Jonathan M. Katz
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Jonathan M. Katz
@katz.theracket.news
77K followers 750 following 10K posts
Author of GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM and THE BIG TRUCK THAT WENT BY. Subscribe to my newsletter: http://theracket.news | Signal: jmkatz.18 | @KatzOnEarth on TikTok & Insta | Avi by @mollycrabapple.bsky.social
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katz.theracket.news
It’s all happening at X, the Everything App
Inez Stepman @InezFeltscher Follow 1am not at all above laughing at a good antisemitic line if it's funny but I genuinely dgi with this guy, everyone keeps telling me he's funny etc and I just hear a whiny loser. Kind of like everyone keeps telling me Mamdani is charming. I accept these things as fave because so many insist but I just can't see it. 12:58 PM • Nov 10, 2025 • 26.4K Views ••° 11 171 148 Pascal-Emmanue... @pego... •11h G ... My sense is that there's definitely a gendered element to his appeal. 11 L71 › 94 ill
November 11, 2025 at 5:12 AM
katz.theracket.news
See, the path to victory is telling people that their bs moral panics are real. Then don't offer any solutions (because there are no real solutions, just the eliminationist politics of the con artists who promote the moral panics). Then, if you still somehow get into office, cave. People love that!
important causes. Tarlov countered that a big tent means allowing for moderation on social issues: Democrats shouldn’t dismiss concerns from people about trans women playing women’s sports, for example. “I’m not talking about being bigoted,” Tarlov said, but “the country operates differently in different places, and we give lip service to that but don’t always behave that way.”
November 10, 2025 at 3:31 PM
katz.theracket.news
The hard part is convincing people to stop listening to Matt Yglesias
But on which issues will Democrats accept disagreement—and on which will they stand firm? No speaker at Friday’s convention offered any real specifics. Meanwhile, the no-shows were notable. “John Bel Edwards is not here. Mary Peltola is not here. Jared Golden is not here,” the panelist and Substack author Matt Yglesias told me about the past Louisiana governor, former representative from Alaska, and current Maine congressman, all of whom have won in red areas. Those lawmakers don’t have a secret sauce—they simply “have more conservative voting records,” Yglesias said. “And people just don’t like that answer.”
November 10, 2025 at 3:23 PM
katz.theracket.news
?
Bill McKinney
November 10, 2025 at 5:15 AM
katz.theracket.news
This is incorrect. I’d rank Trump way behind Wilson and Coolidge. Interested in learning more about this President McKinney however.
Dbdcpierce ***** Verified Purchase Dont waste your.money, not really about Smedley. Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2025 Format: Hardcover The author a leftist hater of capitalism. He has found away to place our president into the rank and fillings with McKinney, Wilson, Coolidge. Was hopeful for a factual book our a great American as Smedley Butler, not a leftist b.s. One person found this helpful Helpful L Share Report
November 10, 2025 at 5:12 AM
katz.theracket.news
= WSJ Jay Jones Sent Violent Texts. Voters Didn't Seem to Care. Virginia voters elected Jones as attorney general despite a scandal that might once have disqualified him By Ken Thomas Follow Nov. 6, 2025 at 5:50 pm ET and Anvee Bhutani Follow AA D Gretchen stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen.
November 7, 2025 at 3:59 AM
katz.theracket.news
1977
issues other than Fascists' rights. David was in the midst of a brawl with the U.S. Immigration Service, an agency which seemed determined to arrest every human being in the Midwest who "looks Mexican." Lois Lipton, our
November 7, 2025 at 2:57 AM
katz.theracket.news
Great administration we’ve got here
Brian Goldstone • @brian-goldsto... • 30m The Trump administration is now literally *fighting* to deny food to 42 million people, more than a third of them children. Read that again. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u... Judge Orders Trump Administration to Fully Fund Food Stamps This Month The Justice Department later said it would appeal, leaving the program known as SNAP in limbo. Listen to this article • 5:47 min The New Yorker•@newyorker.com • 5h One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/ jUZNSc The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands The short documentary "Rovina's Choice" tells the story of what goes when aid goes. • newyorkermag.visitlink.me
November 7, 2025 at 2:53 AM
katz.theracket.news
“So it’s true, some cartoons do cause violence” — Lisa Simpson
November 5, 2025 at 3:27 AM
katz.theracket.news
It’s over, you all can stop pretending you hadn’t heard that joke before
ELECTIONS Democrat Jay Jones wins Virginia AG race, overcoming backlash to his violent texts NBC News projects Jones has defeated the Republican incumbent Jason Miyares. Democrat Jay Jones faced bipartisan condemnation for violent texts he sent in 2022. Mike Kropf / Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP
November 5, 2025 at 3:01 AM
katz.theracket.news
Hey free shipping
A rock with a hole in it and some carvings it looks like Free shipping Stone Bible: Discovering Hidden Treasures in Nature... $7,600.00
November 4, 2025 at 11:47 PM
katz.theracket.news
You can tell from Trump’s initial reaction that even he knew it was a joke. Because of course he did — he’s a 79 year old New Yorker. He grew up with the “two bullets, two dictators and a guy we don’t like” joke in its original form. Hence his immediate spin.

Went better than he could have dreamed.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump It has just come out that the Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes, if they were jokes at all, which were not funny, and that he wrote down and sent around to people, concarning the murdorind of o Danublican
November 3, 2025 at 5:48 AM
katz.theracket.news
This is just a complete and utter lie from @edkilgore.bsky.social. Jones did not “wish deaths” on anyone. People are just making up shit and putting in articles now.
separately, but often campaign together). While Spanberger and the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Ghazala Hamshi, have denounced the texts, which wished terrible deaths for a Republican legislative leader and his family, they haven't asked Jones to withdraw from the race as the GOP and its allied media have predictably demanded.
November 3, 2025 at 5:30 AM
katz.theracket.news
👇🏻
Drug Use by Country 2025 Total Drug Use Rate People with Drug Use Disorder + Total Drug Use Rate (per 100k) 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 3,000 3,500 4,000 2,500
November 2, 2025 at 6:44 PM
katz.theracket.news
!
Ryan Grim @ryangrim Follow .. ° We interviewed @grahamformaine today and he has a book recommendation: Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire, by @katzonearth (Jonathan Katz) It's about a Marine General who oversaw some of the worst imperial war crimes of the pre-WWII era and then became a ferocious critic of American militarism, writing the influential book "War Is A Racket." Graham also said Butler is "a hero" of his for spoiling the fascist plot to overthrow FDR, which Katz didn't get into in any detail in the book, which suggests Platner has read widely on Butler. It's not a widely known historical moment. I asked him about his disturbing Reddit Graham also said Butler is "a hero" of his for spoiling the fascist plot to overthrow FDR, which Katz didn't get into in any detail in the book, which suggests Platner has read widely on Butler. It's not a widely known historical moment. I asked him about his disturbing Reddit comment in which he said he found some enjoyment or exhilaration in combat, and he walked through his feelings on that today, contextualizing his own journey with Butler's. He said that we as a society need to be aware that there will always be young men and women looking for an adventure and a sense of purpose and eagerly signing up for war, and that's why it's so important to stop wars in the first place. 3:14 PM • Oct 31, 2025 • 50.6K Views
November 1, 2025 at 12:08 AM
katz.theracket.news
I will stop quoting sections of GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM when they stop being relevant. us.macmillan.com/books/9781250135599/gangstersofcapitalism/
In reality, "cartel" is a misnomer when it comes to Mexican organized crime. The word refers to a group of political actors or businesses that collude to control prices and production. The most powerful cartels of the twentieth century involved the oil industry: Standard Oil and its successors were part of several, many of which were later recombined into Exxon-Mobil. For many years, the most notorious cartel among Americans was the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, whose 1973 oil embargo caused great economic pain around the world. The DEA had applied the term to Félix Gallardo's operation in the 1980s half-mockingly, because he had brought together competing racketeering syndicates. Even after the syndicates went back to fighting one another, the name stuck. "Cartel" carried the sense of the kind of wealth and influence produced by collusions of corporate and political power that the Mexican gangsters wanted to emulate. But in the end, they could only approximate the violent destructive power of the real thing.
October 31, 2025 at 4:56 PM
katz.theracket.news
GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM is full of fun facts about the Opium Wars
Christians," Susan Rowena Bird, a missionary from Ohio, wrote in her journal in rural Shanxi Province. "We feel that the end may not be far off for any of us. "6 Many in Washington had been waiting for a moment like this one. Some of the United States' most powerful families had gotten rich in China, often in tandem with the Opium Wars. The first U.S. multimil-lionaire, John Jacob Astor, made part of his fortune smuggling opium into China. The Forbes, Delano, and Cabot families of Massachusetts used their narco-profits to found enduring political dynasties.* By 1900, * Warren Delano Jr. wrote: "I do not pretend to justify the prosecution of the opium trade in a moral and philanthropic point of view, but as a merchant I insist that it has been a fair, honorable and legitimate trade; and to say the worst of it, liable to no further or weightier objections than is the importation of wines, Brandies & spirits in to the U. States, England, &zc." Delano jin. Knowing Congress was unlikely to approve a third overseas war in two years, McKinley made a fateful decision: he became the first president in U.S. history to order the full-scale invasion of a sovereign country without seeking legislative approval. Congress did not challenge him. On June 17, Maj. Littleton Waller's most promising lieutenant wrote was the maternal erandfather of Teddy Roosevel's cousin and fellow president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. John Forbes Kerry — the former senator, secretary of state, and Democratic presidential nominee is a descendant of the Forbes family.
