johnpaulpagano.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

This is an arachnoid level of evil and for it you can thank the best America has to offer—a deputized foreigner, a ketamine-sniffing Captain of Industry who looks like a forensic reconstruction of a murdered runaway. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

As Congress probes animal abuser and medieval magician RFK, Jr. for suitability to run the nation’s health and human services, I remind you that there is no such thing as a “vaccine skeptic.” RFK, Jr. is properly identified as a conspiracy theorist. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

The great sadness of our time is that this deeply confirms the suitability of RFK, Jr.’s appointment to a position in the Trump administration.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

Correction. It really WAS a BBQ joint! He just happened to do a full Indonesian rice table too! www.ebay.com/itm/18490937...

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

This is true to the degree that what Sartre is saying applies generally to conspiracy theorists, the fanatical core of which are spellbound bigots. Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. It also aligns well with the cruelty in which Trumpkins luxuriate.

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

This is the upside of having tastes that run primarily in the direction of mom-and-pop “ethnic food,” long before the world was awakened to it by Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern. It was always there for the taking in cities, and more often than you may think in the suburbs.

submitted 43 days ago • 2 comments

We lost our house in the Eaton Fire. We're safe, but the level of devastation is impossible to convey. I won't be able to work for a while, so if you want to support us, I'd appreciate a Patreon subscription or buying one of my books. It will help. www.patreon.com/MikeRothschild

submitted 44 days ago • 348 comments

Not sure there’s a path by which accusations of Antisemitism could be “one of the main tools used to dismantle democracy,” but in any event, there’s a danger of fearful overcorrection. The vacuum of concern on the left about the whole phenomenon of Antisemitism opened the door for Right-wing cynics.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

A tiny silver lining I’d like to see in our Dumb Era is irreparable damage to the romantic myth of the great business leader, which we cling to so tenaciously.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Anthropologically, conspiracy theories trace all the way back to primitive life, where bias and magical thinking would combine to generate rumors about unlucky villagers. Now a half-trillionaire controls a major medium to achieve this effect globally on a whim.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Conspiracy theories reflect a worldview more than any particular truth claim. E.g., the paradox that the Jews are both rapacious capitalists and subversive Communists is credible to those for whom it accurately reflects the cosmic role of the People of Darkness. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

The “paranoid style” pulses at the heart of extremism & will operate at the center of power during the second Trump admin. With this series over the next few months, I hope to share with you everything I know about conspiracism. #Antisemitism #AntiExtremistResearch open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

The Stalinist cat ladies of Code Pink outdo themselves. No less sick than revelatory is that the far-Right BS-machine is raving simultaneously about "DEI" and "lesbians" hampering efforts to fight the fires. Monocausal cranks littering the discourse with embers of bigotry.

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

Interesting. My immediate response is bemusement that this argument is largely being made on behalf of flexible-midrash dipshits who are never so Jewish as when they’re denouncing Israel. www.uclalawreview.org/defending-je...

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

Many seem to have forgotten that Mark Zuckerberg is an alarmingly unsophisticated thinker about hate speech. In 2018, he objected to banning Holocaust denial, because its proponents weren't "intentionally" wrong--which is about as naive a stance as you can have. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

Oh, that sucks. Will no nice things survive our dumb era?

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

The conspiracy theorist doesn’t believe in history. He doesn’t really believe in time. All that matters to him is the eternal combat myth. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

Conspiracy theories are often absurd, but they draw on a sophisticated intellectual heritage. Learn about it here. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Jew-baiters delight in their hateful idiocy and irresistibly reveal their true selves, as UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, now does by "[standing] with" professional Antisemite David Miller, a disgraced ex-professor who raves about the "genocidal Chabad cult."

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

There is nowhere near enough attention paid to this fact.

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

Conspiracy theories are often absurd, but they draw on a sophisticated intellectual heritage. Learn about it here. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Conspiracy theories are often absurd, but the sources of conspiracism are diverse and complex. Let’s journey to the core of this destructive dynamic that will operate at the center of American power for the next four years. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

I don’t believe in augury.

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

The Trump era has occasioned a flood of commentary on conspiracy theories. With this new series, I reach through the intellectual history of conspiracism all the way back to its first principles. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

“Conspiracy theorists are often dismissed as irrational, but that’s not quite right. Their anxious teleology leads to hyper-reason—a compulsion to explain.” Understanding Conspiracism - Introduction open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

The “paranoid style” pulses at the center of extremism and will operate prominently at the center of power for the next four years. With this series, I hope to share with you everything I know about the phenomenon of conspiracism. open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul... open.substack.com/pub/johnpaul...

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

Taylor Lorenz joins Tucker Carlson as the Left-wing mirror of post-career lunacy, chatting jovially about the upside of Brian Thompson's murder with 9/11 Truther Abby Martin. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHu...

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

From Oct 7 to Daniel Penny to Luigi Mangione, there is a cross-spectrum embrace of the cartoon ethic of retributive justice. The rationalization of irrationalist politics always ends in anti-“system” spasms of murder.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

I might as well reveal that I spent over 18 years working for Time Inc., then over 4 years at TIME. None of this was as a journalist; I served in a variety of engineering roles. But I can say with some authority that this is no longer the magazine I knew.

submitted 71 days ago • 1 comment

I can’t unsee the pictures of Elon Musk in Mykonos, exposing his flabby and yet trapezoidal torso, which was clearly the design inspiration for the Cybertruck.

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

This is virtually the whole online shtick of a sizable fraction of social media personalities and it gives me narcolepsy.

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

The funny thing about this is with all the things you can say about Marxists, no one has ever accused them of not being able to organize a military and fight, which our Defense pick would know if he’d ever heard of World War II.

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

Since I moved to NYC in 1998, I've relied on Robert Sietsema's gut--figuratively and literally--to find and enjoy the best folk food in the best city in the world. Make sure to follow what he does next.

submitted 78 days ago • 0 comments