Gavin Jacobson
@GavJacobson
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"The terrifying thought that strikes you while watching the film is that we have already crossed some kind of historical event horizon and are living in that eternal present." I wrote about the enduring power of Alfonso Cuarón’s 'Children of Men'
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Condolences to the University of Chicago Economics department
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Worst coup ever, which is surprising given how much practice Americans have had in Latin America.
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Mike Sonenscher wrote the two most radical, and brilliant, interpretations of the French Revolution since Furet. His next book looks just as ambitious and original (cc @adam_tooze)
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Gramsci's birthday today. Here's his 1918 article on why football would never take off in Italy.
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My wife wanted to us to stay in and watch the Tooze vs Ferguson bout at the WEF and I think we’ve reached both the highest stage in our relationship and transcended the Netflix and chill phenomenon
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Towards an unscientific theory of a certain type of reader I’m calling “Waterstones Dad”, and a screed against the rather impoverished state of popular nonfiction. Let the hate mail begin
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“There is nothing God-given or ‘natural’ about money, but it is constantly treated as if it were beyond human intervention, something to whose order we submit.” Great piece by @GeoffPMann on @stefeich’s superb new book
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Fascinating piece by Alberto Toscano that traces the origins of the US right’s obsession with Gramsci:
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Arno Mayer has died. Here is Enzo Traverso’s piece from February on what made him such a brilliant historian . Arno J Mayer’s 20th century. The historian helped transform the writing of history – and with it our understanding of the modern world.
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"As for Applebaum’s allegation – for which she offered no evidence – Mearsheimer would presumably shrug." Must read piece by @adam_tooze on John Mearsheimer and the origins of realism:
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‘In a world-system that is collapsing because its possibilities of structural adjustment have been exhausted, those with power and privilege will not stand idly by.’ The great Immanuel Wallerstein in the @LRB in 2000. RIP
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the US does not have the labor force to produce the number of Javelins requested by Ukraine, even after Ukraine burned through a putative 5-year supply in the first 6 months of the war. It also consumed what was meant to be a 6-yr supply of Stinger missiles in just 10 months.
Why can’t Ukraine get the weapons it needs from the United States?The problems lie in the history of the U.S. defense industry since World War II. My latest for @ForeignAffairs.
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This evening, I published an appreciation of Noam Chomsky by @yanisvaroufakis. This was obviously a stupid and embarrassing mistake and I'd like to extend my apologies to Yanis and the Chomsky family.
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"Other than wars of national liberation, one is hard pressed to name a single war of aggression since 1914 that has yielded clearly positive results for the first mover. A realism that fails to recognise that fact. does not deserve the name." @adam_tooze
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"The question posed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is whether the spell of the end of History has finally been broken." Epic piece from @adam_tooze on wars of choice and why we may owe @FukuyamaFrancis a giant apology
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A rather overexcited web developer at the Seattle Times
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I like this period
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24 hours on this vandal should be in a cell, facing prison. When these acts go unpunished, more are emboldened. And instead of “regret” from Trinity College, how about condemning it?. Our institutions need to stop kowtowing to those who hate our country.
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Feel like it’s necessary to keep reposting this for as long as editors continue to publish this abominable dipshit
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“People who study cults sometimes end up joining them. Has this fate befallen Matthew Goodwin, one of Britain’s most visible scholars of the hard right?” Superb essay @EagletonOliver
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Superb piece by Richard Bourke on how Hegel’s analysis of humanity as stumbling from one horror to the next remains all too relevant.
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Approaching what @leninology calls “disaster nationalism”:
2016: Brexit will improve your lives. 2018: Project fear. 2021: The following food shortages are actually good-
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My only Verso take is that it’s good to see this series making a comeback next year.
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Brilliant piece by @leninology on why Labour's conflation of power with being in office, and its resort to pints and flags gimmickry, dooms it to perma-defeat:
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“Israel banned The Battle of Algiers from public screening upon its release. But its historical lessons cannot so easily be ignored.” @EagletonOliver
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In 1995, Andrew Gamble wrote a brilliant article in NLR on the crisis of conservatism. To coincide with the opening of the NatCon conference today, I asked him to revisit the piece and reflect on what's happened to the party and tradition since
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Thanks for all of the support and kind words everyone. Got into the hospital eventually, and was there to see the birth of a beautiful boy!.
Being kept outside the hospital (because of pandemic lockdown rules) while your partner goes through the first and intermediate stages of labour by themselves is pretty shit I have to say.
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“You can tell matters are becoming really serious because Jürgen Habermas has entered the ring, for once on the side of the government.” @adam_tooze on Habermas and the debates raging in Germany over the idea of Zeitenwende
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“The underlying source of our disagreement, however, concerns the significance we each attribute to crisis.” @leninology responds to @adam_tooze in a brilliant piece on climate change and how we should avoid falling for a secular eschatology. A must read.
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Being kept outside the hospital (because of pandemic lockdown rules) while your partner goes through the first and intermediate stages of labour by themselves is pretty shit I have to say.
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“The political scientist Hedley Bull advised against the “tyranny of existing concepts and practices”, which made it hard for us to see emergent political forms. We are at such a spawn point now as old forms mutate under new conditions.” @zeithistoriker
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“no journal has remained so resolute in its status as the ur-mag of Anglophone liberalism”. I reviewed @zevin_a ‘s brilliant book on the history of The Economist for @NewStatesman:
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Which living philosophers *are* going to be read in 200 years time?.
