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Tanja Bueltmann

@tanjabueltmann.net
14K followers 662 following 790 posts

Professor | history of migration and diaspora | citizens' rights | commentator | immigrant | trans inclusive feminist | she•they | my views | tanjabueltmann.net

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 06/08/2026
The far right agenda is not a grievance that can ever be settled. That is why we are where we are now, a place where there is a live conversation about who is a 'white Briton' as per below. I am not clear what it will take for people to understand the seriousness of the situation because ...
Restore Britain's Rupert Lowe declines to say whether King is a 'white Briton'

Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe has declined to say, when asked, whether he thinks the King is a “white Briton”.

It comes after Lowe said “white Britons will become a minority by 2063” in a video in which he offered to work with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The BBC’s Nick Robinson asked Lowe about the issue on the Today programme on Thursday, noting that the forecast he referred to defines a white Briton as someone whose parents were both born in the UK.

Robinson told the Restore Britain leader that “because Prince Philip was born in Greece, King Charles is not, under your definition, treated as a white Briton”.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 20/07/2026
Unless this “honesty” involves the recognition that immigrants are *not* the root cause of the UK’s problems *but* actually a part of the solution to them, this will be completely pointless. I cannot stress this enough. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Burnham to say UK must be honest about its challenges as he prepares to become PM
Labour leader will visit king to accept role on Monday and will start making cabinet appointments that afternoon
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 24/06/2026
24 June 2016. The day after when EU citizens across the UK were told to ‘go home’; when the then PM said he would not protect our rights. Stories largely forgotten. BLEA - Brexit Lived Experience Archive - which I am launching today, is here to preserve this history. #Brexit brexit.migravox.org
brexit.migravox.org
Home - BLEA
BLEA. Brexit Lived Experience Archive Documenting experiences. Personal experiences provide valuable insights into how Brexit is lived and understood by those directly affected. Recording these accoun...
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 10/06/2026
There are, in my view, 25 things everyone needs to understand in light of recent events: 1) Those out in our communities last night were not protestors, but organised far right extremists. 2) Their actions align with fascist ideologies. 3) So yes: these are fascist practices on our streets. 🧵
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 22/05/2026
Most importantly: as a cis woman; a feminist; a historian - this will *never* be in my name. Then: an equalities body that chooses to exclude a specific group; chooses to limit human rights of one community - it is an equalities body that has already dismantled itself and any legitimacy with it.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 16/05/2026
The state of things. A thread 🧵
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 04/10/2025
It’s easy to say that this is the last desperate hurrah of a dying party, but can we be clear: Trump’s ICE agents are literally kidnapping people, detaining them without due process in concentration camps (yes, this is the right term) and 1000s have disappeared. These are fascist practices.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 29/09/2025
When I was a teenager there was a bus direct from my hometown in Germany to London - we had a British army base, and this direct bus connection was one of the benefits of that. One summer I went on that bus to go volunteer in an old people's home in Southend-on-Sea. I had just turned 18 and was... 🧵
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 12/05/2025
My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration
Slightly amended so I can fit this here: 

I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame!

I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one.

I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. 

This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong.

Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues.

I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean?

Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way.

You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. 

Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces.

What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly.

The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. 

Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. 

