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Boston Review

@bostonreview.bsky.social

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A magazine of ideas, politics, and culture, committed to the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world. Independent & nonprofit since 1975. Newsletter: bostonreview.net/newsletter Subscribe: bostonreview.net/memberships

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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · Sep 2

The special section from our 50th anniversary issue, The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide, is now online.

Robin D. G. Kelley revisits Noam Chomsky’s classic argument, with @dwaldstreicher.bsky.social, Jennifer Zacharia, and @martinoneill.bsky.social.

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide - Boston Review

Speaking the truth and exposing lies is not enough.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 14h

“We have to be building political homes while also doing the door-knocking and organizing that builds power and changes lives. The duality of that work can be hard to hold.”

An interview with activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:

Building a Political Home - Boston Review

Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen on winning power in the midst of a “generational war.”

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 16h

Join us in New York, Boston, and Chicago to celebrate Boston Review’s 50th anniversary and the launch of our special anniversary issue.

Learn more and register for all of our events at bostonreview.net/events

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 20h

”What if, rather than blaming Palestinians, Arab Americans, and American Muslims, these pundits had seen their treatment—under Biden and for decades before him—as central to the Trump-led repression looming before us?”

Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat, from February 2025:

The Boomerang Comes Back - Boston Review

How the U.S.-backed war on Palestine is expanding authoritarianism at home—from Project Esther to violence at the border.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Matthieu Dugal @matthieudugal.bsky.social · 1d

Un texte de 2018 sur Philip K. Dick, assez prémonitoire de #Sora. «The bombardment of pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans—as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides [...] inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans.»

Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans - Boston Review

We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Caribbean Philosophical Association @caribphil.bsky.social · 1d

“Blouin’s Africa was a product of revolutionary political self-making—a project defeated before it could be born by the reactionary regressions to the inherited.”

The Inventor of the Future - Boston Review

The autobiography of anticolonial luminary Andrée Blouin captures her era’s euphoric highs as well as its tragic denouement.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Eric Reinhart @eric-reinhart.com · 4d

Fyi, this is the “political violence” they call “law and order.”
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

Reposted by Boston Review

Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 1d

Chicago!

Join Cathy J. Cohen, Adom Getachew, and @rickperlstein.bsky.social for a celebration of 50 years of @bostonreview.bsky.social

Thursday, October 9th at 6:30 pm
Haymarket House

RSVP to attend:
www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...

Boston Review 50 Celebration
Cathy J. Cohen, Adom Getachew, Rick Perlstein
October 9th at 6:30 pm CT
Haymarket House, 800 W. Buena Ave in Chicago

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 1d

“Anti-wokeism is about giving ideological cover to longstanding priorities on the right—dismantling the welfare state and ramping up the carceral state, especially in the form of immigrant deportation and detention.”

Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:

Building a Political Home - Boston Review

Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen on winning power in the midst of a “generational war.”

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 2d

Vivian Gornick‘s 2016 Boston Review essay ‘Feeling Paranoid:
Phyllis Schlafly, Trump, and the Terror of Difference’. www.bostonreview.net/articles/viv...

Feeling Paranoid - Boston Review

Phyllis Schlafly, Trump, and the Terror of Difference

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 2d

much in the same way phone phreaking preceded the stereotypical image we have of computer hackers, the reaction of writers like PKD to television and advertising is really where cyberpunk started www.bostonreview.net/articles/hen...

Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans - Boston Review

We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Jules @olivewalking.bsky.social · 2d

Catching up on reading, this by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social is excellent.
"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 3d

“These lies are more than morally wrong; they are politically and structurally significant. Police mendacity acts as a critical accelerant for the carceral state, greasing the wheels by generating arrests, extracting revenue, justifying police violence, and shielding officers from accountability.”

