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Some people say it doesnt even exist that its meaningless, or even a term of abuse. But from the 2008 financial crisis to the vote for Brexit in 2016, from the rise of the alt-right to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is no way of properly grasping our world without thinking about how neoliberalism informs our politics and economy.

But what is it? Broadly speaking, neoliberalism can be defined as the raft of policies and overarching political ethos that enabled governments in the late-1970s to turn away from state-directed economic planning, towards an economic model that extended competitive markets into every sphere of human activity and initiated the reign of finance capital (the kind dreamed up in the City of London and Wall Street) by removing constraints on capital mobility.

Importantly, neoliberalism is not merely a policy agenda but also a moral framework that teaches individuals to conceive of themselves not as, say, wage earners but rather as risk-taking entrepreneurs who should expect to shoulder the financial risks of their participation in higher education, the credit system and deregulated labour markets.

First implemented as an economic programme in the UK and the United States by the Thatcher government and the Reagan administration, its principles continued to underwrite the third way politics of New Labour and Clintonite Democrats. Although centre-left politicians reject the applicability of the term to their politics, a wealth of scholarship produced by economists, sociologists and historians demonstrates how third-way politicians advanced the neoliberal project.

So, where does the ideology stand today? Some are calling time on the neoliberal age. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Paul Mason declared that the exigencies of the crisis would mean that, in short order, the UKs political class would soon consist entirely of either enthusiastic or reluctant socialists progressive state intervention was inevitably back on the agenda. However, claims of this sort should be treated with caution, not least because similar predictions were made following the financial crisis, and after the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president. And those predictions turned out to be seriously awry.

For instance, at the height of the financial crisis, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz announced, Neoliberalism is dead. Yet it soon became abundantly clear that this was premature. It is true that the crisis seemed to pose a serious threat to the veneration of markets, as governments were forced to bail out the financial sector. But, as scholars such as Philip Mirowski have shown, neoliberals have long understood that their project requires state intervention to create and maintain markets. Rather than thinking of the crisis-fighting of governments in 2008 as a repudiation of market-friendly policy, its more useful to think of it as an extreme instance of pro-business government intervention that aimed to maintain the long-term primacy of the market.

On the face of it, the vote for Brexit and the election of Trump appeared to more plausibly represent a break with neoliberalism. But that diagnosis arose from a failure to understand how neoliberalism can adaptively recombine with elements of other ideologies.

While the Brexiteers may loathe the European Union (an institution that neoliberal intellectuals have long disagreed about) they remain committed to the core of neoliberal ideology. For example, the Australian points-based immigration system so beloved by the Brexiteers is perfectly congruent with the neoliberals view of human beings as bundles of assets (of greater or lesser value). The post-Brexit immigrants educational background, work experience and connections are redefined as forms of capital that may or may not be worth investing in (by letting them in) in order to secure a future return on that investment for the national economy. Points-based immigration systems, in other words, do not represent a straightforward shift away from neoliberal, free-market orthodoxy towards rightwing protectionism.

If neither the crises of 2008 nor 2016 signalled the end of neoliberalism, what about Covid-19? Today, as in 2008, politicians such as Rishi Sunak have been forced to implement policies that seem to contradict their adherence to market supremacy, but the intention is again to do so in order to swiftly return to normal and wean the public off their addiction to state support. The governments frustrated desire to curtail the furlough scheme, and the clear opposition to implementing a universal basic income, indicate a commitment to maintaining the core of neoliberal welfare policy. This means opposing generous, non-means-tested payments, which neoliberals view as detrimental to fostering entrepreneurial activity and disciplining the workforce.

More disturbingly, in the context of pandemic and the climate crisis, the persistence of the neoliberal view of individuals as human capital raises the possibility of governments treating populations of low value as disposable. Increased state intervention to protect incomes is welcome, but could be used by governments to implement a kind of economic triage, with populations deemed not worth bailing out excluded from state support. As Michel Feher has shown, there are milder precedents for this in welfare reforms carried out by mainstream political parties in Ireland and Portugal, which reduced benefits for younger cohorts in order to encourage emigration and, in the case of Portugal, to swap young, relatively poor Portuguese for wealthier retirees from abroad. In a context of ballooning national debt, where migrant populations are being treated as vectors of disease, its not difficult to see how an exclusionary neoliberal politics that supports investment in certain populations and disinvestment in others could gain traction.

