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David Austin Walsh Profile picture
David Austin Walsh
Postdoc @UVA. I study far-right politics, political culture, conservatism, labor, and political economy. Book: TAKING AMERICA BACK // Yale Press
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Feb 16 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Tried to play a text RPG with ChatbotGPT but it is lamely not letting me shoot Nikolai Yezhov in the head with my service pistol. ChatbotGPT is now reprimanding me for plotting with Yezhov to assassinate Stalin.
Feb 13 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It is a serious problem that the online far right is actively signal-boosting the East Palestine disaster, for several reasons. One, given the mainstream media's general lack of interest in the story -- and the silence from the federal government -- it means that far-right media are filling in a reporting vacuum.
Feb 5 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Which suggests that the Chinese spy balloon story is a manufactured panic that reflects deep-seated desires among elements of the establishment for conflict with China and also makes such a conflict more likely. I have been and will continue to be critical of left/anti-war apologetics for Russia and their corresponding tendency to portray the United States as the only actor in international politics with meaningful agency, but that analysis doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Feb 4 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I think there are two things worth unpacking here.

First, it's unclear whether or not 2024 will be a "red-wave year." 2022 was supposed to a red wave and... it turned out otherwise. 22 months is a *loooong* time in politics. But the more substantive point is about Florida's fascism speed run, because it is true that DeSantis and Trump are the lead contenders for the 2024 GOP primary, and crucially DeSantis got to this point by positioning himself to Trump's *right.*
Jan 25 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People are making fun of the Proud Boys for their arcane ejaculation rules, but can we talk about how their meeting handbook opens with an extended passage from Pat Buchanan’s THE DEATH OF THE WEST? Image I love how non-American chapters are exempt from reading aloud the section on how great the U.S. is.
Jan 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Excited to announce that you can now find me on @threadablebooks, the new iOS social media app that features interactive marginalia on new and classic books. I’ll be leading a “circle” (think: reading group) on guns and gun culture in America. threadablenative.page.link/2VM9MFvG8LwV6Q… We’ll be reading some new stuff and some old classics in the app (alas, not @PatBlanchfield’s forthcoming, since it isn’t out yet), all revolving around the question of why *do* Americans love their guns so much?
Jan 21 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is mostly the B.S. you'd expect from the likes of Rufo, but it is significant -- and to my mind concerning -- that the authors take pains to frame their opposition to DEI as -- in part -- a crusade against administrative bloat and spiraling tuition costs. Obviously--as anyone who has worked in higher ed. or even just gone to college at any time in the past 25 years can attest--administrative bloat and spiraling costs *long predate* the rise of DEI bureaucracies and is, in part, the consequence of state divestment in higher ed....
Dec 14, 2022 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
If we take the claim seriously -- and I think it's worth doing -- there are three major explanations for this shift floating around out there. The first -- which is the most common on the right, but you see centrists dudes make this case, too -- is to argue that the SV shift is due to wokeness run amok, a reaction to an intransigent and stultifying left-wing political culture.
Nov 9, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
The data point he’s referring to is that young people apparently really aren’t into this whole fascism thing. Granted, Angry Baseball Man isn't exactly a huge influencer in the conservative movement, but the concession here -- that you actually have to have a majoritarian basis for picking culture war fights -- is significant.
Oct 30, 2022 • 24 tweets • 8 min read
A huge part of the significance of Kanye's anti-Semitism is that it's a melding of Black nationalist/capitalist anti-Semitism and right-wing conspiratorial anti-Semitism that is apparently now going mainstream.🧵 So, I think it's worth revisiting James Baldwin's famous essay on Black anti-Semitism: "Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White." Written at a time of Jewish anxieties about the "new anti-Semitism" emerging from black nationalist circles. archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co… Image