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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 22h

Helicopters, raids, families torn apart. Immigration enforcement has become spectacle, bureaucracy a weapon, compassion a crime. What happens when fear redraws the boundaries of belonging? #Immigration #Democracy #Resistance #Authoritarianism

The Long Shadow of Separation

How immigration raids turn neighborhoods into stages of fear, bureaucracies into weapons, and compassion into defiance.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 1d

Implementing Project 2025, Trump is methodologically dismantling of freedoms—speech, press, assembly, due process, the vote, and thought itself. And using fear to try to convince us to live as if our liberties were already lost.

#Democracy #Authoritarianism #Trump #CivilLiberties #Anthropology

Constructing a Military Dictatorship: A Strategic Outline of Authoritarian Drift

How Trump is dismantling the Bill of Rights piece by piece, turning freedoms into privileges, and training Americans to live as if their liberties were already gone.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 2d

When I was growing up, I could not have imagined a government shutdown. Today, Trump has turned shutdown into a governing tool—punishing opponents, stripping agencies, and reshaping democracy itself. #Shutdown #Authoritarianism #Project2025

The Shutdown as Strategy: Authoritarianism by Other Means

How Trump has transformed government shutdowns from rare breakdowns into deliberate weapons to punish opponents, reallocate resources, and remake the state.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 3d

What once seemed like fringe entertainment now fuels authoritarian politics. Conspiracy theories aren’t sideshows—they’re working technologies of power. #ConspiracyTheories #Authoritarianism #Democracy #Disinformation #Trust

The Gospel of the Hidden Hand: Conspiracy Theories in Authoritarian Politics

How conspiracy theories migrate from fringe beliefs to political weapons of authoritarian power

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 4d

Once it came from Radio Moscow. Today it comes from within: divide, scapegoat, inflame. The “culture war” isn’t about culture—it’s an authoritarian playbook. Let’s not fall for it. #CultureWars #Authoritarianism #Democracy #Scapegoating #USPolitics

When Culture Becomes a Weapon

How culture wars and scapegoating divide Americans and pave the way for authoritarian rule

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 5d

I am in mourning for America. At Quantico, Trump and Hegseth didn’t announce a dictatorship — they performed it. Words reclassified dissent as insurgency, turning citizens into enemies. #MourningAmerica #Quantico #Authoritarianism #Democracy

Mourning America: Quantico and the Drift Toward Military Rule

How Trump and Hegseth’s Quantico speeches blurred the line between politics and war, recasting dissent as insurgency and democracy as a battlefield

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 6d

When a government starts treating words as crimes, democracy falters. Trump’s reclassification of language isn’t policy—it’s preparation for repression. #FreeSpeech #Authoritarianism #Trump #Democracy

The Criminalization of Language

How Trump is Turning Words Into Evidence and Speech Into Dissent

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 7d

Trump’s “enemy within” rhetoric isn’t bluster — it’s cultural work. Words recast dissent as treason, cities as battlegrounds, and neighbors as expendable. Preparations for military dictatorship are already underway.

#EnemyWithin #Authoritarianism #DemocracyAtRisk #NoDictatorship

Prelude to Military Dictatorship

The “enemy within” and the militarization of American politics

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 8d

Trump’s new executive order doesn’t just police actions—it criminalizes belief. By redefining dissent as extremism, it turns suspicion into law and civic life into compliance.

#FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #SurveillanceState #Authoritarianism #Democracy

The Grammar of Dissent

Executive power, surveillance, and the slow suffocation of democratic life

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 9d

The U.S. immigration system isn’t broken—it’s designed. Winners profit from cheap labor, detention contracts, and political spectacle. Losers live in precarity, stripped of rights and trust.

#Immigration #BorderPolitics #Labor #Democracy

Engineering Exclusion: How U.S. Immigration Sustains Instability

Exploitation is not a failure of the system—it is its foundation.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 10d

When climate stress drives migration, we face a choice: treat it as a warning of collapse—or as an invasion to repel. Trump chose theater over strategy, walls over resilience.

#ClimateCrisis #Migration #PoliticalEcology #Authoritarianism

Fortress Logic: How Climate Threats Became Border Spectacle

At the crossroads of climate stress, migration, and militarization

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 11d

Trump calls it strength. In reality, it’s sabotage disguised as sovereignty—cuts and dismantlings that leave the whole nation fragile.

