anti capitalist musings

The rest of the blog
Crime and Punishment

Nigel Farage: The Performance Artist of British Punishment Politics

Farage isn’t offering a plan, this is performance. His “law and order” blitz isn’t costed, credible, or connected to reality. It’s the politics of punishment as spectacle: build more prisons, shout louder, deport faster, sentence longer. No thought to the broken justice system, no answers on prevention or rehabilitation. Just another culture war front for a party with no economic programme and no interest in governing.

A graphic representation of the Palestinian flag featuring a grainy, textured aesthetic. The design includes a red triangle on the left and three horizontal stripes—black at the top, white in the middle, and green at the bottom—each with a distressed, vintage look evocative of mid-20th century radical printmaking.
Britain

Is the Home Secretary Embarrassed Yet?

While Israel levels Gaza, the Labour government arrests pensioners in Liverpool for carrying a leaflet. Yvette Cooper calls it national security. But what we are witnessing is the suppression of solidarity, the silencing of dissent, and the transformation of protest into a punishable offence. A government that will not name a genocide is quick to jail those who do.
Gaza

The Exhaustion of Moral Capital

Moral capital was never just sympathy, it was a strategy. It allowed Israel to present itself as victim and victor, past sufferer and present enforcer. But capital is not infinite. What was once a shield has become a smokescreen. And in Gaza, that smokescreen has lifted.

The world is watching a nuclear-backed state starve and bomb a captive population, and still we are told this is security. But what happens when the story no longer convinces? What remains when the history runs out? Only the force. Only the ruin. Only the lie that it was ever anything else.
Donald J Trump

The Litigious President: Trump, Epstein, and the War on Journalism

The President has weaponised billion-dollar lawsuits to silence reporting, chill satire, and punish dissent. After ABC and CBS paid out millions, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was cancelled days after mocking a Trump settlement. Now he’s suing Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over a sketch linked to Epstein. This isn’t about truth. It’s about fear, and who’s allowed to speak.
Britain

The Butcher’s Apron: How the Far Right Got What It Wanted

Let’s not pretend this was ever about a child proud of her nation. It’s about the adults. Their performance, their grievance, their weaponisation of the flag. The far right didn’t stumble upon this story; they engineered it. A girl in a Union Jack dress becomes a national martyr, a school is hounded into closure, and the flag flies higher because of it. This isn’t about inclusion. It’s about intimidation. Once again, they’ve made the butcher’s apron the price of admission, and Labour’s too afraid to say otherwise.
European Union

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.

The Ice Sheet and the Idiot

JD Vance went to Greenland to play imperialist. He left rebuked, ridiculed, and unwelcome, a fitting emissary for a decaying superpower.

Empire in Disarray

Hal Draper’s ‘America as Overlord’ is a study of imperial necessity, how the United States became the regulator of global capitalism, why its dominance persisted, and what happens when the system it upholds begins to fracture.

The Anti-Imperialism of Fools

The left’s long struggle against empire has often been distorted by its own blind spots, nowhere more so than in the contradictions of campism, where opposition to Western imperialism too often becomes an excuse for silence, or worse, complicity, in the face of other empires.

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.

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.

Imperial Nostalgia and the Politics of Crisis

Robert D. Kaplan’s Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis is less a serious analysis of global instability than an extended defence of imperial power, dressing up the failures of capitalism as inevitable and naturalising the dominance of Western capital as the only alternative to chaos.

An IDF Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer demolishing a house in the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada

A Crime Against Humanity in the Making?

Donald Trump’s latest scheme—expelling Gaza’s population to neighbouring countries and transforming the strip into a capitalist playground, exposes the brutal logic of imperialism. With threats to withhold aid from Egypt and Jordan unless they absorb millions of displaced Palestinians, this plan is not just a violation of international law but a blueprint for ethnic cleansing.

Dystopian global war.

A Critique of “A Global War Regime”

Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra’s article “A Global War Regime” examines the interplay between militarisation and capitalist structures, yet, from a Marxist perspective, it overlooks crucial aspects like class struggle, the state’s role, and the ideological mechanisms underpinning militarisation.

M1 Abraham tanks in the desert

Echoes of Iraq: Lessons from a Haunting Legacy

As we approach the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, there has been a surge in retrospective articles examining the conflict and its aftermath. These introspective pieces provide an opportunity for us to reevaluate the decisions that led to the war, its far-reaching consequences, and the lessons we can glean from this turbulent period in history. By engaging in such reflection, we can better understand the complexities of war and work towards preventing similar catastrophes in the future.

Load More