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Adam Serwer 🍝 Profile picture
Adam Serwer 🍝
@AdamSerwer
Staff Writer, @TheAtlantic Ideas. adam@theatlantic.com. Order THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT here: https://t.co/JryuLIO8yR 🟡🐺🔴
18 subscribers
Sep 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Good morning. Today the paperback of THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT hits shelves. When I wrote the piece that shares its name with the book, I hoped that the phrase would become obsolete. But unfortunately it remains a relevant descriptor in our politics. randomhousebooks.com/books/665171/ The CRUELTY IS THE POINT is an essay collection about the historical and ideological roots of the Trump era. The softcover contains new material on the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and the future of Trump-style politics.
Jan 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is idiotic. People do not have to go to sporting events. They do have to go to work. supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf… Image There’s really no difference between Trump tweeting executive orders at his television while watching fox news and this.
Jul 10, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Today, the statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, after years of protest. It was the inspiration for 2017's white supremacist rally, where activist Heather Heyer was killed. This is long overdue. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/r… The true Lee has long been hidden behind a fog of nostalgia. Months prior to the rally, I wrote about Lee's canonization as a reluctant, anti-slavery Confederate—part of the postwar propaganda push to whitewash secession and justify the Jim Crow system. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Jul 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I write about this in THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT but once black men could no longer vote it drastically changed the character of the party and if this disenfranchisement project succeeds the Dems will change substantially as well. The point of this project is not simply to insulate their power from the public, it is to engineer the electorate to be narrow enough that even when they lose the rival party is restrained by the character of the populations who retain meaningful political influence.
Jul 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This left wing political correctness is getting out of control Starting to think that maybe these guys aren’t as big on free speech and rigorous factual inquiry as they said
Jun 26, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
A few years ago I wrote an essay titled "The Cruelty Is The Point" on Trump's approach to politics and policy. On Tuesday, my book sharing that title is being published. Today in the @nytimes, I explain why Trumpist politics didn't end with his defeat. nytimes.com/2021/06/26/opi… Image Cruelty is a part of human nature; we're all capable of it. But in American history, its elevation to a virtue in politics is strongly associated with attempts to deny people their fundamental rights, from the Founding, to Reconstruction, to the Civil Rights Movement to now.
Apr 30, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I am very excited to share the cover for my forthcoming book: The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump's America, which is coming out on June 29. You can preorder here: bit.ly/3psRSrr

I hope you'll buy a copy and encourage others to the same! TCITP contains some of my Atlantic essays, but is mostly new material, including new pieces on the politics of police unions and the myth that European immigrants at the turn of the century came to America "the right way," among others.
Apr 12, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Baldwin’s remark that “Urban renewal is negro removal” is 60 years old, but when mocking actual history as “wokism” gone mad, it helps for both the mocker and their audience to be completely ignorant of that history. Relies on it. Yes I get it, it really sounds crazy that white planners would destroy entire black neighborhoods to build a road. It still happened. theatlantic.com/business/archi…
Jan 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Good to finally hear from the vanguard of the proletariat Worker’s Party
Jan 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Before cell phone cameras, de jure and de facto segregation made it hard for non-black Americans to pierce the veil and see the disparate treatment black people experience at the hands of the police. Their own experiences may have made black complaints seem impossible. In recent years that veil has been pierced by technology, and it has opened many people’s views to a reality they were previously unable to see. At the same time, it has sparked a movement in favor of impunity for armed agents of the state who abuse their powers.
Nov 25, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
They’re not mad that Obama said there are religiously conservative Latinos who vote Republican (though that’s not why Trump improved his vote share among Latinos.) They’re mad because Obama called Trump racist, a description that logically extends to the people who voted for him. In other words the thing they’re actually mad about is white people being called racist, which they find outrageous and offensive, especially from the black former president who should shut up and be grateful. Trump’s racism though, is fine.
Sep 9, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
So there are LOTS of differences between the U.S. after the Civil War and right now, as Adam says (and my argument is not that this is a 1:1 comparison, but that we are potentially at a similar crossroads in terms of potential for progress) But I actually want to respond by focusing on something that is maybe underappreciated about how little things had changed in the immediate aftermath, politically. In 1868, the Dems run Horatio Seymour on their classic themes of white supremacy and economic populism.
Sep 4, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A couple of tells of a bad faith argument: one is you don’t name the person you’re arguing with, another is that you falsely paraphrase the argument because quoting it accurately would refute the point being made. The piece actually argues that Farrakhan is a fringe figure who retains a certain amount of support despite his bigotry because of NOI’s work among particularly impoverished communities, and because his white critics lack the standing to discredit him.
Apr 15, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think some of you are overstating the political brilliance of Trump putting his name on too-small stimulus checks that are gonna arrive late, or be direct deposited and possibly clawed back by banks, and be insufficient to sustain people through worsening economic conditions. If the economy recovers in time, Trump may get a lot of credit. If it doesn’t, whatever measures he pursued are likely to seem insufficient. Idk what will happen in November but people know who the incumbent is and crude branding isn’t gonna make much of a difference.
Apr 5, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Best not to look into this. Best not look into this. https://t.co/mjTfp0ygEX
Apr 5, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This doesn’t even make sense on its own terms, unless you were going out of your way to avoid finding any fault with how the Trump administration handled this because it’s all related. This isn’t even “not playing politics.” It’s playing politics by avoiding questions that are of obvious public interest because you want to avoid the impression you’d do anything to oppose the president mismanaging a plague and economic collapse.