Benjamin Teitelbaum

It’s been more than two years since Olavo de Carvalho died; a man I knew for a brief period of time who ended up playing an outsized role in my life. This is not due to mutual admiration: Olavo spent some of the last months of his life cursing and condemning me. 🧵

@paulinaneuding Underbar bok av en äkta Ambjörbyson!!! <3

Sträckläst Hans Bergströms finstämda bok om uppväxten i Klarälvsdalen på 50-talet, mellan gamla Sverige och moderniteten. Levandegör tidens kultur, hur man talade, skolades i medborgarskap, löste problem – samt oironisk och livsbejakande ungdomskultur. Rekommenderar mkt varmt.

@alex_usyd Really, it's a fantastic example of what can be accomplished and how much can be learned with a sense of scholarly purpose that goes beyond the basics of assessing good/bad

@BenTeitel Thanks Benjamin, you're too kind!

Some of the best writing on the right I've seen for a while. Nice work, @alex_usyd noemamag.com/the-return-of-…

@DamonLinker Been teaching a similar curriculum courses for over a decade. Always some of the best experiences I’ve had as a teacher.

I taught Michel Houellebecq’s Submission (2015) in my Penn course on “The Reactionary Right” this semester & was impressed w the rigorous way he thinks thru what it would take to heal the wounded souls of those modern men who are deeply discontented w the contemporary world. 1/3

I am impressed by those who approach this moment with curiosity and a sense of adventure

a surprisingly good month for putin. russia making bank on oil, gas. fertilizer. us sanctions suspended. us weapons now prioritized for iran war. russia supporting iran without consequence. and a russian tanker with oil now allowed through to cuba by the americans.

He dwells on Ukr’s most maximalist aims, implies they never really started negotiating till 2024.Meanwhile no mention of Rus obvious goal to topple Kyiv and the government, demands for Ukr disarmament hidden in a discussion of troop numbers, resistance to NATO expansion redefined as only expansion to Ukr…

Presumably there's an editorial drive to publish perspectives that break with the Washington consensus, but I welcome it as food for tonight. I don't know what you mean by "redefines Russias standard for success." By going beyond territorial issues, Kempf grasps Russia's war aims better than many Western commentators, IMO.

Retired French Brigadier General Olivier Kempf very briefly summarizes the odds stacked against Kyiv as the war drags on and concludes that "it is possible, at this point, to assert that Ukraine will not win." harpers.org/archive/2026/0…

Glenn Beck and Benjamin Teitelbaum had an intriguing conversation about big-T Traditionalism, which both Aleksandr Dugin and Steve Bannon subscribe to, four years ago. The signs have been around, but we weren't paying attention. youtu.be/C7ou_0QEgv0?si…

@L0m3z See Jünger— Forest Passage

Perhaps the greatest testament to the triumph of democracy is that even Kim Jong-un feels like he needs to keep up the pretense of holding elections. The usual explanation is that this is done for outward appearances but I don’t think that’s quite right. Who is North Korea fooling? No one. I think it’s more about internal cohesion. No matter how farcical, the ritual of voting obviously has some psychological effect that allows the voter to ignore his powerlessness and/or justify compliance with the state no matter how tyrannical. Any system that isn’t democracy has to find some substitute for this procedural layer. Voting, it may turn out, is perhaps politically meaningless, but actually emotionally necessary for keeping a well ordered society. And, ya, democracy is just really good at this and also explains why democracies endure.

Whether it is for the man himself, this has been an explicit goal of the people around him. I’ve written a book about this.

@WarintheFuture Surprised you don’t write about oil markets and Russia

5/ You can read my full assessment of the implications for Ukraine and the Pacific of the Iran war, as well as my regular updates on #Ukraine and ongoing strategic competition in the Pacific theatre, at this link: mickryan.substack.com/p/the-new-iran…

It has been a hectic period tracking events in the skies and on the ground in #Iran as well as Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and other nations in the Middle East. In this article, I look at the implications of the new war for #Ukraine, and the Pacific theatre. 1/5 🧵🇺🇦

What a picture.

The demands from Russia amount to surrender (which by the way would not end the war, just change it). If that’s what you think Ukraine should do, you should just say it. That’s better than pretending like negotiations as they have been taking place since the summer of 2022 mean anything else.

@DanDePetris What, if you could fantasize, would he negotiate about politically? You are entirely capable of imagining something. But no one with your position ever does, because for them “negotiations” is just an empty signifier.

Anne’s negotiating strategy is essentially ‘Ukraine should fight until it runs out of men.’

The maddening thing about the “is all scholarship political?” debate is that obviously scholar-activists think some scholarship is apolitical—or at least not activism—because they use the label “scholar-activist” to distinguish their work from traditional, non-activist research.

@peterwennblad Verkligen? Problemet är att den är ful, inte att den är opraktiskt

Det första vettiga inlägget i den här debatten. dn.se/kultur/skonhet…

This is like the hundredth example of this, and like each and every one before— always draped in fanfare —it will mean nothing and help nobody.

Apropå det föreslagna Nobelcenter i Stockholm så bad jag AI ändra vädret till något mer representativt för huvudstaden. Människorna stannar naturligtvis inomhus, för vem vill strosa i blåsten och kylan. Lita aldrig på en konceptbild