racism

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: How to Combat the GOP Election Denialists’ Plot to Subvert Democracy

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – In the 1978 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an alien fungal spore infection takes over the minds of susceptible people, growing into pods that duplicate their bodies and transforming them into pod people — mindless authoritarian monsters that want to control America. A remake of the 1956 movie […]

African-Americans

With his Dangerous Antisemitism and Racist Stereotypes, Ye has made himself a MAGA Patsy

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – Kanye West, who now goes by just “Ye,” has transformed himself from a global rap and fashion icon, into a useful idiot for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. What he did not realize is that rich, powerful white men like Trump are routinely forgiven their racism by […]

Colonialism

How Whiteness was Invented and Fashioned in Britain’s Colonial Age of Expansion

The Conversation

By Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta | – (The Conversation)- Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before. The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion of the British empire and […]

Congress

Tlaib calls out “Progressive except on Israel,” and Wasserman Schultz inadvertently makes Her Point for Her

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ursula Perano at the Daily Beast reports on the controversy among the Progressive Democratic Caucus in Congress over remarks on Wednesday by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She attacked the syndrome of “progressive except on Israel” within her caucus and observed at an online seminar, “that among progressives, it has become […]

Featured

Top 6 things wrong with DeSantis’s Stunt of Flying Asylum-Seekers to Martha’s Vineyard

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Stunts like Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s program of rounding up and flying to Martha’s Vineyard Venezuelan and Colombian asylum-seekers, who are in the country legally awaiting the adjudication of their asylum status, have definite downsides. DeSantis helped run an explicitly racist Facebook page before he was governor of Florida, and […]

Books

Of Course there were Africans in Middle Earth, Just as there Were in Medieval England

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – American white nationalism has attempted to appropriate certain cultures, times and places as quintessentially “white,” and so it is no surprise that, as John Blake at CNN writes, there is controversy on the American Right about the multicultural casting visible in the Amazon Prime series Rings of Power, based on […]

Far Right

Faced with Extremism within its Ranks, US Military has clamped down on racist Speech, including Retweets and Likes

The Conversation

By Dwight Stirling, University of Southern California | – Less than a month after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin took the extraordinary step of pausing all operations for 24 hours to “address extremism in the ranks.” Pentagon officials had been shaken by service members’ prominent […]

African-Americans

How Samuel Alito’s Attack on Privacy Rights could Make that famous Star Trek Kiss between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner Illegal Again

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Steve Chawkins writes in the LA Times that actress Nichelle Nichols died of a heart attack on Saturday at 89 in Silver City, New Mexico. Nichols was cast by Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry as Lt. Nyota Uhura, chief communications officer of the Federation star ship Enterprise and the fourth […]

Antisemitism

Former Oath Keeper reveals racist, antisemitic Beliefs of White Nationalist Group – and their Plans to start a Civil War

The Conversation

By Sara Kamali, University of California Santa Barbara | – During his testimony before congressional investigators, former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove left little doubt about the intentions of the white nationalist militia group when its members stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Tatenhove explained that Jan. 6 “could have been a […]