#mashagessen — Public Fediverse posts

Vielschichtige Reportage von Masha Gessen über Péter Magyars Sieg in Ungarn (mit Aufnahmen von Máté Bartha, die die Stimmung nach der Wahl festhalten): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/opinion/hungary-win-election-viktor-orban.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mVA.yHR9.5iwQNPRcDcHN&smid=url-share (Geschenk-Link). Gessen hat u.a. Bálint Magyar, den Entwickler des Konzepts des Authoritarian Breakthrough, gefragt, wie es gelang das Orbán-Regime zu besiegen. Der Pluralismus der Bewegung, die ausgezeichnete Organisation und Péter Magyars relativer Outsider-Status waren mitentscheidend. Man ist bewusst anders vorgegangen als Orbán, hat auf die unterschiedlichen Stimmen in der Bevölkerung gehört und auf reale Menschen gesetzt statt auf Online-Mobilisierung.

Wir haben in der Steiermark einen FPÖ-Landeshauptmann, der Orbán verehrt. Orbán setzte in seiner Symbolpolitik auf ungarische Minderheiten in Nachbarstaaten – Kunasek provoziert durch eine Landeshymne, die die slowenische Südsteiermark zum Teil der „Heimat“ erklärt. Sollten Kunasek und sein Parteichef Erfolg haben, stehen wir am Anfang der Orbanisierung, mit der Ungarn gebrochen hat. (Ich fürchte, dass Putin ihnen dabei durch Angriffe und Kriegsdrohungen helfen wird.) Wir nehmen diese Gefahr immer noch nicht erst genug – während Masha Gessen immer auch Trump meint, wenn von Orbán die Rede ist.

Vielschichtige Reportage von Masha Gessen über Péter Magyars Sieg in Ungarn (mit Aufnahmen von Máté Bartha, die die Stimmung nach der Wahl festhalten): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/opinion/hungary-win-election-viktor-orban.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mVA.yHR9.5iwQNPRcDcHN&smid=url-share (Geschenk-Link). Gessen hat u.a. Bálint Magyar, den Entwickler des Konzepts des Authoritarian Breakthrough, gefragt, wie es gelang das Orbán-Regime zu besiegen. Der Pluralismus der Bewegung, die ausgezeichnete Organisation und Péter Magyars relativer Outsider-Status waren mitentscheidend. Man ist bewusst anders vorgegangen als Orbán, hat auf die unterschiedlichen Stimmen in der Bevölkerung gehört und auf reale Menschen gesetzt statt auf Online-Mobilisierung.

Wir haben in der Steiermark einen FPÖ-Landeshauptmann, der Orbán verehrt. Orbán setzte in seiner Symbolpolitik auf ungarische Minderheiten in Nachbarstaaten – Kunasek provoziert durch eine Landeshymne, die die slowenische Südsteiermark zum Teil der „Heimat“ erklärt. Sollten Kunasek und sein Parteichef Erfolg haben, stehen wir am Anfang der Orbanisierung, mit der Ungarn gebrochen hat. (Ich fürchte, dass Putin ihnen dabei durch Angriffe und Kriegsdrohungen helfen wird.) Wir nehmen diese Gefahr immer noch nicht erst genug – während Masha Gessen immer auch Trump meint, wenn von Orbán die Rede ist.

#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

#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.

@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

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

Autokratischer Durchbruch gegen die ökologische Realität: Vor Trumps zweiter Amtszeit

https://wittenbrink.net/autokratischer-durchbruch-gegen-die-oekologische-realitaet-vor-trumps-zweiter-amtszeit/

@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

@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

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.

@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

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

@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

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

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

#PermanentCeasefireNOW
#EndTheOccupationNOW 🇵🇸

Dafür, dass das Event gestern abend bei der Böll-Stiftung mit #MashaGessen doch recht spektakulär war, gibt es erstaunlich viel mediale Stille, oder?

Kommt da noch was?

Some thoughts on antisemitism and tokenization:

https://mishathings.org/2023-12-17-masha-gessen-antisemitism-and-tokenization.html

#MashaGessen #Israel #Palestine

Hannah-Arendt-Preis trotz Kritik an Autorin Gessen verliehen

Der Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken ist ungeachtet massiver Kritik an Masha Gessen verliehen worden. Der Bremer Senat und die Böll-Stiftung hatten die Teilnahme aus Protest gegen Äußerungen der Autorin zum Nahost-Konflikt abgesagt.

➡️ https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/hannah-arendt-preis-100.html?at_medium=mastodon&at_campaign=tagesschau.de

#MashaGessen #HannahArendtPreis

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

Ich empfehle allen, die sich mit dem Artikel von Masha Gessen im New Yorker und dann dem Rückzug der @boell aus der Verleihung des Hannah-Arendt-Preises an #MashaGessen beschäftigt haben, sehr diesen Podcast mit Masha Gessen. Danach aufgenommen.

Englisch, allerdings.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/masha-gessen-on-the-holocaust-israel-and-the-politics-of-memory

"#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!

@MishaVelthuis
Minor correction: The Hannah Arendt award hasn't been withdrawn.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation (which is close to the German Green party) and others withdrew it's support, and the award ceremony for #MashaGessen will now be on Saturday at a different location.

Powerful essay by #MashaGessen on "How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in #Israel and #Gaza today"

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

This essay led to the suspension of their Hannah Arendt award

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/award-ceremony-suspended-after-writer-masha-gessen-compares-gaza-to-nazi-era-jewish-ghettos

Some quotes from this article:

'“The problem is that criticism of Israel is often seen as antisemitic, which I think is the real antisemitic scandal. This overlooks the actual antisemitism”'

'“Hannah Arendt wouldn’t get the Hannah Arendt award in Germany today.”'