The rest of the blog
Let’s not pretend there’s a serious policy debate here. The call to ban the burqa wasn’t a contribution to some Enlightenment café of ideas; it was a dog whistle blasted at full volume, a panic-button press designed to provoke.
Trans people are not confused. They are not misled. They have not been lied to. They are responding, with dignity and resistance, to a sustained campaign of dehumanisation, spearheaded by a cross-section of legal hardliners, culture warriors, so called feminists, and opportunists.
Amazon’s humanoid delivery bots aren’t just replacing drivers—they’re accelerating the creation of what William I. Robinson calls surplus humanity: billions rendered useless to capital.
This isn’t a defence strategy—it’s a subsidy for the arms industry, a performance of deterrence, and a reaffirmation of Britain’s role as obedient junior partner in the global machinery of capital.
On Larry Alan Busk’s Democracy in Spite of the Demos
Lee Anderson doesn’t want a solution—he wants a stage, and the small boats crisis is just the latest prop in Britain’s long-running theatre of cruelty
On Faiz Siddiqui’s Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk
The presidency was already a sideshow in Trump’s first term, but his second has stripped it of any remaining dignity, turning the White House into just another stage for his brand of gaudy, transactional spectacle.
A masterful dissection of power, corruption, and the making of modern America, The Apprentice deserved to sweep the Oscars, but the Academy, as always, chose safety over truth.
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.
There’s no mystery here. The American empire, bloated and decayed, has finally started eating itself, and Musk is just the latest tech-cult billionaire to turn state side destruction into spectacle.
The transition is complete. The bureaucracy is being purged, executive orders rain down like decrees from a throne, and opposition is branded treasonous. The state is no longer a neutral machine for capitalist management—it is becoming an instrument of direct class war. Trump’s second term is not simply a rerun of his first; it is something darker, more disciplined, more openly repressive. The threats against political enemies are no longer bluster—they are policy. The FBI and CIA are being reshaped in his image, turned from institutions of surveillance into enforcers of ideological loyalty. Official diktats appear not just in government memos but on X, where Musk, the regime’s favoured oligarch, polls his Twitler Youth on whom to exile next. The question is no longer whether American democracy is eroding but whether we are watching its final transformation into something else entirely. Neoliberalism is collapsing, and in its ruins, a new order is emerging. The only question is: what kind?
Picture a once-mighty empire, stripped to its underwear. Once hailed for its democratic values and global reach, the United States now staggers beneath the weight of its own contradictions—its institutions hollowed out, its alliances squandered, its climate left to burn. In the aftermath of a second Trump presidency, what was once dismissed as political theatre has morphed into a crisis so profound that even the most reluctant observers must confront the truth: the old order cannot endure.
The growing concentration of power in the digital realm, exemplified by Elon Musk’s control over X, poses unprecedented risks to both online discourse and real-world stability.
From the cult-like following of visionaries like Elon Musk to the polarising influence of figures such as Donald Trump, we explore how the digital age’s most prominent personalities contribute to and thrive within the ever-evolving spectacle that captivates and divides our global society.