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Adam Johnson Profile picture
Adam Johnson
@adamjohnsonCHI
co-host @citationspod. pre-order ‘How to Sell a Genocide’ out 4/21 https://t.co/0sSOGW2HwL or https://t.co/FLiOjxUamb
Apr 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I wrote about J Street’s “cut off military aid to Israel” PR gambit which, upon closer inspection, is clearly a time-buying scam that 1) aligns w/ Netanyahu’s “phase out” plan & 2) provides a fake Israel-critical talking point for Dems increasingly under pressure from their base. Jonathan Chait joins the campaign, along with J Street, Lindsey Graham and Netanyahu, to severe US military funding of Israel to blunt opposition and give the appearance of distance between democrats and Israel while maintaining the status quo of arming genocide and apartheid
Apr 4 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The Economist and Bloomberg also called the downing of fighter jets an “escalation” by Iran. Everyone knows you’re supposed to just let invading militaries bomb your universities and girls’ schools and apartment buildings and that shooting back is an act of unhinged aggression. If you’re invaded, 1000s of your people are killed, your infrastructure destroyed and your leadership is wiped out in a sneak attack, anything short of you doing this to the enemy in response cannot, by definition, be an “escalation”. Thats how language works, that how words work
Apr 1 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A very strange article that makes repeated references to an “Iranian nuclear weapons program” that US intelligence has repeatedly said doesn’t exist. He was sabotaging and threatening *civilian* nuclear scientists but this somehow becomes “stopping Iran from getting the bomb” Again, US intelligence has repeated time and time again since 2003 that Iran has neither the desire to build a nuclear bomb nor do they have an active program to do so. A fact strangely omitted from this piece of rank propaganda
Mar 22 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
No Kings is planning 3000-events on 3/28 and its 1700-word press release makes zero mention of Iran, only opaque mentions of “illegal wars” (which ones?) I like many of the orgs involved but what’s the utility of these generic “anti-authoritarian” word salads at this moment Given how much Trump’s attack on Iran is rapidly escalating and the stakes involved, it seems now would be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible to marshal their tremendous resources and hold an actual antiwar march with clear demands, not more partisan pep rallies.
Dec 22, 2025 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
more brainless stenography from the paper of record. Is anyone at NYT interested in doing any actual journalism or just running through a list of "officials says" and wholesale embracing the US govts line? lets break down the problems with the latest copy and paste job from NYT🧵 (1) The piece heavily implies that Venezuela's oil is under sanctions from "The US and other countries". It is not, it is only under sanctions from the US.

