Carl Beijer

Carl Beijer•www.peoplesline.org

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Politics

Readings on politics, socialism, and other things from Carl Beijer's substack.

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Episodes

The limits of political "strategy"

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peoplesline.org/subscribe

Aug 22, 2024•7 min

"Authoritarian" is an analytically useless concept

Guess the term: some scholarly works of history and political theory use it in specific and coherent ways, but almost no one else does. Instead, its primary role in our discourse is to demonize political opponents and shut down debate by vaguely invoking the memory of Nazi Germany and other violent, repressive regimes. In this use, it appeals to a concept that is just too vague and subjective to explain or describe anything; in this use, it never moves the conversation forward or contributes to ...

Dec 01, 2021•13 min

Pandering to the right is lucrative and can make you extremely popular

Let’s suppose that the standard Republican take about the supposed left-wing bias of MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and so on are true. It’s not — this is a gross simplification that calls liberal orthodoxy “left” and then ignores all of the coverage that doesn’t even meet that standard — but let’s accept it for the sake of argument. Let’s imagine that these outlets are all radical left propaganda organs. Let’s also suppose, to accept another exaggerated claim, that if you ...

Nov 24, 2021•13 min

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