All of this is not to deny that the Covid-19 crisis poses a real threat to neoliberal orthodoxy. Physical distancing and enforced quarantine have disrupted the labour market, potentially shifting the balance of power between labour and capital in favour of workers. The increase in wildcat strikes and the emergence of mutual aid groups are certainly encouraging. And the furlough scheme has temporarily revealed the artificiality of government spending constraints. But given the persistence and adaptability of neoliberal ideology over the past 10 years, any sober assessment of the current situation needs to be attuned to the possibility of its survival (or successful mutation), as well as its possible demise.

Alex Doherty is the host of the Politics Theory Other podcast

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Has the coronavirus crisis killed neoliberalism? Don't bet on it - The Guardian

Georgia is leading a national conversation today about white men with guns.

A few weeks ago, the Michigan branch of Vanilla Isis carried rifles into the state capitol and screamed hell past lines of state troopers. And we asked ourselves, if they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot?

Last week, we watched video footage of three white men confront and shoot to death a black jogger in south Georgia footage that the Glynn County prosecutor had been sitting on for more than two months. And we asked ourselves, if they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot?

Wittingly or not, I think were linking these scenes together in our minds. The news cycle juxtaposes these images in front of us. We can bear only so much hypocrisy.

We are seeing our elected leaders ignore terrorism, though people resist calling it that because white men with guns dont just shape our policies, they also shape our language about who is and is not considered violent or threatening. And I think were finally tiring of it.

Under any other conditions, a man with a rifle screaming demands of you is an act of intimidation. In my view, it is a terroristic threat and a crime. And they know it. Its a dare.

I had a chat with Jerry Henry, the executive director of Georgia Carry, about the capitol protests last week. Georgia Carry is amid a fairly important and frankly interesting legal battle with Governor Brian Kemp over gun permits. If you moved to Georgia, you cant get a Georgia drivers license right now with all the tag offices closed. Hell, theyre handing drivers licenses to 20,000 people without a road test. The governor has been able to suspend enforcement of some laws, like one outlawing the wearing of a mask in public. But if you want a new gun permit with the county courthouses closed, youre out of luck.

For gun rights activists, this is infuriating. But Henrys crew doesnt participate in public gun demonstrations, and certainly not at the capitol, he said. A protest can make you look real good or look real bad, Henry said. The liberal press will pick out the worst people there or no one will show up.

So, to be clear, armed protesters at state capitols in Michigan, Texas and elsewhere dont have much of anything to do with gun rights. But I dont think the white supremacist messages were seeing with those armed protests are incidental.

If they were black men with guns, how quickly would they have been arrested, or shot? Well, probably pretty quickly, because thousands of black people are not having long chat room sessions fantasizing about armed insurrection after a confrontation with state police, as they are on the Fascist Forge board right now.

Heres some context people might be missing.

The 2017 racist alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., fundamentally screwed up the white supremacist movement in America, believe it or not. Heather Heyers murder and the images of running street battles turned the world decidedly against the alt-right. Activists like those behind Unicorn Riot infiltrated and exposed racists Discord channels, making clandestine recruiting all but impossible. They began outing the foot soldiers identities through social media, like Trent East, a deputy sheriff and National Guardsman in Haralson County who lost his job last year after activists spotted his online racism. The increased attention cost them their jobs, personal relationships and community standing. (This, by the way, is why the far-right loathes Antifa and propagandizes against it as much as it does: its an effective intelligence-gathering group).

White nationalist leaders and publications got sued and de-platformed, and financial supporters abandoned anything tinged with racial hatred. People like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopolous were cut off from being able to raise money easily from the public. Two of the largest formal groups the Traditionalist Worker Party and the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement no longer exist as functional organizations today.

That doesnt mean things are getting better. Theyre just getting weirder, and perhaps if the El Paso shooting is any indication, more violent.

