Paul Harland

Hey Pablo, don't you read your own Tweets? You've been getting played by the rich private owner of his so-called "public town square"! Well, what did you expect...? It's what billionaires do, isn't it? But... but... Pah!

@carinaprunkl I know you're not here much, but any chance you could be on Bluesky just as much?

@IrfanHindustan I found it on ResearchGate after someone shared the journal article on Bluesky, thanks. Any chance you could use that platform more in future than Musk's X? I see you are on there but very rarely post.

Thanks for your interest in my essay; some asked for its PDF. Those wihout access to the journal website, may read the pre-print version here. academia.edu/127926060/Ahma…

Some Notes on Jürgen Habermas (1929 –2026) Yesterday post-iftār, I read the news of death of Habermas on my social media feed. While the Associated Press described him as “one of the world’s most influential philosophers,” the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “Germany and Europe have lost one of the most significant thinkers of our time.” When read together, the two observations where the world is or can be mostly synonymous with Germany or Europe (and vice versa) also summarize the scope and limits of Habermas’ thinking. Even for many informed observers and readers of Habermas, he was a noteworthy and “rational” philosopher of our time except for his 2023 statement on Palestinians-Israel, which they take as a deviation or digression from his otherwise uplifting, Enlightenment-defending philosophy. As I have argued in my 2025 essay, Habermas’ 2023 statement, when analyzed closely, instead was largely an offshoot of his earlier, otherwise “good” philosophy. 1. Eloquent about “internal colonization” of lifeworld by system in Western plutocracies (especially, Germany), Habermas was conceptually silent about external colonialism and imperialism at large. This silence by a philosopher of “universalism” speaks volumes about the kind of philosophy he wrote and stood for. Clearly, in his philosophy there is no mention of the ongoing brutalization of lifeworld of Palestinians who have no system of their own, as they (un)live under occupation of the Israeli settler colonial state. 2. “… there’s no sense in his [Habermas’] writings” that he felt “guilt or shame for his adolescent role in fighting for Hitler” (Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss, Verso, 2016, p. 295, ebook). 3. In a way, Habermas also diminished, even demeaned, philosophy when he argued that “philosophy cannot and should not try to play the role of usher” or a “judge” (in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 1990). In agreement with Richard Rorty’s argument about the demise of philosophy, he held that cultural anthropology would be “the strongest candidate to succeed philosophy after its demise.” Yet, Habermas had no genuine interest in anthropology and cultures of the non-West. For example, whenever he wrote about Islam, as he did prominently after 2001, he mostly mimicked and displayed rank Western Orientalism. In his writings and many interviews, there is no reflexivity, the so-called attribute bequeathed by the Enlightenment and modernity. 4. Commentators on and defenders of Habermas take him as Kantian or neo-Kantian. Habermas too sees himself in that tradition. From a decolonial framework, this indeed is the precise problem. As the star philosopher of the Enlightenment, Kant’s own project of rational philosophy stands in opposition to a series of others, most notably Islam and Muslims. Habermas’ rank orientalism vis-à-vis Islam is thus beholden to Kant as well as to Max Weber, who serves as his key inspiration in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity and who is an arch orientalist in relation, among others, to Islam [ on my formulation of European Enlightenment as an ethnic project, see Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace, 2017; uncpress.org/9781469635095/… ] 5. Many on the Left take Habermas as a critic –– sometimes even a radical one –– of capitalism. However, his stance on capitalism is at best pretty reformist. In The Theory of Communicative Action, he described capitalism as “norm-free:” capitalist “market is the most important example of a norm-free regulation of cooperative contexts.” Though he withdrew his characterization of capitalism as “norm-free sociality,” the withdrawal was only in its linguistic “expression,” not in substance. With the fall of the USSR and Berlin Wall, Habermas’ liberal position became stark; for Habermas, the enemy was not capitalism but its “management” and technocracy. He was “an enthusiastic apologist for…capitalism in its all viciousness at home and abroad.” 6. Of his many texts, the one on public sphere is widely discussed. There is certainly much merit in this text; however, it is also ridden with contradictions and elision. In Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere Negt and Kluge wrote an early critique. There are notable critiques of it from feminist scholars too. Consider this. Israel struck a deal with Paraguay, which had given refuge to Nazi war criminals, including Dr. Josef Mengele, responsible for murdering hundreds of Jews in Auschwitz. In this deal, Israel aimed to get rid of sixty thousand Palestinians, ten percent of the total population, by transferring them to Paraguay. Such deals that defy democracy’s supposed transparency to remain in dark secrecy rarely find any meaningful mention in Habermas’ theory of public sphere. 7. The Eurocentrism of Habermas and his total disregard of non-Weste was evident in his 2003 text, at once an analysis and an “appeal,” on the demonstrations against the US-engineered imperialist invasion of Iraq. To counter “the hegemonic unilateralism of the United States,” Habermas proposed a common European policy based on a historical and futuristic European identity. To the existing and future constituent nation-states of the EU, Habermas advised adding a “European dimension” to their “national identities.” The core of this European identity, to Habermas, was the distinct “form of spirit” “rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” So permeated throughout with Eurocentrism was Habermas’ appeal that he felt impelled to say, in his final sentence, that he rejected Eurocentrism. American political theorist Iris Young rightly noted how the philosopher’s appeal amounted to a re-centering of Europe and far removed from any notion of an inclusive global democracy. Tellingly, she dubbed Habermas’ posturing of European identity against the US as “little more than sibling rivalry.” More importantly, Young pointed out how the appeal to fashion and nurture “a particularist European identity” entailed designing new “others,” indeed continually constructing and setting “insiders” against “outsiders.” Young also correctly identified the erasure of demonstrations outside Europe because Habermas highlighted only those within Europe to signal “the birth of a European public sphere.” [for more on this, see this link below] academia.edu/48974091/Ahmad… @NewLeftReview @MehreenKhn @alex_callinicos @CihanTugal @TuttReal @TeachinginHE @ibrar_bhatt #Habermas #habermas #philosophy #Enlightenment #Europe #modernity #GazaGenocide‌ #anthropology

