#mashagessen — Public Fediverse posts

#elections #MashaGessen

"As for the next presidential election, Trump has made his intentions clear: He is not planning to leave his throne. He may look for a pretext to cancel the vote. (When President Volodymyr Zelensky told him that Ukraine can’t have an election during the war, Trump visibly lit up: 'So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.') He may find a way to invalidate the vote after the election — he has been laying the groundwork for such a move since his first term. Even if he doesn’t, it is foolish to think that this iteration of our national nightmare will end in three years.

One term for regimes that maintain the trappings of democracy, such as legislatures, courts and elections, but use them primarily as decoration is 'electoral authoritarianism.' This is what we are becoming.

(. . .)

We can’t count on change being brought about by elections when we can’t count on elections. We can’t count on the freedoms and resources we enjoy today to still be available to us tomorrow."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/trump-one-year-later.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.crde.7jYvifcOp0Zu&smid=url-share

@andrewstroehlein Thank you. A very impactful piece. #MashaGessen is uniquely qualified to report on suppression by government entities. The perspective by a person who was born in the #USSR and lived the most part of their adult life in #Russia and the #US connects the dots how totalitarian regimes survive by inflicting fear and paralysis on a society.
*Correction: I misgendered. I'm deeply sorry. English is not my native language.

Lese einen Artikel von M. Gessen über Normalisierung, über die Gewöhnung an die Folgen des authoritarian breakthrough in den USA. Und habe beinahe schon vergessen, dass der rechtsradikale Soziallandesrat der Steiermark Amesbauer ukrainischen Kriegsflüchtlingen gerade die erste Notunterkunft gestrichen hat, so dass einige in Graz unter freiem Himmel übernachten.

Fediverse Reactions

Germany deporting EU citizens for their political activism is another chilling step towards a new era of authoritarianism - orchestrated not by the AfD, but by the so-called political centre...

And worse again, most of the German media seem to ignore this latest incident!

#Deutschland #Abschiebungen #EU #Ireland #Palestine #Gaza #protest #FarRight #AfD #authoritarianism #Staatsräson #NoOtherLand #MashaGessen #NancyFraser #OmriBoehm #AdaniaShibli

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/03/germany-deporting-pro-palestine-eu-citizens-chilling-new-step

“The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others. It is happening to people who, we claim, have rights just because we are human. It is happening to me, personally.” #MashaGessen https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/opinion/trump-trans-denationalizing.html

#MashaGessen over Trump’s type of lying

https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/114112649885387310 ff. 🧵

#USPol

@wdlindsy if you haven’t seen it, here’s a recent piece by the estimable #MashaGessen in the New Yorker. A nuanced view from the ground at Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom, an intentional Jewish/Arab settlement in Israel.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/17/wahat-al-salam-neve-shalom-israel-gaza-october-7th

"Discussion of #Israel and #Palestine has long fallen into a special category. Some have called it 'the Palestine exception to #FreeSpeech.' #BrooklynCollege, like other universities, has weathered many controversies in this area." - #MashaGessen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/brooklyn-college-jewish-currents-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.U_kS.VD_aEd7NIv85&smid=url-share
#censorship #CUNY #FreeSpeechOnCampus #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #Gaza #JewishCurrents #USpol #USpolitics @palestine

"Discussion of #Israel and #Palestine has long fallen into a special category. Some have called it 'the Palestine exception to #FreeSpeech.' #BrooklynCollege, like other universities, has weathered many controversies in this area." - #MashaGessen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/brooklyn-college-jewish-currents-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.U_kS.VD_aEd7NIv85&smid=url-share
#censorship #CUNY #FreeSpeechOnCampus #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #Gaza #JewishCurrents #USpol #USpolitics @palestine

"Discussion of #Israel and #Palestine has long fallen into a special category. Some have called it 'the Palestine exception to #FreeSpeech.' #BrooklynCollege, like other universities, has weathered many controversies in this area." - #MashaGessen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/brooklyn-college-jewish-currents-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.U_kS.VD_aEd7NIv85&smid=url-share
#censorship #CUNY #FreeSpeechOnCampus #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #Gaza #JewishCurrents #USpol #USpolitics @palestine

"Discussion of #Israel and #Palestine has long fallen into a special category. Some have called it 'the Palestine exception to #FreeSpeech.' #BrooklynCollege, like other universities, has weathered many controversies in this area." - #MashaGessen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/brooklyn-college-jewish-currents-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.U_kS.VD_aEd7NIv85&smid=url-share
#censorship #CUNY #FreeSpeechOnCampus #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #Gaza #JewishCurrents #USpol #USpolitics @palestine

