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Monica Marks Profile picture
Monica Marks
@MonicaLMarks
Prof of Middle East Politics @NYUAbuDhabi. Tunisia, Turkey, Gulf. PhD @StAntsCollege Oxford. Fulbright, Rhodes, @HarvardWCFIA. 14 yrs writing on Tunisia.
2 subscribers
Jul 8 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
This tweet & Grok’s clarifying replies beneath it are shocking, but not surprising.

Grok is Elon’s baby. He has a history, as I’ve shown here before, of spreading antisemitism. It was naive to think he’d allow Grok to be used to correct him, without going farther to co-opt it. Get a load of these screenshots. Grok is actively spreading rank antisemitism.

And people are using it as if it’s some kind of unbiased source approaching the calibre of Wikipedia… Image
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Jun 25 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I come at today’s NYC mayoral election having watched democratic backsliding in other countries where pro-democracy parties face a crisis of confidence, particularly from young people.

That’s made me assess Cuomo-Mamdani risks differently than many friends here do.

A short 🧵⬇️ In Tunisia & Turkey, two examples of autocratisation that I know best, democratic backsliding coincided with—and was presaged by—an alarming opting out of politics by young people.

American democracy is backsliding. Hearing & helping young people opt in is critically important.
Jun 22 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
Correct. Iran’s options are few & poor.

They could attack US military sites, oil facilities, or trade routes in the Gulf—essentially taking this region hostage in what amounts to a suicide mission.

But those acts of desperation would consolidate US & local powers’ opposition. Iran’s regime is in a serious dilemma, as Thomas notes.

Retaliation guarantees more clobbering—but that is what Iran has chosen so far, and why bombing sites like the Israeli hospital was so unwise.

There’s another option, of course, but it would appear to many as surrender:
May 24 • 18 tweets • 8 min read
This is extremely significant. Former 🇮🇱 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (2006-9) wrote in a May 22 Haaretz op-ed that Israel is:

🔴 intentionally waging a war of annihilation
🔴 premeditatedly adopting a policy of starvation
🔴 massacring civilians
🔴 making declarations of genocide Image
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Image The op-ed was written & published in Hebrew for Haaretz, and intended as a desperate warning call for the Israeli public.

You can read it here:
haaretz.co.il/opinions/2025-…

Or here: archive.ph/2025.05.22-170… Image
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May 22 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
You can’t spend 19 months justifying Oct. 7 (which targeted Israelis for being Israeli) & chanting “by any means necessary” (when we know full well that some acts of violence aren’t necessary or justifiable), then wash your hands of all culpability.

That discourse played a role. This is why, as much as I support the Pal cause & criticise Israel’s crimes daily, I have refused to march alongside or do anything that might normalise these discourses.

Language matters. Normalising hatred of all Israelis & killing civilians makes acts like this likelier.
May 11 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Trump's visit to Qatar, UAE & Saudi next week occasions a close look at how these countries buy 🇺🇸 political influence.

Trump 2.0's conflicts of interest render corruption involving his family's corporate interests inevitable.

One angle to explore further: how this affects 🇵🇸 Image All the best-case scenario outcomes for Palestine that could come out of Trump's Gulf trip rely on Gulf money and/or Trump family financial interests essentially working as a lever to mitigate harms being done to Palestine.
May 7 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
🚨 Trump’s efforts to deport migrants w/o legal status to Libya are beyond disgusting.

I teach North African Politics, followed Libya for years & interviewed scores of migrants in Tunisia who went through its hell.

There is an active slave trade there. Journalists cannot enter. Image I’ve personally spoken with Black African migrants who were bought & sold in Libya, and who were horribly tortured, and who were literally held in cages without toilets (defecating then throwing their feces through the cage wires to maintain some semblance of hygeine). Image
Apr 1 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
For whatever it’s worth to Zach or other students, I’ve sat on Rhodes Scholarship committees & reviewed many elite apps.

This essay: (1) lapsed into hubris by the end of para #1, & (2) didn’t explain *why* Zach wants to learn from other humans, let alone at a particular uni.🧵 No matter how impressive the application, painting oneself as a preternaturally gifted wunderkind who’s doing x or y elite university a favour by applying can turn off reviewers.

Communicate confidence, curiosity & commitment to learning from/contributing to your new community.
Mar 28 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Imagine getting deported from a country where you’re a legal resident. A country that calls itself a democracy. A country whose most prestigious government scholarship, the Fulbright, you won.

All because you coauthored this nuanced & articulate op-ed in the student newspaper ⬇️ Image
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Image Here’s the link.

This is, of course, the op-ed that the young Turkish scholar Rumeysa Ozturk coauthored for the student newspaper at Tufts University, where she was pursuing a PhD in childhood development.

tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/0…
Mar 6 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
Before I started following its specific positions, I’d assumed that the BDS org—@PACBI—was a logical, non-racist actor.

After its boycott of Standing Together, & esp after its statement today declaring Oscar-winning film No Other Land violates BDS, I no longer feel that way. 🧵 Image I encourage everyone to read the following two statements in chronological order:

1) First, the joint statement from No Other Land’s directors:
nootherland.com/directors-stat…

2) Second, the BDS org (@PACBI) statement denouncing it as “normalising”
bdsmovement.net/no-other-land
Mar 5 • 29 tweets • 8 min read
The left accelerationist case for Trump paints him as a vile vessel who will, nevertheless, achieve important goals: (1) make the US less militaristic & (2) empower the Global South.

