Angela Mitropoulos

@mitropoulos

📚 🔺️ 🏳️‍🌈 🚀 ☕️ 🍋 🪴 Contract & Contagion: From Biopolitics to Oikonomia (2012) Pandemonium: Proliferating Borders of Capital and the Pandemic Swerve (2020) More (open access) writings at

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Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 7d

A constant since the 1930s.

Scooby Gang villain: "Neither Left Nor Right"
Villain unmasked; The Right

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 14d

I don't think so. A lot of Trump's and Musk's posts during the presidential election were like this. It very much is the Spectre of Communism.

Trump post with Harris in a military uniform, backdrop of hammer and sickle.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 16d

I've not seen the film, will at some point. What I would likely enjoy far more is a retelling from the perspective of a minor character. Along the lines of Sally Potter's Thriller (1979), a rereading of Puccini's La Boheme.

Movie poster for Sally Potter's 1979 film, Thriller. A rewrite of La Boheme.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 16d

In philosophy, Odysseus has often been juxtaposed to Plato as emblematic of pragmatism and idealism. cf. "Art of War, Art of Life." www.e-flux.com/journal/90/1... As Whitehead noted of Odysseus' bloodsoaked homecoming: "the bones of his companions are strewn on many a reef and many an isle."

There are fewer, more emphatically mythic accounts of the link between the “art of life” and the “art of war” than those found in philosophical juxtapositions between Plato and Odysseus—in other words, fewer epic and aristocratic versions of the phenomenological dichotomy between ideally solid objects of life whose properties are known and enclosed, and seagoing circuits where the hero sets off from the noble home to war and tribulations and returns, eventually, to a proper homecoming of being known. In a series of lectures in the late 1920s, the English mathematician Alfred North Whitehead proposed that “the function of Reason amid the welter of our mental experiences, amid our intuitions, our emotions, our purposes, our decisions of emphasis” is to “promote the art of life.” Whitehead distinguished between two kinds of reasoning: Platonic and Odyssean. According to Whitehead,

In a series of lectures in the late 1920s, the English mathematician Alfred North Whitehead proposed that “the function of Reason amid the welter of our mental experiences, amid our intuitions, our emotions, our purposes, our decisions of emphasis” is to “promote the art of life.” Whitehead distinguished between two kinds of reasoning: Platonic and Odyssean. According to Whitehead, Plato’s rationality is absolute, speculative, and “enthroned above the practical tasks of the world.” Odysseus, by contrast, is a “pragmatic agent,” whose decisions are determined by experiential and situational knowledge. Without the latter, Whitehead contends, there is no impetus to creativity, including in the techniques of reason. Whitehead does, however, offer a fleeting warning: “the bones of his [Odysseus’] companions are strewn o

The Odysseus of Homer’s epic is polytropic, a person of “many turns,” who becomes lost and for ten years endures storms at sea after undertaking the war on Troy; he takes multiple forms, encounters monsters and temptation, returns initially unrecognizable, murders the rivals for his wife’s affections, and finally regains his proper place at the head of the royal Ithacan household. Whitehead is not alone in ascribing to the mythical figure of Odysseus an iconic status in philosophy as the legend of a practical, seafaring reason juxtaposed with that derived from transcendental knowledge—one that, more or less explicitly, treats the well-defined, patrimonial property of the sovereign household (or oikos) as the normative condition of formal, categorical reason.

Adorno and Horkheimer describe Odysseus melancholically. For them, he is the exemplary homo oeconomicus characterized by self-mastery and (self-)sacrifice, the condition of a bourgeois aesthetics that is all ears but incapable of taking pleasure in beauty, the alienated “homesickness” of an Enlightenment rationality both set adrift from and destructive of normative foundations in a euphemistic nature. If Whitehead was less scornful of Odysseus’s adventurist entrepreneurialism than Adorno and Horkheimer, he nevertheless deals, albeit tacitly, in a similar structural analogy between the patrilineal genealogy of a well-ordered oikonomia and the coherent properties of classical, categorical reason by suggesting that “reason is the self-discipline of the originative element in history,” without which “this element is anarchic.”

The oikos has long-furnished philosophers with a naturalized, patrimonial aesthetics of the selective preservation of heritable, unique properties.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 20d

Nate Silver discovers that "college degree" is not a proxy for class. No mention of context: increase in enrolments by women, Black people, children of w-c backgrounds. Or the Right's subsequent efforts to devalue degrees. Or the false claim that w-c (defined as non-college degreed) support Trump.

Note Silver post: "Income and education are usually positively correlated. But sometimes the relationship breaks down. What's the most Democratic voting group in America? People with post-graduate degrees but lower-to-middle incomes."
Below the text is an attached data table from the "Silver Bulletin" titled "How income and education affect presidential voting." The subtitle reads, "Share of two-way vote going to Democratic presidential candidate, 2016-2024 elections."
The table displays a grid with income brackets as rows and education levels as columns. The cells contain percentages, shaded in light orange for lower numbers (leaning Republican) and light blue for higher numbers (leaning Democratic). The data shows that as education increases, the Democratic vote share generally increases, but it decreases as income increases within the same education brackets.
A prominent red circle highlights the number 70 in the table. This is the highest percentage shown, located at the intersection of the "$30K-$60K" income row and the "Post-grad" education column.
The bottom of the table notes the source as the "Cooperative Election Study, 2016-2025."

