Louis Römer
@lromeranth.bsky.social
9K followers 2.3K following 240 posts
🇨🇼🇳🇱🇺🇲 | he/him | PhD | anthropologist @vassar.bsky.social | opinions mine | retweet & like≠endorsements |
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lromeranth.bsky.social
How did "free speech" become a cudgel to silence dissent? My latest in @bostonreview.bsky.social

www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...
In past rounds of moral panics on campus, when “cancel culture” and “trigger warnings” were still the threats du jour, pundits and social media outrage peddlers converged to frame campus protests at large as threats to “free speech.” Responding to the steady churn of outrage-bait framing protesting students as “snowflakes” and “crybullies,” state legislatures across the country passed a flurry of “campus free speech” bills drafted by right-wing think tanks, which expanded the range of anti-protest measures available to college administrators. To be sure, boycotts and deplatforming protests were useful props in these efforts. Still, what made it possible to inflate deplatforming incidents into threats that required expansion of repressive state power was the failure to question a securitized vision of liberty that, since Bush’s “they hate our freedoms” speech, has become increasingly dominant.
Reposted by Louis Römer
partners4israel.bsky.social
Viki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen: "If there's something our leaders need to do during these holy days, it's to ask for forgiveness - not in words but in acts. They must bring the hostages home." But instead, Netanyahu and his ministers "have abandoned us".
www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...
The sukkah shakes like a heart that never calms
On the Holiday That Reminds Us That We All Live in a Temporary Dwelling, I Ask That We Not Accept a Reality in Which Our Children Live in Forced Captivity
www.haaretz.com
lromeranth.bsky.social
There are parallels to this in the Caribbean and colonial-era Indonesia.
lromeranth.bsky.social
Studying the history of slavery and colonialism makes it very easy for me to predict how authoritarians and fascists respond to displays of irreverent joy:
michaelehayden.bsky.social
I love when Andy Ngo does one of his David Attenborough-style posts about Antifa and highlights some kid who took a bong rip and waddled into the protest dressed like a giant muppet.

My favorite flavor of his commentary by far.
Andy Ngo wants to draw your attention to Barney the dinosaur
lromeranth.bsky.social
To your point:
michaelehayden.bsky.social
I love when Andy Ngo does one of his David Attenborough-style posts about Antifa and highlights some kid who took a bong rip and waddled into the protest dressed like a giant muppet.

My favorite flavor of his commentary by far.
Andy Ngo wants to draw your attention to Barney the dinosaur
Reposted by Louis Römer
nicholasgrossman.bsky.social
The Trump regime is having trouble prosecuting James Comey on frivolous charges, and hasn’t been able to get charges against Letitia James.

They couldn’t keep Kimmel off the air.

Their desire for authoritarianism is bottomless, but their capacity is not. Hurting people yes, but bluffing a lot too.
Kimmel and Comey Highlight the Trump Regime's Limitations
Their desire for authoritarian abuse is bottomless, their ability to carry it out is not
www.arcdigital.media
Reposted by Louis Römer
prisonculture.bsky.social
This very very very bad. I cannot stress this enough. I said that they crossed the Rubicon with arresting Ras Baraka several months ago. This is very bad and portends more bad things for regular people.
royalpratt.bsky.social
The President of the United States is calling for the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois to be jailed.
lromeranth.bsky.social
Like you said, Ras Baraka was a harbinger.
Reposted by Louis Römer
ryanlcooper.com
if blue state governors and mayors aren't already thinking about the reliability of various police forces nominally under their control, they should start immediately
Reposted by Louis Römer
ryanlcooper.com
he probably doesn't! most American police forces are some combo of rogue paramilitary and criminal gangster conspiracy! but that's all the more reason to start standing up some loyal formations bsky.app/profile/kitc...
Pritzker seems to be semi waving the white flag on that and acting like he doesn't control his state police. Hope he reconsiders.
Reposted by Louis Römer
prisonculture.bsky.social
Local cops are not on the side of Democratic politicians or under their actual control. People refuse to understand this too even though we've been making this point for decades.
Reposted by Louis Römer
prisonculture.bsky.social
And in terms of politicians with national ambitions he has been the best. So where does this leave us?