(2) we've now moved from scare quotes to the NYT just using the term "ghost tankers" This is a meaningless propaganda term
Dec 19, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It’s correct that Israel doesnt want Hamas out of power in a formal sense, they want them totally disarmed which is to say they want everyone in Gaza disarmed so they can use an IDF solider getting a paper cut as a pretext to finish the job against a wholly defenseless population This is why, despite half of Palestinians disapproving of Hamas according to most polls, 70% reject Hamas disarmament because (1) they know in effect Israel means a disarmament of everyone not on their payroll and (2) they’re be nothing standing between them an total annihilation
Dec 4, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There’s a frog in boiling water element to this too. On polymarket you can bet on whether Gaza will be ethnically cleansed. On Kalshi you can bet on whether they’ll be famine in Gaza (that one paid out for ‘yes’ btw) This is objectively depraved and should not be legal but 1/2 Image
Image it is not only legal but totally normalized and never commented on by anyone in our media. CNN, by partnering with Kalshi, is going to be “reporting on the news” now while offering the chance to wager on these events. On mass death, starvation, dispossession and genocide. 2/2
Nov 27, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A simple way of explaining this to people is that Israel’s calculus is that they can maintain apartheid and carry out genocide and will still be seen as a normal country—just with some bad apples. BDS says no, this is unacceptable. Israel is banking on Business As Usual. 1/4 “Open dialogue” claptrap is just another version of Business As Usual. To the extent speaking to Israelis in person has any political utility (very debatable) it is VERY MUCH outweighed by the more urgent and meaningful goal of cementing Israel’s pariah status. 2/4
Nov 13, 2025 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
None of the people in these emails lovingly chatting with Epstein will face social consequences and we know this because in 2019 it was revealed Bill Gates met with Epstein several times—and his wife of 30+yrs divorced him over it!!—and this basically went into a memory hole. vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/…
Nov 5, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
[$70 million organization dedicatedly entirely to israel]: it’s important politicians understand Israel is irrelevant and they need to ignore it It’s an interesting PR tactic common with pro-Israel groups I call Quantum Zionism. they put on press tours, trips to Israel, luncheons etc for politicians, then when it’s a politician critical of Israel they go “um obsessed with Israel much? Hum, curious why that would be?”
Nov 5, 2025 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Trump openly said his motives for attacking Venezuela are to seize its oil. But recent explainers in WaPo, Politico, BBC pontificating about Trump's motives do not mention this fact at all. I wrote about western media's bizarre refusal to state the obvious
columnblog.com/p/media-pontif… For years Trump has openly talked about how he thinks the US should take over other countries' resources. Indeed, exploitation of resources is his most consistent, publicly espoused motive behind his foreign policy. Why is this dynamic rarely discussed in Venezuela coverage? Image
Nov 3, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
this is all so tedious. This sleight-of-hand is exactly what make the Abundance guys so cynical. What Sanders says here is that the generic "good govt" stuff is banal and fine. The issue is **this is not the whole of their project** which anyone with two brain cells can see The Abundance "movement," as it exists in reality, (rather than a vague marketing pitch) but actual policies, think tanks and funders with actual goals, is defined by deregulation and left-punching. And anytime this is mentioned they do the coy "Who me?🥺I just want more stuff"
Oct 17, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ah I see the Christian studio behind the Qanon exploitation film Sound of Freedom is releasing a gritty origin story hagiography on George Washington July 4 weekend 2026 and doing the aggrieved “help us make it the No 1 film in America (to own the libs)” marketing campaign Mel Gibson chose to make the enslaved people free black workers (unclear why 18th century Mel Gibson would be so kind??) when he did The Patriot, curious how they handle this awkward fact. They may just ignore it, or just imply his slaves are cool and chill with the situation
Oct 16, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Another attempt at a fake scandal, Mamdani’s position on this is the same as Trump’s (thus far at least, thankfully). Demanding Hamas disarm is a nonstarter for obvious reasons. This is a rational and moral position because the alternative is open-ended nonstop genocidal killing “Hamas shouldn’t be forced to disarm” isn’t some abstract normative position, or endorsement of Hamas, it’s a rational position because that’s what a “ceasefire” is—a cessation of firing—not demanding unconditional surrender from one side.
Sep 16, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Vance’s speech was a masterclass in shameless demagoguery. They cant find any credible media “cheering on” Kirk’s killing so they just highlight media criticizing him, then pivot to random nobodies celebrating Kirk’s death, then seamlessly switching back and forth between the two The reason the goal posts has to shift from “celebrating Kirk’s killing” to “mocking it” to “being mean/misquoting him” is because no one with any power or significance on “the left” celebrated it so they have to create a fog by mixing in random social media posts w/ “the media”
Sep 9, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One of the few certainties in social science is high social trust is essential to healthy societies which can only be achieved through greater equality. We not only rejected greater equality (ofc) but built our economy around a machine whose primary value proposition is deception Having a technology adopted overnight that is, in most of its applications, premised on tricking people (often in intimate settings), doing plagiarism remix, letting Silicon Valley do our political thinking for us and exploiting people with mental health problems is Probably Bad
Sep 8, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Ok even if one accepts this frame where the perceived victim gets veto power over language, every single time a Democrat in congress says “Israel has a right to defend itself” 100s of kids are killed that week, nonstop for 100 weeks. Why isnt this expression therefore off limits? This squishy bullshit sounds superficially sensible to half paying attention liberals, racists, or both. But more Palestinians were killed in first two weeks of the “Israel-Hamas war” than Israelis have been killed by Hamas since the creation of Hamas 40 years ago.
Sep 6, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Buddy upon news of the merger Ellison **put out a press release in the Jerusalem Post detailing how he “loves Israel” and “quietly donates quite a bit to the State of Israel and the IDF”**

Bari Weiss is a one note shill for Israel. But for sure, it’s just the free market at work Even the sycophantic Puck News write up which was more or less transcribed from Ellison acknowledges her substack isn’t worth $150million. CNN and NYT both bury references to their mutual hatred of Palestinians as a reason for the deal. Let us be serious.
Aug 23, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This has every dishonest liberal cliche:

1) One Bad Man Theory

2) Reinforce “Hamas must go” pretext for genocide (how exactly, magic??)

3) meaningless “offensive” vs “defensive” weapons

4) “two state solution” pablum

5) centering needs and ego of state committing genocide It’s got (2), (3) and (4) with (1) more or less implied
Aug 14, 2025 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Not sure what it would look like to “turn” on Mamdani, but I assure you any such “turn” will be grounded in (admittedly difficult and complex) value judgments on key issues. All politics requires subjective analysis of priorities and compromises, this is kind of its whole deal I assure you conditional support is not some neurosis of the left, and we know this because Mamdani won the democratic primary and the whole of the democratic establishment—from Schumer to Gillibrand to Jeffries—refuses to endorse him. This is also known as “purity politics”
Aug 12, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The thing is this isnt really a change. Conditioning bombs to the flow of aid is consistent w/ 2024 Dem consensus of Bomb Palestinian Kids on 600 Calories a Day vs the (R) position of Bomb Palestinian Kids on an Empty Stomach—modestly preferable but still objectively pro-genocide The fact that this very low bar is now considered some type of “break” from Israel is just further evidence that this latest round of performative outrage is an ass covering exercise, something that can be pointed to at a later date.