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Adam Johnson Profile picture
Adam Johnson
@adamjohnsonCHI
co-host @citationspod, writer at https://t.co/pKhO6hyJ5M
9 subscribers
Jul 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
important to understand what pro-Israel lobbying org ADL is doing here: they are issuing a mob threat to continue demagoguing this issue and exploiting the public’s ignorance and racism until Mamdani “comes to them” e.g. toes the line on Israel. This is extortion plain and simple It has nothing to do with him “condemning” anything. If he condemns “globalize the intifada” they will demand he condemn “intifada,” if he condemns this they’ll find some other expression for him to “condemn”. The point is for him to accept the minimum axioms of liberal zionism
Jun 29 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Again this never a thing that ever happened I am losing my mind. Just pure racist libel. Are any “fact checking” groups or reporters going to note Mamdani never said “intifada” anything but simply said, when asked about it, it wasn’t a call for violence against anyone, much less Jewish people (the thing he’s also being accused of saying that he never said)
Jun 24 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It’s funny how every article on Mamdani has to include a to-be-sure paragraph about his “impractical” redistributive policies or “tone deaf” Palestine positions. There’s always an air of menace, a “if only he didn’t do this things would be easier” message to any future Mamdanis It’s the most brainless ideological disciplining, typically shrouded in “inviting controversy” meta discourse or, in the case of the NYT, an alleged “trouble with Jewish voters” horserace framing that’s basically made up. Editors view it as their job to gate-keep Seriousness.
Jun 23 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
given what we know, and what’s currently happening in Gaza, it is deeply insensitive and glib to write “throwing around hot-button words like genocide”. It is near universal consensus in the human rights world—HRW, Amnesty, MSF—Israel is committing genocide, it is not a buzzword. Image Dr Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the largest group of genocide scholars in the world has argued Gaza is genocide very conclusively. Among scholars it’s near unanimous. Yet it is repeatedly reduced to a fringe leftwing neurosis
Jun 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Jake Tapper just referred to Iran’s “weapons program” as the target of the US attack. Again *there is no nuclear weapons program*. US intelligence has affirmed this dozens of times since 2007, having done so again just a few days ago. This is an outright lie but it doesnt matter “But US intelligence assessments had reached a different conclusion – not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing”

cnn.com/2025/06/17/pol…
Jun 20 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Remembering when @jaketapper had a 72hr meltdown because @RepRashida suggesting a pro-Israel AG may be biased against Palestinian protestors and accused her of antisemitism. Anyway this is the millionth inanely racist thing Rep. Fine has said that Tapper will continue to ignore. inthesetimes.com/article/media-…Image
Feb 10 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
It’s been 21 days, don’t reporters covering DOGE still indulging “finding abuse” frame find it odd that Musk hasn’t found a single case of actual fraud. All he does is screencap random, wholly legal expenses—he simply ideologically disagree with—and presents it as a major scandal If a random internet troll did what Musk is doing—taking random screencaps of expenses out of context, calling every program he ideologically disagree with “waste” or “fraud”—he would be dismissed as a crank. Yet here we are still doing “funding efficiencies” reporting
Dec 18, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I (and my pseudonymous co-author) did an analysis of Sunday Morning news shows and their coverage of Gaza. We found their coverage was defined by double standards, casual dehumanization of Palestinians, and softball questions to US and Israeli officials

thenation.com/article/societ… Key findings 🧵
Oct 29, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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, 2024 • 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.