Patrick Iber
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patrickiber.bsky.social
Patrick Iber
@patrickiber.bsky.social
Co-editor, Dissent Magazine. I teach history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Write books about Cold War culture and propaganda. Have written for the set of all publications that are not members of themselves
Step 1) Show that you understand the problem people will face
Step 2) Show them what you and city workers are going to do about it
Step 3) Tell people how they can contribute to solving shared problems
Step 4) Demonstrate a sense of humor and an understanding that living together can be fun
We're getting a snowstorm tomorrow. But New York City is prepared.
January 25, 2026 at 7:16 PM
The courage of the people in the streets of Minneapolis and the cowardice of a political opposition that has no leader willing to join them, in that city and across this country, is awe-inspiring in every possible sense of the term
January 24, 2026 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
My kid takes language classes at a cafe in Minneapolis on Saturday mornings. Last week the instructor moved them online for safety. Today, just at the time we would have arrived, ICE shot someone 1/2 a block away. @mayorjacobfrey.bsky.social @governorwalz.mn.gov Get these thugs out of my city.
January 24, 2026 at 3:55 PM
I also got a revise and resubmit recently and one of the reasons given was that I needed to engage more with the work of Patrick Iber; I think people need to chill a bit about judging scholars for self-citation
I just thought everyone should see this
January 23, 2026 at 3:48 AM
Back in the twitter days I would interact with Rieff a bit, and I could see him falling further and further down this anti-woke rabbit hole. I appreciate this accounting by @davidklion.bsky.social
For @open-society.bsky.social's Ideas Letter, I've written a profile of David Rieff, the son of Susan Sontag and Philip Rieff and a globetrotting humanitarian intellectual who in recent years has taken a striking anti-woke and anti-trans turn.
Woke Obsessions - The Ideas Letter
Klion traces the intellectual and moral trajectory of David Rieff, from a childhood spent in the forbidding shadow of his mother, Susan Sontag, to a successful journalistic career of his…
www.theideasletter.org
January 22, 2026 at 9:26 PM
I have mostly Mamdani/AOC politics but as a person who sometimes talks about foreign policy I had to leave DSA over the IC and I can't go back until the organization represents democratic and anti-imperial politics, not just anti-US ones
Awful that they're trying to smear Mamdani and the entire DSA with this, but the international committee has been a tankie haven for ages. Just disgraceful that they're taking state-organized junkets to the Uyghur region
www.newsweek.com
January 20, 2026 at 11:06 PM
One thing that has been bothering me about the Tooze / DB quotes about the Red Army &etc. is that they seem to think that the alternative to "meliorist liberalism" is Stalinism. If it is, people are going to choose "meliorist liberalism" every time; if it isn't, then we should give them that choice
January 20, 2026 at 8:21 PM
How to Not Hide an Empire
Trump posts an image depicting Canada and Greenland as part of the United States
January 20, 2026 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
A passage from the 1943 OSS psychological assessment of Hitler, for your holiday mo(u)rning www.cia.gov/readingroom/...
January 19, 2026 at 3:06 PM
There's a very common argument that what seemed like an easy success in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954 led the CIA/Eisenhower/JFK to think that the Bay of Pigs would be easy too, and we seem to be speedrunning that error
January 19, 2026 at 6:57 PM
A passage from the 1943 OSS psychological assessment of Hitler, for your holiday mo(u)rning www.cia.gov/readingroom/...
January 19, 2026 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
January 19, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
A joke for the history buffs:

Germany’s satirical newspaper @der-postillon.com titles: “Vienna Academy of the Arts offers Trump admission as a student — They don’t want to get blamed again“
January 18, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
January 12, 2026 at 6:04 PM
New issue out today, special section on municipal socialism’s challenges and promises
January 12, 2026 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
Zohran Mamdani’s successes and failures will shape how people around the country think about the viability of a socialist program, and whether socialists are capable of enacting it.

Read @patrickiber.bsky.social's introduction to our new issue: dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
The Dignity of All People - Dissent Magazine
Mamdani’s failures and successes will shape how people around the country think about the viability of a socialist program, and whether the people who identify as socialists are capable of enacting it...
dissentmagazine.org
January 12, 2026 at 5:17 PM
Hmm
The U.S. withdrawal from a whole host of international organizations, and in particular climate-related ones like the IPCC OR THE UNFCCC), removes the most powerful obstructionist force within them, which may enable them to finally hit the necessary stride.
open.substack.com/pub/nilsgilm...
January 9, 2026 at 1:17 PM
Educational polarization in everything
getting most of the pre-2020 joint chiefs and officer corp in the national divorce is an odd, but good thing
They have lost McChrystal
January 9, 2026 at 1:50 AM
Here's Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map in case you want to visually know how big things actually are (to a reasonable approximation)
January 9, 2026 at 1:04 AM
Reposted by Patrick Iber
Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).
January 8, 2026 at 5:38 PM
As history shows, maintaining domestic and international hegemony by being evil famously works out forever for those who employ it as a strategy
January 8, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Garland's Civil War got mixed reviews when it came out and I get it but it has been really _sticky_ in the culture and in my own mind; there are some scenes that have not left me and seemingly will not
January 8, 2026 at 12:17 PM
Had the stray thought that if Trump’s first term channeled the energy of the Tea Party in government then the second is more like the J6 mob in power
January 8, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Guys I finally found Heems
January 7, 2026 at 12:19 AM
I'm in Chile and I just got served a YouTube ad in Spanish, from Homeland Security, telling me that the US border is a death zone and even if I make it I will be sent back home
January 6, 2026 at 10:32 PM