Reed Van Schenck
LightNews LightNews
banner
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
Reed Van Schenck
@reedvanschenck.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1K following 85 posts
Assistant Professor of Communication @ IE University. Researching reactionary digital networks and infrastructures. 🇺🇸 living in 🇪🇸 #TeamRhetoric #MediaStudies Views = mine
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
gizmodo.com
Palantir CEO Says Making War Crimes Constitutional Would Be Good for Business
Palantir CEO Says Making War Crimes Constitutional Would Be Good for Business
Alex Karp vows to use his "whole influence" on immigration and defense policy.
gizmodo.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:56 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
I'm going live at the top of the hour to discuss queer critical challenges to/through AI on Breaking Culture! Join us www.youtube.com/@BreakingCul.... Or if you want to join the Zoom to ask a question, DM me.
Breaking Culture Live
Breaking Culture Live is hosted by Sean Johnson Andrews. Each week we talk to a cultural studies scholar about the breaking news and their latest work in the field. We especially draw upon activists, ...
www.youtube.com
December 3, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
rstromolsen.bsky.social
In our latest podcast episode, @reedvanschenck.bsky.social and I look at Shmitt's "The Concept of the Political" and explore how his idea of the Friend/Enemy dynamic is increasingly relevant to the volatile polarization in our modern democracies. rolfstromolsen.substack.com/p/179403645?
Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political
While Our Students Are Sleeping: a Podcast about Theory and Politics
rolfstromolsen.substack.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:16 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
It's finally live! Listen to "While Our Students Are Sleeping." Join me and Rolf as we dissect political theory for our students. Our first few episodes are about Carl Schmitt, trad-cath Nazi jurist. All relation to current events is strictly non-coincidential. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
While Our Students Are Sleeping: the Theory & Politics Podcast
Philosophy Podcast · A podcast with a couple of political theory professors that explores the thinkers, ideas and debates that inform our modern political landscape. rolfstromolsen.substack.com
podcasts.apple.com
November 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
In IE Insights today, I write that Europe needs to de-risk from the U.S. or face a major, digitally-mediated identity crisis. www.ie.edu/insights/art...
Europe Must Confront Donald Trump – or Lose Its Identity | IE Insights
Europe faces growing pressure from U.S. tech and politics, but its strength lies in upholding democratic values through rights-based regulation and autonomy, writes Reed Van Schenck.
www.ie.edu
November 3, 2025 at 4:30 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
New article just dropped! "Christian Nationalism as Media" explores how the political identity of Christian Nationalism retrieves racist and sexist ideas of the human through its obsession with owning and controlling the media. ijoc.org/index.php/ij...
Christian Nationalism as Media | International Journal of Communication
ijoc.org
October 18, 2025 at 9:37 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
Just pasted the whole book in 1 word doc. I only have to trim a minimum of 800 words! I'd like to thank my 10th grade English teacher.
September 16, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
amaramarasingam.bsky.social
They are priming themselves to lead MAGA after Trump, a kind of fascist theocracy.
esqueer.net Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · Sep 15
"We're going to go after the NGO Networks"

JD Vance and Stephen Miller openly outline how they are going to crackdown on civil society and use the government to crush political opposition.
September 15, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
stano.bsky.social
Pretty crazy how "America is a legit, no bullshit fascist country" is now a NYT headline.
White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups
www.nytimes.com
September 15, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
rickperlstein.bsky.social
In 2019 Nick Fuentes' neo-Nazi "Groypers" engaged in a systematic campaign to harass Charlie Kirk at his events for not being racist enough. He responded by becoming more racist.

www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-gr...
How the Groypers Won
In the clash between Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes, the Pepe people prevailed.
www.thebulwark.com
September 11, 2025 at 3:02 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
Check out this resource library NCA has launched! "Addressing Authoritarianism" is a resource to enable successful pedagogical, research, creative, and administrative interventions into authoritarianism and fascism. www.natcom.org/addressing-a...
Addressing Authoritarianism: A Resource Library - National Communication Association
Addressing Authoritarianism: A Resource Library This resource library has been compiled by NCA members and others to provide public resources to teach, think, and write about the current rise of autho...
www.natcom.org
August 28, 2025 at 4:02 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
Check out my review of @transform6789.bsky.social's fascinating and all-too-timely book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege. And if that doesn't sound like too much nausea for a summer, read the book!!! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com
August 4, 2025 at 8:21 AM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
"This silence has made a mockery of the slogan 'Never again,' transforming its meaning from an assertion of resistance to inhumanity wherever it is perpetrated to an excuse, an apology, indeed, even a carte blanche for destroying others by invoking one’s own past victimhood."
July 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
alicetiara.bsky.social
Wow @reedvanschenck.bsky.social absolutely killing it on the top papers of ethnicity race & comm panel w their paper on white supremacists, Telegram, and interfaces
Reed Van Schenck, comm scholar, wearing a patterned shirt, in front of a lecturn, gesturing to a PowerPoint slide featuring white nationalist content found on Telegram
June 13, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
beemooney.bsky.social
Ding ding ding
June 11, 2025 at 4:59 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
I just signed a book contract!

