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bendon82.bsky.social
Ben
@bendon82.bsky.social
150 followers 89 following 700 posts
He/Him ACE
Unapologetic communist.
Unrepentant atheist.
No masters. No gods. Just community.
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bendon82.bsky.social
Ben @bendon82.bsky.social · Sep 8
Well, several months ago I deleted all of my social media accounts because my mental health couldn't tolerate the constant hate.
However, I forgot this one.
Then, I was extremely isolated, so I'm back, but curating a different online experience.
To my followers: goddamn, I've missed you all. ❤️
Reposted by Ben
zhugeex.com
This is a real sentence in a new NYT article about how the US has changed since Trump, lol.
January 22, 2026 at 12:33 AM
bendon82.bsky.social
When the Hell are people going to realize that voting will not solve this?
January 22, 2026 at 4:15 AM
bendon82.bsky.social
Lmfao
January 22, 2026 at 4:14 AM
bendon82.bsky.social
Boy it sure does feel like this government is trying to provoke both a civil war and a world war at the same time, don't it?
January 21, 2026 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Ben
grateful42069.bsky.social
the soviets including Lenin and Stalin took a backwater feudal country and turned it into a world superpower that crushed Hitler’s war machine, put a man in space, and raised the living standards for millions but sure the USSR was very dysfunctional and unproductive.

you're a clown :)
January 21, 2026 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Ben
markjacob.bsky.social
"Almost violently" means nonviolently.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d
Bovino: "Individuals came in and disrupted almost violently a church service"
January 20, 2026 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Ben
debraguckenheimer.com
I was just reading a telegram my great grandfather wrote in 1941 saying he applied to move to the States. In 1942, he was murdered by the Nazis.
January 20, 2026 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Ben
pookleblinky.bsky.social
Americans, seeing fascism, will call it literally anything else: communism, anarchism, Maoism, Stalinism, etc.

Like their eyes just glaze right past it, it doesn't process.

And even if they do actually notice the fascism, they don't notice its basis in centuries of domestic homegrown tradition.
January 21, 2026 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Ben
beejonson.me
If you’re a working class person trying to understand what’s happening in the west, especially the US right now; red maga and blue maga fascism, and liberal “democracies” all over the west backing israel’s genocide, please don't read 1984 or Animal Farm.

Pick up Lenin’s 'The State and Revolution.'
A paperback copy of The State and Revolution by V. I. Lenin lies on a small wooden train table, next to a window with blurred scenery outside. The Penguin Classics edition shows a red-and-black cover with Lenin speaking to a crowd, the words “ВСЯ ВЛАСТЬ СОВЕТАМ” (All power to the Soviets) printed in Russian above.
September 30, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Ben
jamesinbrooklyn.bsky.social
January 20, 2026 at 2:14 PM
bendon82.bsky.social
My smart TV for some reason:

Open app: network disconnected
😑
Retry: network disconnected
😖
Retry: network disconnected
😠
(Sigh)
Run network test: Connected
😡
Open app: opens.
🤬🔪
January 20, 2026 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by Ben
jaimeharrison.bsky.social
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail

Silence is not neutral. It is a choice.
January 19, 2026 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by Ben
phillewis.bsky.social
Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She was 95.
Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95
ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away
thezebra.org
January 19, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Ben
lostzinn.bsky.social
Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad. - MLK
January 19, 2026 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Ben
jasonhickel.bsky.social
On the 17th of January, 1961, the US, UK and Belgium assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Republic of Congo, because he sought to restore national control over the country's mineral reserves. Remember Lumumba!
January 18, 2026 at 4:43 PM
bendon82.bsky.social
When I was a kid there was a Mexican place called The Armadillo. They had complimentary bottomless chips and salsa, the most delicious enchiladas, and it's where I first tried fried ice cream and sopapillas with honey. Absolutely divine food and a wonderful atmosphere.
clairewillett.bsky.social Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 4d
Sunday night timeline cleanse

please tell me about your favorite lost restaurant (closed for at least 5 years, like I really want you to go back into the vault), why you loved it and what you ate there
January 19, 2026 at 3:13 AM
Reposted by Ben
mark-bray.bsky.social
I teach a history of antifascism course @ruhistorydept.bsky.social and figured I'd start an ongoing thread this semester to share some insights from course readings and recommend some great works on antifascism.

