Book Review
Who Gets to Tell the Story?
Journalism doesn’t need saving by those who made it toxic. Wright names the rot—Murdoch, the lobby, the Oxbridge cartel—and shows how the presses keeps running.
The rest of the blog
Journalism doesn’t need saving by those who made it toxic. Wright names the rot—Murdoch, the lobby, the Oxbridge cartel—and shows how the presses keeps running.
Trump didn’t just return to NATO; he returned as “Daddy”—a role not earned through diplomacy, but conjured through spectacle. Baudrillard warned that when image overtakes reality, politics becomes performance. The bombs may have hit Iran, but the real strike was rhetorical. What mattered wasn’t destruction, it was the appearance of obliteration, the meme of authority, the myth of restored order. In the empire of simulation, the sovereign returns not with treaties, but with merch.
Labour won power by promising stability, but what it offers now is paralysis. It has no strategy to counter Farage, no defence against a Tory right fightback, and no imagination to confront the ecological and economic shocks coming fast over the horizon. While Reform sets the agenda and the left reorganises, Starmer retreats into technocratic caution. The government is not leading Britain—it’s managing decline, and doing it badly. Unless Labour finds the courage to confront the forces tearing the country apart, it risks becoming the caretaker of its own collapse.
Pankaj Mishra’s The World After Gaza is a searing indictment of Western complicity in Israeli aggression, exposing the ideological, economic, and political forces that have enabled the destruction of Palestine.
The work isn’t fake because it’s imaginary—it’s fake because it pretends to matter. We clock in, log on, file the forms, and call it a life.
Matt Goodwin’s claim that “London is over” isn’t analysis, it’s a panic attack in column form. Behind the talk of pints and train delays lies the same tired script the Mail rehashes every few weeks, just in time for its readers to rage over their cornflakes. Crime becomes a cipher for immigration, anecdote stands in for data, and the city’s diversity is framed as an existential threat. But what really offends Goodwin isn’t decline—it’s that London no longer looks or sounds like him.
Alexander Dugin’s latest polemic is not political analysis but fascist sermon—an apocalyptic blueprint in which nuclear war is both inevitable and desirable. Cloaked in the language of sovereignty and tradition, it is a call to arms for a new ideology of holy Russian power. What begins with Fordow ends with the end of humanity. And for that reason alone, it demands scrutiny—not celebration. You listening, tech bros?
The next state to cross the nuclear threshold won’t be doing anything new. It’ll be following the path Israel already took—building the bomb in secret, shielded by silence and strategic utility. The real precedent was set decades ago in the Negev. That’s the hypocrisy at the heart of the so-called international order: one bomb is a threat to civilisation, the other a pillar of it. This isn’t about non-proliferation. It’s about who gets to own the apocalypse.
In the pulsating heart of a divided France, the shadow of Damocles looms as the nation braces for a verdict on President Macron’s contested pension reform plans.
As the neoliberal order crumbles beneath the weight of its own contradictions, a chorus of global protests heralds the birth of a new era, forged by the indomitable spirit of a disillusioned generation.
In his compelling article on Sidecar “The French Uprising,” Frédéric Lordon examines the current political and social unrest in France, suggesting that the nation may be on the brink of a revolutionary transformation. In this post I explore some of his ideas.
The Iraq War was not just a regrettable event but a calamitous blunder that continues to reverberate to this day. In scrutinising the reasons behind the conflict and its lingering effects, I’ve delved into three recent articles covering the legacy of the Iraq war, two in Foreign Affairs and one from The Atlantic. These articles detail the ideological and strategic forces that drove the US and UK towards invasion, leading to catastrophic outcomes that were both unforeseen and brutal. The war’s impact gave rise to widespread displacement, which in turn became a breeding ground for violent extremist groups. The dire consequences of misguided military interventions serve as a harsh reminder that war always comes at a great cost, and that those in power must take heed of the lessons of history.