Newly released deposition videos are providing a never-before-seen look at two of the people responsible for the largest mass termination of federal grants in the National Endowment for the Humanities' history. abcnews.link/p5u6o3A

Yes, you’re probably right in calling me a critic of Nigel Farage. But I have to admit one thing. And it pains me to say it: Farage is an honest & committed politician who is without doubt a man of his word. 👍

@HeritageUSA69 @soncharm From his own testimony, he's re-deciding grants by identifying individual letters of the alphabet in them, like a smirking child.

@PabloRedux @soncharm One doesn’t need experience to identify self-evidently bullshit grants

To preface w/disclaimer: I was & am not a defender of DOGE But It’d be interesting to see a critic think through & try to articulate why it’s so universal to call them “DOGE bros” Is this guy a DOGE “bro” (rather than employee) for any reason other than, young white guy?

@HeritageUSA69 @soncharm That his experience would, to most people, seem unrelated to the job.

@PabloRedux @soncharm He was quite literally following orders, as one expects subordinates to do. What about him is weird?

@HeritageUSA69 @soncharm He was only following orders?

@PabloRedux @soncharm What about him is weird?

@HeritageUSA69 @soncharm He seems unbelievable.

@PabloRedux @soncharm He seems unbelievably normal

@soncharm Not sure one is necessary? But the above term, unfortunately, still seems quite handy at the moment.

@PabloRedux Is there a word for young weird nonwhite guys?

@GPIngersoll He seemed pretty empty-headed to me.

lol the fact that you think this is embarrassing for DOGE reflects more poorly on you than on them

43 million. Stats here: bsky.jazco.dev/stats

It just gets worse and worse.

Source: bsky.app/profile/neil-l…

FT comments section this morning...

Yes, no, maybe?

@KemiBadenoch I would rethink your dehumanising language about the Muslim community - not just the word "monster", but also "harvesting" like some insentient crop - and, as leader of the Conservative Party, its long-term responsibility for promoting divisiveness (and driving voters away).

Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country. If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great. Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine. Clearly this election was not about who would be the best MP. But there was only one sensible candidate standing in Gorton and Denton, and it was Charlotte Cadden - a former chief inspector of police, a mother, a woman who fought for single sex spaces and dignity for women and girls. While the other parties race to the bottom, Charlotte embodies the new Conservative Party. This result shows Keir Starmer’s premiership is finished. He lost authority a long time ago, a mere hostage at the mercy of a divided Labour Party that cannot decide who to replace him with. He has lost the support of his voters, his MPs and the country. He is in office but not in power. If he had any integrity he would go.

A statement on the Gorton and Denton by-election result.

Alternatives to X (was Twitter, in case you've forgotten) and others...

A reminder that anyone who cheered on DOGE’s wanton destruction of USAID - which includes many of our lauded tech leaders - is complicit in human suffering. liberalcurrents.com/what-elon-has-…

Can anyone enlighten me on what is going on here?