Back in March, I wrote a post here called “I Think They Call This Fascism,” meant to be a preliminary inquiry into how to define “fascism” and apply it to present circumstances. I laid out seven methodological issues that arise in defining “fascism,” the second of which was how the concept of “fascism” applies to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. At the time, I was conceptualizing totalitarianism as revolutionary and all-encompassing, and conceptualizing authoritarianism as traditional and more limited in scope. Though I still think that totalitarianism vs authoritarianism is an essential issue, it now occurs to me that the preceding conceptualization, somewhat uncritically adopted from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s account, is misleading or wrong.
Continue readingTag Archives: politics
Robert Massie at Princeton
“Divestment and the Boundaries of Conscience”
As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been involved since 2024 in the campaign to induce Princeton University to divest its holdings, not just from Israel, but from arms manufacture and military affairs as such.
It was about a year ago that I got it into my head to get Robert K. Massie IV involved in our efforts. Massie is one of the architects and chroniclers of the decades-long campaign to divest from apartheid South Africa; I’d first encountered his book Loosing the Bonds twenty years ago, and been impressed by the rigor of his argument, as well as by the wealth of detail and moral passion he brought to the subject. Continue reading
Navy Copter Down
Mikie Sherrill’s defenders are now doubling down on her Naval Academy issue. It isn’t enough for them to say that what she did was wrong, but a long time ago, which might be sufficient. They need to double down because they perceive, correctly, that something larger is at stake. They’re right, but not in the way they think.
Continue readingMorituri Te Salutant
I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my best friends in Palestine, someone who lives in a small village in the South Hebron Hills. I’ve excerpted it below, deleting personal names, and omitting place names and other particulars, and corrected the grammar of one sentence for clarity. It’s in English, but I’ve provided a tl; dr translation just after the block quote. The word “football” refers throughout to soccer. Continue reading
Montgomery Twp Issues ITA Proclamation
Apropos of my last post, Montgomery Township has just issued an official proclamation in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. A proclamation has a somewhat lower official status than a resolution; unlike a resolution, it’s issued collectively by the mayor and Council, and doesn’t require individualized votes by Council members. So it’s not exactly what we wanted, but it’s still a win.
Whether coincidentally or not, two Council members who were present last time were absent today, notably Dennis Ahn and Vincent Barragan.
Continue readingInstitutional Neutrality: Another Day, Another Exception
Institutional neutrality is the doctrine that institutions like universities should refrain from issuing public comment on matters of public controversy. As I’ve argued here at PoT (and elsewhere), one canonical exception to neutrality is institutional self-defense: a university is obliged to speak up when the university itself comes under attack. Predictably, we now have yet another exception to add to the list: the Charlie Kirk Exception. This exception asserts that when a famous right-wing loudmouth is shot on a university campus, all institutions hitherto bound by solemn pledges of institutional neutrality are obliged to carve out a special dispensation to condemn the act. Continue reading
Activism and Its Critics
The migrant defense group that I work with, Resistencia en Acción, held a rummage sale the other day, raising $3,700 for migrants detained in a recent set of raids here in Princeton. That, by any measure, is a success. Think about what was involved in making it happen.
Someone had to conceive the idea, then convey it to others willing to help make it happen. Tasks had to be divided up, and people had to be held to keeping whatever promises of assistance they made. The organizers had to find a space within which to hold the event. They had to acquire several roomfuls of items to sell, then go to the space they’d acquired and arrange the items there. The space in question was a set of rooms in a church, not presently set up for a rummage sale. So that had to be set up. “That had to be set up” is elliptical for hours of work too tedious to describe: the space in question was the size of small house; anyone who’s moved homes, even from one apartment to another, knows what’s involved. Continue reading
Is It Time to Bomb Columbia University?
I had a conversation the other day with a friend who just started law school at Columbia. This person told me that on the first day of orientation, the first-year law students were visited by officials from Columbia’s so-called Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). According to OIE, the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” is presumptively to be understood as advocacy of genocide, as discrimination against Jews, and therefore as a violation of Title VI. Anyone who chants it thereby becomes a candidate for reprimand, suspension, and/or expulsion. So they were instructed not to chant it. A couple of things can be said about this, I think. Continue reading
“Not the Time for Cowardice”
Statement of Sadaf Jaffer in support of a municipal resolution supporting the Immigrant Trust Act, Montgomery (NJ) Town Council, Sept. 4.
Good evening,
As a former mayor and state legislator, I urge you to pass a resolution supporting the Immigrant Trust Act and to do everything in your power to ensure that our state assemblymembers Roy Freiman and Mitchelle Drulis cosponsor it as well. Continue reading
Statement to Montgomery Town Council
Montgomery Town Council
Sept. 4, 2025, 7 pm
100 Community Dr, Skillman, New Jersey
Hi, my name is Irfan Khawaja. I live in Princeton, but spend a fair bit of time here in Montgomery. I’m here to speak in favor of Montgomery’s passing a municipal-level resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act, just as we’ve recently done in Princeton, and has been done in more than a dozen municipalities across the state. Continue reading
