Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大

PhD, postdoc historian of modern Russia, Finland, Estonia, Karelia, Finno-Ugric people, Turanism, empires and borderlands in Eurasia@Helsinki uni.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

As the world is distracted AGAIN by more war and manufactured despair, Israel is AGAIN deliberately starving Gaza.
Don’t be fooled: a so-called "board of peace" that presides over this level of suffering isn’t diplomacy; it’s a grim omen of the world to come, if we don’t stop it.

[Robert Horvath @RG_Horvath]

Grotesque, ill-informed and racist. De Custine was not 'American.' He was a French aristocrat, whose account of his short visit to Russia in 1839 is a compendium of Orientalist stereotypes.

Merz is invoking the bigot who wrote: 'the Russians are not yet civilized. They are regimented Tatars, nothing more.' In other words, they are tainted with the 'barbarism' of Asia.

De Custine's core message is that the Asiatic Russians cannot be Europeans, they can only imitate them:

'I do not blame the Russians for being what they are; I blame them for pretending to be what we are... I see them constantly possessed by the desire to ape other nations, and they ape as the apes do, mocking what they copy. So I think: these are men who have forsaken savagery and missed civilization…'

Unsurprisingly, de Custine's racist ideas about Russia exerted a profound influence on German Ostforschung in the nineteenth century - the same Ostforschung that was instrumentalised by the Nazi regime to justify aggression and genocide.

The fact that the Chancellor of a democratic Germany is invoking de Custine to condemn not the Putin regime, not the Russian state, but Russia as a country is a gift to Kremlin propagandists.

No less deplorable is the fact that he was responding to an interviewer's question about Navalny - a democrat who died for the idea that Russia had a European future. Like de Custine, Merz seems to prefer Orientalist stereotypes to listening to the voices of Russians challenging autocracy.

[Tulpar🐎中央ユーラシアの雑貨とアートの店 @TulparEurasia]

アスタナで見かけた民族音楽アンサンブル・トゥランのサイン。
「分断されしものを狼は食らう。団結せよ、団結せよ！」彼らの代表曲「エル・トゥラン」の歌詞の一部。
「トゥランの民よ、テュルクの民よ、目覚めよ」というこの曲に乗せて氷上を舞った、テュルクではない青年のことを思い出している。

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

My full AJ Forum speech last week: the common enemy of humanity is THE SYSTEM that has enabled the genocide in Palestine, including the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it and the weapons that enable it.

[Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大 @tkhrkbtkyptr]

"Of course, much of the criticism Marin received was sexist. But she also uses the charge to shield herself from more legitimate criticism – as well as, in typically self-aggrandizing style, suggesting that her having a normal social life is an enlightened feminist act".

[New Left Review @NewLeftReview]

Lily Lynch (@lilyslynch) on Sanna Marin’s memoir:

‘Throughout Hope in Action, Marin invokes ‘the collective’ – sometimes to illustrate the qualities of the Finnish soul, at others to give her lust for power an egalitarian sheen.’

https://t.co/OtRSWrh4Jd

[Crisis and Critique @CrisisCritique]

For your weekend listening: 21 free conversations on the Crisis and Critique Podcast with thinkers like Butler, Žižek, Zupančič, Malabou, Tooze, Varoufakis, Pippin and more.
Take a listen&consider subscribing or following us!

https://t.co/Oa5ytql6eh

https://t.co/iC7RWCwPri

[Tribune @tribunemagazine]

The late historian Eric Hobsbawm recounts the history of International Workers' Day.

https://t.co/kPsqUJRqgn

[Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大 @tkhrkbtkyptr]

https://t.co/93qu6znt12

[Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大 @tkhrkbtkyptr]

Another event for thh Finnish Days of Science 2025, with the Kalevala Society!
https://t.co/gvCWR1WHET

[Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大 @tkhrkbtkyptr]

It's an exciting opportunity @tieteidenyo to talk about my doctoral dissertation on Soviet Karelia, Kalevala and pan-Finnism on the Night of Science on 9 January in Helsinki with @tiedeseura!

