Patrick Iber

@patrickiber

Widely somewhat respected. Co-editor, Dissent Magazine. Teach history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. New book coming at end of 2026: Poverty of the Imagination: The Cold War and the Social Science of Development in Latin America.

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Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 14h

Dave Zirin wrote a new biography of Howard Zinn, and reading it (along with Martin Duberman's not-particularly-old biography) led me to a new Grand Unified Theory of Zinn newrepublic.com/article/2137...

Zinn's historical analysis resembles this populist frame rather than, say, the class politics of Karl Marx. Writing in A People's History more than 40 years after he read the Ny Committee's reports, Zinn explains World War I as having arisen from the fact that "American capitalism needed international rivalry-and periodic war--to create an artificial community of interest between rich and poor, supplanting the genuine community of interest among the poor that showed itself in sporadic movements." A conspiracy of elites. A dishonest government led to catastrophe by business interests seeking profit. The victims: common people, who otherwise are in broad agreement about how the world could be made better. That is the core of Zinn's historical model, and Nye would
have recognized it.

That same pattern of analysis, shoehorned in again and again, is responsible for what is probably the worst passage in A People's History: his account of the U.S. Civil War. Zinn calls the Civil War "not a clash of peoples ... but of elites." It was "not over slavery as a moral institution ... the northern elite wanted economic expansion ... the slave interests opposed all this; they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and prosperous way of life impossible in the future." There are elements of truth here, of course. The North was also racist, it had businessmen with interests, it was not merely waging a war of righteous emancipation. But, again, Zinn is too reductive. There was moral and political outrage about slavery in the North. Troops, Northern and Southern, understood what the war was about. The Thirteenth Wisconsin Infantry, in 1862, declared that it was "as plain as the noon-day sun" that the South's "infamous rebellion" was "a war of, by, and for Slavery," and a Confederate Brigade agreed: "any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks ... is either a fool or a liar." There are times when Zinn should have
listened more to "the people."

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 21h

The power of Count Binface

Croissant trays showing a price of one pound, one of the campaign promises of Clint Binface, who is running in the byelection against Nigel Farage

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 2d

I’m in England at the moment and the depths of this drought are really astonishing; London’s only rainless July in recorded history; farmers’ fields were harvested weeks ago to salvage what they could www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A picture from the train window showing some thickets of dry grass by the track, a brown dry field and a blue nearly cloudless sky

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 8d

Chapter 4 of the book analyzes the "culture of poverty" debates - their origins as research in Mexico, the influence on the War on Poverty in the US, Oscar Lewis's research in Cuba at the end of his life - and the ways the idea was variously taken up by radicals, liberals, and conservatives

It's the Anakin-Padme meme; Anakin says "The Culture of Poverty Thesis is an indictment of the capitalist system, not the lives of the poor," Padme says "So we're going to use it to change the system, right?"; Anakin stares at her wordlessly, she says "right?"

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 14d

Dissent's most-read article in 2025 was this one by Zoe Hu about Andrew Tate; this paragraph is still as sharp as it gets dissentmagazine.org/article/mr-l...

Some have suggested that young men are drawn to Tate because they suffer from a "loneliness epidemic." For what it's worth, Tate believes this too, having derided women in his videos for not understanding the interpersonal isolation that men experience. Yet it should be said that men go to Tate not to alleviate loneliness but to intensify it, making it synonymous with power. They accept his premise that life pits the strong against the weak, that social antagonism is a universal condition. They forgo mutual recognition or vulnerability within their relationships, which instead are stacked and arranged for maximum value and extractive potential. It is lonely at the top. It is lonely
everywhere else.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 19d

The corner where Corey Ruiz was killed by police has been blocked off by the community and turned into a memorial. There’s a vigil at 5pm. Leaving people out of the photo to protect privacy

Flowers and chalk remembering both Tony Robinson (killed 2015) and Corey Ruiz (killed this week)