It makes intuitive sense bc Trump is weakening USG & Western alliances. But it’s deeply naive 🧵 I see at least 6 reasons why:

1) Rising US expansionism
2) More frontal assault on international law & multilateral institutions
3) Disinvestment in soft power
4) Hypocritical reliance on hard power
5) Emboldened bad actors in the “imperialist international”
6) Nuclear reliance
Feb 17 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Musk is an ideologically warped wrecking ball.

He’s mixing (1) extreme leftist impulses, like Maoist iconoclasm, with (2) rightist elements, like neoliberal privatisation.

But that’s not all. A third, underestimated element is afoot: (3) Earth-eschewing techno authoritarianism. The mixing of extreme rightist & leftist elements in Elon’s power grab is under-explored.

Another example: fetishisation of permanent revolution via an authoritarian vanguard that’s committed to freeing the people from corrupt elites shows up in a lot of Marxist movements.
Feb 8 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Just watched a mind-bending @60Minutes interview. It’s the stuff of a great American novel: the story of Senator Mitch McConnell’s life.

@LesleyRStahl interviews McConnell & @tackettdc, whose biography just came out.

The arc of his career is... whew. Triumph & tragedy 🧵 Image @SenMcConnell is an institution in my home state, Kentucky. One of the most consequential politicians in the past century, and one of the savviest Senators in history.

So savvy, in fact, that he ended up beating himself—and the US—at his own game.
Feb 8 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
What’s collapsing: liberal imperialism or liberal internationalism?

The first seems oxymoronic & off base, since liberal ideals masked, more than motivated, US interventions.

I fear the second—institutions of post-WWII human rights & multilateralism—might be more threatened 🧵 Diagnosing what’s most at risk matters. It’s entirely possible that we’re nixing liberalism, but not imperialism. And that, by assaulting liberal ideals & institutions, we’re unleashing more naked forms of expansionism.

Trump’s comments on Greenland, Panama & Gaza augur thus.
Feb 5 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
You might be wondering where to look rn. I’m going to say this despite specialising in the MENA region & foreign policy:

Focus squarely on DC & how DOGE in particular is (1) gutting American power & safety & (2) eroding the checks & balances fundamental to American democracy. For the US to make good, representative policy on any issue, foreign or domestic, it must remain a liberal democracy with robust checks & balances.

Instead, America is Orbanizing via a presidentially appointed body that’s ripping constitutionally granted powers from Congress.
Dec 16, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Assad used secularism “to gain legitimacy among international actors, while rejecting its implementation.”

True for Syria & most MENA authoritarian states. When you hear an Arab ruler described as “secular,” or pitching themselves as such to Westerners, think very critically. We should resist repeating the fiction that any MENA authoritarian, from the relatively forward-thinking (eg: Ataturk) to the sadistically depraved (eg: Assad) embraced “secularism” according to any commonly accepted definition of that term.

Doing so creates 3 serious problems:
Dec 8, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
My god. It’s happening. A post-Bashar Syria.

The transition starts now. Make no mistake: it will be incredibly rocky.

But today, take a beat to hear the soft, human joy of many Syrians as they cry, embrace, learn if wrongly jailed loved ones survived & vow “now we can go home.” Growing up as a young researcher in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, losing dear ones to counterrevolutionaries’ prisons, seeing how swiftly atrocities breed vengeful atrocities & studying extremists have made me reflexively caveat hope with realism, celebration with concern.
Nov 19, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
In 1986, Netanyahu lambasted Apartheid at the UN, where he was Israel’s Permanent Representative from 1984-88.

He condemned Arab countries for selling oil to South Africa, and called Apartheid the “ultimate abomination."

But his words were at odds with Israeli foreign policy 🧵 Image
Image By the mid-1970s, Israel had shifted its South Africa policy to alignment w/ the Apartheid state. And throughout much of the 1980s, South Africa was actually Israel's second largest trading partner after the USA.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky explains why in his excellent book here: Image
Nov 6, 2024 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The most shocking result of yesterday’s election, from my pov:

Despite centring her presidential bid on a promise to “stop Gaza’s genocide on Day 1” & selecting a Muslim running mate who campaigned on Palestine, the Green Party’s Jill Stein won fewer Michigan votes than in 2016. Image For comparison, here are the Michigan results from 2016.

In 2016, Jill Stein won 50,700 votes in Michigan (1.1% of the state’s total).

Yesterday, with 99% of Michigan’s precincts reporting, she won 44,642 (0.8% of the state’s total). Image
Oct 26, 2024 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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Image Asking Palestinians, @LibyaLiberty says, is key- but what does that mean?

To my knowledge, we don’t have polling on what Palestinians who are actually living in Gaza & the West Bank think re: Harris vs. Trump.

But we do have reporting that’s interviewed them:
Oct 11, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
How to spread mutual humanisation in an atmosphere of reciprocal radicalisation has been one of my primary concerns as an educator this year.

Many professors are afraid to discuss Israel-Palestine. But facilitating humane & evidence-based discussion now is more vital than ever. I’ve heard stories that haunt me.

The film “Farha,” about the 1948 Nakba, was shown in one class. Some students were upset that Israeli soldiers in an execution scene did not kill the baby (after having killed its family), because they believed Israelis wouldn’t show any mercy.