Tanja Bueltmann
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 12/05/2025
You are a "citizen of nowhere", they said. A "queue-jumper", they said. Now I am a "squalid chapter", they say. A risk as I might make this an "island of strangers", they say. I am "pulling the country apart", they say.
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Dr Chris Noone @chris-noone.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Just out! Our peer-reviewed critique of the Cass Review has been published by BMC Medical Research Methodology. Please read and share. We show that the Cass Review is fatally flawed and should not be the basis for policy or practice in transgender healthcare. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 08/05/2025
As a German I will forever be grateful to all who fought for the liberation of Europe. But as a historian I am looking at front pages today and must wonder: What is the point of remembering #VEDay 80 years on, what is the point of our thanks, when we are failing to protect the sacrifices made? 🧵
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 03/05/2025
Essentially *all* research and expert assessments show that this does not work. It will not counter Farage, but literally push votes towards Reform. It genuinely is impossible to overstate how profoundly stupid and strategically illiterate this decision is. You cannot out-Reform Reform.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 28/03/2025
While so many continue to pretend that it’s not fascism that we’re seeing in the US, here’s Trump continuing his policies of Gleichschaltung. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Trump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museums
The order says that
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 23/02/2025
I know we all love a dose of hopium, especially now. But the take, which I see all across here, that the far right was defeated in Germany tonight because 80% of Germans voted for other parties is very misleading and unhelpful. Understanding this really matters. 🧵
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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
This isn’t some rant saying “Germany has learned nothing from its past” - the reality is more subtle than that. Middle-class Germans live and travel with an incredible amount of ease and comfort, and they just got…sleepy. Many of them dismissed the far-right’s rage as just another set of complaints.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 06/02/2025
As an immigrant who chose to make my home in the UK—but also as someone who is a migration historian and researches the impact of dog-whistle politics—there is no way for me to overstate how wrong and disgusting these ads by the UK Labour Party are. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Labour launches ads in Reform-style branding to boast about deportations
Exclusive: Some MPs and activists upset at tone of party’s Facebook campaign aimed at countering Farage
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JoJoFromJerz @jojofromjerz.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
If you don’t think this is exactly what we’re up against, then you haven’t been paying attention.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 30/11/2024
It is not an overstatement when I say that I could genuinely weep: this is 100% the *exact opposite* of what they need to do: you cannot out-Reform the Reform Party. The only thing this will do is drive more voters to Reform: voters always choose the original. *Every* bit of research shows that. 🧵
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Peter Baker @peterbakernyt.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
"You are an abuser of women": The searing email that Pete Hegseth's own mother sent him in 2018 accusing him of sleeping around, cheating on his wife and debasing and belittling women. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/u...
nytimes.com
Text of the Email That Pete Hegseth’s Mother Sent Him
Penelope Hegseth sent the email to her son in 2018 as he was in the middle of divorcing his wife, Samantha.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Let me state this is bluntly as I can, as a biographer of both Donald Trump and Elon Musk: Vladimir Putin is now inside the U.S. government, with visibility into absolutely everything. He has that access through Trump, Musk, and David Sacks. We are fully infiltrated. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/u...
nytimes.com
Elon Musk Puts His Imprint on the Trump Transition at Mar-a-Lago
He’s on the patio. He’s on the golf course. Everywhere Donald Trump looks, there is the world’s richest man.
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The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
A quick social experiment. The same tweet, posted at the same time on here and on Twitter, commenting on @joannahs.bsky.social’s brilliant piece on the exodus of criminal barristers. Bluesky replies on the left. Twitter on the right.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
I cannot tell you how truly bizarre it feels to not have crypto ads and porn bots and foreign trolls and people who hate Jews in any of my comment fields here And also, simultaneously, to not to feel like political content is being throttled Bluesky is feeling very breath-of-fresh-air-y right now
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
The rate at which Bluesky is growing is absolutely astonishing
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
What's gonna happen, if they really believe that unis have no quality audit, that they 'bank' money, that the lack of a general numbers cap is the problem, is that they'll crash the entire system and then go 'wail wail why is this happening no-one told us'. (2/2) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
England's universities flex their muscles to hike fees, while students get a bum deal | Sonia Sodha
Canny PR suggests critics are against aspiration but who is policing the spread of poor-quality degrees?
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Still appalled by this piece from the w/end. If civil servants and Ministers believe this funhouse mirror version of reality, topsy-turvey, upsy-downy and almost wholly false, they are going to get into deep, deep trouble. You can't help some people, but 😬. (1/2) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
England's universities flex their muscles to hike fees, while students get a bum deal | Sonia Sodha
Canny PR suggests critics are against aspiration but who is policing the spread of poor-quality degrees?
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 07/11/2024