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 19d

Chapter 3 of my book in meme format: I describe the origins of dependency theory in the 1960s and its Cardoso v. Frank branches. Frank's form of anti-imperialism, and his personal behavior, leave him institutionally adrift. Cardoso...well...he's the future president of Brazil

It's the "Hello, Human Resources meme" with the suave guy labeled as Fernando Henrique Cardoso saying "dependency theory: associated dependent development" (lady at desk responds: "Aww, you're sweet") and the uncouth one labeled Andre Gunter Frank saying "dependency theory: development of underdevelopment", and the lady calls Human Resources

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· 29d

I was recently far enough from light pollution that I was able to show my children the night sky for what was effectively the first time. One is nearly 15 years old. We stayed up and made up silly stories about constellations, as is our birthright as human beings

The night sky full of stars and the band of the Milky Way, with silhouettes of palm trees in the foreground at right

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jul 4

Jeff Isaac has written the piece I needed today: "What to Eugene Debs was the Fourth of July?," on Debs, the tradition of patriotic dissent, and the spirit of revolution possible in the 4th dissentmagazine.org/article/euge...

It has been regarded as a patriotic duty for Americans, on the 4th of July, to apostrophize Liberty and to select from the vocabularies of all languages eulogistic words to describe its value and its glory, and when words failed to express those essential attributes of liberty which made life itself an inferior blessing, bonfires have blazed, cannons have belched their thunder, banners have waved, drums have throbbed, and bugle blasts have called the people to assemble and rejoice together over God's inscrutable decree in bestowing upon Americans blessings denied to all other peoples, kindreds, and tongues since time began. Nor do I doubt that on this anniversary such exhibitions will be repeated, but it will be a hollow mockery. The stage will be gorgeous with scenery for the play of
liberty, but liberty will be absent-only its ghost will appear, only its
"canonized bones" will be present.
-Eugene V. Debs, "Liberty's Anniversary," July 4, 1895

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jul 1

Gotta reregister again and I can't tell you how much it cracks me up that the Hoover Institution asks for your pronouns

It's the Hoover Institution Library & Archives registration page, including name questions and then preferred pronouns

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jun 29

In this interview that I did with David Bateman and Julie Suk about our democratic crisis, Bateman made a point that totally changed the way I think about constitutional reform in the US, and it's one that you may find particularly relevant today dissentmagazine.org/article/decl...

Bateman: We have probably the most difficult-to-amend Constitution in the world. Every additional state has made it more difficult, because it increases the number of veto points. On the other hand, we amend the Constitution all the time through the courts. And the courts have an enormous amount of flexibility, because we recognize that court decisions are the mechanism through which we accommodate our short, unspecified Constitution to the vastness of the American empire and the American state. The court uses this power, and we give it the power, because we see amending the Constitution itself as such an impossible task. If you raise the idea of amending the Constitution through the regular Article V path, people will laugh in
your face.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 31

Backyard fox today

An orange fox with big foxy ears looking toward the camera. It is lying down in a field full of yellow, white, and pink flowers

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 29

Oh, OK, I get it. The last ten years do make a lot more sense now

A prop model of a Sentinel from The Matrix attacking the top of a building. The Sentinels are squid-like with long metal tentacles that resemble the UFC cage construction at the White House

Photo of a sinister black metal arc rising over the White House, with a crane in the center and an American flag. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images, attached to news articles, not my photo, just my little joke)

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 27

I know that part of engaging with this sort of thing is to prove that we're the smart kids in class and that there's really no point to doing that here. But technology affects society, and therefore faith, and so Popes have literally been pontificating about it for ages

The Demands of the Common Good 78. But a further point needs emphasizing: Any adjustment between wages and profits must take into account the demands of the common
good of the particular country and of the whole human family. 79. What are these demands? On the national level they include: employment of the greatest possible number of workers; care lest privileged classes arise, even among the workers; maintenance of equilibrium between wages and prices; the need to make goods and services accessible to the greatest number; elimination, or at least the restriction, of inequalities in the various branches of the economy--that is, between agriculture, industry and services; creation of a proper balance between economic expansion and the development of social services, especially through the activity of public authorities; the best possible adjustment of the means of production to the progress of science and technology; seeing to it that the benefits which make possible a more human way of life will be available not merely to the
present generation but to the coming generations as well.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 25

Still very proud of the opening paragraph to this review I wrote in 2019 newrepublic.com/article/1559...

Warnings of a crisis of liberalism have become commonplace, as it is assailed by an illiberal right on the one side and a socialist left on the
other. The situation is plain, and it is at least partially self-inflicted. Liberalism has missed opportunity after opportunity. It is not merely the tepid response to the financial crisis. One critic warns that already in the '80s there were "fresh and full disclosures of poverty" and "the decay of rural industry and population," yet liberals made no serious
proposals for reform. "The old laissez faire individualism," he reasons, "was still too dominant." Nevertheless, he holds, there is the possibility of renewal. The cause of liberty can be advanced through social reform, through a more robust welfare state, through attacks on monopolies and unearned property. The writer is the social scientist
J.A. Hobson. The year is 1909.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 21

That doesn't sound like the CIA I know, thought I, so let me check the reference. And here it is! Looks like a human intelligence conversation in which the source is making a point about collective leadership rather than "one man makes all decisions"

INFORMATION REPORT
INFORMATION REPORT
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY This material contains Information affecting the National Defense of the United States within the meaning of the Espionage Laws, Title
18, U.S.C. Secs. 793 and 791, the transmission or revelation of which in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by 25X1
SECRET
COUNTRY
SUBJECT
DATE OF INFO.
USSR
REPORT
Comments on the Change in Soviet
Leadership
DATE DISTR.
NO. OF PAGES
REQUIREMENT NO. RD
REFERENCES
This is UNEVALUATED Information
SOURCE EVALUATIONS ARE DEFINITIVE. APPRAISAL OF CONTENT IS TENTATIVE.
MAR 2 19525X1
2
25X1
25X1 1. Even In Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western Idea of a dictator within the Communist, setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organi- zation of the Communist power structure. Stalin, although holding wide powers, was merely the captain of a team and it seems obvious that Khrushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin, so that it will be safer to assume that developments in Moscow will be along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets to stream-
line their power organization.
The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the Communist dictatorship since the
death of Stalin 2. There will not be a dramatic purge. Inasmuch as the MVD has already been cleaned up and the Party and the Army have not been in the hands of Malenkov's favorites, there can be expected only a normal replacement of officials In the reorganization of the top-level administration of the Party and the Govern-
ment. 3. It is hard to draw any parallel between present events and those of the 1920's "
when Stalin was ascending to power.
There is now no organized opposition inside the Party or in the Soviet Union in general. As the …

"..g
SECRET
-2- as the Communist leaders were unable to keep this promise, particularly because of accelerated war preparations, they had to find a scapegoat,
and thus Malenkov resigned. 6. Bulganin Impressed those who had worked with him in the State Bank, In- cluding a famous expert on banking, with his high intelligence, mild manners, and capacity to learn in a very short time the most special
and difficult problems. 7. It 1s difficult to anticipate any withdrawal from the Soviet foreign policy line unless there are concessions from the West with regard to the ratification of the Paris agreements. There 1s a possibility that a continuation of discord among the Soviet leaders may lead to a soft- ening of the Soviet position and to a recognition by Molotov of his Incompetence in the conduct of foreign relations. The Soviet leaders however, have recognized that the balance of power has changed in favor of the West. They are now endeavoring to change this balance as can be seen from the shift to accelerated war production, and the attempts to
disrupt Western unity.
The aggressiveness of the Chinese Communists may also be a part of the endeavor. A stiff position on the part of the west toward the USSR probably favors the continuation in vower of the more
stiff elements in the Soviet leadership.
25X1
25X1
25X1
SHOREE

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· May 11

Chapter 2 of my forthcoming book in meme format: I describe the Italo-Argentine sociologist Gino Germani's quest for a modernization theory that would help with national development, and how its elite orientation undermined its political promise but produced our ideas about populism

