Skip to content

anti capitalist musings

The rest of the blog
Imperialism

No One Is Above the Law—Not Even the SAS

The state demands loyalty from its killers, and contempt for those who ask why. To question the SAS is treated as heresy. To investigate them, as betrayal. But no one is above the law. Not even the men with night-vision goggles and state-sanctioned impunity. If the victims of British state violence are to be denied justice so that the myth of military virtue can remain intact, then we are not a democracy. We continue to be an empire that refuses to admit it.

A stylised screen-printed poster, depicting a broken factory window set in a red brick wall. The shattered glass forms sharp, black jagged lines against a beige background, with thick black outlines and graphic shadows. The design uses bold, limited colours—red, black, beige—and a grainy, stippled texture to evoke the mood of militant industrial unrest.
Gaza

Terror Is a Word They Use to Stop You

You don’t have to like the tactics. But if protest that disrupts power is treated as terrorism, then the state has rewritten the definition to suit itself.

A weathered and torn political poster clings to a rough concrete wall. The poster reads “SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM, 2029?” with the words “SOCIALISM” and “2029?” in bold black and “BARBARISM” in bold red. The edges of the poster are frayed and peeling, suggesting age and neglect.
Green Party

The Left Breaks Cover: Sultana, Corbyn, and the Case for a New Party — With McDonnell at the Helm?

The Labour Party under Starmer has become a machine for silencing dissent. Abbott, Shaheen, Driscoll, and others have been smeared, blocked, or expelled. The party has moved right on immigration, welfare, protest, and Palestine — and done so proudly. Sultana’s resignation wasn’t a betrayal of Labour values. It was a defence of them. And if a new left party is to be more than symbolic, it needs more than moral clarity. It needs leadership. Corbyn remains the figurehead, but John McDonnell (articulate, disciplined, and trusted) is the one who could anchor this project. He may not want the crown. But that is exactly what makes him the right person to hold it.

A black withered Labour rose
Britain

The Art of Losing: Labour’s First Year in Power

Labour’s problem isn’t just that it inherited a broken economy. It’s that it refuses to say so. The party acts like governing is a performance for bond markets and newspaper editors, rather than an act of political leadership. Hard choices are made without explanation. Rollbacks happen without apology. And the public is left wondering: if even Labour doesn’t believe in what it’s doing, why should anyone else?

A large crowd at Glastonbury Festival waves numerous Palestinian flags under a partly cloudy blue sky. Dominating the image is a prominently raised flag in the foreground reading “GLASTO FOR PALESTINE” in white letters across the Palestinian tricolour (black, white, and green horizontal stripes with a red triangle on the hoist side). The atmosphere is festive yet political, with a visible sense of solidarity.
Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray and the Fetish of Empire

Murray calls the IDF a “citizen army”, as if it were Dad’s Army with drones. In truth, Gaza is a laboratory, where missiles are tested, faces scanned, and children used to perfect the next export.

It depicts five heavily armed and masked Border Patrol agents in tactical gear standing in and around the open sliding door of a white van. The central figure’s vest prominently displays a yellow badge with the words “BORDER PATROL.” The image has a rough, stencilled texture and a distressed background, evoking a dystopian, authoritarian atmosphere.

Spectacle at the Tool Aisle

The ICE raid at Home Depot isn’t law enforcement. This is performance of sovereignty. Armed agents posing in camo and Kevlar to detain migrant day labourers is not about public safety, but about staging dominance. It’s capitalism enforcing its border through spectacle: a theatre of control, broadcast from a retail car park, where labour is criminalised and militarism is aestheticised. This isn’t about stopping migration. It’s about punishing poverty and reassuring power.

A dark, oil-painted 1950s-style illustration titled “Daddy’s Home” shows a stern, scowling man resembling Donald Trump standing in a doorway, holding a briefcase. He wears a black suit with a red tie and looms under dramatic lighting. To his left, a woman looks frightened, covering her mouth with her hand. In the foreground, a young boy with a furrowed brow glares angrily. The mood is tense and ominous, evoking themes of authoritarian return and domestic dread.

Daddy’s Home: Trump, NATO, and the Spectacle of Power

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.

A square-cropped image featuring the bold black text "THE SAMSON OPTION" in all capital letters on a cream background. The second "O" in "OPTION" is stylised with the upper half containing the Israeli flag and the lower half the American flag, symbolising the book’s geopolitical focus

The Bomb in the Basement, the Bomb in the Mountains: Israel, Iran, and the Nuclear Hypocrisy of the West

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.

A stencil-style, red monochromatic illustration split vertically into two scenes. On the left, three masked or hooded figures—one wearing a tactical vest—stand beside a Ford SUV. On the right, outside a Home Depot store, two shoppers push a trolley while another stands nearby. The entire image is rendered in a bold red on a beige background

Rendition Comes Home

Under Trump and Stephen Miller, extraordinary rendition has been refashioned for domestic use—not to fight terrorism, but to disappear the vulnerable. There are no warrants. No charges. No destinations. Just men in unmarked vans, masked and armed, taking people who often never come back. This isn’t immigration enforcement. It’s the logic of the War on Terror—secret transfers, indefinite detention, legal disappearance—turned inward. The spectacle is the point. The fear is the policy.

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.

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

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.

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.

Load More