Liberals like to complain that journalists and others have normalized Trump and his racism, authoritarianism, etc.,but this is precisely what 75 years of US hegemony have done - completely normalized the US allying with repressive regimes, regularly bombing other countries, etc. Much of the rest of the world views US support for Israel’s annihilation of Gaza and bombing of Yemen as the act of an unaccountable empire. Most Americans just assume we will bomb several countries a year and conduct military ops in many more, because its always been this way.

As a historian who has researched and studied genocide in places like Indonesia and Timor Leste, I am deeply aware of the difficulties of determining when it seems clear that genocidal violence is unfolding. The Israeli annihilation of Gaza clearly meets that threshold. In most genocides there is an information vacuum, and details trickle out because of the difficulties of reporting in real time and placing events in context. Even in well publicized genocides - Rwanda, Bosnia - reporters and diplomats were behind the curve in grasping events.

The first Palestinian person I ever met was my junior year in Germany. He was a medical student named Nimr living on the floor of my apartment building, and for weeks, he wouldn’t talk to me. At one point I asked him why he wouldn’t talk to me, and he said because I was American. This struck me, and so I asked him to explain. He told me that he lived in the West Bank and he and his sister would cross through checkpoints every day to go to work in Israel. And every day he had to watch his sister be groped and sexually humiliated by checkpoint soldiers.

Israel is doing to Gaza what every historian of colonialism and counterinsurgency can tell stories of - responding to an atrocity against metropolitan civilians or attack on colonial soldiers with a punitive counter massacre of civilians on a far larger scale. Indonesia did this in East Timor many times. It was the logic of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1981, and many French massacres in Algeria. One goal of such counter-terror massacres is to demonstrate the vulnerability and helplessness of those being massacred.

Historian of US foreign policy here. One of the core functions of US diplomacy towards client states engaging in mass murder is denial of death tolls. I cannot think of a single example of simple acknowledgment of client state atrocities since 1945. A few examples: When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, with US military and diplomatic backing, its armed forces killed 50-100k civilians in the first 12 months (roughly 15% of the population). US officials flatly denied the scope and scale of killing:() jstor.org/stable/40647042

In early 1999 or so, while I was in grad school I was arrested for disrupting a speech Madeline Albright gave before the Chicago World Council. I had been in Iraq for the second time just a few weeks before, Delivering medicine to Iraqi hospitals in defiance of US /UN sanctions. I was sitting next to an old Jewish couple from Ukraine who had escaped separately from a German concentration camp at the end of the war and made their way all the way across Russia, and eventually to Hawaii where they reconnected before moving to Chicago.

Watching Twitter discover today that area studies research in the 1950s and early 1960s was greased with CIA money. The CIA/NSA stuff has been known since 1967. Scholars have been writing about this for decades. Wait to you hear about Clifford Geertz. mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/cu… George McT. Kahin, the most humane and decent liberal in Cold War area studies, served in the Army, started the Modern Indonesia Project and SEA Studies Program at Cornell partly w/CIA $ and after 1960 became the most prominent academic opponent of the Vietnam War! People change.

I'm astonished that the bands we grew up with don't write songs that reflect the pressing concerns in our current lives: not losing our girl/boyfriends but losing the keys, having creaky joints, forgetting the stupid password to something, having too many browser tabs open. I want to hear a new Social Distortion song about having to get your knee operated on because you tore the meniscus in a pickup game thinking you could still move like you were in your twenties.

1/3 The notion that the CIA is a rogue agency operating independently of Presidential authority is one of @ggreenwald most pernicious and stupid conspiracy theories. Presidents use intelligence agencies as instruments of their own foreign policy, not the other way around.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1442115339672772614

2/3 This insipid zombie conspiracy theory has been given life by countless spy movies, but as George and Audrey Kahin demonstrated years ago, it masks the role of the CIA in US foreign policy as an effective instrument of executive power. thenewpress.com/books/subversi…

1/7 I was a radio producer for Democracy Now! on September 11, 2001 and in the months afterwards. I had a unique vantage point to witness the antiwar movement against the US invasion of Afghanistan. There was a mass antiwar movement: decentralized, local, and ignored by media. 2/7 Shortly after 9/11 we had Rita Lazar on the show. She lost her brother in the Twin Towers. She talked about her opposition to killing innocent Afghan civilians as revenge for the murder of innocent US civilians. There were many, many Rita Lazars.