As a Southern Poverty Law Centers surveillance report notes, the white supremacist movement has fractured, and the conversation in the quiet places has changed.

The movements followers are breaking into two major strategic camps: so-called accelerationists who wholeheartedly embrace violence as a political tool and mainstreamers (or the dissident right, as they often call themselves) who are attempting, with a degree of success, to bend the mainstream political right toward white nationalist ideas.

Consider how both views play out in Georgia. Last year, Chester Doles, who has a lengthy history of white supremacist organizing, staged a rally in Dahlonega. Shortly after that, he launched American Patriots USA. This group has made four political endorsements across the state. Amazingly, one of them is in DeKalb County that of Hubert Owens, the Republican challenger to State Rep. Darshun Kendrick. Owens has allegedly accepted this endorsement perhaps because as a relatively recent transplant to Georgia, he doesnt know any better.

God bless Mr. Owens for his service and dedication he showed his country. And now he is in another war. Let's help him out Wwe need a representative like him!

Posted by American Patriots U.S.A onSaturday, April 4, 2020

This post was not available on Huberts Facebook page as of Wednesday, May 13. Reached by phone, Hubert said he was unaware of this endorsement and hadnt removed anything from his Facebook page.

Im not even in the state of Georgia right now, he said. He ended the conversation with, Im in D.C. Ive got to get back to work.

On the other side of the coin, the FBI arrested three Georgia men in January, who are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and participation in a criminal gang. They, and other members of The Base are accused of, plotting to murder a Bartow County couple they believed were Antifa members and training for a race war on a range just south of Rome.

Theres a lot of push and pull between these views among white supremacists. Mainstream white supremacists want to carry their message in a suit and tie into schools and churches and legislation. Accelerationists want someone, somewhere, to kick off the boogaloo, or the long-awaited apocalyptic race war that will reset America. And they want to recruit fighters.

But every time theyve tried to stage a major public demonstration like the neo-Nazis tried in Newnan two years ago, or Chester Doles tried in Dahlonega last year, theyre met fifty-fold with anti-fascist local protesters and cameras ready for a repeat of Charlottesville. They look weak, because they are weak. Theyre completely outnumbered and despised.

And then the pandemic locked everyone down.

The guys with guns wearing Hawaiian shirts under their camo and giving the Pepe the Frog OK sign arent out here because theyre protesting the pandemic. Thats incidental.

Theyre out here because we cant counterprotest in force.

Theyre piggy-backing off the pandemic protests in exactly the same way that black bloc anarchists use the relative anonymity of anti-police brutality street protests to flip over cop cars. Its an opportunity presenting itself, a means to an end. The end, for the alt-right guys, is visibility without the opposition making them look small. They know theyre running a risk of getting COVID-19, but if the rest of us start confronting them as before, our greater numbers would actually create an exponentially greater risk of infection.

Its an elegant game theory put to disturbing use.

While weak, theyre hoping for a galvanizing Ruby Ridge confrontation of some sort to rekindle public support. The best thing that could happen to them, in their view, is a violent confrontation with authority preferably liberal authority that sparks massive armed conflict. Its a fantasy. But it shapes how we react. State leaders across the country are denying them their Waco moment.

George Chidi is a political columnist and public policy advocate.

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George on Georgia: Why We're Not Just Arresting White Guys With Guns - Decaturish.com

By Michael Rosenthal

The power of a story is immeasurable, but in a time when we isolate ourselves and hunker down to protect our loved ones from COVID-19, I am writing my truth about how this coronavirus might just save our country and our planet. This is the fourth year of Donald J. Trump's presidency, and our country and our planet may not survive a second term. This could be the plague to save the U.S.A. and the Earth.

Trump won the election, although he did not win the popular vote, because his populist message was heard by the forgotten and frustrated white Americans in the cities, suburbs, and rural America who felt the economy wasn't working for them. Trump won the election because he was able to give white America an enemy they could visualize, Latino immigrants coming across our border with Mexico. His call for a wall and the demonizing of undocumented workers played to the fears of white Americans of increased violence, drugs, and unemployment. This hate and fear of non-whites was always draped in the red, white, and blue of our flag.

This call to arms to stop illegal aliens from crossing our southern border was also couched in language understood by white supremacists, who feared that the demographics showed that within a generation whites would be a minority in the United States of America. The fear of being in the minority went to the primal fear of white supremacists; they feared that the systematic subjugation of blacks, latinos, and native Americans during the past 125 years would happen to them before the 21st century was over. Our society and criminal justice system claims to be unbiased, but the actions of police, our government, and our penal system tell another story. There are not any white people I know who fear for their life when going out for a jog, while unarmed like Ahmaud Arbery, or who are fearful when they are stopped by the police while behind the wheel because of the color of their skin.

Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, rightfully and peacefully protested injustice to people of color who looked like him by the police by taking a knee during the national anthem. Those whites who said Blue Lives or All Lives Matter were missing the point; black lives should matter, too. That "too" makes all the difference in the world. Instead of addressing injustice, President Trump wrapped himself in the flag and questioned the patriotism of anyone who kneeled during the anthem. The president then proceeded to strong-arm the 32 white owners of NFL teams who blackballed Kaepernick from the league, and who dropped any support or concerns of their players due to a threat on their bottom line. Even during this isolation it was amazing to me how it was the players who stepped up to protect the lost wages of stadium employees often before the actions of the billionaire owners or the professional leagues.

The sway that the alt-right has with our president should be of concern to all Americans. These all-white rallies with citizens either in paramilitary gear including body armor and assault rifles, or draped in the flag and their MAGA gear should have all Americans afraid for our country. These rallies to "liberate" citizens from state governments, put the lives of police, first responders, and the medical profession in greater danger of exposure to the virus, and often the police are even physically threatened. Those same Americans who bemoaned Blue Lives Matter when Kaepernick took a knee are now showing their true colors. These same police who forcibly and violently take down unarmed blacks whom they think have weapons fail to make arrests of armed white men who physically confront them while packing serious heat.

These paramilitary protests are also a dangerous foreshadowing that these "good people" who are flexing their muscle now in armed peaceful protests in front of the state houses, will revolt to keep another president from taking office if and when Trump loses the 2020 election. These armed peaceful protests by "good people" threaten to provoke the first violent transfer of power in our country's history.

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There are many reasons why Trump has been a danger to our nation as well as the future of our planet, and this pandemic has exposed his failures as President, the flaws in our society, and the resiliency of our planet. Therefore the coronavirus might just be the plague that saves this country and the world.

Trump's failures as a leader have been apparent from the start of this pandemic. Looking at the differences between the responses of South Korea and the United States to this crisis is a good place to illustrate his deficiencies as a leader. Both South Korea and the United States had their first reported case of COVID-19 in their country on the same date in January. As of early May, South Korea has had fewer than 300 deaths compared to the greater than 80,000 deaths here in the United States. South Korea learned from their experiences with SARS, Mers, and H1N1, and treated news of the outbreak in China with a sense of urgency. Within two weeks South Korea had developed a test for coronavirus and had begun a massive effort to test their population, and trace the path of the virus, isolating those with positive tests and quarantining those who had contact with people who tested positive.

President Trump on the other hand is a science denier, and failed to approach this outbreak with a sense of urgency. His administration did not follow the playbook developed from the Obama administration response to H1N1 and ebola. In addition he dismantled the part of the White House security council responsible to respond to an infectious epidemic. Unlike South Korea, it took the United States two months to develop a test, as they even eschewed tests developed by the World Health Organization. During February and most of March the president downplayed the threat of the virus, failed to stockpile personal protective equipment, or use the war powers act to get the full weight of the U.S. government behind efforts to stop this invisible enemy. He would rather lie to the American people than tell us the truth.

Failure to understand the scope and severity of this pandemic is one of his flaws as a leader, as are failure to listen to experts, reliance on inexperienced cronies, and promoting unfounded and potentially dangerous coronavirus treatments; but how can we follow any leader who fails to ever take responsibility for his actions? These are the same leadership qualities he displayed in avoiding serving in our military during the Vietnam War. During this crisis he has blamed President Obama, China, the governors of various states, and the media for his failings. He doesn't want to be a leader, instead he has said he has acted as a cheerleader. He won't even lead by example by wearing a mask.

