Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Aurelien Mondon

@aurelmondon.bsky.social

13K followers 600 following 2.9K posts

Researching the mainstreaming of reactionary/far-right politics Co-convenor of @reacpolrn.bsky.social Reactionary Democracy w. @aaronwinter.bsky.social and co-editor of The Ethics of Researching the Far Right Full profile: https://shorturl.at/CiYKm

shorturl.at

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · Nov 12

Hello new followers!

I research the mainstreaming of reactionary politics which informs much of my presence here

Below are some publications which might be of interest

A full list can be found here:

researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/a...

🧵

1/

5 22 120

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Netpol @netpol.org · 4h

Yesterday's narrative of 7 October as ‘another 9/11’ – "yet another day torn free from any history or context" with only two sides – seeks to demonise all Palestine solidarity as "pro-terrorist." It is critical to understanding Britain's current crackdown on protest rights netpol.org/2025/10/06/a...

Protesters against the banning of Palestine Action in Trafalgar Square, London, 4 October 2025.

1 19 30

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Academic Anarchy🏴 @johnbrownbread.bsky.social · 14h

The nazis themselves were not some clever masterminds where everything they did went perfect. They were also comical idiots who did ridiculous things, like invading Russia in the winter.

They gained power because the opposition couldn’t understand that the fascists were not rational agents.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Feb 5

that said: I think the "it's not fascism unless they're good at it" brand of analysis probably isn't the move

16 280 960

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 16h

Indeed...

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 6d

2a) Apart from featuring his definition of fascism (which he offers reluctantly), Paxton observes how the fascist relation to ideas is merely tactical and not grounded in intellectual consistency.

Useful for today's world to remember how fascists dont feel the need to "justify" changes in position.

The fascist leaders themselves, as we observed in chapter 1, called
their movements ideologies, and many interpreters have taken them at
their word. It is commonplace to see fascism defined by extracting common threads from party programs, by analogy with the other “isms.” This works better for the other “isms,” founded in the era of educated elite politics. I tried earlier to suggest that fascism bears a different relation to ideas than the nineteenth-century “isms,” and that intellectual positions (not basic mobilizing passions like racial hatreds, of course) were likely to be dropped or added according to the tactical needs of the moment. All the “isms” did this, but only fascism had such contempt for reason and intellect that it never even bothered to justify its shifts.

2 14 85

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 16h

Seriously?! Wow. Then again, not surprised...

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 16h

Also, buy his excellent book which will again be on the compulsory reading for my unit on the resurgence of reactionary politics (and what to do about it)

www.calton-books.co.uk/books/antifa...

ANTIFA - The AntiFascist Handbook

FOR A UNITED WORKING CLASS

www.calton-books.co.uk

2 8 19

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 16h

Solidarity with Mark Bray

For anyone who still doubted, reactionaries never believed in free speech, they always believed in forcing their ideas into the mainstream and mainstream institutions were too ready to welcome them

And these are the consequences

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve received multiple death threats + doxing (including my home address) directly following harassment from Turning Point USA, Jack Posobiec, Andy NGO, + Fox News which called me an antifa ‘financier.’

I have been forced to move my classes online.

If journalists want to talk, DM me or reply here.

3 16 49

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 7d

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.

🧵

12 160 430

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 17h

Utterly beholden to lobbyists, staggeringly ignorant and dismissive of the natural world: Rachel Reeves might not look or sound like Donald Trump, but she is behaving very much like him. This government is even more of an ecological hazard than the Tories were.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Rachel Reeves clears planning blockage amid ‘good relationship’ with developer

Exclusive: Chancellor says 20,000 homes were being held up due to ‘some snails that are a protected species or something’

www.theguardian.com

39 180 510

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 17h

Y'all who keep lecturing protesters to "not give them an excuse" need to pause for a minute. Imagine yourself telling a DV victim, "Be sure not to mouth off or make any mistakes so he won't hit you. Don't give him an excuse! It's what he wants!" That's what you fools sound like.