* he's also been aligning with other blue states on health issues etc...
prisonculture.bsky.social
Pritzker is offering the following at the moment:

1. Trust the courts. [not a viable strategy]
2. "Film the cops"
3. Vote in 2026
4. Protest [peacefully]

And he knows this is not sufficient. Everyone does.

He will not address the local cops angle because he might be deposed...
lromeranth.bsky.social
It is on us to examine the structural constraints of the position and plan accordingly.
Reposted by Louis Römer
prisonculture.bsky.social
Pritzker is offering the following at the moment:

1. Trust the courts. [not a viable strategy]
2. "Film the cops"
3. Vote in 2026
4. Protest [peacefully]

And he knows this is not sufficient. Everyone does.

He will not address the local cops angle because he might be deposed...
Reposted by Louis Römer
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
It’s really not surprising that someone who thinks the post-1960s civil rights thing was a mistake doesn’t have much of an issue with Hegseth’s white male warrior nonsense or the Trumpist promise to resegregate all the major institutions and spheres of American life. That’s the Right’s core project!
Reposted by Louis Römer
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
If there is one thing the American mainstream media simply cannot resist, it’s a “Relax, the Libs are overreacting again!” take that presents a wildly disingenuous version of what is actually going on in MAGA land to launder the Right and chide “the Left” for being hysterical.
Reposted by Louis Römer
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
Even the “respectable” thought leaders on the Right are clearly not arguing from within a consensus that America should exist as a pluralistic democracy. To Caldwell, that’s a dangerous pipe dream, lacking the necessary national cohesion; and more importantly, it’s an affront to the “natural” order.
Reposted by Louis Römer
jamellebouie.net
i think it is cool that a government run by fanatical bigots is on track to plunge the economy into a mountain and cause a food crisis
ddayen.bsky.social
So this is funny.
The administration just issued a rule slashing foreign agricultural worker wages. And to justify it, in a public filing, Trump's Labor Department alleges that Trump's immigration enforcement has devastated the Ag workforce and caused a "risk of supply shock-induced food shortages."
Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis
In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a lack of migrant agricultural workers.
prospect.org
Reposted by Louis Römer
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
Let's note that Christopher Caldwell, who gets to defend Hegseth’s rabidly bigoted, sexist speech in the New York Times, wrote a whole book about how the Civil Rights Act constitutes an illegitimate departure from the Constitution.

So, of course he is on board with imposing white male domination.
Opinion | That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Louis Römer
dannagal.bsky.social
If anything these masked thugs kidnapping people and tearing families apart illustrate that it’s actually VERY HARD in practice to deal with undocumented immigration in ways that are moral and careful. It’s also very hard in practice to identify and deport criminals who are undocumented.
lromeranth.bsky.social
This reminds me of the fragments in the archives I have encountered of slaveowners, overseers, and colonial officials working themselves into paranoia and panic about colonized and/or enslaved people playing music or dancing.
Reposted by Louis Römer
Reposted by Louis Römer
avielroshwald.bsky.social
May the maelstrom of protest overwhelm the spiral of silence!
abuaardvark.bsky.social
“Their strategy is to play divide and conquer, rewarding friends and brutally punishing opponents. They win when society cracks, creating a self-enforcing set of expectations, in which everyone shuts up and complies because everyone expects everyone else to shut up and comply, too.” - excellent
himself.bsky.social
"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Reposted by Louis Römer
sanho.bsky.social
Holy crap. Trump will make the FCC crucify Jimmy Kimmel for this.
Reposted by Louis Römer
timnitgebru.bsky.social
A someone who has written extensively about the eugenic roots that permeates those who claim to be building so-called artificial general intelligence, I'm here to tell you to please NOT compare criticism against corporations claiming to build a machine god, with eugenics. The audacity.
if you're writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go "oh that's fine to say because it's not a real person" (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that.
Reposted by Louis Römer
sarahkendzior.bsky.social
Someone should ask what Miller was doing between 2021 and 2025, why David Horowitz recruited him to the foreign policy team of the Trump campaign, why the Democrats never followed through on their 2017 investigation of alleged lies on Miller's SF-86 clearance forms, but no one asks real questions