The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear: the future of the United States depends on making Trump a one term president in November.

Michael Rosenthal writes from Williston, Vt. The opinions expressed by columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of the Brattleboro Reformer.

If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us. We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.

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Michael Rosenthal: The COVID-19 pandemic just might be an antidote for the 'plague' of Trump - Brattleboro Reformer

Aram Westergreen, a construction worker idled last month in the COVID-19 pandemic, filled out an online Washington state form recently to report a pawn shop open despite a ban on nonessential businesses.

Westergreen lives in Tacoma, Wash., less than an hour from the nursing home where the first COVID-19 death in the United States was reported in late February. With more than 900 deaths statewide since, and a stay-at-home order in place since March 23, Westergreen, like many of his neighbors, has suffered from lost income, but regards social distancing as critical to slow the spread of the pathogen.

To his alarm on Thursday, he opened his email to find a message entitled Lowlife scumbag whistle-blower snitches. It was sent from a stranger to about 100 people, informing them that their names, reports and identifying information had been released by the government and shared on social media.

All you cowards who reported businesses as being open ... guess what ... social media is about to reign fire on you, the message said. How can you live with yourself when the REAL DOCTORS have already come out and stated that social distancing is making matters worse? Every one of you slimeballs must only get your news from CNN.

The emailer was correct in one respect. The Washington Military Department, which is coordinating state response to the pandemic, had responded to public records requests by releasing spreadsheets containing more than 7,600 reports of suspected stay-home violations, including email addresses and phone numbers of those lodging complaints.

Westergreen and many others did not immediately realize that Washington State Three Percent, regarded by civil rights organizations as a far-right militia organization, had joined another militant group opposed to state coronavirus lockdowns in posting the reports on Facebook and other sites. Some of those listed in the spreadsheets say they are now being harassed, including receiving death threats.

Such public naming and threats are among the latest tactics being employed by far-right, neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups seeking to exploit the pandemic, according to organizations that track their activities.

Extremists have been spreading hate and misinformation on social media while encouraging members to attend reopen rallies such as one Saturday at the state Capitol in Olympia, according to Western States Center, a Portland, Ore., organization that tracks white nationalist and alt-right groups.

Methods vary depending on ideology, analysts say.

White supremacists from accelerationist groups which seek to weaken the political system that they believe has been diluted by multiculturalism have sought to weaponize the deadly virus, calling on members to engage in direct attacks in order to expedite the collapse of society, said Joanna Mendelson, a national expert on extremism at the Anti-Defamation League.

Accelerationist groups have also been organizing coronavirus-related discussions online around the word boogaloo. Usage of the word in far-right context emanated from an unlikely source: the 1984 break-dancing film Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo. The word is now being used by extremists as a way to refer to what they believe is a looming civil war. Other shorthand references to the word that extremists use is the boog.

There is an enormous indoctrination effort in order to expand their base, and the majority of that recruitment takes place in the virtual space. We have seen them using memes in order to express hatred, targeting Jews, Mendelson said.

Lindsay Schubiner, a Western States Center program director, said she first noticed the coronavirus report information posted Thursday on Washington State Three Percents Facebook page. The organization is an armed paramilitary group that promotes anti-government conspiracy theories and seeks to undermine local democratic institutions, she said.

Posting this public information incites and encourages harassment and even possible violence, she said.

Complainants whose names were exposed, and who were since contacted by The Times, reported receiving hostile messages, emails and phone calls.

One voicemail said, You called on March 30th at 9:15 p.m. to report a nonessential business ... massage parlor. When you did that, you triggered a chain of events which made it known that you were the kind of person who would stomp on the rights of people who are trying to run a business, and that you believe yourself to be superior to them.

The caller said he hoped that the complainant would do something to prove that she had changed her mind. If not, have fun with the, you know, whats going to happen next, he said.

