anti capitalist musings

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Accelerationism

Trump, Land, Dugin

Trump is not Land’s monarch nor Dugin’s tsar. He is their degraded symptom: the parody of a fascist synthesis of technology and tradition, replayed in the register of meme stock and casino populism.

Bossware

Stop, Go, Smile: The New Discipline of Bossware

From PwC’s colour-coded attendance dashboard to HSBC’s biometric checkpoints and the rise of Algorithmic Affect Management, the new wave of “bossware” represents less an innovation than the latest stage in capital’s long history of making workers legible. What began with the factory bell and the punch clock now extends to our faces, moods, and keystrokes.

Corbynism

The Party of Good Intentions

Zarah Sultana’s interview in Sidecar captures the anger at Labour’s complicity in genocide and austerity, but it risks becoming another broad reformist project, haunted by the ghosts of Corbynism—vulnerable to sect capture, parliamentary illusions, and the same popular-front logic that has historically disarmed the working class.

A satirical cartoon shows a battered wooden puppet painted with the Union Jack dangling limply on strings. The marionette is worn, chipped, and cracked, symbolising a weakened Britain. Behind it loom two large shadowy figures: one in a Nazi uniform, the other resembling Vladimir Putin. Both extend their hands to manipulate the strings, casting an ominous, ghostly control over the puppet.
History

The Faragist Fantasy: Britain Should Have Backed Hitler

Nigel Farage’s TikTok wunderkind wants us to imagine a Britain that never fought Hitler, kept its colonies, and models itself on Bukele’s prison state. This is not contrarianism; it is fascist nostalgia dressed up as common sense.

Donald Trump–like figure dressed in a tuxedo clapping enthusiastically, standing beside a stern Vladimir Putin–like figure holding a chained brown bear. The background is a dark curtain, giving the scene a theatrical, vaudeville atmosphere.
Donald J Trump

The Last Superpowers

Alexander Dugin calls the Trump–Putin summit in Anchorage “splendid,” insisting the US and Russia must find an “understanding as superpowers.” The problem is that this fantasy of bipolar order flatters two declining states while obscuring the real forces shaping the 21st century.

Donald J Trump

Trump’s Civil War Rehearsal

With armed red-state troops patrolling a blue city, Trump is not protecting Washington; he is rehearsing the mechanics of civil war.

A satirical illustration of a grand Gothic-style university building with a large sign out front that reads: “CLOSED TO THE LIKES OF YOU,” highlighting the exclusion of ordinary people from higher education.
Higher Education

Universities Were Never Meant for You

Every August, the right reheats its old contempt for higher education. Their complaint is not about debt or “Mickey Mouse” degrees, it is about closing the gates of knowledge, keeping universities for the dominant class and consigning everyone else to warehouses and call centres.

Time to Face Facts: Bayrou, Budget Bombshells, and the Unthinkable Truth About Fortress Europe

Europe is not being overrun—it’s running out. Of workers, of births, of time. François Bayrou’s budget bombshell is less about fiscal rules than demographic reckoning. Fortress Europe clings to nostalgia while the tax base collapses. No amount of white-baby fantasies or border theatre will reverse the maths. The future demands what no mainstream party dares admit: migration, not austerity, is the condition of survival.

After Le Pen

Marine Le Pen is out of the race, but her party is preparing for power.

The Sad Technocrat

Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation is a novel about the end of things: not apocalypse, not collapse, but the quieter, lonelier ruin of meaning in a technocratic capitalism that no longer pretends to offer hope.

Front cover of the book

Alienation in a Hairnet

A short, unsentimental novel about fast-food labour and family life, On the Clock shows how work seeps into everything, even the holidays meant to offer escape.

Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Translated by David Broder

The People’s Tribune and the Sixth Republic

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Now, the People! Revolution in the 21st Century, published by Verso books, is a sweeping and urgent call for a citizens’ revolution, rooted in French republicanism but alive to the crises shaping political struggle across Europe and beyond.

Best of 2024 (books)

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.

No to racism graphic from the NPA

The Real Forces Behind Le Pen’s Rise

Marine Le Pen’s rise in French politics, often attributed to immigration and crime, is more accurately understood as a reaction to the economic exploitation and inequality perpetuated by the capitalist system.

Démantelons les playmobil.

Unyielding

Amidst the relentless hum of an oppressive state, the silenced voices emerge, defiant whispers cutting through the smoke of the Molotov, a testament to the indomitable spirit of resistance.