The Moe-tosses-Barney meme, with drunk Barney in panel 1 labeled "Fascism" and Moe's toe as "modernization theory", Panel 2 has satisfied Moe labeled as Gino Germani, and in panel 3 Barney reappears behind Moe

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Apr 1

Chapter 1 discusses how the Ford Foundation thought about its actions when it started investing in Latin America: confident in its formula of anti-Communist modernization--linked not to infrastructure projects but to the development of a group of well-educated elites and academic institutions

It's the Pam from The Office meme, with the pictures labeled "Westernization" and "modernization", "The Ford Foundation needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture"; Pam is labeled "Cold War social science" saying "They're the same picture"

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Apr 1

Your humble servant has a written a book about the social science of poverty in Cold War Latin America and the contexts that shaped its creation, from international sources like the Ford Foundation to dictatorships across the region. The book is in production and will be ready at the end of 2026

Book cover shows an alleyway in a Rio favela, the black and white photo has been given a bluish tinge; my name is upper left, the title of the book "Poverty of the Imagination" is at lower left and at right, in reddish text is the subtitle "The Cold War and the Social Science of Development in Latin America"

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Mar 23

Found this newspaper clipping tucked inside a book. It’s a complaint about US researchers parachuting in to South America and not staying enough time to do good work. “Use local knowledge,” it urges. The article is from 1942

A newspaper clipping on a desk titled “Fly by Night” research hit by South Americans

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Mar 19

Edward Ruscha's 1962 painting OOF, which is a deep blue background with OOF written in large yellow capital letters in a sans serif font

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Mar 10

The left's theory of anti-fascism--one I have believed and continue to want to believe--is not as robust as I would like it to be

If Austrians are so unhappy with their lot in life that they would prefer fascism to liberal democracy, a hundred years after the Nazis marched into Vienna, then they frankly need to get out more; what they cannot do is claim, by any global measure, to be suffering to the degree historically viewed as necessary for a people to throw it all away. As a columnist for the left-wing newspaper Der Standard recently pointed out, social science indicates that it is not economic deprivation that primarily drives support for the far right but false perceptions: voters who are doing better than others, objectively, but imagine themselves to be worse off, or are simply anxious about losing their privileged status.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Feb 20

This book is ~~wild~~, I really did not expect the answer to this question to begin with sixty pages on Lyndon LaRouche

Page proofs of AJA Woods's book "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West"; the cover art is a picture of Theodor Adorno with devil horns and a tail crudely drawn on

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Feb 17

Went back this morning and read @dissentmag.bsky.social's coverage of the Jackson campaign in 1988; I think it is Michael Harrington's "A Case for Jackson" that holds up the best dissentmagazine.org/article/a-ca...

Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign marks a historic breakthrough in American politics. It is the first time that a "social democratic" platform has been presented in the mainstream of American politics and attracted significant mass support. The journal-
istic cliche was, and is, that Jackson's program is "extremist," vague, outrageously expensive. In fact, as a correspondent for the London Financial Times reported, only in Ronald Reagan's America could Jackson's eminently moderate and sensible ideas be seen as far out. Those ideas, on full employment, health, North-South and the like, are familiar to readers of Dissent, members of Democratic Social- ists of America, and the broad democratic left. They are, more or less, what we have been talking about during the past decade and in some cases the people who articulated them for Jackson came from our
world.

His appeal to working people--he is the most pro-union candidate in recent memory- did not always translate into votes but won him very real respect even from many who cast their ballot for another candidate. In Iowa, it is clear that he had an appeal to farm families in small communities that saw few blacks. And, more predictably, he suc- ceeded very well with the new-class vote in the
college towns and urban centers.
Third, Jackson has broken some racial barriers.
Let there be no mistake about it, there was a "backlash," particularly in some of the later primaries. But what is remarkable is that in every state Jackson significantly increased -and some-
times doubled - his percentage of the white vote in 1984. When the campaign began, even though I supported Jackson I felt that the racism of the society would limit him much more than it did in fact. And one of the reasons why he succeeded in this area is that his social democratic class appeal reached across color lines, in some cases moving even
former George Wallace voters.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Feb 17

First the orcas attacked the yachts and now the dolphins have worked out how to take hostages

Newspaper headline: Dolphins are said to be releasing Tyreek Hill and Bradley Chubb

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Feb 11

The closure has apparently been lifted.

