anti capitalist musings

The rest of the blog

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.

A black-and-white satirical cartoon depicts a stern Daily Mail journalist dressed as a judge in full wig and robe, holding a gavel in one hand and a sign reading “GUILTY” in the other. He stands on a gallows platform beside a hanging noose, with the caption below reading “JUDGE, JURY AND EXECUTIONER.” The title “DAILY MAIL” looms overhead, suggesting the paper acts as a one-man court of condemnation.
Gaza

Hodges’s Courtroom: Palestine Action on Trial

Dan Hodges’s Mail column denouncing Palestine Action as “terrorists” is not journalism but ideological policing, an attempt to criminalise dissent while excusing the real violence: Britain’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

Grainy black-and-white, newspaper style showing the silhouette of a police officer facing a crowd, holding up a blurred mugshot. Camera flashes from photographers in the background illuminate the scene, casting stark light and deep shadows, evoking a sense of public spectacle and mob judgment.

Back to the Mob

Publishing a suspect’s ethnicity isn’t transparency, it’s a gift to the mob, a state-sanctioned dog whistle that trades justice for headlines and hands Reform UK exactly the ammunition it craves.

The Patriarchy in Uniform: Reform UK’s Law and Order Is a War on Women

When Reform UK’s justice spokesperson declared she would “much rather see a great big strapping male police officer with a female,” she wasn’t just airing a preference. Pochin was laying out a worldview. One where women are too vulnerable to patrol alone, too soft for frontline work, and too inconvenient to be equal. As under Trump, so under Farage: the creeping politics of patriarchy, where power is always male, and women are tolerated only if they stay in their place.

A grainy, black-and-white brick wall with a faded Pride flag poster pasted in the centre. Spray-painted across the flag in bold red letters are the words “NEUTRALITY = COMPLICITY”. Below, in black stencilled text, it reads “TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS”.

Against the Ruling: Pride, Policing, and the Politics of Supposed Impartiality

Neutrality in the face of injustice is not impartiality. This is complicity. The court’s ruling isn’t about keeping police out of politics; it’s about appeasing a reactionary movement that wants trans people pushed from public life. Today it’s Pride. Tomorrow it’s the right to celebrate Eid, to march for Black lives, to speak up for Palestine. The message is clear: visibility is permitted only for the unthreatening.

Pencil drawing inside prison

No More Cells

They say prisons are overcrowded, as if the cages are too small. As if the problem is spatial. As if all we need is a few more acres of razor wire and reinforced concrete and the crisis will vanish. But prisons aren’t full because we lack space. They’re full because we lack imagination.

Painting of Stuart Hall produced by Ai

Forceful Irony: Policing & Power

Through the ideas of Stuart Hall, this post looks at the persistent problems of the Metropolitan Police and the complicated relationship between policing, power, and social inequality.