🧵
September 30, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Ben
themckenziest.gay
If y’all could help me spread this online petition and sign it for me, that would be amazing 💜

Thank you so much
January 18, 2026 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by Ben
seantcollins.com
Child abuse is a central plank in the conservative platform, because physical mastery of the weak is how they establish dominance, their only value. It's not just something a lot of conservatives do, it is part of being a conservative.
rgoodlaw.bsky.social Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 6d
About the ICE agent who fatally shot a man on New Year’s Eve while off-duty:

A court document "says the ICE agent allegedly whipped his sons with a belt, made homophobic slurs and racist remarks about Black and Latino people and brought a gun to a youth sports game."
ICE agent believed responsible for L.A. killing accused of child abuse, racism in court filings
A court filing made public this week claims that a federal immigration agent thought to have shot and killed a Los Angeles man on New Year's Eve was previously accused of child abuse and making racist...
www.latimes.com
January 17, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Ben
beejonson.me
If you wanna understand how hunger in Africa is man-made and a product of western capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism, watch this video. "They tell you that the best chocolates come from Switzerland. How many cocoa farms does Switzerland have?"
January 16, 2026 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Ben
broadwaybabyto.bsky.social
The ICE agent accused of shooting and killing Keith Porter on New Year’s Eve has a history of racism, homophobia and beating his children.

This is who ICE attracts.

This can’t be reformed.

www.latimes.com/california/s...
ICE agent who killed L.A. man accused of child abuse, racism in court filings
The off-duty federal immigration agent who shot and killed a Los Angeles man on New Year's Eve was previously accused of child abuse and making racist remarks about Black people and immigrants, court ...
www.latimes.com
January 17, 2026 at 5:27 AM
Reposted by Ben
jeff.doctor
"While he still leads and attends right-wing events, McInnes pulled back from the spotlight after 2018. Ironically, one of the likely reasons is that, as a Canadian citizen, he risks deportation if he’s too closely associated with groups accused of organized violence like the Proud Boys"
amandamarcotte.bsky.social Amanda Marcotte @amandamarcotte.bsky.social · 6d
Many have observed the similarities between Noem's ICE and the Proud Boys.

But folks, I have the receipts. I reviewed tapes from 2016-2017 of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.

Everything Noem is doing in Minneapolis is laid out in his vision from then.

