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Adam Johnson Profile picture
Adam Johnson
@adamjohnsonCHI
co-host @citationspod, writer at https://t.co/pKhO6hyJ5M
9 subscribers
Oct 29 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Important to note how framing this as exclusively a “Muslim” or “Arab” issue (as democrats, NYT, MSNBC, etc have been doing for months) is a subtle way of reinforcing the premise this is a sectarian or tribal grievance rather than people—across many demos— angry about genocide It’s playing in the AIPAC/ADL sandbox which loves to frame the issue as sectarian or ethnic rather than colonial/anti colonial or genocide/anti genocide. With the not so subtle implication that *those people* are hot headed and not thinking straight. It strips it of moral content
Oct 14 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In The Nation, with (anonymous) researcher and writer Othman Ali, I examine double standards in media humanization, comparing CNN and MSNBC coverage of Palestinian vs Israeli and Palestinian vs Ukrainian victims. Here are our main findings🧵 thenation.com/article/societ… First off: why MSNBC and CNN? Given it's a Dem president arming and funding the ongoing genocide, this study is the first installment of a multipart series detailing how Center-Left media helps sell the wholesale destruction of Gaza to liberals and centrists over the past year.
Sep 4 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
ok so NYT is just gonna publish this conspiratorial claim without an ounce of skepticism or providing a single shred of evidence. cool. Image if US intelligence has evidence of Iranian agents posing as students and organizing protests can they... name them? This is a very specific and explosive claim would be nice for anyone, anywhere, to provide any evidence of this
Aug 15 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Netanyahu’s been clear for months he will not accept a lasting ceasefire deal. He’s said so dozens of times. Yet Biden keeps faking like this is a thing that could happen without a credible threat of US cutting off aid—which Biden refuses to do. The Trump angle is a non sequitur More silly WH spin from Ravid, this is his whole beat
Aug 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Everything NYT lists here that supposedly makes Harris “inching” closer to the Left on Gaza is wholly superficial and already Biden WH policy, right down to the vacuous Empathy-Speak and the warping of “ceasefire” to mean brief pause followed by continuing the destruction of Gaza If switching to a candidate with (at least for now) the exact same Gaza policy + some bleeding heart rhetoric is enough to win over skeptical lefties on the issue of genocide then this is a dark day for whatever the US Left is supposed to be
Jul 15 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
NYT says they’d have withheld anti Trump editorial Sunday if they could have. If the shooter wrote a manifesto citing Paul Krugman and Gail Collins maybe this would be a polite gesture but he was some rw crank, why is liberal media accepting premise they are somehow responsible? Begging people to get a grip.
Jun 26 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There’s a lot of linguistic sleights of hand in media discourse but none more sinister—and successful—than “two state solution.” The gap between what the avg listener imagines this means vs what pundits and lawmakers actually mean is lightyears apart. Not remotely the same thing. When the average US pundit or lawmaker says they support a “Palestinian state” ask them to define it. What they envision is a completely demilitarized series of Bantustans with no freedom of movement or commerce or unilateral FP, entirely under US-Israeli security architecture
May 13 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
My contribution to the “we still have to vote for Biden discourse” is this: I think the popular debate suffers from a flawed premise that this is some abstract trolly problem without political context. 🧵 That Trump “would be worse” is a reasonable position in the abstract ofc but it’s secondary to the CONTEXT of the debate which everyone keeps avoiding but I think it’s the far more interesting and urgent question. What function does the specter of massive vote withholding have?
May 11 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In 2002 Applebaum explicitly argued in favor of killing Palestinian journalists for the crime of making Israel look bad. If she’s going to opine on media and authoritarianism, can any of these high status media commentators ask her if she still believes this? I’d be good to know!


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Jan 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Truly the most evil and misleading thing Leonhardt has written and this is saying something. No mention of deaths caused by disease, birth complications or starvation. Also ignores limits of Gaza officials’ count since every hospital, and thus their capacity, has been destroyed Leonhardt is a craven partisan hatchet man and the genocide-lite narrative is the only one the White House can plausibly try and push and here he is carrying out his disagreeable task. Absolutely shameful, intellectually and morally dishonest
Jan 12 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
No dipshit, the idea isn’t “US bad” the idea is pushing for a ceasefire is a much more efficient and humane way to deescalate rather than bombing, yet again, the poorest country in MENA to defend Israel’s inalienable right to turn Gaza into an even greater death zone Yes they have, it’s called reining in Israel’s unchecked destruction of Gaza which is clearly and quite explicitly the origin of Houthi attacks which do not exist without a geopolitical context
Jan 9 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Among the findings in Ali’s research is the selective use of emotive terms to describe killing—something reserved almost exclusively for Israeli deaths. It’s a sort of reverse humanization, horror only goes in one direction. The killing of Palestinians is seen as sterile/clinical
Image Coincidentally the CBC was asked last week by @TheBreachMedia’s @emmapaling about their own selective use of emotive terms and the answer they gave… made no sense breachmedia.ca/cbc-palestinia…


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Jan 4 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
yeah clearly nuance is important but theres a whole genre of pop science writing about the pitfalls of binary moral thinking that increases in frequency when younger people coalesce around existential critiques of racism, inequality, or––of late––our govt backing ethnic cleansing Sometimes subjects are "complex" but sometimes they are are not, sometimes things are Just Bad and it's not "extremist" to say they are Just Bad in clear and certain terms.
Dec 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
losing my mind. UN special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (correctly) accuses Israel of working to expel civilian population of Gaza and CNN reports it as mere allegation without mentioning Netanyahu explicitly said this is his goal just yesterday. Image


Dec 12, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Sanders position is confusing but I’ll try and spell it out

(1) he opposes a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power. Which is to say he opposes a ceasefire as it’s universally understood
(2) he’s repeatedly called for a nebulously humane regime change effort that Israel… (1/3) has zero interest in and is presumably accomplished with fairy dust
(3) he refuses to acknowledge the obvious: that Israel is axiomatically not waging a war on “Hamas” but on the whole of Gaza
(4) wants a “ceasefire” that allows Israel time to plan for his magical humane…(2/3)
Nov 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
this isnt a good faith question but here we go anyway:

- call for Israel to stop bombing/sieging Gaza
- announce end to military assistance until bombing ends
- not deny death counts
- not refuse to have ANY red lines
- stop vetoing ceasefire resolutions at UN
- 600 other things to the extent to which Biden has pushed Israel to extend the ceasefire it's to secure more Israeli hostages. If Biden has a super secret plan for a longer term ceasefire––where Israel doesn't try to "eliminate Hamas"––at this point it's pure speculation.
Oct 24, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
the nicest people on earth, and heretofore loyal Dems, are trying to politely explain that uniformly backing Israel will have political consequences, aside from moral issues, that it’ll wreck inroads with Muslim, Arab, young voters but Dem messaging only knows one response: scold 8yrs of muscle memory attacking mythical Bernie Bros it’s all cynical privilege discourse, extortion language, and feigned helplessness that doesn’t really work here. But it’s all they know. So people are accusing grieving and outraged Arab Americans of entitlement and petulance.
Apr 23, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
My brain is leaking out of my ears. What the fuck did I just read. This is not how laws, or policing, or morality, or epistemology, or “AI”, or anything works. ImageImage Serious question: are you six years old? Image
Apr 23, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Expediting this and replacing the half a million lead pipes poisoning poor people in Chicago would save thousands of lives and garner absolutely zero media coverage. There are countless ways of combating violence without mindlessly pressing the “more cops” button “Chicago has an estimated 80% of homes with water connections made of lead, more than any other city in the nation…

One in 20 tap water tests performed for thousands of Chicago residents found lead, a neurotoxic metal, at or above US government limits” theguardian.com/us-news/2022/s…
Apr 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
most media outlets are a mixed bag and I’ve had my beefs w/ Insider and Buzzfeed but this weird thing where multimillionaire guy gloats over low level media workers getting indiscriminately fired to own the libs is without ideology or moral utility, just vindictive score settling Image Glenn’s general thesis, repeated ad nauseam, is the market hates the Woke Liberal media (which is presumably artificially jammed down people’s throats?) and this free market is rushing to choose rightwing media platforms—their own astroturfed financing models notwithstanding
Apr 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
we really have to stop taking these "labor shortage" arguments at face value. The number of unemployed persons per job opening in Iowa is unchanged since prior to covid. These laws are designed to

1) combat increase union activity
2) make legal child labor they're ALREADY doing ImageImage These child labor laws will have little-to-no impact on “the labor shortage” when those pushing for them are already engaged in widespread child labor violations. All it does is lend full legal sanction for a workforce that’s already being exploited below board