Soviet citizens perusing their daily copies of Pravda or Izvestiia on May 23, 1934, would have come across an essay by the famous writer Maksim Gor΄kii with an unusual title: “Proletarskii gumanizm” (Proletarian Humanism). Perhaps intrigued by this funny sounding but clearly important foreign word, inquisitive readers might have turned to the recently published first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE), which provides two entries for humanism: one referring to “a conventional but not sufficiently precise term used to characterize the culture of the Renaissance epoch, or some aspect thereof,” and a second, much shorter entry concerning “a modern movement in the theory of knowledge that arose in the early twentieth century in connection to pragmatism.” Neither entry makes any mention of proletarian, socialist, or Soviet varieties of humanism. Indeed, according to the BSE, Renaissance humanism inevitably “exhausts its progressive possibilities, degenerates, and becomes a conservative and reactionary force,” remaining “alien to the broad masses and even a significant part of the bourgeoisie.”

What is the difference between a philosophy and an ideology? Would simply observing some aspect of human experience count as ideology? No. But suppose we try to explain and interpret what we have seen. Now, we enter the neighborhood of what gets called ideology. What else does it take to sort out what should be called ideological? And why would a worldview sometimes turn into an echo chamber, a cocoon of confirmation bias that fosters false consciousness?

In 1768, Mohegan minister Samson Occom made a case for why he was a heathen. Shortly before Occom departed for London to raise funds for Moors Indian Charity School, ministers and fellow missionaries spread rumors doubting whether Occom had truly converted from “heathenism” to Christianity. Occom responded by drafting an autobiography defending his conversion. He cast his Mohegan upbringing as heathenism from which he escaped into his newfound Christian identity: “I was born a Heathen and Brought up in Heathenism, till I was between 16 & 17 years of age. . .[My parents] strictly maintained and followed in their heathenish ways, customs & religion, though there were some preaching among them.” However, these three mentions of heathenism in the opening were the only times the term appeared. Throughout the manuscript, he subtly transitioned to the term “Indian.” Occom then spent the rest of the manuscript highlighting his unfair treatment in the hands of his peers: he was underpaid compared to White missionaries and he was labeled an ineffective educator of Mohegan children. He closed the account attributing his failures to the fact that he was “a poor Indian.” The final line read, “I can't help that God has made me so; I did not make myself so.” It was hard for Occom disentangle his conversion from the possibility that he was always and already a heathen.

In a “mixed bag” 2023-2024 session, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of decisions both favorable and antithetical to public health and safety. Taking on tough constitutional issues implicating gun control, misinformation, and homelessness, the Court also avoided substantive reviews in favor of procedural dismissals in key cases involving reproductive rights and government censorship.

This article investigates memories of the Cold War era in Thailand, through online practices on Facebook pages administered by residents of a borderland province in the Northeast that was a key front line during the conflict. The possibilities for greater access to, and dissemination of, information afforded by digital media technologies have created a new environment for the production of shared knowledge about the past. However, on these pages, instead of converging plural memories, participatory online culture and the use of the language of memory have enabled the creation of distinct and separated memory spaces. This article calls attention in particular to what is silenced and absent in what people are sharing online. It argues that the deep-seated ethnic politics of the Cold War have an afterlife in Thai society—especially in the country's ‘margins’ where the conflict was most violent—that is reflected as much by what is not said as by what is said online.

Given the prevalence of hate ideology, a concerted, multipronged effort to combat it clearly seems in order. In this essay, I explore whether hate crime legislation is a permissible and advisable component of this effort. In particular, I consider whether it is morally permissible to impose enhanced punishments upon criminals who select their victims at least in part because of an animus toward members of the group to which the victim belongs. Would it be permissible to punish more severely a White supremacist who attacks a person only because she is Black, for instance, or an anti-Semitic thief who selects her victims at least in part because they are Jewish? After sketching a preliminary defense of this type of hate crime legislation, I note some potential concerns, including vexing questions about the likely effects of imposing such laws under the present, nonideal circumstances in the United States.