Joined April 2009
- Tweets 39,773
- Following 2,929
- Followers 13,182
- Likes 33,957
2,764 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
Mar 9
Andrew Tate has gotten books wrong – they are supposed to be slow.
My first contribution to my favorite American magazine, @TheAtlantic
theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…
1
10
2,034
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Apparently, Sweden’s second largest morning paper, Svenska Dagbladet, took note of my review of @joelsh’s new book, Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age. If your Swedish is as bad as mine, you can read the English at @reason 👉 reason.com/2026/06/09/readin…
2
11
584
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 13
Pope Benedict XVI’s Germany won a World Cup.
Pope Francis’s Argentina won a World Cup.
Will Leo XIV deliver for the United States?
86
244
5,394
188,441
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 11
“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity.
“You are not numbers or case files.
“You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.” — Pope Leo XIV
2,113
8,388
34,843
1,045,478
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 11
If you thought long, interesting, original, civil exchanges no longer existed, I give you this thread between @Andrey4Mir abd @joelsh
Jun 9
Interesting, thank you.
The effects of writing and printing seem to be illustrated very well, yet there is a huge gap in terms of media effects between nation-states (the effect of printing) and the emergence of the Nazis or the Bolsheviks.
Media have compounding effects.
The printing press did create the nation-state: printing exploded the book market and ushered in vernacular Bibles printed in national languages instead of a unified Latin.
Printing also emancipated reading and enabled unsanctioned interpretations of the Bible, leading, for the first time in history, to ideologically based rebellion against authority - the Reformation.
Journals and newspapers gave rise to professional revolutionary movement, first by the Bourgeoise, then by the lumpen-intelligentsia on behalf of the Proletariat - Marx's Rheinische Zeitung, Lenin's Iskra, and so on.
Finally, printing ushered in Modernism, the rational rearrangement of nature and society, and this eventually led to the ideologies of Nazism and Communism, the extreme forms - and reversals - of Modernism.
Yet the immediate medium that created the Nazis and the Soviets was not print but radio (and yes, radio was an effect of printing, too).
In Understanding Media (1964), Marshall McLuhan referred to radio as “the tribal drum,” implying its ability to audially—immersively—synchronize nations into tribes of imperial scale. He directly referred to radio’s crucial role in Hitler’s ascent to power.
But in fact, by creating tribal unity on an unprecedented scale, radio enabled all three major empires of the 20th century: the Communist, the Nazi, and the consumerist ones.
Hitler was a media effect of radio, just as Luther was a media effect of the printing press.
By the way, "Mein Kampf" itself did not "secured" the Nazi regime. The written manifesto still belonged to literacy, an analogue of Luther’s 95 Theses. For the Nazis to emerge as a regime, the mass press (manifestos, ideologies) needed to be translated into a unified resonance by radio, the “tribal drum.”
The Nazi, Communist, and Commercial Empires of the 20th century were the compounding effect of mass literacy/ideology (front pages/posters/dazibao) reversed into a tribal unity by electronic orality (radio).
5
10
5,783
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 11
I agree: it was the poster-like newspaper front page plus radio that became the media condition for the emergence of the "mass man" of Ortega y Gasset, what he observed in the 1920s in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, and the subsequent conversion of the mass man's self-entitlement into fascism.
Why front pages' headlines? Because paperboys shouted them in the streets, repetitively, much like heralds in medieval oral Europe. The mysterious, god-like voice coming out of radios in public places and homes added to this newly emerging and technologically amplified oral-tribal agitation of unity. ("Fascio": Italian "bundle, bunch, group")
In Europe, it was radio plus newspaper headlines for a just-emerging mass literacy with strong oral residues, leading the rise of fascism.
In Russia and China, it was radio plus newspaper headlines (dazibao in China) for a barely literate peasant culture that led them into communism. The medium of newspapers also served as the backbone of the revolutionary movement of the progressive lumpen intelligentsia (Lenin), just as it had 70 years earlier in Europe (Marx).
Funny fact: communism as an ideology emerged, and could only have emerged, in literacy. But as a political practice, it succeeded only in the oral cultures of peasant countries. Less funny: since literate cultures are now reversing into digital orality, formerly literate societies are becoming more susceptible to practical communism than ever before.
By the way, Orwell was wrong when he described Big Brother's hypnosis sessions delivered through the telescreen. He thought that, since he was describing an emerging fascist dystopia, a new medium—television—would be its vessel. No, television is a Huxleyan medium, not an Orwellian one. McLuhan wrote that Hitler would have lost his tribal magic immediately if he had appeared on TV. McLuhan also spoke a lot about how Nixon, more authoritative as an imaginary figure of radio and newspapers, lost to "cool" Kennedy in their famous TV debate.
Television cannot create an authoritarian dictatorship; it can create a consumerist society with a "manipulative" dictatorship manufacturing consent. The real medium of Big Brother would have been radio plus the front-page headline/poster/dazibao, the early forms of mass literacy.
1
1
1
562
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 11
The drama of migration must serve as an appeal to the conscience of the nations of origin of the migrants, which must establish conditions for peace, justice and development. It is also an appeal to the conscience of the transit nations, which are called to protect the vulnerable and not leave them in the hands of criminal networks. It is likewise an appeal to the conscience of Europe, which cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves, as well as that of the international community, which is called to effective and persevering cooperation. #ApostolicJourney vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/e…
4,557
1,421
8,836
2,079,745
Jun 11
AI makes skimming an obsolete quality – let the machines do that, while we focus on deep reading.
Glad this reviewer of "Reading Matters" picked up this point from my book!
publishersweekly.com/9781479…
279
As Joel Halldorf shows in his new book, the history of reading is in many ways the history of the individual.
reason.com/2026/06/09/readin…
12
21
4,918
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 10
The World Cup begins tomorrow, and many will watch the matches. Soccer reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off on our own, but a path we learn to walk together. Anyone who does not know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, has not yet understood the game. Anyone who does not know how to live with and for others has not yet understood life. #ApostolicJourney
1,523
15,267
101,987
5,467,991
Jun 10
Inte lyssnat, men av programbeskrivningen att döma låter det som att jag åtminstone fortfarande tror på tungotalet!
1
27
2,482
Jun 10
There is a debate about the rise of religion among the young and whether it is part of a conservative surge.
New figures from Sweden confirm an uptick in churchgoing even in "the world's most secular country" – but no connection to a conservative turn.
vitrok.substack.com/p/the-de…
1
3
532
Jun 9
On reading after 500 years of acceleration:
"Digitization is merely the latest innovation in reading, and we're still coming to terms with the cultural consequences. If skimming seemed necessary at the dawn of the Renaissance, it now feels unavoidable."
theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…
280
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Reading: The Quietest Way To Disobey reason.com/2026/06/09/readin… via @reason
2
5
338
Joel Halldorf retweeted
Jun 9
Today marks the release of "Reading Matters"! It is always a bit scary to let go of a book, and allow it to venture out into the world on its own.
How wonderful, then, to see this warm reception in a thoughtful review by @joeljmiller over at @reason!
reason.com/2026/06/09/readin…
1
2
6
1,478
Jun 9
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on books
”We need to recover the lost sense of quality. It means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection”
reason.com/2026/06/09/readin…
1
3
543
Jun 9
”Bonhoeffer believed reading could serve as a prophylactic against propaganda, enabling individuals to reclaim possession of their minds and stand apart from the mob.”
- @joeljmiller in @reason
reason.com/2026/06/09/readin…
2
4
571