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 23d

Photo of antifascist militia in Spain, July 1936 — at the onset of the Spanish Civil war, 90 years ago.

July 1936 Spain, a small group of antifascist militia during Franco's rule.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· 27d

From recollection, the film's colouring was based on the 2009 dust storm in Sydney, AU. (Ofc, dust storms and fires on this scale are due to climate change)

2009, Sydney Harbour Bridge in a major dust storm, engulfed in orange light

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Jul 9

The Platner campaign illustrates an upper middle class aesthetics *about* working class men. In a queer vocabulary: rough trade. Re Platner, also the supposedly exciting insinuations that authentically working class men have a propensity & enthusiasm for (intimate and military) violence.

From the Wikipedia entry on Rough Trade:
In the term's historical usage, rough trade is a variant describing partners with characteristics stereotypical of extreme masculinity. This may include physical strength, roughness, and calloused hands. These men are usually laborers in physically demanding occupations, such as factory work, construction, and farming.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Jul 4

SSPX don't name any of those schools. But they do run several childrens' camps in the US. (Maybe some schools can be inferred from the camp names?) Either way, the uniform for the girls' camps are pink; the boys' camps, military green.

SSPX-run childrens' camp, Los Gatos. Picture shows children in uniforms, with flags and a military style jeep.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Jun 18

German Nazi policy on motherhood in the early 1930s:

Nazi leaders were obsessed with increasing the size and health of the so-called "national community" ("Volksgemeinschaft") so that the German nation could dominate Europe. During the years of Nazi rule, Nazi authorities and German medical professionals tried different policies and initiatives to increase the sinking German birth rate.1

Shortly after the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, the new regime enacted legislation that increased existing criminal penalties for abortion among so-called “Aryan” Germans.2 The Lebensborn (“Fount of Life”) program was designed to discourage abortions by providing discreet maternity homes and adoption services to single “Aryan” women.3 Although Nazi policies encouraged these births outside of marriage, Nazi propaganda urged young “Aryan” Germans to marry early and have many children. Large families were the Nazi ideal, and they were promoted through written articles, visual propaganda, and the introduction of military-style awards for motherhood

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· May 30

And now, this from the US gov:

Graphic from US gov website, green text on black screen, claiming to track "aliens"

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· May 6

Every time this comes up, I'm reminded of the list of "unorthodox medications" found in Hitler's bunker.

Abstract: For the last nine years of his life Adolf Hitler, a lifelong hypochondriac had as his physician Dr Theodor Morell. Hitler's mood swings, Parkinson's disease, gastro-intestinal symptoms, skin problems and steady decline until his suicide in 1945 are documented by reliable observers and historians, and in Morell's diaries. The bizarre and unorthodox medications given to Hitler, often for undisclosed reasons, include topical cocaine, injected amphetamines, glucose, testosterone, estradiol, and corticosteroids. In addition, he was given a preparation made from a gun cleaner, a compound of strychnine and atropine, an extract of seminal vesicles, and numerous vitamins and 'tonics'. It seems possible that some of Hitler's behaviour, illnesses and suffering can be attributed to his medical care. Whether he blindly accepted such unorthodox medications or demanded them is unclear.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 29

Film you've watched more than six times with a gif. hard mode: no star wars, star trek, lotr, dc, marvel, disney, pixar, dreamworks, spielberg, cameron, wachowskis, or ghibli.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 24

Reminded of this.

On Vimeo: Glenn Greenwald speaks out in defense of Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer ...

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 16

Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein (1925).

Scene from Battleship Potemkin, maggots and part of spectacles found in food

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 5

Relatedly, I've been wondering about the money that's behind the rightward turns of previously Left journals. And the growing number of redwashing outfits — such as Compact, describing themselves as social democratic but, in the detail, fascist-adjacent. Just checking in on Compact ..

Compact article: Trump Should Declare Victory In Iran

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 2

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Apr 2

State monopoly capitalism not doing so well in Hungary

Chart of 4jg's falling share price.

"The firm has become the primary face of Orban’s strategic goals and ties with President Donald Trump’s insiders, including billionaire Elon Musk and Richard Grenell, the US’s special envoy to the Balkans who became an adviser to 4iG last year"

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Mar 31

All of Zizek's writing is redwashing though: radical Left verbiage, centre-Right conclusions. And so much confident ignorance about how borders and labour markets function. bsky.app/profile/jour...

Re Zizek.