October 29, 2025 at 1:48 PM
katz.theracket.news
Oh, right

us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
GANGSTERS OF CAPITALISM 10 But we ignore the past at our peril. Americans may not recognize the events Butler referred to in his confession, but America's imperial history is well remembered in the places we invaded and conquered-where leaders and elites use it and shape it to their own ends. Nowhere is more poised to use its colonial past to its future advantage than China, once a moribund kingdom in which U.S. forces, twice led by Butler, intervened at will in the early twentieth century. As a rising People's Republic embarks on its own imperial project across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Chinese officials use their self-story of "national humiliation" to position themselves as an antidote to American control, finding willing audiences in countries grappling with their own histories of subjugation by the United States. The dangers are greater at home. As a candidate and then as president, Donald Trump preyed on American anxieties by combining the worst excesses of those early-twentieth-century imperial chestnuts-militarism, white supremacy, and the cult of manhood-with a newer fantasy: that Americans could reclaim our sense of safety and supremacy by disengaging from the world we made; by literaly building walls along our border and making the countries we conquered pay for them. To those who did not know or ignored America's imperial history, it could seem that Trump was an alien force ("this is not who we are," as the liberal saying goes), or that the implosion of his presidency has made it safe to slip back into comfortable amnesias. But the movement Trump built—a movement that stormed the Capitol, tried to overturn an election, and
October 29, 2025 at 1:42 PM
katz.theracket.news
If only there were a book that came out three years ago that explained not just all of this but how the US played a central role in China’s self-story of national humiliation and why Americans don’t remember it
How the 19th-Century Opium War Shapes Xi's Trade Clash With Trump China's leader, Xi Jinping, draws on lessons from Lin Zexu, a Qing official whose defiance of Britain led to China's defeat but made him a national hero. 6 MIN READ "I don't know how much of a student of history Trump is, but it is very important that he understand the emotional importance of this history in China," said Ms. Lovell, a China scholar at the University of London's Birbeck College. "This history is shaping China's actions and strategies in the here and now." Celebrating China's resurgent power last month with a massive military parade in Beijing, he said from the rostrum of Tiananmen Gate that his country had "put an end to China's national humiliation of suffering successive defeats at the hands of foreign aggressors in modern times."
October 29, 2025 at 1:38 PM
katz.theracket.news
Sadie you fucking moron.
Sadie White female, 25 Show personal views - 1. Favors 'Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally' 2. Favors Tougher laws and regulations to protect the environment even if it raises prices or costs jobs' 3. Thinks abortion should be Legal in most cases' Who do you think Sadie voted for? 2 3 7 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Donald Trump
October 29, 2025 at 5:32 AM
katz.theracket.news
That’s right folks, knowing basic facts about one of the formative events of Western history makes you a threat to the nation
"When I heard him say that, I smiled," recalled Brian Purnell, one of Mr. Mamdani's former professors at Bowdoin College. He also noted that Mr. Mamdani's reference to freedom was a nod to Haiti's status as the first republic founded by former slaves. "That's straight out of the lessons from the Haitian Revolution that we teach in Africana studies," said Dr. Purnell, who is now the chair of the Africana studies department at Mr. Mamdani's alma mater. "I will claim that," he added with a laugh. He would also become one of the most visible representations of a new generation of progressives - whose formative years as young adults were shaped by elite colleges where, over the last decade, theories of social and racial justice became even more deeply ingrained in liberal arts education.
October 29, 2025 at 1:29 AM
katz.theracket.news
Jeremy W. Peters identifies the tell-tale sign of “leftist dogma” in @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social: pronouncing Haiti’s name correctly
What Zohran Mamdani Learned as an Africana Studies Major at Bowdoin The mayoral candidate has said his education was formative. But critics say that his degree exemplifies how colleges steep students in leftist dogma. Listen to this article • 12:37 min Learn more By Jeremy W. Peters Oct. 28, 2025 Updated 3:17 p.m. ET It wasn't so much what Zohran Mamdani said. It was how he said it. "We're going to stand up for Haiti, because you taught the world about freedom!" the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York exclaimed to an elated crowd at a Haitian music festival in June, fresh off his upset victory in the primary. Mr. Mamdani pronounced the island nation's name "AH-ee-tee" - near-perfect Creole elocution. "When I heard him say that, I smiled," recalled Brian Purnell, one of Mr. Mamdani's former professors at Bowdoin College. He also noted that Mr. Mamdani's reference to freedom was a nod to Haiti's status as the first republic founded by former slaves.
October 29, 2025 at 1:27 AM
katz.theracket.news
Makes sense
You agreed with Zohran Mamdani on streets, safety, Rikers, past mayors, transit, congestion pricing, cinema, hobbies, affordability, taxes, breakfast and leadership. You agreed with Andrew Cuomo on pets and congestion pricing. You agreed with Curtis Sliwa on baseball.
October 28, 2025 at 11:18 AM
katz.theracket.news
Of course
What is Marc Lobliner known for? Marc Lobliner, AKA; 'The Machine' is an entrepreneur who owns a supplement and clothing line businesses, alongside being a chief marketing officer of several different companies.
October 27, 2025 at 12:56 AM
katz.theracket.news
Great things happening at Larry Ellison and Marc Andreesen’s US TikTok Shop
Explore Following Shop For You Q Q book stuff Jewish Activities in the United States Volume II of The International Jew The Worlds Henry Ford, Sr. The International Jew Volume I: Jewish Acti... a Free shipping $18.48 # Extra 15% off coupon Use > Not interested Search more Home Oo Friends + 27 Inbox Profile
October 26, 2025 at 3:10 PM