The woman in her 40s who received the call, who works from home in Arlington, Wash., said in an interview Saturday that she had no intention of changing her mind about the importance of nonessential businesses remaining closed. Speaking on condition that her name be withheld, she described her personal experience with COVID-19.

My uncle contracted it, she said. He went to the hospital and was intubated almost immediately, and died days later.

Matt Marshall, Washington State Three Percent president, said Saturday that his organization posted the reports not to incite threats but to expose those who filed them for having turned in business owners trying to maintain livelihoods. They need to know that their neighbors have the right to face their accusers, he said.

Marshall, a Republican running for a seat in the state Legislature, said that he was provided the reports by one of the political partys county officers, whom he declined to identify. That person had obtained the spreadsheets by submitting a public records request one of two dozen people to have done so, according to Chelsea Hodgson, a spokeswoman for the state agency coordinating coronavirus response.

Marshall spoke at Saturdays protest in Olympia, along with Joey Gibson, leader of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, and state Rep. Matt Shea, a far-right lawmaker suspended from the GOP caucus last year after an investigation accused him of planning and participating in domestic terrorism. The rally drew about 1,500 people, roughly 500 fewer than a similar protest last month.

In early April, the FBI sent out an intelligence report from the New York field office saying white supremacists and neo-Nazis were encouraging the spread of the coronavirus to law enforcement officers and the Jewish community.

The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council a coalition of 40 nonprofit groups that provide health, job counseling and other social services started an online reporting center tracking hate reports. The organization recorded 670 complaints of hate crimes during the week of March 19, the first week it kept track. By the end of the second week, the group had received 1,100 complaints and were averaging around 100 a day. Some 32% of those incidents occurred in California, the council said, and included incidents in grocery stores, big-box retail shops and pharmacies.

What you have is Charlottesville on steroids, said Erroll Southers, a former FBI special agent and currently director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at USC, referring to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, where violent clashes broke out and a woman was killed.

Charlottesville had Klan members, League of the South confederates, neo-Nazis and nationalists, all who typically dont play well together. What you have now is all those groups plus your Boogaloo, anti-vaxxers, your Trump supporters, who have nothing to do with either group, all out there ... and its made for an incredibly dangerous situation.

Far-right groups have long sought to exploit global crises to expand their ranks and drive a wedge between them and those who disagree with them.

A May 2020 study conducted by researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank titled, Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany: 1918-1933, found a correlation between deaths in the years after the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago and subsequent support for right-wing extremists blaming minorities and foreigners for the pandemic and economic hardships that followed.

Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, said Western nations are likely to experience a similar situation now.

This crisis could strain the political system, Simi said. You have people who are experiencing heightened levels of emotion, resources being utilized in different ways and people who are being stretched thin. As a result, it does create more opportunity for extremists to mobilize around.

I would expect youll have an exacerbation of certain economic, social pressures, he added, and youre going to have changes in emotional temperament, heightened levels of depression and anxiety, which are ripe for fascist, far-right movements to take advantage of.

In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee has spoken out against attempts to exploit the pandemic for political gain as he extends his stay-at-home order to May 31, gradually lifting restrictions on some business sectors while maintaining social distancing. The Democrat seeking a third term is being sued over aspects of the order by a Republican gubernatorial candidate and four GOP state legislators.

In an interview in Olympia on Friday, Inslee called the posting of the reports by Washington State Three Percent and a group called Reopen Washington State, which could not be reached for comment, really unfortunate.

That kind of harassment and intimidation just wont stand. I dont think itll work, either. I think Washingtonians are a little too stalwart for that.

Read reported from Seattle and Etehad reported from Los Angeles.

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Far right outing those reporting coronavirus violations - Los Angeles Times

Shoutout to my haters, sorry you couldnt phase me Nicki Minaj

Among the things I planned on doing in college, writing for The Hullabaloo was not one of them. Writing for The Hullabaloo and amassing a cult following of haters was certainly not one of them.