In a piece written in the aftermath of New York’s recent mayoral race, he argues that “only a radical leftist can win over working-class Trumpians – a constituency whose distrust of the establishment remains entirely justified.”[3] Yet in another recent piece, he advances the argument – disturbingly consonant with right-wing populist rhetoric – that supporting undocumented migrant workers merely aids “big capital,” which profits from cheap labor and wage arbitrage, and simultaneously fuels “support for Trumpian populists.”[4]

These stances, of course, are hardly new. In his 2016 book consecrated to today’s “troubles with the neighbors”[5], he devotes considerable energy to attacking both humanitarian anti-border advocates and proponents of hardline anti-allochthon policies. And it is under the flag of a revolutionary break with capitalism that these alternatives are seen as a double blackmail.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Mar 17

Apparently Zizek has a new podcast, "Liberal Fascisms." I expect his Great Insight is that "liberalism is the real fascism" — ie, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, translated into Hegelese. Where dialectics is a fancy name for bombastic, fascist-adjacent contrarianism.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Jan 12

Musk supporting calls to "white solidarity" made me think of Ignatiev et al's "Race Traitor." I've not read the edited collection, but did come across a pdf of the first edition of the magazine "Race Traitor" (1993) to read instead. files.libcom.org/files/Race%2...

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Jan 11

If I may add to this, from blog notes on Trump and fascism, Dec 2015: "Fascism is what happens when ‘domestic violence’ goes public and political, is justified through elaborate forms of victim-blaming and an inverted view of victimisation ..."

From s0metim3s blog: "Fascism is what happens when ‘domestic violence’ goes public and political, is justified through elaborate forms of victim-blaming and an inverted view of victimisation, enjoyed and encouraged without limit, spills out from the privatised spaces of the home and into the streets"

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Dec 31

Franz Neumann's Behemoth: The Structure & Practice of National Socialism, 1933-1944. Published in 1942. [Disagreed with most of Neumann's theories. And, learned a lot — I'd become so bored with learning nothing new from more recent books on fascism.]

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Dec 12

Atlantic article, by David Frum, "If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will"

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Dec 4

Define: security. Contrast the extreme insecurity inflicted on Black and Brown people with Jeffries' and Sanders' lauding Trump for securing the southern border.

Fox News: Top Democrat says President Trump will be given 'credit' for border finally being secured. (Dec 3, 2025)

Newsweek: Bernie Sanders Praises Trump's Job on Securing the Border. (Oct 24, 2025)

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Nov 21

The frontiersman of the apocalypse

For Elon Musk and his backers in the state capitol the Gigafactory is much more than a place to make cars. The complex’s enormous assembly floor, with its shiny red robots and twenty thousand employees, sends a Texas-sized message to entrepreneurs everywhere: the future won’t be built in California or New York. It will be built in the Bible Belt, by men—always men—with the willpower to tame the forces of technology, wrestle profit from the land, and create new industries out of whole cloth. It will rise up like the oil derricks of a hundred years before and give evidence of the limitless, God-given natural bounty of the region. It will make some men rich and when it does, it will provide evidence that the land still breeds heroes like Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, defenders of the Alamo

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Nov 5

Thinking about "kitchen tables"

1935 photomontage by Dada artist John Heartfield, people seated around table eating armaments

Tradfam around dinner table, served by tradwife

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Nov 2

From Nathan Bailey, Colonial Dictionary:

That corrupts or ruins women. Greek thelys, female + phthora, corruption. M. Madan in 1780 wrote a book entitled Telyphthora; or, A Treatise on Female Ruin, in its Causes, Effects, Consequences, Prevention, and Remedy. Fourteen years later Thomas Mathias inquired, in his poem THE PURSUITS OF LITERATURE: Must I with Madan, bent on gospel truth, In telyphthoric lore instruct our youth? The prefix thely-, female, is used in various scientific terms, such as thelytokous, thelygenous, producing only female offspring; hence thelytoky; arrhenotoky, q.v., is the production only of males. Nathan Bailey in his DICTIONARY (1751) lists thelygonum, 'an herb which, when steeped in drink, is said to make a woman conceive a girl' It is equally efficacious when drunk by the man.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Oct 17

Speaking of natalism as a competitive sport, here's the "Cross of the German Mother," a medal introduced by Hitler. More history in the alt-text.

German Nazi "Cross of the German Mother"

The crosses were awarded annually on the second Sunday in May (Mothering Sunday), so despite its institution in 1938, the first awards were given in May 1939. The last awards were presented in 1944.

The first woman to receive the Cross of Honor of the German Mother was Magda Goebbels, the wife of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The couple had six children, and Magda was awarded the Silver Medal

History / Summary

This award was instituted on 16 December 1938 as part of Hitler's initiative to encourage Aryan population growth. Only women of German origin qualified for such awards, though women from absorbed Germanic countries and areas (such as Austria, the Sudetenland and Danzig) were also eligible. A mother could be awarded a bronze, silver, or gold cross depending on the number of children she had borne. Eight or more would entitle the woman to a gold cross, six or seven for silver, and four or five for bronze.

The medal was not a permanent award, as mothers stood to be stripped of the Mother's Cross if they proved themselves unworthy through neglect of their children, marital infidelity, or any other social offense.

Angela Mitropoulos@mitropoulos· Oct 15

Still reading, but it's good to see discussions of the distinct, insightful contributions of Black scholars to understanding fascism. Not least, these points: