawns" and imperialist powers "flooding" Spain with migrants.
Different state & capitalist interests are **always** manufacturing and controlling irregular…As usual, geopolitical hot takes ignore and erase especially Black African migrants, despite the reality of what's happening on the ground. ELIN reports that most don't have food, hygiene access, and many need medical attention. This is the reality of what's happening on the ground
- and at border sites everywhere - and what needs our solidarity and mutual aid (donate to them & no name kitchen if you are able).
The biggest beneficiaries through are the far-right across Europe who are stoking anti-migrant, anti-Muslim racism. Italy's far right PM Giorgia Meloni, for example, has temporarily suspended it's Schengen arrangement with Spain, backed by Finland and Denmark - even though Ceuta isn't even in the Schengen zone. And Spain has been a recent outlier in EU policy not only with respect to Palestine, but also faced EU backlash for it's recent regularization program.
Yet, in the past day, Spain and Germany's centrist responses have been to "assure" the EU that the borders are fortified, and "not a single migrant who landed in Ceuta has reached the mainland of Europe." This rebuttal simply buttresses the premise of border securitization. The Spanish government has also blamed the surge on smuggling and trafficking networks - something to be extremely vigilant about because one of the main methods of criminalizing migration in the EU today is through anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling initiatives.
Immigration is arguably a much more divisive issue in Spain (across party lines) than Palestinian liberation is, and is thus much more likely to be manipulated in the upcoming elections.
In Ceuta itself in the past day, Nazi organizations and figures, like Alvise Perez or those from Nucleo Nacional, have descended in Ceuta to foster racism and division and to literally hunt migrants who are remaining. But residents of Ceuta, many Muslim, Chrisitan, and/or of Moroccan descent, have been rallying today against this while chanting "Ceuta antifascista!" and "Fuera fachas do nue…
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Reposted by slm
Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! @standplaatskrk.pl · 05/07/2026
Matt Olma (@matt_olma) on twitter: Some definitions for any who are confused.
Subjective: bad
Objective: good
Ontological: very
Valid: true
Metaphysical: ontological
A priori: without thinking on it too deeply
Deontological: prudishPostmodern: bad in a French way
Continental: bad in a German way
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
my boss found my secret cheese drawer and threw everything out. devastated
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
this is what formal epistemology talks are like
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
lads phd in fifa vacancy just dropped
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
walking around my apartment so exhausted my partner said it’s like i’m carrying too much in skyrim
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
after 10 months unemployment, i got a job!! and it genuinely does some good in the world! (not philosophy obv lmao)
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
with this grant i will literally achieve nirvana
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I forgot how spicy it was tbh
A tweet from me: "In this paper I will examine instances of scientists shouting "Die nigger die!" as they indiscriminately spray machine gun fire into jazz clubs. I will argue that this is evidence of racial bias which leads to a distinctive harm, that I term "epistemic literal actual murder", "
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
finished my phd dissertation today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
in my succumbing era
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
i bring a kind of rube goldberg machine energy to my thesis that my supervisors just don’t appreciate
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
the boy who cried ‘the thesis is almost finished’
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Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · 02/10/2023
October is here let's go
Animorphs cover with George Costanza turning into soup
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
sure hugs are nice but i’m never 100% confident in the arm configuration i have chosen and i fear that one day it will have consequences
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 20/10/2024
the dutch weather app everyone uses has a setting called ’bbq’, no one knows what the colours or numbers mean but my guess is vibes
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Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
A police car but the siren goes “wow wow wow wow” in Owen Wilson’s voice
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 08/09/2024
lmao
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 07/09/2024
social critique ah you mean fancy complaining
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 06/09/2024
i miss butt dials. the intimacy of it
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 05/09/2024
on the job market for a poastdoc position
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 04/09/2024
more of a comment than a question? ok well this is more of an ok bro than a response
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 04/09/2024
can't even sleep anymore. because of woke
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 04/09/2024
evergreen
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Nate's Myth @natesmith.dev · 03/09/2024
maybe I can change things by worrying about them harder
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
no, habermas, please, haberless
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sky @iamspacegirl.bsky.social · 28/08/2024
the first rule of don’t fight club is let’s talk about it
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Spooky Sara (Endless Halloween🔪🩸🪦) @pashion.bsky.social · 24/08/2024
Agents Scully and Mulder from the xfiles they are leaning forward wearing Adidas track suits that are dark blue and white  x-files they both have cigarettes in their mouths and a bottle of absolut vodka this Pic rocks
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Possum Acquainter @possumacquainter.bsky.social · 25/08/2023
(lying down horizontally) Oh jesus god this fucking rules. God damn. God damn this is so fucking good
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 23/08/2024
phd campaign turning out surprisingly well given how nerfed my character build is
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
how much should one apologise in advance to one’s thesis committee
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 19/08/2024
my neighbours complain about my nightly tambourine playing but they fail to realise that every night i am simply not sleepy nor is there a place i am going to
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 19/08/2024
political theorists talk a big talk about false consciousness and still submit to academic journals smh
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 18/08/2024
well well well how the tables have turned i say after flipping my desk over having given up on my writing
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 18/08/2024
i feel like as a society we never took sculpting shrubbery into animals and objects to its full potential
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 18/08/2024
phd defense ❌ phd defenestration ✅
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 27/07/2024
who up getting their hood winked
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 26/07/2024
are they gonna light the olympic flame with a cigarette
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 26/07/2024
the olympic hosts always play up their national culture in the opening ceremony and this year in paris they did *checks notes* a ménage à trois
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 25/07/2024
the cat is biting me by the collar and dragging me to your front door, should i be worried
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 24/07/2024
my mind is a protagonist but my body is an npc, therein lies the problem
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 24/07/2024
yo so i never got those hugs you sent ….
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slm @sadhominem.bsky.social · 23/07/2024
academic conferences should have poaster sessions
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Reposted by slm
Kai Arzheimer @kai-arzheimer.com · 23/07/2024
#Sociologists be like
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