"Discussion of #Israel and #Palestine has long fallen into a special category. Some have called it 'the Palestine exception to #FreeSpeech.' #BrooklynCollege, like other universities, has weathered many controversies in this area." - #MashaGessen

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/brooklyn-college-jewish-currents-gaza-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.U_kS.VD_aEd7NIv85&smid=url-share
#censorship #CUNY #FreeSpeeckOnCampus #PalestineSolidarity #GazaSolidarity #Gaza #JewishCurrents #USpol #USpolitics @palestine

From #JewishCurrents
Livestream and Location Sunday May 17 Event "The #USElection After #Gaza"

From the broad support for the uncommitted movement, to calls to “vote blue no matter who” in order to “preserve American democracy,” navigating the electoral landscape at this moment presents unprecedented challenges. Together we’ll explore these questions with #PeterBeinart, #LaylaElabed, #MashaGessen, and #WaleedShahid, hosted by #MehdiHasan.

@palestine @israel #USPolitics

https://jewishcurrents.org/newsletter/livestream-and-location-for-sundays-event-the-election-after-gaza?token=tMgwZlPEroMhJzbDmEH9itV3TVajsSWE

@Timotei #MashaGessen, who knows #Russia better than nearly anyone, said the same thing on MSNBC the other day.

5 stars from me for "The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin" by Masha Gessen:

As an American, this was a fascinating and educational read. It fills in the blanks left by our myopic media and provides context to events that were quite mysterious and unexpected at the time that I was living through them.

To have finished the book, which closes describing scenes in Moscow in December 2011, when Alexei Navalny was leading hopeful protests against the Putin regime, on the same day that the news of Navalny's death in prison reached me, seems cruel, but entirely fitting. In these passages, Gessen notes that Putin and his allies were slow to recognize the danger they were in, and predicted that when they did, they would lash out violently, like a cornered animal. Perhaps with a terrorist attack, like the ones the KGB engineered against the Russian people in 1999 - 2000, when Putin was first running for president. But no. Putin started a war.

Follow my bookwyrm account for all my reviews: @[email protected]

#Books #Bookstodon #Nonfiction #MashaGessen #Putin #Russia #History @bookstodon

https://bookwyrm.social/user/SallyStrange/review/3867979/s/i-learned-so-much

@JamesGleick

They are #Fascists and #Fascism fanboys.

This is how #democracy falls.

These are the actions of #Authoritarian #Extremist #insurrectionists and #AntiAmerican #Seditionists

How did we.get here?

#TimothySnyder
#MashaGessen

“‘You know what was good about the Second World War?’ Nayyem asked wistfully. ‘It ended!’” #MashaGessen https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/ukraines-democracy-in-darkness

Can Masha Gessen get an Apology now that Israel's Smotrich called Gaza a "Ghetto" that Should be Depopulated?
https://www.juancole.com/2024/01/apology-smotrich-depopulated.html

#Palestine #Gaza #Israel #ApartheidIsrael #MashaGessen #Genocide #EthnicCleasing #Liquidation

a time to dismantle
https://pdbowman.studio/quareidfaciam/turning-point-usa/

#MelanieYazzie #RedNation #imperialism #MashaGessen #HannahArendt #JonathanGraubart #Palestine #Gaza #Israel #Zionism #BDS #VladVexler #TurningPointUSA #CharlieKirk #blog

📺 PBS: "Masha Gessen Responds to Controversy Over Gaza Comments" ⤵️

🔗 https://www.pbs.org/video/masha-gessen-responds-to-controversy-over-gaza-comments-w8p3/

🏷️ #Israel #Gaza #Antisemitismus #HannahArendt #Bremen #Preis #FreeSpeech #MashaGessen #PBS

"“But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards –Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term ‘ghetto’ would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

The irony is almost too thick to cut." #mashagessen #hannaharendt #gaza
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/18/hannah-arendt-prize-masha-gessen-israel-gaza-essay

THE POLITICS OF MEMORY

“The way memory politics functions in Europe, in the United States, but especially in Germany, the cornerstone is that the Holocaust was a singular event, standing outside of history. My argument is that in order to learn from history, we have to compare. That actually has to be a constant exercise. We are not smarter people, better people, or more educated people than the people who lived ninety years ago. The only thing that makes us different from those people is that in their imagination the Holocaust did not yet exist. In ours it does. We know that it’s possible. And the way to prevent it is to be vigilant in the way Hannah Arendt did in fact and other Jewish thinkers who survived the Holocaust.”

