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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for category 2024
I AM A FOUNDING member of Platypus and one of the authors of our Statement of Purpose and the Platypus Review’s Editorial Statement. I bear some responsibility for starting our now 18-year-old organization, which is currently active in universities across three continents. I am also a historian of intellectual history, social reform, and the crisis of liberalism in the 19th century, and I teach undergraduates at the University of Chicago. Platypus is a Millennial Left organization, among the last which have survived the tumultuous decade and a half.
IN EARLY MARCH 2024, two photos, each of a disturbing leaflet produced and circulated in Times Square in New York ostensibly in support of Palestinians, began circulating widely on X/Twitter. On each leaflet, superimposed over the Palestinian flag, was a slogan: “Rape is resistance” on one, and “Babies are occupiers too” on the other. “Free Palestine,” the subscript read, “by any means necessary.” Despite calls for other images of the leaflets to establish their origins and authenticity, only these two have appeared.
On August 17, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society members Erin Hagood and Evan Rodgers interviewed Benjamin Studebaker, a political theorist and author of The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut (2023) as well as the forthcoming Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies. An edited transcript follows.

Meine wichtigsten Lehrer im Marxismus waren die Spartacist League, Adolph Reed und Moishe Postone – Theodor Adorno war durch seine Schriften, auf die mich Reed aufmerksam machte, als wir uns trafen, nachdem ich mein Studium in Chicago abgeschlossen hatte, ebenfalls ein entscheidender Lehrer. Die Überschrift des vorliegenden Essays ist eine Hommage an Adolphs Text „Paths to Critical Theory“, der seine politische und theoretische Bewusstwerdung erzählt.

Der Kern des Angriffs des SYC-Flugblatts gegen Platypus ist die Lüge, dass die Platypus Affiliated Society den US-Einmarsch in den und die US-Besatzung des Irak unterstütze. Diese Lüge wird dann mit verschiedensten Unterstellungen und Anspielungen zu untermauern versucht, ein sehr schäbiges Kartenhaus, das aufzubauen eine reine Zeit- und Energieverschwendung war.