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Cihan Tugal

@cihantugal.bsky.social

5.3K followers 520 following 250 posts

Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley Working on a book on right-wing populism https://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/cihan-tugal

sociology.berkeley.edu

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Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · Nov 27

What are the social dynamics behind the resilience of today’s elected authoritarian regimes?
In order to answer this question, I develop the concept “democratic autocracy.”
This regime type is a populist update to fascism under neoliberal conditions. 1/6
t.co/8L4B3UZ1GH

https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/aop/article-10.1163-1569206x-20242360/article-10.1163-1569206x-20242360.xml

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 1d

University of California professors, students, staff, and workers are resisting higher education's increasing complicity with the Trump administration.
A damage to one is damage to all.
We will not leave our colleagues, students, and coworkers alone.
cucfa.solidarity.tech/academic-fre...

Academic Freedom and the Release of Names - Council of UC Faculty Associations

cucfa.solidarity.tech

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 2d

Co-sponsored by @asatheory.bsky.social, ASA GATS, and Global Critical Studies & Praxis

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 3d

My sociological explanation of the recent surge of violence against Palestinians, Alawites, and the Druze ... coming up as a part of this panel:

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

They are coming for us. But we will not passively sit and wait for them.
13/13

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

All this was no mere theoretical exercise. The night ended with listing the local and national venues where people have been organizing along the lines suggested above, naming the contact people and encouraging people to sign up. And people did sign up.
12/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

Personally speaking, I prefer the current structure, since it allows us to grow through our tensions and disagreement, rather than excluding anyone or fighting each other too nastily. But there might indeed be a tipping point where this structure is no longer effective against a violent regime. 11/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

strategy might be required to fight a more fully fascist regime. Some comrades, currently in the fringe, have indeed been pushing for a more explicit laying out of the differences between the ideological and strategic options, and a more democratically centralized adoption of one of them. 10/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

(e.g. mass organization at the expense of electoralism or vice versa), whereas our chapter has been thriving through integrating all these approaches. But what is today a strength might become a problem as the regime in fact slides more and more to fascism. A more coordinated and streamlined 9/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

-- as in the case of liberal universities openly cooperating with Trump’s exclusionary politics.
One strength of East Bay DSA has been the coexistence of the countervailing approaches discussed above. I know of some DSA chapters where the needle almost exclusively points in one direction 8/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

work is bound to shore up liberal institutions and organizations. Supporting mainstream institutions is certainly good to the extent that it temporarily blocks some fascist advances. But it is damaging in that the existing (and decaying) liberalism in the US further prepares the scene for fascism 7/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

meetings without getting killed by militias indicates that we are not living under a fascist regime yet. And at this point, working on mass organization is a bigger priority than working on elections and/or coalitions with liberals, since given our current state of mass disorganization, electoral 6/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

the years in New Politics, @jacobinmag.bsky.social, and @evrensel.net – has been that the regime is a Bonapartist/oligarchic dictatorship with fascist tendencies. It is true that those tendencies have become stronger in recent months. However, the fact that (for now) we can even hold these 5/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

mass organization, i.e. of workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. This was also one of the main four venues of organization that Glass thought we should prioritize. So, there were mostly differences of emphasis rather than principle in the room.
My personal position – communicated throughout 4/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

since it has been published. He emphasized four main venues of organization against increasing state repression, one of which – the electoral one – made many people in the room somewhat uncomfortable. There were objections, since many in the EBDSA believe that that the main emphasis must be on 3/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

(The latter three texts provided different answers to these questions). Fred Glass made a 40-minute presentation. We then broke up into small groups to discuss the points he made. While strongly sympathetic to Seymour’s book, F Glass thinks that we have taken quite big strides towards fascism 2/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 15d

In a meeting attended by close to 100 people, @dsaeastbay.bsky.social discussed whether the Trump regime is “fascist,” and what difference that label makes in terms of how we organize. We read texts by Ernest Mandel, Fred Glass, @leninology.bsky.social and me to frame the discussion. 1/

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 17d

"Gezi, as both rebellion and the beginnings of a movement, exemplifies a popular response to this morbid intersection.”

I also discuss the upsides and limits of horizontalism.

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 17d

"multiplying ecologically induced movements and contentions throughout the globe, especially as market-driven plunder of nature and atomization of society intersect with and compound state- and empire-making by authoritarian leaders.

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 17d

Why is a Polanyian-Gramscian analysis of Gezi still necessary and always “timely”? You’ll find some answers in my review essay on Kaan Ağartan’s book.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
“Capitalism’s endless drive to accumulate has now run against the world’s limits,

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 21d

Along with the Trump regime, we need to get rid of these administrators.
We can't be truly free until the entire system changes.

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 21d

Educators, researchers, students, and workers on University of California campuses are fighting for freedom.
But their higher administrations are siding with Trump in this fight.
It is not Trump, but the system itself that put these administrators in their current positions.
+

University of California Faculty Association @uc-faculty.bsky.social · Aug 28

Coalition of UC unions condemns Trump’s attacks on the UC and the California economy.

@ucaft.bsky.social @afscme3299.bsky.social @uaw4811.bsky.social @aaup.org

#HigherEd #AcademicFreedom #UnniversityofCalifornia #HoldTheLine #Trump #HandsOffHigherEd #StandUpUC

On Friday August 8, the Trump administration demanded a $1 billion “settlement” from UCLA after freezing $584 million in federal grants for vital scientific and health research. The proposed $1 billion agreement would be the largest settlement since Trump began extorting universities, and marks the first attempt of the federal government to ransom payment from a public university. These attacks have been waged under the guise of fighting antisemitism and investigating alleged Title VII violations, but we see them for what they are: an attempt to cripple public higher education in the nation’s premier public university system.

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 22d

contribute to the rise of fascism?"

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 22d

My talented comrades at @DSAEastBay
created this poster. It's more eye-catching than anything else on the UC Berkeley campus.
PS: This was produced before the news of the university ratting out its own professors, students, and staff. Next time, we'll have to add:
"How does higher education +

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 23d

The far right will use the information provided by @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social in very much the same way.

I repeat: It is mainstream institutions' weaknesses rather than the far right's strengths that are paving the way for a total dictatorship.
jacobin.com/2024/11/far-...

Let’s Measure the Far-Right Threat Seriously

Donald Trump’s second term could empower the organized far right much more than the first. Its current mobilizing strength suggests it’s far from ready to take over the state apparatus — but it does h...

Cihan Tugal @cihantugal.bsky.social · 23d

mainstream institutions are intentionally or unintentionally solidifying these dynamics. Following the Kirk assassination, Trump and some of his supporters have been calling for an all-out war against "the Left" (broadly defined) based on inadequate information on the killer's identity and motives.+