Masha Gessen, in an Interview on Democracy Now, 16 Dec 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtSD2Y5g5OM

#MashaGessen #HannahArendt #germany
#holocaust
#memory
#israel
#NeverForget
#history
#time
#palestine
#genocide
#ghetto
#liquidation
#gaza
#warsaw

#MiddleEastEye
#MashaGessen compares the conditions in #Gaza today to a ghetto of WWII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpGAhk41f7Y

#PermanentCeasefireNOW
#EndTheOccupationNOW 🇵🇸

> .. layers of irony.. Hundreds of people at this point have said that #HannahArendt would not be eligible for the #HannahArendtPrize. But I was also corresponding with this philosopher, #SusanNeiman — an #IsraeliCitizen who lives in #Germany who is a premier scholar of German politics of memory — and she wrote to me saying #Arendt wouldn’t even be able to get a visa to come to Germany, if she needed a visa of course.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/16/masha-gessen-israel-holocaust-00132132
/HT @dbattistella
#MashaGessen

I'm not in the habit of boosting the work of staff writers at The New Yorker, but this essay -- the one that got Masha Gessen's Hannah Arendt Prize ceremony cancelled (they're still getting the actual award) -- is quite good.

There aren't really pull quotes to take out that would do it justice. I recommend just reading it in full. The controversy has whittled the whole thing down to one paragraph about the similarities between Gaza and the Jewish ghettos under the Nazi regime, but that omits a lot. And it's a telling omission.

The actual gist of it is the impossibility, given the nature of a lot of official Holocaust and WWII memory culture, of having an honest discussion about the current fighting in Israel/Palestine specifically, and about victims who are also perpetrators more generally. But even that kind of shortchanges the scope of Gessen's argument.

The cancellation of the award ceremony only appears all the more absurd once you've read the article. If I saw a movie where an article like this produced a response like that, I'd be annoyed because it would just seem too perfect to be believable.

In any event, it's worth reading.

#MemoryCulture #Holocaust #MashaGessen #HannahArendt

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust

"#PoliticsOfMemory": #MashaGessen's #HannahArendtPrize Postponed for Comparing #Gaza, #WarsawGhetto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtSD2Y5g5OM

#CeasefireNOW
#EndTheOccupationNOW🇵🇸
#EndCensorshipOfArtistsWritersJournalistsAthletesAcademics

Safly, #history repeats. It just 'looks' different!

"Some of the great Jewish thinkers who survived the Holocaust spent the rest of their lives trying to tell the world that the horror, while uniquely deadly, should not be seen as an aberration. That the Holocaust happened meant that it was possible—and remains possible." — #MashaGessen #memoryculture

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust

Invito a leggere le parole davvero illuminanti sul comportamento di #Israele nel conflitto israelo-palestinese, di #MashaGessen #intellettuale #ebreo che dice una scomoda verità che invece TUTTI gli stati del mondo stanno facendo finta di non vedere

https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_dicembre_14/gaza-come-ghetto-bufera-germania-masha-gessen-viene-ritirato-premio-hannah-arendt-2ac25b6e-9a82-11ee-a760-1b940a8522c8.shtml

In the Shadow of the #Holocaust - How the politics of memory in #Europe obscures what we see in #Israel and #Gaza today.
#MashaGessen #HannahArendt

Such an insightful, thoughtful essay, hard to believe that @boell could have decided to withdraw sponsorship after reading it...

#longread #essay #genocide #IHRA #JerusalemDeclaration #AntiSemitism #BDS #Germany
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust

Die Publizistin erhält den Preis, aber die Feier fällt aus. Sie hat den Krieg in Gaza mit der Liquidierung der Ghettos unter den Nazis gleichgesetzt.#MashaGessen #HannahArendt #Preisverleihung #Bremen #Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung #Palästina #Israel #Nord
Bremer Hannah-Arendt-Preis 2023: Keine Feier für Masha Gessen https://squeet.me/display/962c3e10-324eea9b-ff6ba10fc95a82d8

HOLOCAUSTVERHARMLOSUNG

#shoah #holocaust #gaza #israel

#Russia #issues #arrest #warrant for #trans #nonbinary #journalist over #reporting on #Ukraine.

#MashaGessen #fled the #country in 2013 in the face of #antiLGBTQ+ #propaganda #laws.

#Nonbinary #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Media #Representation #Culture #Russia #FuckRussia #FuckPutin

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/12/russia-issues-arrest-warrant-for-trans-non-binary-journalist-over-reporting-on-ukraine/

the certainty of the reality of the possibility
https://pdbowman.studio/briefs/30-jul-23-masha-gessen-parallel-polis-and-political-hope/

#MashaGessen #ParallelPolis #dissidence #VáclavBenda #VáclavHavel #Solidarność #hope #ErichFromm #blog