I’m an anthropologist, sometimes I occupy things & such.

I see anarchism as something you do not an identity...

...so don’t call me the anarchist anthropologist

Twitter was David’s public platform and tools for practicing a new language – clear and understandable for everyone, it was a space where he made friends and enemies.

Tweets 7,501 Replies 51,144 Retweets 24,559 Everything 83,204
Tue 21 Jan 2020 18:13

“In many ways, I feel that elements of the cultural studies movement and postmodernism, in emphasising human agency vis a vis the media, have obscured the extent to which the media influences people.” Indeed. https://t.co/mY7U6ntHle

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Tue 21 Jan 2020 17:42

Most dramatically Dershowitz’s job wasn’t threatened at all, despite being proved to be a plagiarist, neither is the Minister of Justice in trouble despite having been proven to have broken the law

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Tue 21 Jan 2020 17:06

First they came for the journalists. Then I hear rumors they came for somebody else but I don’t really know who. #glengreenwald

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Tue 21 Jan 2020 16:43

This reminds me of when Finkelstein was fired from his job basically for proving Alan Dershowitz was guilty of plagiarism. Now Glen Greenwald is being prosecuted for discovering that prosecutors were breaking the law. https://t.co/ZXvOrxlJJZ

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Mon 20 Jan 2020 13:22

This is x a really outrageous case and while it might seem a far-away affair to many, Russia is now the testing ground for forms of repression that can then be exported elsewhere. This concerns everyone https://t.co/nglJuQFjNz

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 19:50

(on reflection, speaking out against injustice to far right people allows a *triple* sense of moral superiority, doesn’t it? 1. to the oppressor. 2. to the victim, 3. to anyone you can accuse of being unsympathetic because the victims are far right. So for a liberal it’s perfect

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:59

even having to hear about Momentum & their vision rather than Brexit in 2018 fits this pattern; solidarity, even critical solidarity, requires 1000x more work than obsessing on the machinations of the right from a haughty or even concerned distance 10/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:55

to have to think about, or act in solidarity w/, someone who shares your own avowed commitment to human liberation, but inevitably has somewhat different ideas about how to go about it, is less safe, e.g., you have to listen to & seriously engage with what they have to say 9/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:52

in any one case there are numerous factors but it’s hard not to see a pattern: it’s easy for a liberal to support a right-wing person who’s been wronged, because it allows them to feel morally superior to both sides – & moral superiority is ultimately what they’re all about 8/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:50

why is it Western leftists & peace activists seem to be so much more likely to know who Hamas is, a far-right organisation, & speak of the wrongs committed against them, than the PYD, a libertarian socialist organisation inspired by the ideas of Murray Bookchin? 7/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:47

many who have strong opinions about Shamima Begum seem to be genuinely unaware of the Kurdish or other Syrian feminists’ existence. And not just because it affects them: UK-born feminists, Kurdish or English who joined the SDF face arrest on return to barely a peep of protest 6/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:42

I can’t help but see a connection here with the fact that despite the fact there’s an explicitly feminist revolution in N Syria, most Western feminists seemed far more concerned with the rights & fates of ISIS wives, than leftist Syrian feminists literally fighting patriarchy 5/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:39

though supposedly left-wing, he had zero interest in the fact a major party was trying to develop real left-wing policies that might even get enacted, he wanted to only talk about the initiatives of the right & resistance to them. This was so obviously part of the problem 4/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:38

… that he presumably didn’t know about (new forms of ownership, etc). He arrogantly shut me up, telling me I was obviously too close to the scene to understand what was really important (i.e., what he was presumably reading in the news like everyone else) 3/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:36

I keenly remember meeting an old acquaintance of my wife, an (Israeli?) leftie at an art fair in ’17 & he immediately asked all about the current state of Brexit. I said I was bored of Brexit, it was a sideshow anyway, & started listing proposals in the Labour manifesto … 2/

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Sun 19 Jan 2020 17:33

rant for the day: it is becoming apparent to me that liberals actually enjoy talking about or even defending to far right much more than they do the far left, presumably, because it heightens rathe than threatening their sense of moral superiority 1/

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Sat 18 Jan 2020 19:54

I would write that I have it on good authority that .@paulmasonnews is actually an agent of Hermès Trismegistus but this being twitter there is the danger some people would probably take me seriously

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 12:29

it’s hard to escape the impression there’s some sort of political conflict or even (dare I say?) racial bias involved here that I’m not aware of. Anyone have the backstory? 5/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 12:28

even using the Gayanashagowa, the Six Nation story of the origins of the League, as an historical source is often treated as crazy. Obviously oral sources aren’t to be taken uncritically but neither are written ones, there’s a long tradition of how to do this (e.g., Vansina) 4/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 12:25

for instance, Bruce Trigger, the eminence grise of Huron/Wendat studies, disagrees with his argument the Neutral Confederacy was a chiefdom, but ONLY cites the archaeological & Jesuit sources, he pretends the oral history doesn’t even exist. No one else refers to it either. 3/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 12:24

I’m reading Wlm Noble (1985) “Tsouharissen’s Chiefdom” about the Neutral – he has an oral narrative said to be conveyed directly in the female line from a ruler’s last wife. Noble is a respected archaeological authority yet this mss is never cited by anyone else even thru him 2/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 12:21

incidentally anyone out there has any insight into Iroquoian history/studies? Why is it that oral history sources are so systematically discounted or ignored – where in equivalent histories of, say, African or Austronesian societies, they wouldn’t be? It’s quite extraordinary. 1/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 10:56

if he becomes leader he’ll either have to 1. continue to use his position to tell at least a significant portion of the elite exactly what they want to hear (i.e. abandon socialism), or 2. suddenly be discovered not to have these “personal attributes” after all. You know that! 2/

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 10:53

Paul, KS was treated by the media as having these qualities because as Shadow Brexit sec’y he was the only one in the Labour leadership whose job was to tell a significant portion of the elite exactly what they wanted to hear. 1/ https://t.co/yHnCfMtyTZ

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Tue 14 Jan 2020 06:15

I wrote this basically as a compendium of all the things I’d never be allowed to say in British media https://t.co/qNVkvHTsRZ

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