[BASEES Baltic States Study Group @BalticBASEES]

The 2025 Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies (11-13 June 2025) is currently accepting proposals. Submission deadline: 25 January 2025. We will be there, so see you all in Estonia! https://t.co/MC02Rn4ucY

[transnational & global history seminar @OxfordTGHS]

We are very excited to receive submissions from graduate students and early-career researchers on transnational and global historical themes for our regular seminar. Please do consider applying and circulate this CfP among your peers. #AcademicTwitter #oxford #History

[USSR Pictures @PicturesUssr]

Culinary and Cafe "Kalevala" in Syktyvkar, Komi ASSR, 1982

[Takehiro Okabe/岡部赳大 @tkhrkbtkyptr]

The Kalevala Society @kalevalaseura generously gave me a chance to introduce my research, Soviet-Finnish Kalevala controversy and pan-Finnism, on their website, many thanks! https://t.co/fetYUFrN2s

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolute must-read by @adam_tooze and probably the most important geopolitics article I've read in The Guardian in years: https://t.co/16cSmGc3Oa

Tooze makes the point, which I think is correct, that Washington likes to portray itself as a victim and merely reacting - often powerlessly - to events such as the war in Ukraine or Israel's destruction of Gaza and now Lebanon.

But what if, Tooze asks, "that interpretation is too benign"? What if this was all essentially gaslighting and the US were in fact in the driver seat? What if we were witnessing "the pivoting of the US to a deliberate and comprehensive revisionism by way of a strategy of tension", as Tooze puts it?

Tooze argues that Biden's foreign policy is a direct continuation of Trump's, which he calls "literally revisionist", as "he had no interest in the existing rules of the game". Biden, he writes, "has been every bit as aggressive as, perhaps more so than, his predecessor." For example, Tooze says that with regards to China Biden acted even far more aggressively that Trump did with his attempts "to stop China's development in tech" and its "strong-arming [of] allies such as the Dutch and the South Koreans" for that purpose. Similarly, Tooze argues, "in what is now called the Indo-Pacific, the US is not merely defending the status quo" but very much revising it.

Same thing with the Middle-East: despite all its propaganda about wanting peace, the basic fact remains that "the US is paying for more than 25% of Israel's rampage as it physically annihilates Gaza, victimises the West Bank and sets about uprooting Hezbollah. It has pulled allies such as Germany and the UK into line. It is shielding Netanyahu against the reach of international justice."

All in all, Tooze writes that "in all three arenas – China, Ukraine and the Middle East – the US will say that it is responding to aggression. But rather than working consistently for a return to the status quo it is, in fact, raising the stakes. While insisting that it supports the rules-based order, what we are witnessing is something closer to a revival of the ruinous neoconservative ambition of the 1990s and 2000s."

This is a point I've long made myself and the key paradox of today's geopolitics: the US largely built the post-WW2 and post-Cold War order but it's obviously come to the conclusion that it doesn't serve it anymore, and therefore has become the world's foremost revisionist power. And they do so whilst attempting to gaslight all of us with the Orwellian assertion that they do so to protect "the rules-based order"...

[ASEN @asenevents]

The call for papers for the 2025 ASEN Conference on Nationalism and Borders is out now at https://t.co/7NzLAVfOtA! It closes on 16th November, and the conference runs from 23-25 April at @ceu in Budapest
#asen2025

[European Research Council (ERC) @ERC_Research]

Are you preparing an application for the ERC AdG2024 call for proposals️?

📌 Tune in to our dedicated webinar on Monday 19 August @ 11.00 CEST

Find here the link to join, the list of questions answered during the last session, plus its recording 👉 https://t.co/rKKewilXSN

[Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno]

If I read this and had not been following the news for a year I would think Iran had invaded Gaza and Hamas was holding Iranian hostages

[Michael Kimmage @mkimmage]

It was an honor to have @DrRadchenko join for this Long View conversation about his wonderful recent book, To Run the World, which re-envisions the history of the Cold War. A video recording of our conversation is available below. @kennaninstitute
https://t.co/YYFjiyDdFA