1/10 Four years ago today was Elijah's last day at school. He died two days later. His brain tumor was ravaging his body and stealing the last bit of life from him. He could barely eat, and had trouble breathing. But what I remember now, looking back, was how joyous he was. 2/10 He lived for 51 weeks after diagnosis with that brain tumor killing him inside out, stealing his bodily and motor functions one by one, but he was determined to suck as much joy out of life as he could, even when he could barely move, as in his last therapy session.

Other acceptable Republican infrastructure?

1/ On the 25th Anniversary of @democracynow I will share one of my favorite memories: being Amy Goodman's producer on election day 2000 when she interviewed President Bill Clinton, who called into WBAI for what he thought would be a routine GOTV call. democracynow.org/2000/11/8/demo… 2/ I was in grad school, living in NYC, and had run out of money. I owed Amy a few huge favors after breaking a $1200 digital tape recorder of hers, and ran into her on election eve, telling her if she ever needed a producer I could help. She said "can you come in tomorrow?"

1/5 So 17 years ago I was living in a house in cooperative in Chicago with 18 of my closest friends. It happened to be international pancake day, and the famous Dr. Patch Adams was in town. Some of my housemates knew him and went downtown and clowned with him all day long. 2/5 They had said they would be coming back at night, and we were wondering what to do to make the visit of Patch Adams special. One of my housemates noticed it was international pancake day, so we decided to hold a pancake Olympiad that night.

1/4 The issuing of a State Department Dissent Cable directed directly at the US government itself is, to my knowledge, unprecedented. The Dissent Channel was created in 1971 to give diplomats the ability to voice unpopular views about US policy elsewhere without retaliation.

https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1347604490044665857

2/4 Here is the full text of the cable itself.

https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1347602317131046914?s=20

Lou Dobbs referring to “enthusiastic Trump supporters who tried to gain entry to the Capitol,” but says it’s basically Antifa who did all of the bad things. Calls this a “rare and tragic exception” to Trump supporters normally peaceful and nonviolent nature. John Solomon, his guest, calls them patriotic, loving Americans. They have no idea how to cover this.

1/11 A short thread on the US and Western Sahara, which Donald Trump has never heard of and could never have found on a map until one of his advisers showed him. Morocco and Mauritania invaded Western Sahara (formerly Spanish Sahara) in 1975: un.org/Depts/Cartogra…

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1337067019385057290

2/11 After Spanish dictator Franco stepped down in 1974, Spain began decolonizing Spanish Sahara. Morocco and Mauritania both threatened to invade. They rejected self-determination for its mostly nomadic, indigenous people, and coveted it resources, especially phosphate.

1/10 If the Pentagon Budget were a country it would rank 20th in terms of world GDP, right behind Saudi Arabia and ahead of Switzerland and 191 other countries. worldpopulationreview.com/countries/coun… 2/10 Focusing on the connections between the latest Def Sect nominee and military contractors misses the forest for the trees. The US has had a political economy of war since 1950, with bases and military contractors in every one of 435 Congressional districts.

1/6 An interesting article about conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who seemingly inspired Trump's bizarre war on "critical race theory." yahoo.com/news/the-man-b… 2/6 A glance at Rufo's website christopherrufo.com tells a familiar grifter story. BA from Georgetown (School of Foreign Service, natch), zero academic background in anything related to critical race theory, and affiliated with the right wing Discovery Institute think tank.

1/ What movies will President Trump’s #1776Commission recommend as part of his “Patriotic Education” program, and for which period? @HerbertHistory? American Revolution (a gimme): 2/ Civil War? Come on.

Free job hunting advice from a tenured professor.
1. save your CV in multiple places. I save mine on a floppy disk and print out copies on my dot matrix printer. 2. Make sure the little tape in your answering machine is rewound in case you get called with an offer. 1/4 3. Give yourself plenty of time to mail in all of your application materials.
4. Keep the white out handy in case you have to edit your cover letter on the typewriter.
5. Mention the latest trends in your field (“social history,” “gender,” “culture,”) in your interviews. 2/4