The Reactionary Web is a book about why white supremacists manage to stay online, and what that teaches us about the racist conceits of the internet at large.

Coming in 2026 from @brisunipress.bsky.social
June 4, 2025 at 4:28 PM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
This happened a couple years ago, and the group that did it has not fared well since, but the point stands.
keneakers.bsky.social Kenny Akers @keneakers.bsky.social · May 27
We can keep discussing these societal issues year after year, but nothing is likely to change. Instead, it’s up to you to take proactive steps to protect yourself and your family and live with the reassurance that you can protect your life if the threat arises—plain and simple.
May 28, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
implausibleblog.bsky.social
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Israel,

"We do not trade with a genocidal state"
May 14, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
donmoyn.bsky.social
So basically, there was a Signal chat with tech folks and some Harpers Letter writers, and the Harpers folk were chased out when Andreessen realized they would not go along with censorship. But the tech guys stuck with Chris Rufo. www.semafor.com/article/04/2...
The breaking point came on July 5, 2021, when Foster and Williams, along with the never-Trump conservative David French and the liberal academic Jason Stanley, wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing new laws against teaching “critical race theory.” “Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education, it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression,” they wrote. The conservatives had thought the Harper’s letter writers were their allies in an all-out ideological battle, and considered their position a betrayal. Andreessen “went really ballistic in a quite personal way at Thomas,” a participant recalled. The group ended after Andreessen “wrote something along the lines of ‘thank you everybody, I think it’s time to take a Signal break,’” another said. The meltdown of this liberal-tech alliance was, to Rufo, a healthy development. “A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,” he said. “By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end — so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.” Rufo had been there all along: “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”
April 28, 2025 at 2:47 AM
reedvanschenck.bsky.social
Seems like all those tactics people have been using to diminish the value of Tesla have worked more effectively than both the legislative and judicial branches.
April 24, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social
A "sex" that's immutable even if you change every single sex characteristic you have is not a biological one actually
April 24, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
robertmaguire.bsky.social
It's a high bar, but this from @radleybalko.bsky.social might be one of the most fucked up things I've read in the new Trump era. For context, this TX lawyer had just had an informal conversation with a family caught up in ICE raids.

Seriously. Read this. radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-courag...
“A couple days later, on March 6, I was working from home at around 11:30 when I got a notice that my VPN had gone down,” he says. “I didn’t think much about it. It can cut out from time to time. About 10 minutes later, I got a knock at the door.” Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges. “I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’” Jackson says alarms went off in his head. “My first instinct was to want to know what this was about. That it must be a misunderstanding. So I started to tell them about how I’ve been involved in some pro bono work. Then this voice in my head kicked in and just said, you need to shut the fuck up — don’t say anything.” The officers never identified themselves. They did ask if they could come inside. “I said absolutely not,” Jackson says. “I asked for their names and badge numbers. They said they didn’t have to provide that information at this time. So I told them I’d be calling my lawyer and I shut the door behind me.” Jackson says his mind started racing. “I needed to know who they were, what agency they were with. Then I remembered that I have the Ring camera. Maybe I could watch the video of the incident and figure out who they were from that.” There was no video. “That’s when I learned why my VPN had gone down. It wasn’t the VPN. Someone had shut off my Wifi.” About 15 minutes after the interaction at his front door, Jackson’s Wifi was up and running again.
April 23, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
normative.bsky.social
I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · Apr 22
The Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to attend the birth of his first child, who was delivered at a New York hospital on Monday, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.
Mahmoud Khalil’s Son Arrives After ICE Refuses to Let Him Attend Birth
Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident detained in Louisiana, had requested a monitored furlough for the birth. His request was denied in less than an hour.
www.nytimes.com
April 22, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by Reed Van Schenck
nathantankus.bsky.social
Pope Francis staying alive long enough to insult JD Vance is an amazing exercise in will. May his memory be a blessing.
April 21, 2025 at 2:23 PM