Aurelien Mondon
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aurelmondon.bsky.social
Aurelien Mondon
@aurelmondon.bsky.social

Researching the mainstreaming of reactionary/far-right politics

Co-convenor of @reacpolrn.bsky.social

Reactionary Democracy w. @aaronwinter.bsky.social and co-editor of The Ethics of Researching the Far Right

Full profile:

https://shorturl.at/CiYKm .. more

Political science 65%
Sociology 14%
Pinned
Core to reactionary politics is a cowardly project that aims to protect and restore privilege and hierarchies of oppression

Some thoughts on terminology and the term reactionary @reacpolrn.bsky.social

reacpol.net/on-reactiona...
Article: On reactionary politics (Aurelien Mondon) - Reactionary Politics Research Network
This article by Aurelien Mondon explores the meaning of reactionary politics and its use in our current context
reacpol.net

Excellent example of the way our media landscape works against democracy:

Today, Le Monde runs a number of stories on the real, dire cost of AI

In the past few days, it prominently featured an infomercial (clearly labelled but looking like a normal article) on "AI being finally productive"
I did not understand this: one of the five Europeans the US has barred from traveling to the United States...is a permanent resident who lives with his family in the US.

Now he is worried about being arrested and deported for the crime of monitoring online hate.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/u...
Judge Blocks Detention of British Researcher Who Scrutinizes Online Hate
www.nytimes.com
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

You have to admire the courage of people wishing others Merry C-word in the open and wearing Santa hats considering the ban currently in force and the woke police roaming the streets

To think some think the culture wars are whipped up by bad faith reactionary elites...
It remains wild to me that during the first trump administration there was a long debate over terminology after AOC (correctly) called border internment "concentration camps" and now having concentration camps is a core domestic policy.

The purpose of that stupid debate was to normalize the idea.

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

Camps where tens of thousands of politically disfavored people will be concentrated.

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
ICE documents reveal plan to hold 80,000 immigrants in warehouses
The Trump administration wants to build seven large-scale deportation hubs to speed up deportations, internal ICE documents show.
www.washingtonpost.com

*Wildly

*obviously, many also don't genuinely want to do anything about it or don't care

One of the reasons behind the rise of fascism is that people who could do the most to stop it and genuinely want to* refuse to even consider that what they are currently doing is counterproductive

If it weren't for the arrogance & fragility of the mainstream elite, things could be widely different

The mainstream media always finds it easy to talk about fascism and authoritarianism abroad but almost impossible at home without euphemising it ("populism", "hard right" etc)

Yes, the threat of fascism is very real, but the lessons should be applied here too

www.theguardian.com/world/commen...
In Berlin, I took an evening class on fascism – and found out how to stop the AfD | Tania Roettger
With the far-right party ahead in the polls, I discovered that a novel set during the rise of the Nazis provides a timely warning, says journalist Tania Roettger
www.theguardian.com
This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.
Congratulations to Stephen Macedo & Frances Lee, whose book In Covid's Wake has been recognized as:

⭐ A @newyorker.com Best Book of the Year
⭐ An @economist.com Book of the Year
⭐ A @wsj.com Best Book of the Year

Learn more about this eye-opening book: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

I honestly cannot stop laughing

Incredible and yet totally unsurprising... These people...

Of course he ended up at TPUSA...
Fresh off his headliner speech with the TPUSA grifters.
Russell Brand has been charged with two further offences of rape and sexual assault, the Met Police has confirmed

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

Blindingly obvious and exactly what I said to the New York Times at the time. So the question is, why did the useless British media carry, hysterically, coverage of a UK (Not Very Good) Lawyers for Israel press release? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Bob Vylan: No charges over IDF chants during Glastonbury set
Avon and Somerset Police says the incident
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

Fresh off his headliner speech with the TPUSA grifters.
Russell Brand has been charged with two further offences of rape and sexual assault, the Met Police has confirmed
Russell Brand charged with two further offences of rape and sexual assault
www.thenational.scot

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

Russell Brand charged with new rape and sexual assault offences

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Russell Brand charged with new rape and sexual assault offences
Russell Brand will appear in court on 20 January 2026 over the new charges.
www.bbc.com

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

Worth noting that the student admits that she just threw the thing together in 30 minutes without reading the paper she was supposed to be responding to.
An English local council innovates, evaluates what it did, finds it works (replicating an earlier study in Scotland) … and all councils are told by the Labour government not to try it. What message does this convey? Another victory for ideology & cowardice

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Councils warned against adopting four-day week
Local Government Secretary Steve Reed has told council leaders to not introduce four-day working weeks.
www.bbc.co.uk
DOJ briefly uploaded this letter from Jeff Epstein to serial child molester Larry Nassar:

"Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to 'grab snatch,' whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system."

Look at you thinking there is a future!

If there are people studying our era in the future, they will be amazed that all that is unfolding was entirely predictable

Every post on my wall is like:

- how fascism is being enabled
- how it could easily be countered
- how the people in power do the opposite while pretending to care

Congratulations, looks great! We'll have to organise an interview in the new year if you're up for it!

Reposted by Aurélien Mondon

How it started. How it’s going.
The most heart breaking part is this kind of "journalism" high up editor logic is NOT unique to Weiss. I wish you could've heard what I heard when my work was killed, silenced, suppressed and silenced (or at best, just criticized).

It's eerily familiar. In some ways identical.
Bari Weiss, cont'd: "I held that story because it wasn't ready. The story presented very powerful testimony of abuse in CECOT, but that testimony has already been reported... The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison... we simply need to do more."

This is where the "polarisation narrative" mixed with anti-populist discourse has led us: the centre left and the far right being painted as equal threats, meaning the failing status quo must be propped up, regardless of its reactionary nature

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Weiss concluded: “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera. To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else. And that is my North Star, and I hope it's the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”
“It turns out that banishing the slur from public discourse was, in fact, important. Because now it’s back and it turns out that it does matter when subtext becomes actual text, when terrible people enable open hatred and bigotry, encouraging others to emulate them, degrading us all.”
Perry: The return of the r-word
"These days, the r-word slur has become a staple of the American right wing, uttered with few professional or social consequences," David M. Perry writes.
www.startribune.com

The extremism of organised transphobia and their unwavering belief in the necessity to exclude, dehumanise and make diappear a marginalised community should ring alarm bells to anyone who knows even a little about 19th and 20th century history...
Presented without comment.