anti capitalist musings

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Close-up of a British two pence coin, copper-coloured, showing a heraldic lion in a crosshatched frame with fleur-de-lis corners and the words “TWO PENCE” at the top.
Labour Government

Rachel Reeves and the 2p Trap

The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.

An illustration of a red fish (Herring) in profile against a pale background, with the words “RED TERROR” in bold black capitals beneath it.
Charlie Kirk

Red Herring, Not Red Terror

David Frost calls it a new “Red Terror.” The truth is plainer: it’s the Right’s wars, coups and crackdowns that have spilt the deepest blood in politics.

Donald J Trump

The Invention of the Narco-Terrorist

Trump’s latest “kinetic strike” killed three unknown Venezuelans he labelled “narco-terrorists.” The phrase is not law but incantation, a word that strips away humanity and legitimises killing. From Vietnam body counts to Obama’s “signature strikes,” America has always named its enemies into existence, and into death.

Britain

Beyond Creeping Fascism

To call Robinson’s rally “populist” or “right-wing” is to miss the point. Fascism doesn’t require every marcher to be a coherent ideologue; it requires a mass, a scapegoat, and leaders prepared to turn grievance into violence. That is what we saw in London.

Screenshot of a Telegraph article by Camilla Tominey titled “The killing of Charlie Kirk shows just how poisonous Left-wing politics now is,” with the subheading “Speech has consequences – we have once more learnt that lesson from the horrifying events in Utah.” Below the headline is a photo showing two people in jeans holding a poster with a portrait of Charlie Kirk.
Camilla Tominey

Tominey’s doublethink

Camilla Tominey’s sainthood act for Charlie Kirk trades politics for piety. The Right already owns the machinery (press, finance, courts, police) and Kirk was part of the drive shaft. A death certificate doesn’t wash clean a career built on making violence respectable.

Front cover of "Disputing Disaster"

Disputing Disaster

Histories of 1914 and the start of the First World War continue to proliferate, yet few reflect on how those histories themselves have been shaped. Perry Anderson’s Disputing Disaster is a forensic examination of how the war’s origins have been written, but what does it omit?

A photograph of a wall on Castor Church which show Roman bricks as part of the construction.

A City Between

Peterborough lies on the edge of the Fens, a city without hills, shaped by wind that moves unhindered across the flatlands. It is a place that resists definition, constantly reshaped, rebuilt, and erased, where history lingers in fragments and memory holds more permanence than the streets themselves.

Videogames, Labour and the Uncertain Future of Play

A whip smart and urgent examination of videogames as both a cultural force and a political battleground, Everything to Play For interrogates the industry’s contradictions: its creative potential, its exploitative labour practices, and its uncertain future in the age of AI.

Dominion

The consolidation of reactionary power in the United States is not accidental or chaotic but the result of a long-term, well-funded strategy to entrench minority rule, an argument laid bare in Owned by Eoin Higgins and Money, Lies, and God Behind the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart.

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin during the G20 Japan Summit Friday, June 28, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Beyond Theory, Beyond Slogans

Trumpism and Putinism are reshaping the global order, through a new brand of reactionary nationalism. As the world looks more unstable, the left cannot afford to rely on old slogans or abstract theory, because when bombs fall and occupations expand, resistance is not a thought experiment.

Photograph of Milton William Cooper

The Last American Prophet

Few books have shaped the conspiratorial mind like Behold a Pale Horse, and in Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America, Mark Jacobson unpacks the strange, sprawling legacy of its author, William Cooper, a man who saw the deep state before it had a name, predicted 9/11, and died in a shootout with police. But was he a prophet, a fraud, or just another victim of his own paranoia?

You never know what’s behind the mask by graffit artist Hijack. Shows a child in Ukrainian colours taking a micky mouse mask off a Russian soldier.

Between Militarism and Solidarity

As global tensions intensify and militarism gains momentum, how do we maintain principled opposition to war while effectively confronting authoritarian threats? Reflecting on recent debates, I explore the urgent need for genuine internationalist solidarity.

Andrew Tate in an interview on Anything Goes with James English, 2021

Beyond Tate

In the face of Andrew Tate’s return and his seductive brand of toxic capitalism, the left urgently needs to offer more than critique, we need a strategy to win back the young men he preys upon.