Blue Lies Matter - Boston Review

We need to reckon with police lies not only as a form of individual misconduct but as a matter of political speech.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 4d

“Much about what Ezra Klein argues is objectionable,”—including “the appeal to debate as ’persuasion,’ which confuses the mere appearance of giving and responding to reasons with the substance of good-faith rational inquiry,” writes columnist @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Phil Free @philfree.bsky.social · 3d

“This rhetoric, like much of the writing throughout the book, isn’t just ‘simple’. It constantly verges on platitude or tautology, concealing consequential political, economic & moral judgments behind a veneer of common sense.”
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

The Real Path to Abundance - Boston Review

To deliver plentiful housing and clean energy, we have to get the story right about what’s standing in the way.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Farah Bakaari @bakaari.bsky.social · 3d

“I am no less committed to resisting, but without the belief that history is on my side. It’s a form of stubborn resistance that is the legacy of my father.” I cried several times reading this. Who you’re now is who you will be on the other side of this.

www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

A General Air of Anxiety - Boston Review

The Red Scare targeted my father. He taught me the meaning of resistance.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Eric Reinhart @eric-reinhart.com · 4d

As ICE agents terrorize Chicago neighborhoods and rough up my friends, patients, neighbors, and elected officials with total impunity, this essay I wrote for Boston Review last week on the myths surrounding "political violence" is as pressing as ever.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

What Is Political Violence? - Boston Review

Pundits and politicians conceal the truth: it’s all around us, perpetrated by our political system itself.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 4d

“With the mission of democratic education itself at stake, I expected resistance, even from those who were administering the neoliberal university as a corporate autocracy, treating knowledge production as a private commodity rather than a public good.”

Joan Wallach Scott on “what we got instead”:

A General Air of Anxiety - Boston Review

The Red Scare targeted my father. He taught me the meaning of resistance.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 4d

The flip side of this exceptionalizing is to erase and excuse the slow and less spectacular violence of American political life. When ICE agents raid homes, when Medicaid is stripped from millions, both politicians and media speak of “policy” rather than “violence.” @eric-reinhart.com

What Is Political Violence? - Boston Review

Pundits and politicians conceal the truth: it’s all around us, perpetrated by our political system itself.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 4d

“Much about what Ezra Klein argues is objectionable,”—including “the appeal to debate as ’persuasion,’ which confuses the mere appearance of giving and responding to reasons with the substance of good-faith rational inquiry,” writes columnist @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 4d

“By cloaking naked power in the trappings of the law, the Trump administration, like the Bush administration before it, channels objections to its behavior into sterile disputes about who has the best lawyers—a dispute that no one really expects to resolve.”

Reposted by Boston Review

Shane M. Bailey @shanembailey.com · 4d

"Blouin’s very birth troubled a colonial order erected on a strict racial hierarchy. She would make sure that her life would be far more of a problem for it."

The Inventor of the Future - Boston Review

The autobiography of anticolonial luminary Andrée Blouin captures her era’s euphoric highs as well as its tragic denouement.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

LPE Blog @lpeblog.bsky.social · 4d

In the Boston Review, Lily Hu discusses How to Lie with (Political) Statistics.

How to Lie with (Political) Statistics - Boston Review

Inside the data wars over Democratic strategy.

www.bostonreview.net

Reposted by Boston Review

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 6d

we should bring back shame actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 5d

“I’ve come to think of the Democratic Party as being more of a professional association for liberals than a real political party. There’s not this sense of excruciating mission that the Republicans and the right have.”

Osita Nwanevu talks with @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social:

Democracy v. the Constitution - Boston Review

An interview with Osita Nwanevu about his new book, The Right of the People, and why defeating authoritarianism requires going back to democratic basics.

www.bostonreview.net

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 5d

The liberal-heterodox alliance over “free speech” engineered by people like Bari Weiss is precisely what has eased the way for the most authoritarian, anti-free speech government the United States has seen since the McCarthy era, argues @pastpunditry.bsky.social:

The actual politics of free speech is fueled by a right-wing political strategy. - Boston Review

Nicole Hemmer responds to Alex Gourevitch’s “The Right to Be Hostile.”

www.bostonreview.net