I posted a last thread on Twitter which I think is worth sharing an adapted version of here: ❗️ Democracy does not actually die in darkness: it dies in broad daylight because of the choices people make. Historians have been telling you that since forever. FFS: Listen more to your historians!
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 22/02/2024
They’re not even bothering to hide it now: Jack Posobiec at CPAC: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.” America, please don’t treat this election as normal politics.
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Chris Kendall @ottocr.at · 17/02/2024
It would be a good use of five minutes of your time to read the speech given by Daria Navalnaya to the European Parliament in December 2021 when she received the Sakharov Prize on behalf of her father, Aleksei Navalny. Note the date, two months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
europarl.europa.eu
Verbatim report of proceedings - Award of the Sakharov Prize (formal sitting) - Wednesday, 15 December 2021
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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 10/02/2024
Weekend reading: I wrote about Republicans lusting for civil war or “national divorce.” It’s a manifestation of the Right’s radical rejection of pluralism. They’ll have their “real America” - or none. Short thread, based on the piece below: 🧵/1
thomaszimmer.substack.com
Domination or Dissolution, Rule or Ruin
The Right is fantasizing about secession, “national divorce,” and civil war – because they will not, under any circumstance, accept pluralism.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 05/02/2024
I wasn’t going to swear here but bloody hell what the actual f and all that … Depraved. Completely rotten to the core. Who even thinks of betting on the lives of people??? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
independent.co.uk
Sunak accused of ‘new low’ after betting £1,000 on Rwanda flights
PM slammed over ‘crude and depraved’ bet during Piers Morgan interview – and reported to officials over potential breach of ministerial rules
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 18/01/2024
No anti-migrant policy—not in the UK, not anywhere else in Europe—will benefit the local population. If anything, the opposite is true. And yet, politicians keep pursuing anti-migrant policies because it’s easy to do: ‘the other’ is always a great distraction. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/j...
theguardian.com
Crises have split European voters into five ‘tribes’, survey suggests
Attitudes to climate, migration, global economic turmoil, Ukraine and Covid will dominate this year’s elections, research indicates
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 16/01/2024
If you understand German: I highly recommend this new documentary. One of the contributors told me that it might be made available in English too — hopefully, as it’s very important history. “Forbidden Love - Queer Victims of the Nazi Dictatorship”. 🔗 www.zdf.de/dokumentatio...
zdf.de
Verbotene Liebe - Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur
Warum wurden Schwule, Lesben und Transpersonen im Nationalsozialismus verfolgt? Die Dokumentation zeigt, wie die Nazis queere Menschen terrorisierten.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
At last some coverage of the major cyber attack at the British Library and the impact this has had on researchers. It is a critical piece of national infrastructure. Worrying if they will have to spend 40% of their reserves on rebuilding their digital services on.ft.com/48FCP4T
on.ft.com
British Library to burn through reserves to recover from cyber attack
London-based institution faces spending millions of pounds to rebuild most digital services
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 04/12/2023
The Conservatives — limiting your future further every single day.
Screenshot of a news headline about the new immigration rules. It says: ‘Most UK nationals unable to bring home a foreign spouse under new migration rules’
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 02/11/2023
I wrote about Policy Exchange's laughable and error-ridden "report" on academic freedom (which claimed among other nonsense that someone was sacked for "failing to approve" of a photo of Jeremy Corbyn) here www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The rightwing defence of 'academic freedom' masks a McCarthyite agenda | Jonathan Portes
Are rightwing academics being silenced? The Policy Exchange thinktank says they are – and has plans for cracking down, says professor of economics Jonathan Portes
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 01/11/2023
This morning I wrote to UKRI to inform them of my resignation from the UKRI Talent PRC with immediate effect. My decision to resign is a direct result of the letter from the UKRI CEO published here www.ukri.org/news/respons... yesterday. I attach my resignation letter for information.
Full text of my letter unfortunately too long to fully copy for all images, so here is a summary that captures the essence; I am having to spread this across the images as not enough space here:

I argue that I expected UKRI to express concern in terms of wellbeing and safety issues that the public singling out of two academics might cause, and to confirm EDI as a core mission of UKRI. 

I then say that the UKRI CEO's response is anything but, setting a chilling precent that precedent that documents that UKRI is prepared not only to bow to government pressure, but to identify EDI as immediately dispensable in the process.I then continue to explain why I think this is so concerning. I note that such developments are not happening in isolation given the recent pledge at the Conservative Party conference to to ‘kick woke ideology out of science’, and examples from elsewhere that document that the government is moniroting those critical of government policy.I end by asking about where this will end and saying that I cannot serve in an org that makes such choices.
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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 23/10/2023
Still ‘living’ in the alternate universe that is book writing, so not much from me here yet. But this wee robin (no hidden nod to birdsite!) I managed to capture is too lovely not to share. Birds are of course also a great symbol of migration, so very fitting. Anyway: hello folks …more coming soon!
Photograph of a European robin in a tree. The robin is sitting on a small branch and looks quite “puffy” and round. There are some green and yellow-ish leaves on the branches around the bird.
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