www.salon.com/2026/01/16/h...
How Kristi Noem turned ICE into the Proud Boys
Footage shows the right-wing group’s founder developing the “recruit giant losers” strategy
www.salon.com
January 16, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Ben
ositanwanevu.com
Apropos of nothing, let's check in with how things are going at Bari Weiss's free speech university. www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Most people didn’t think much of it when the university dean, Ben Crocker, called a student named Dan into his office on Monday, Sept. 9, the first day of classes. But at 7:44 in the evening, they received an email from three administrators saying that Dan had been removed from campus, “transported to his home out of state,” and barred from further access to the university. The nature of the allegations concerned, at their core, a pair of charged statements Dan allegedly made that would be familiar to any Title IX officer. The first was a general statement implying that UATX girls carried themselves physically in a way that invited sexual assault. The second was a suggestion to a specific female student that she had carried herself in a way that invited sexual assault. Dan had already been the subject of some negative attention on campus because of provocative statements he’d made in a UATX-based Discord “introductions” chat. These included a challenge — “If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I’ll kill you” — which was a reference to the 1981 movie “Stripes” and likely misunderstood by fellow students. In another exchange, a discussion of transgender issues, Dan expressed reservations about hormone treatment and said that he couldn’t wait “to play devil’s advocate for legalizing pedophilia.” Between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., Crocker visited the dorms, where he hosted a meeting on the roof to discuss the issue with students. Crocker’s message was that Dan’s conduct had been evaluated to be a “credible threat” — a phrase that would be repeated by the administration many times over the following days. Crocker then faced what one student attendee recalled as a “firing squad” of questions. Some students said that Dan had seemed off, but others saw his hasty removal as an example of the very cancel culture to which UATX was supposed to be the antithesis. Several students noted a lack of diversity. Consistent with its emphasis on “merit-based admissions,” UATX doesn’t publish demographic data. The students with whom I spoke said their classmates — and the college’s leadership — were overwhelmingly white, disproportionately came from wealthy families and had an overrepresentation of apparent neurodivergence. They found ideological diversity to be particularly lacking. “I didn’t realize exactly how conservative it would be,” one current student told me. “You know, when I hear free speech and open debate and all that jazz, I assumed that there was going to be a more equal amount of political views, and there wasn’t.” Classes weren’t as innovative as most students expected. “Year one was exceptionally boring,” the student said. “They did great books, they just didn’t do it in a great way,” said another student, who lamented the amount of memorization required. “I thought we were going to be intensely debating,” he said. Several students shared course syllabi with me. Most are easy enough to imagine being offered on any campus — with the notable exception of math and science. “The math classes go over algebra you learned in ninth grade,” a student told me. “There was just nothing there.” He described the offering as “schizophrenic” and described a class he’d taken at University of Texas at Austin as “exponentially more important.” Indeed, the syllabus I reviewed for a class called “Intellectual Foundations of Science II” covered a range of topics unusual for a science class including “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.” A student who’d taken the course shared a slide with me on “ensoulment” — the principally religious question of when a soul enters the human body — and said that the class had been told that IVF but not abortion could be consistent with the Catholic belief about ensoulment. The poor quality of the science offerings had bothered Heying and Pinker. “Others thought I was the token liberal,” Heying told me, “but I came to understand myself as the token scientist.” In an email, Pinker wrote, “They should have hired a widely esteemed scientist and proven program builder to set up their science division.” Another surprising similarity with other colleges stemmed directly from Dan’s expulsion: The students feared cancellation. “At any moment a frivolous Title IX complaint could be filed against you,” a former student told me. “I’ve never felt my speech was so chilled as it was in the classroom at UATX.” During the many conversations I had reporting this story, two questions came up more than any other. The first: Where was Bari Weiss? Many of the people I interviewed told me about internal conversations and shared internal emails. Weiss, who remains on the board of trustees, was almost never present in the conversations as they were related to me, and while I saw many emails on which Kanelos and Ferguson were copied, I never saw any including Weiss. speaks onstage during an event in New York City, on Nov. 19, 2024. | Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press One person I spoke to, who was present during the early planning stages, told me that Weiss was “very elusive” and almost never present in person. This was ironic since UATX was closely associated with Weiss — a bust of whom now resides in the school library. Weiss, meanwhile, has only risen further during the Trump 2.0 era and is now editor-in-chief of CBS News, where she has been criticized as genuflecting to the Trump administration. A spokesperson for CBS News did not respond to a request for comment from Weiss. One former member of the development team told me that they would routinely ask prospective donors how they got to know UATX. “Eighty percent of the time, the answer was Bari Weiss,” they said. “It was very often referred to as Bari Weiss’ University, or Bari Weiss’ University Project, or Bari Weiss’ University of Austin.” For several people, this was a source of resentment. “I don’t care whether she wants to pretend this is all gone now — she is the reason that this place exists. She was huge, she was held in such high regard, she had such an enormous impact,” the former staffer said. “I want her to be held to account,” she added. “I’m pissed.”
January 16, 2026 at 4:40 PM