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“From the beginning, Heidegger ensured that his legacy came with a death wish”. A superb essay on the German philosopher and his afterlives by @LyndseyStonebri
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The real End of History.
In 1956, the French government banned the serving of wine in school canteens.
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Personal news: next week is my last at the @NewStatesman. I’m beyond excited about what’s coming up, but for now I just want to give a shoutout to the amazing people at the magazine and thank all of the writers who worked with me over the last five years. It’s been a privilege!.
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“Where Crack-Up stands tallest, though, is amongst that expanding literature on the crisis of democracy. Slobodian has injected fresh revelation and energy into what had become a moth-eaten genre.” My interview-profile of @zeithistoriker
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"A new social character is emerging in modern Western societies: the libertarian-authoritarian personality – a dark by-product of late modernity." @onachtwey and @CAmlinger
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Is fascism really the "wave of the future"? A critical intervention by @GeoffPMann that situates the ongoing debate about fascism in the context of climate crisis and permanent emergency. Such a pleasure to work on this one.
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"the grand strategy of the US and its waning lickspittle across the Atlantic remains unchanged. What is different is that the perceived enemies of the West are much stronger than Saddam Hussein ever was." Brilliant piece by @blowbackpod co-host @nkulw
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"We are talking about a People - that fundamental component of modern politics the world over - that quite simply does not know how to speak for itself". Extraordinary piece from @shirkerism on why we're enthralled to the glamour of backwardness:
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“…each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilisation acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread”. Césaire
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Superb conversation between @KaiserKuo and @adam_tooze on the rise of China, which builds on Adam's NS essay from July
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A pleasure to arrange this symposium of writers on what it means to be Jewish and on the left today. Some brilliant reflections from @faniaoz, @SamAdlerBell, @katforrester, @YairWallach, @IBJIYONGI, @_ryanruby_, @bartov_omer, Shlomo Sand, and others
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I think a lot of the pushback against this piece was for similar reasons
Exactly how I felt after 9/11. Ignatieff even once admitted that Chomsky was right about Iraq but then said that the fact that he was right “so quickly “ made him morally suspect.
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Enzo Traverso writes on the life, thought and method of one of the outstanding historians of our time:
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Phenomenal piece by @nikhil_palsingh, surveying the American scene through its obsession with the prospect of civil war (and the Civil War) and how that fixation defers the hard work of saving democracy itself. One of the best things we’ve ever published.
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'To put it Albert Hirschman’s terms, we are seeing a generalised “exit” rather than the traditional “voice” of strikes and organised labour. People are revolting, but as individuals rather than as a class'. Great piece by @DanielZamoraV
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Wondering what Perry Anderson is making of this year's Eurovision.
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“like any true intellectual, he never grew out of his childhood passions”. Brilliant piece on the late @davidgraeber
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“Daredevil economics is nothing more than the undead zombie neoliberalism of the 1990s. The monstrosity of Milei is not his cartoonish novelty but his deadening familiarity. A new haircut on the same old monsters.” @zeithistoriker
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At the start of my interview with John Ganz yesterday, I warned him that my 4 year old was off nursery sick and might come in and disturb us at some point during the conversation and this is how the transcription app summarised it.
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“One lesson of Christopher Clark’s magnificent new narrative of 1848 is a reminder of just how quickly liberals switched sides in throwing in their lot one more time with counter-revolutionary order”. Great review by @samuelmoyn
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An astonishing essay by @MadocCairns situating the life and work of JGA Pocock against the violent upheavals of American history. The latest instalment of a genre-defying series on key thinkers and intellectuals:
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Susan Neiman writes very powerfully on the.@mashagessen affair, Arendt, and the growing list of Jewish women who have been lambasted in Germany for criticising the Israeli government.
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Another example of the thoughtfulness, solidarity, and strategic common sense that define these protests.
People donate money and transit tickets for protesters at Hong Kong MTR subway stations #HongKongProtests #香港 #反送中
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Love it when contributors write "I think it reads much better now" when filing a second draft as if this is some kind of Jedi mind trick used to avoid another round of edits.
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The thesis of this book is about to get one hell of a peer review
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"Whereas Rousseau saw the garden as a place in which innocence could be regained, and Orwell thought of it as a place of safety from fascism and war, Adorno considered the garden a redoubt of fascist potential".
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“the toughest questions of all concern the implications of recognising climate change as a permanent feature of our politics.” @alybatt and @GeoffPMann respond to pieces on the climate emergency by @adam_tooze, @leninology, @meadwaj and @cedric_durand
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"More than economic necessity, the 'new politics of distribution' exemplified by cash transfers also arises from deeper, structural changes in our democracy." Brilliant piece from @AntonJaegermm and @DanielZamoraV on UBI and and “liquid” democracy.
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"But this was a fantasy".
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A brilliant essay by Peter E. Gordon on the relationship between Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wander above the Sea of Fog' and the history of ideas, and why the image is the height of reactionary kitsch:
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“If currency is conventionally thought of as an attribute of sovereignty, then this preponderance of the dollar would seem to confirm the continued existence of a US financial empire.” @adam_tooze on why the dollar is king
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About the most inappropriate news graphic imaginable and pure revelation for anyone who doubted the sickness of modern capitalism.
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