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Trump’s tariff war is not about economic nationalism, it’s a desperate attempt to prop up a failing system through class warfare, digital authoritarianism, and mass repression. As capitalism stumbles deeper into crisis, the dominant class turns to protectionism, billionaire governance, and algorithmic control to maintain its grip, ensuring that workers, migrants, and the global precariat bear the cost.
Choice is meant to liberate us, but what if it does the opposite? In the shift from physical to digital media, the promise of having everything at our fingertips has eroded the way we engage with culture itself.
As the American empire stumbles towards decline, Mark Fisher’s analysis of capitalist realism, the slow cancellation of the future, where crisis is managed rather than solved, finds its ultimate expression in Trumpism, the rise of the billionaire tech elite, and the ruling class’s increasing reliance on authoritarianism and reactionary culture wars to sustain its grip. This article traces the roots of US decline back to the 1970s, when Nixon and Reagan dismantled the post-war social contract, paving the way for financial speculation, deindustrialisation, and the monopolisation of power by tech oligarchs, before examining how today’s political and economic landscape is setting the stage for fascism.
The age of algorithmic authoritarianism is here: governance has been outsourced to billionaire-controlled social media and AI systems that manipulate reality, suppress dissent, and enforce ideological obedience through predictive algorithms and digital surveillance.
America’s War on Terror may have ended, but its brutal legacy lives on as Trump resurrects its worst excesses, using Guantánamo Bay to detain migrants in a grotesque expansion of the carceral state.
The Trump administration’s second term is proving to be not a resurgence of American power, but a chaotic acceleration of its decline, marked by incoherence, reactionary bluster, and an open invitation for geopolitical adversaries to fill the void left by its retreat.
The end of the year wouldn’t be complete without a list.
In V13: Chronicle of a Trial, Emmanuel Carrère immerses readers in the unprecedented legal aftermath of the 2015 Paris terror attacks, illuminating the harrowing testimonies of survivors, the moral quandaries of justice, and the uneasy search for meaning amid almost unfathomable violence.
In this review of Annie Jacobsen’s book “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” I reflect on the ever-present threat of nuclear war, drawing from my personal childhood experiences, the sobering realities of the Cold War era, and the chilling minute-by-minute account presented in Jacobsen’s work.
As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the most compelling and insightful reads of the year. In this roundup, I recommend five books spanning climate disaster, digital privacy, the Trump era’s threat to democracy, Marxist theory, and life under Israeli occupation, describing how each illuminates the complex issues defining this moment.
In a world reminiscent of Kafka’s nightmares, the arrest of a French publishing executive has cast a long, ominous shadow over the fragile nature of free expression. Ernest, the foreign rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, found himself entangled in the suffocating coils of the state’s overreach as he was arrested. This ensnarement occurred at the behest of the French government, employing British anti-terror legislation as their instrument of control.
Exploring the enduring relevance of class in modern society, this post delves into the works of Didier Eribon, Édouard Louis, and Richard Sennett to shed light on the complexities of class-based inequalities and the importance of confronting them.