14 1.1K 4.2K

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

David Wearing @davidwearing.bsky.social · 1d

Incredibly dangerous for a senior politician to suggest that there's some zero-sum game to be played between mourning the losses of Oct7 and protesting an ongoing genocide. And incredibly cynical given that the protests are directed at his own complicity

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Keir Starmer calls student protests on 7 October anniversary ‘un-British’

Prime minister urges students not to protest on the second anniversary of Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel

www.theguardian.com

7 51 140

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 19h

Solidarity with @mark-bray.bsky.social, a fantastic, thoughtful, and generous scholar whose work about antifa is so important in this moment.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Rutgers professor moving to Europe after threats over antifa accusations

Mark Bray says threats intensified after a Turning Point USA petition accused him of promoting political violence

www.theguardian.com

4 110 250

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 21h

"It feels as if everything has vanished. Not only the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza erased without graves, without records, as if they had never existed – so many other things have been hollowed out: basic conceptions of morality, decency, compassion, humanity, hope, future."

Disappearing people, disappearing morals – how two years has changed Gaza and Israel | Orly Noy

There can be no healing until the world stares into and acknowledges the void torn open by this conflict, says Israeli journalist Orly Noy

www.theguardian.com

2 62 140

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Alexa Ray Corriea @alexaray.bsky.social · 1d

It’s boiling in October because you’re using ChatGPT to write your emails, Janice.

10 930 3K

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 1d

Has anyone else been dealing with some serious headline whiplash recently?

Even for those of us who follow #climate and #energy matters closely, it can be hard to know what the hell is going on!

So here's a thread to help climate communicators get a grip on how to deal with this 🧵

3 47 89

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Alasdair Mackenzie @alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social · 1d

Of course at one level: who cares what the Tories do any more? But at another, apparently wildly insane ideas like “put judges under the control of politicians” have a habit of becoming mainstream political thinking these days

Alasdair Mackenzie @alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social · 1d

Your reminder that Robert Jenrick isn’t interested in judges being unbiased or apolitical: on the contrary, like the far right media, he wants to intimidate or control judges into making decisions which reflect *his* political biases

Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · 1d

More in the breathless, breaking stop-the-presses, and not at all confected story, that judges, before they were judges, were involved in practising law. Take 5 seconds to appreciate just how hard into "swivel-eyed loon" Robert Jenrick is being allowed to lean:

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

3 18 41

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 2d

The Greens requested an interview on the Laura Kuenssberg Show with Zack Polanski when he was elected leader, but were denied, with a promise to interview him during Green conference instead.

This was then scrapped citing the Manchester synagogue attack. Polanski is both Jewish and from Manchester

BBC Laura Kuenssberg Show Accused of Anti-Green Bias After Cancelling Zack Polanski Interview

The new Green Party leader was the only major party leader not to have been granted a conference interview on the flagship BBC show

bylinetimes.com

150 1.3K 3K

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 1d

Greta:

"I will never comprehend how humans can be so evil. That you would deliberately starve millions of people living trapped under an illegal siege as a continuation of decades of oppression and apartheid.”

Source: Global Sumud Flotilla via X

5 650 2K

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 2d

He was very seen as centrist by many

1 1

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 2d

To think Macron was once thought of as the centrist alternative that would bring peace back to French and European politics...

Economist front page with Macron as "Europe's Saviour?"

3 5 24

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Rachel Shabi @rachelshabi.bsky.social · 2d

I took part in this devastating episode on how Israel has targeted and killed journalists in Gaza - the most courageous professionals who carried on working in the most impossible conditions www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUSx...

Smear. Kill. Repeat. Israel’s playbook for journalists in Gaza | The Listening Post

YouTube video by Al Jazeera English

www.youtube.com

12 16

Reposted by Aurelien Mondon

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 2d

We are living under an aspiring fascist regime that has not yet fully consolidated. This is not difficult to understand unless you get paid to muddy the waters.

Tom Nichols @radiofreetom.bsky.social · 3d

If we were living under fascism, none of you would be here daring to post things. You'd be erasing your social media accounts and keeping your head down; you'd know that peacocking your faux-bravery on a network would expose you to being disappeared.
You have no idea what "fascism" really means.

shane @mouthfulofcavities.bsky.social · 3d

the regime is zip tying toddlers and ripping them away from their mothers unclothed... calling it fascism upsets this neo-con.

17 110 470

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 3d

💯

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 3d

You're absolutely right and I actually added a correction. What I was talking about is LLMs and other systems rolled out to everyone indiscriminately

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · 3d

Sorry, I should have been clearer, I mean LLMs in particular which are pushed onto all of us

No doubt AI can be useful in particular settings. What I am talking about is their wider politicized use.

2 1 20