Author: Benjamin Balthaser
Spectacles of Fascism in an Age of Exhaustion
In a reading of Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism, Benjamin Balthasar argues that today’s far right channels popular disillusionment into apocalyptic fantasies of destruction. The left, he insists, must respond with a politics of collective freedom rather than appeals to a return to neoliberal normalcy.
Mamdani’s Judeo-Bolshevik Threat
Benjamin Balthaser explores the representation of Zohran Mamdani as simultaneously foreign menace and inauthentic outsider, deploying both antisemitism and Islamophobia to prop up a neatly racialized version of politics.
The New Anti-Dreyfusards
Benjamin Balthaser argues that Antony Lerman’s recent book on state antisemitism fails to develop a theory of antisemitism for the current moment.
From Schlemiel to Super Hero
Benjamin Balthaser explores the roles of militarism, masculinity, and Jewish identity in the political persona of Volodomir Zelensky.