Tweet

@Jo_Livingstone

More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

17 Sep

https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1438656654342557697

1. Bob Woodward is indeed very good good at selling books. But having read the two previous books he's written on Trump, I want to extend a few cautions about his new book and its supposedly earth-shattering revelations about General Milley.

https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1438656654342557697

2. Woodward is best seen as the ne plus ultra of access journalism elevating the form away from daily journalism into a kind of court history. Like all court historians, he relies on the gossip of courtiers. This has some value, but courtiers tend to be self-serving.

3. It's usually fairly easy to figure out which courtiers Woodward is relying on: they tend to be the ones who are shown in a heroic light as the pivots of momentous events. In Fear, Rob Porter & Gary Cohn allegedly saved us from Trump's worst instincts.

Read 6 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

15 Sep

1. I often think about Anne Applebaum's argument that the collapse of the 1990s neo-liberal consensus is due to "the losers of the competition" created by meritocracy revolting against the system. As an precursor to this, she cited Apartheid South Africa created by loser Boers.

2. Applebaum's argument, found in her recent book Twilight of Democracy & excerpted in the Atlantic, is a perfect distillation of the elite centrist worldview: that all anti-systems politics is just sour grapes, that Bernie=Trump, that meritocracy is real, etc.

3. The South African example lays out the ludicrous assumption: that the British Empire was a meritocracy & Boers were resentful louts. In fact, apartheid was one extreme variation of racist state found in white settler colonies like Australia, Canada & (ahem) USA.

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

14 Sep

1. The appearance of an English language magazine called Hungarian Conservative (available in newsstands all over the Anglosphere) reflects a curious inversion of the 1990s, when Westerners of all sorts (liberals as well as conservatives) flooded Eastern Europe as missionaries

2. In the current moment when USA confidence is flat on the floor, it's weird to recall the giddy decade after 1989 when Americans (and Westerners of all sorts) parachuted into the former Eastern bloc with advice on modernization.

3. The imperial hubris of the 1990s shared not just by conservatives but also (perhaps more so) by centrists like Anne Applebaum and liberals like Larry Summers. They knew what ailed Eastern Europe and had all sorts of remedies, quack or otherwise, to sell.

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

13 Sep

@benyt

1. The @benyt piece from last night highlights Michael Wolff's seeming revelation about Steve Bannon doing p.r. consulting for Jeffrey Epstein & also asks about Wolff's own habit of hanging out with the likes of Epstein. There's more to this story.

@joshtpm

2. Bannon doing p.r. work for Epstein raises more questions than answers, frankly. As @joshtpm notes, Epstein could have hired anyone in crisis management & that's not part of Bannon's skill set. Wolff's own relationship with Epstein suggests something more.

3. Wolff's Epstein ties are numerous. They met in late 1990s (Wolff's starry-eyed account part of 2007 New York magazine report), in 2003 Wolff organized an attempt to buy New York magazine with partnership of Epstein & Harvey Weinstein.

Read 5 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

10 Sep

1. It's interesting to compare this New York Times op ed by Sami Sadat claiming Afghan forces betrayed by USA with this New Yorker account Sadat as a commander.

2. There's nothing new, of course, with the Times giving op ed space to alleged war criminals (paging Doctor Kissinger). But the larger issue is that on Afghanistan, the media's go to experts are either USA military or American allies in Afghan government

3. The Western media covered Afghanistan the way it often covers the global South: with westernized, USA-aligned urban voices being elevated. Big problem in a predominately rural country where USA-led coalition never won allegiance of hinterland.

Read 4 tweets

Jeet Heer

@HeerJeet

16 Aug

1. What are the long term implications of the American right's flirtation with Orbanism? Tucker Carlson's shows are interesting in suggesting there is a mass audience for this politics but I think the longer lasting impact is going to be in cadre formation among elite.

2. Before Orban, there was Franco. A significant subset of National Review right, led by William F. Buckley's brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell, exalted the Spanish fascist as offering a viable and desirable alternative.

3. Bozell broke with Buckley and has been unfairly relegated into sidelines of history, but he represented an important, innovative branch of right that has had a lasting legacy: the integralist right (now joined by Protestant theocrats).

Read 4 tweets

Share this page!

Jeet Heer

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?