Greg Beckett
banner
gbeckett.bsky.social
Greg Beckett
@gbeckett.bsky.social
Anthropology Professor. Interested in politics, culture, history, and climate change. I write about political crisis in Haiti. Author of There Is No More Haiti and co-editor of Trouillot Remixed: The Michel-Rolph Trouillot Reader.

https://gregbeckett.org
Reposted by Greg Beckett
December 8, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
‘As Adorno saw it, Surrealist art had been compromised by postwar conditions: made of “world-rubble”, the montages of Surrealism created only “nature morte”; “After the European catastrophe the Surrealist shocks lost their force.”’

Hal Foster on Surrealism v. fascism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Hal Foster · Tightrope of Hope: Surrealism v. Fascism
The Surrealists saw colonialism and imperialism as intrinsic to fascism, and from start to finish they campaigned...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 6, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
‘Like Bobby Sands, these six hunger strikers are young: none is over thirty; Zuhrah turned twenty in prison. They aren’t setting out to become heroes or martyrs.’

E.S. Wight on the largest co-ordinated hunger strike in British prisons since 1981, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...
E.S. Wight | On Hunger Strike
Qesser Zuhrah, Amu Gib, Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink, T Hoxha and Kamran Ahmed are on hunger strike. All are on remand in...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 4, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
‘The Surrealists saw colonialism and imperialism as intrinsic to fascism, and from start to finish they campaigned against both, opposing the wars in Morocco in the 1920s and Algeria in the 1950s.’

Hal Foster:

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Hal Foster · Tightrope of Hope: Surrealism v. Fascism
The Surrealists saw colonialism and imperialism as intrinsic to fascism, and from start to finish they campaigned...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 3, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Age of the ‘scam state’: how an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry has taken root in south-east Asia
Age of the ‘scam state’: how an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry has taken root in south-east Asia
Like the narco-state, a ‘scam state’ refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into institutions and transformed the economy
www.theguardian.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
‘Of all the violent phases in the history of Liverpool, the slave trade was the most vicious, yet it was barely acknowledged until recently.’

John Kerrigan on Liverpool, the Atlantic slave trade and m. nourbeSe philip’s long poem 𝘡𝘰𝘯𝘨!

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
John Kerrigan · No Illusions: Syntax of Slavery
Slavery was accepted across most of the early modern world. No one wanted to be a slave, except when the alternative was...
www.lrb.co.uk
November 25, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
This doesn’t seem weird to anyone else
You might not have caught what just happened on the Senate floor, but the Senate just “deemed as passed” the Epstein resolution.

That means as soon as it arrives from the House, it automatically passes the Senate (with no amendments) and heads to the President’s desk.

Wow.
November 19, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Thank you to our comrades in the Senate for reminding us of the folly of libbing out.
November 10, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
At a certain point you have to conclude that the Democrats agree with the Republicans that they are contemptible and illegitimate, and don’t deserve to govern.
November 10, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
November 6, 2025 at 4:58 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Dick Cheney did more than anyone else to build up expansive and destructive executive branch powers in the wake of 9/11; he lived to see another president turn those same powers against his own daughter.

He should be a warning sign to the GOP today but too many of them are in the cult.
November 4, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Do better, "Financial Times." Here's the truthful headline:

"U.S. aerial killings in the Caribbean violate international and American law."

@financialtimes.com #Venezuela
October 27, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
amazing how you can write about culture professionally and still have no idea what’s going on in the world
October 17, 2025 at 9:37 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
‘The environmental history of European empire doesn’t end with decolonisation. The quasi-colonial schemes of the Green Revolution were as consequential ecologically as the infrastructure projects that had been established under colonial rule.’

Oliver Cussen on water: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Oliver Cussen · Fish in the Wrong Place: Aquatic Colonialism
The environmental history of European empire doesn’t end with decolonisation. The quasi-colonial schemes of the Green...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 15, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

“It is unambiguous and it is clear climate change is playing a role. These aren’t just bigger fires, they’re fires occurring under increasingly extreme weather conditions that make them unstoppable.”
Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable
Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade
www.theguardian.com
October 6, 2025 at 7:43 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
"Solar energy is anticipated to be the world’s main source of energy by 2050" hell yeah
October 4, 2025 at 5:15 AM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
it’s Sunday on bluesky so I am urging everyone to take care of themselves. Take a walk, have a second cup of coffee or tea, read a book, spend some time looking at small poems
September 28, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
One thing I’ve really absorbed living in the Bay Area is that the tech libertarians are so, so much stupider than the rest of the country understands.
yeah this guy is dumber than donkey shit
so this is what counts as an intellectual for the modern right, huh
September 25, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Was enjoying this graffiti at our local bus stop until I had to explain fascism to my 6 year old
September 24, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...
Justice Dept. Official Pushes Prosecutors to Investigate George Soros’s Foundation
www.nytimes.com
September 25, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
this exists it is called thinking
September 20, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
The deaths of regime allies command demonstrations of collective mourning and punishment of those who accurately describe the dead. The deaths of regime enemies and those they deem disposable is fodder for little jokes.
Vance on Trump's strikes on boats: "I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world."
September 17, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
Just so I'm clear:

TV host says we should kill every homeless person? No big deal

TV host says the right must "go to war" with the left? Pfft.

TV host says the government is cracking down on critics? Well, the government cracks down on him for the criticism.

Free speech, everyone.
September 17, 2025 at 11:52 PM
Reposted by Greg Beckett
I want to be clear about what I'm saying here.

I'm not denying the danger.
I'm not denying the threat.

I AM saying that we live in a geographically huge country where the vast majority oppose this administration.

They don't have the power to work on that scale.
Tho they want us to believe they do
They don’t have the power to do what they’re threatening on a grand scale.

But they want us to think they do.
September 16, 2025 at 3:00 PM