I stumbled into college journalism by accident. During my freshman year, I was weirdly surrounded, both physically and socially, by many students who were passionately involved in the student newspaper. Just out of courtesy, I entertained their gossip and talk about what was going on in The Hullabaloo and the challenges they were facing. I could care less about what was being written; my passion was in activism.

Yet, in my second semester at Tulane, I quickly myself huddled over the long wooden table in The Hullabaloo basement office, bearing witness to the newspapers dedication to the voices of marginalized people and the birth of Intersections. I was in awe of then-Editor-in-Chief, Canela Lopezs leadership and understood that this could be a vehicle for change in our university.

F*** I look like, h*e? I look like yes and you like no Nicki Minaj

As I dispersedly wrote articles up until my senior year, I was surprisingly met with unusual engagement. And by unusual, I mean hate. Readers physically mailed essays to the Hullabaloo office on how much they despised me. Beyond just the comments section, my inbox on every social media was filled with personalized attacks and random critiques.

I really could not believe that people cared that much.

When I stepped into the role of Intersections editor my senior year, I knew that I wanted to make this section mean something. We had a track record of shining light on dark places and I wanted to accelerate that. I cant help being a Leo, but it makes me drawn to controversy. I tried to write pieces that would represent my values, stir the pot, and push people to interrogate the normal around them. But as the hate kept coming and kept coming and really did not stop coming, I got so tired.

Do a show for Versace, they request me by name and if they dont get Nicki, it just wont be the same do I even need to say who it is

And it wasnt just me. I sat with countless writers this semester, listening as they shared their cyberbullying experiences. More writers wanted to write something, but feared the online retaliation. Writing something for your college newspaper and having it posted online to all your peers is incredibly different from writing that same idea for one of your classes. It is vulnerability to be public about the hardships you have faced. That is what I admire most about each of the writers in our section.

It was jarring to me that the more vulnerable I became in my writing, the attacks that I would receive would dramatically increase. I thought I hit a breaking point in late January when my article on business professionalism launched a seemingly never ending series of hate. I had entire Reddit threads dedicated to my demise. Alt-right media sites assigned a writer to monitor every thing that I posted. I couldnt even look at any social media without being reminded about how much people disagreed with me.

I really could not believe that people cared that much. I realized that if my articles were truly making this many people mad then maybe the subjects I was writing about were really pushing people to think about the world around them. Maybe this was the activism I had dreamed of way back when freshman year.

And it was easy to tell myself this time and time again, but it was still incredibly hard to read these comments over and over again. I do truly believe that there is a compassionate human behind every one of the comments thrown at Intersections this year. I also believe that there are some deep insecurities these people have about social justice issues and frankly, its not my job to solve it for them.

There are so many people to thank for the incredible year that Intersections has had. I promise myself to extend my gratitude to all those people that I can. However, there is one person who has taught me to deal with haters better than anyone else ever could.

And Im all up, all up, all up in the bank with the funny face and if Im fake, I aint notice cause my money aint Nicki Minaj

Nickis principles have really guided my college experience. She pushed me out of the closet, cured my writing block, and probably had some inspiration in any thing that I have ever written.

Intersections has had an amazing year. We were consistently the top section with the highest amount of views and highest amount of articles trending. We rocked two amazing front-page stories. Our Black History Month edition of The Hullabaloo brought real conversations to our administration. We beat all the haters who were waiting for our downfall.

Each of our writers Cliff, Jewell, Ren, Maiya, Meredith, Wash, Harmonii, Emilie, Josh, Ori, Juju, Hugo, Shay, Kennon, Sanjali, Apoorva, Frederick, and Kia you all continually impressed me with your writing and dedication to justice.

Meg, you were the best co-editor I could have asked for. Thank you for embodying everything Nicki stands for. I know Apoorva and Ori will continue this work and make us proud.

Thank you to everyone who has kept up with our articles, especially the people who disagree with us. If anyone ever feels the need to reach out to me, well just ask the people who write the hate comments, they sure know how to get into every social media inbox I have.

All love,

(Former) Intersections Editor, Shahamat Uddin

This one is for the Barbz!

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Letter from the Intersections Editor: Haters keep us famous - Tulane Hullabaloo