#Trump47 #Authoritarianism #Fragility #Resilience #ClimateCrisis #PublicHealth #NationalSecurity #PoliticalEcology

Sabotage Disguised as Strength

How weakening one pillar makes the whole nation fragile

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 12d

Trump’s push to indict James Comey isn’t just retribution. It’s part of a larger assault on the courts—where law becomes performance, precedent is broken, and trust collapses. Justice itself is on trial.

#JusticeOnTrial #RuleOfLaw #Democracy #Authoritarianism #Comey

Justice on Trial

Trump’s attack on the courts and the unraveling of American democracy

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 13d

When categories define lives, safety is no longer a right but a fragile illusion. Labels decide who belongs—and who can be taken in an instant. #Democracy #HumanRights #Family #America

When Categories Define Lives

The peril of a world where classification rules over humanity.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 14d

Trump doesn’t just seek power—he demands worship. His rallies function as ritual theater, his lies as tests of faith. This is not politics as usual, but the making of a cult. #Trump #Authoritarianism #CultPolitics #Democracy

The Cult of Trump

How ritual, spectacle, and devotion turned politics into worship

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 15d

Labels don’t just categorize— they brand. From McCarthy to Trump, accusations of “communist,” “invader,” and “terrorist” turn debate into danger and inquiry into subversion.

#Authoritarianism #Democracy #Trump #WitchHunt #McCarthyism #PoliticalEconomy #FearPolitics #KnowledgeUnderAttack

When Words Become Crimes

How political labeling turns debate into danger and inquiry into subversion

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 16d

When leaders promise “retribution,” they aren’t just talking. They are reshaping who feels safe, who doesn’t, and what democracy even means. Once Safety shrinks from a right to a privilege—the republic itself is at risk.

#Democracy #Authoritarianism #Retribution #CivilRights #Safety

How Safe Should We Feel?

Conditional security and the slow undoing of democracy

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 17d

I once saw Trump as a clown or a puppet, but I’ve come to recognize the method in his chaos. His performance corrodes institutions, and the spectacle itself functions as policy. The danger isn’t sudden collapse—it’s the steady drift.

#Trump #Authoritarianism #Democracy #Spectacle #Power

The Method in the Madness

Why Trump’s chaos isn’t accidental—and how it corrodes democracy’s foundations

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 18d

Trump governs like a grifter, bending tariffs, tax cuts, and deportations into tools of looting. The damage is already visible: slowed job growth, rising prices, and a government that no longer trusts its own numbers. #CrashingTheEconomy

Crashing the Economy

How Trump’s policies of looting, deportation, and data manipulation are driving the U.S. toward economic fragility

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 19d

MAGA isn’t fascism borrowed from Europe. Its DNA is American: white supremacy, rebellion, and spectacle repackaged in red hats.

#MAGA #AmericanHistory #Democracy #WhiteSupremacy #Authoritarianism #ChristianNationalism

The American DNA of MAGA

Why Trump’s movement is less fascist import than homegrown insurgency

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 20d

MAGA didn’t reject identity politics — it inverted it. What began as protection for the excluded has become grievance for the powerful.

#MAGA #IdentityPolitics #Democracy #Authoritarianism #PoliticalEcology

MAGA and the Politics of Identity

Why identity politics thrives in collapse—and how MAGA turned it upside down

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 21d

MAGA isn’t just politics—it’s a system of belief. Ritual, grievance, and identity fuse into a fortress where facts can’t penetrate. Breaking it won’t come from evidence, but from new stories of belonging.

#MAGA #Trump #Democracy #Belief #Authoritarianism

Beyond Facts: The Identity Politics of MAGA

How ritual, grievance, and survival bind Trump’s movement together

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 22d

Healthcare in America isn’t collapsing by accident — it’s being redesigned to decide who survives. From debt traps to actuarial governance, survival itself is being triaged by policy. The logic is brutal, but it can be undone.
#Healthcare #Necropolitics #PublicHealth #Democracy #SocialJustice

The Cost of Survival

How U.S. Healthcare Policy Triages the Aging and Poor

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 23d

I get it. The term is misleading. Neoliberalism doesn’t mean liberal in the democratic, pluralist sense—it came out of Europe in the 1930s to describe a “new” market liberalism: privatization, deregulation, and shrinking the state. Over time it became shorthand for policies that let markets rule.

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James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus @zavaletas.bsky.social · 23d

The U.S. healthcare system is collapsing under the weight of profit, politics, and neglect. What’s at stake isn’t just affordability—it’s survival. #HealthcareCrisis #Neoliberalism #Democracy #PublicGoods

The Price of Exposure

Healthcare Inflation, Structural Abandonment, and the Quiet Reconfiguration of Risk

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