FAA tweet announcing closure of El Paso airspace is over

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Feb 10

Oh is that so

Fundraising email from Elissa Slotkin that says "As a former CIA officer, I've seen democracies flicker out."

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jan 24

like so?

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jan 19

A passage from the 1943 OSS psychological assessment of Hitler, for your holiday mo(u)rning www.cia.gov/readingroom/...

PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND RECONSTRUCTION The world has come to know Adolph Hitler for his insatiable greed for power, his ruthlessness, cruelty and utter lack of feeling, his contempt for established institutions and his lack of moral restraints. In the course of relatively few years he has contrived to usurp such tre- mendous power that a few veiled threats, accusations or insinuations were sufficient to make the world tremble. In open defiance of treaties he occupied huge territories and conquered millions of people without even firing a shot. When the world became tired of being frightened and concluded that it was all a bluff, he initiated the most brutal and deva- stating war in history - a war which, for a time, threatened the com- plete destruction of our civilization. Human life and human suffering seem to leave this individual completely untouched as he plunges along
the course he believes he was predestined to take.

Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amuse-
ment. Many people refused to take him seriously on the grounds that "he could not possibly last." As one action after another met with amaz- ing success and the measure of the man became more obvious, this amusement was transformed into incredulousness. To most people, it seemed inconceivable that such things could actually happen in our mod- ern civilization. Hitler, the leader of these activities, became generally regarded as a madman, if not inhuman. Such a judgment, concerning
the nature of our enemy, may be satisfactory to the man in the street. It gives him a feeling of satisfaction to pigeon-hole an incomprehensible individual in one category or another and having classified him in this way, he feels that the problem is solved. All we need to do is to eliminate the madman from the scene of activities, replace him with a sane indivi- dual, and the world will again return to a normal and peaceful state
of affairs.

This naive view, however, is wholly inadequate for those who are delegated to conduct the war against Germany or for those who will be delegated to deal with the situation when the war is over. They can- not content themselves with simply regarding Hitler as a personal devil and condemning him to an Eternal Hell in order that the remainder of the world may live in peace and quiet. They will realize that the madness of the Fuehrer has become the madness of a nation, if not of a large part of the continent. They will realize that these are not wholly the actions of a single individual but that a reciprocal relationship exists between the Fuehrer and the people and that the madness of the one stimulates and flows into the other and vice versa. It was not only Hitler, the madman, who created German madness, but German madness which created Hitler. Having created him as its spokesman and leader, it has been carried along by his momentum, perhaps far beyond the point where
it was originally prepared to go. Nevertheless, it continues to follow his

lead in spite of the fact that it must be obvious to all intelligent people
now that his path leads to inevitable destruction. From a scientific point of view, therefore, we are forced to con- sider Hitler, the Fuehrer, not as a personal devil, wicked as his actions and philosophy may be, but as the expression of a state of mind existing in millions of people, not only in Germany but, to a smaller degree, in all civilized countries. To remove Hitler may be a necessary first step, but it would not be the cure. It would be analogous to removing a chancre without treating the underlying disease. If similar eruptions are to be prevented in the future, we cannot content ourselves with simply remov- ing the overt manifestations of the disease. On the contrary, we must ferret out and seek to correct the underlying factors which produced the unwelcome phenomenon. We must discover the psychological streams which nourish this destructive state of mind in order that we may divert them into channels which will permit a further evolution of our form
of civilization.

Patrick Iber@patrickiber· Jan 9

Here's Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map in case you want to visually know how big things actually are (to a reasonable approximation)