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A large black-and-white graffiti mural of a young Mike Tyson is painted on the side of a red brick building in New York. The mural shows Tyson before his face tattoo era, capturing his youthful intensity with a stern expression and strong jawline. His name, “MIKE TYSON,” appears in bold white capital letters beside the portrait. The building features classic urban architecture with fire escapes, giving the scene a gritty 1980s New York atmosphere. A streetlamp stands in the foreground, adding to the mural’s dramatic presence.
Biography

The Beast in the Bleachers

Mike Tyson was never just a boxer—he was a system made flesh. Mark Kriegel’s Baddest Man understands this: it’s not a redemption tale but an anatomy of spectacle, where a traumatised boy from Brownsville is forged into a global icon of violence, repackaged as entertainment, and finally rebranded for profit

The image is divided into three main sections: on the left, dark green conifer trees form a dense forest; on the right, large, jagged orange and yellow flames dominate the frame, licking upwards; above, thick grey smoke billows into a pale blue sky with sharp, graphic cloud shapes. The colours are bold and flat, with a textured, screen-printed effect, evoking urgency and destruction.
Climate Change

The Far Right Would Rather Burn the World Than Change It

The far right has no intention of meeting the climate crisis—they’re not even pretending anymore. As scientists warn we have just two years left to stay within the carbon budget for 1.5C, reactionary forces double down on fossil fuels, culture war, and delay. Their politics is not about preventing collapse, but exploiting it. Climate denial has become climate opportunism—and the cost will be counted in lives.

A retro, screen-printed style illustration of a large construction site at twilight. Multiple cranes dominate the scene, with one lifting a massive circular structure. In the foreground, a solitary figure in a yellow hi-vis jacket stands facing the site. The sky is a textured teal, and the buildings and machinery are rendered in bold shades of orange and black.
Britain

Half Finshed Futures

Britain doesn’t have a problem with ambition—it has a problem with delivery, honesty, and class. HS2 is just the latest national fiasco sold as progress, then gutted behind the scenes to serve consultants, cronies and headlines.

A grainy, vintage-style photograph shows a massive fire engulfing a facility at night on the outskirts of a city. Thick black smoke billows into the sky, illuminated by the intense orange and yellow flames below. In the background, the cityscape glows with scattered lights, contrasting with the dark sky and the ominous blaze in the foreground. Several utility poles line the edge of the compound, silhouetted against the fire.
Donald J Trump

Trump, Tehran, and the Spectacle of Pressure

As Trump ramps up pressure on Iran—economically, militarily, and rhetorically—he discards intelligence briefings in favour of bombast, demands a surrender he can’t define, and courts catastrophe under the banner of strategic clarity. But Iran is not Iraq, and the fantasy of collapse may end in flames, not order.

A distorted television broadcast screenshot from the 1980s showing Margaret Thatcher speaking. The image is heavily glitched with horizontal multicoloured static lines disrupting her face and suit. She wears a dark blazer, a pearl necklace, and has her characteristic hairstyle. The glitch effect creates a retro, unsettling atmosphere.
Adam Curtis

Shifty and the Curtis Method in Decline

Adam Curtis’s latest series attempts to diagnose the collapse of public trust in Britain—but without his voice, a clear argument, or fresh material, Shifty drifts through the ruins of the neoliberal age, recycling fragments and offering atmosphere where once there was clarity.

Front cover of Scorched Earth showing a lone soldier walking across a barren landscape.

The Empire Fights Back

The Second World War, as Scorched Earth recounts it, was colonial in its origins, genocidal in its prosecution, and imperial in its aftermath.

The End of the Long 20th Century

The long 20th century has ended, not with a transition to something new, but with the collapse of what once was, neoliberalism has failed, but nothing has yet replaced it, and in the absence of a left alternative, the far right alone moves to seize the ruins.

Front cover of Haywire by Andrew Hindmoor

Haywire Britain

Andrew Hindmoor’s Haywire offers a quietly devastating account of Britain’s long crisis, from Blair’s stage-managed optimism to Truss’s market-induced implosion, tracing how New Labour’s betrayals laid the foundations for a state that can no longer govern itself.

Neil Faulkner: The Historian as Revolutionary

I knew the late Neil Faulkner, and I have always meant to review his last book; he was a storyteller, a fighter, and one of the great Marxist historians, someone who could hold a room and remind you that history is not past but struggle.

Front cover of Munichs snipped to fit.

David Peace’s Munichs

David Peace’s Munichs is not just a novel about the Munich air disaster, it is a novel about how tragedy lingers, how history is shaped in grief and uncertainty, and how disaster, in the absence of instant news, once unfolded in echoes and silence.

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.

A portrait of Karl Marx as if painted by Roy Lichtenstein

Althusser’s Theory of History Today

In this post, I look at Althusser’s theory of history, why it’s still important and how it can help us understand the complicated social structures of today. By looking at modern examples like the rise of tech giants, the debate over climate change, and the rise of populism, we can see how Althusser’s ideas still give us important insights into how economic, political, and ideological forces work together to shape our world.