Category: fascism
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The Immortality of Capital
In the daily doomscroll, I came across this news article that tells of how Alan Hamel, a multi-millionaire entrepreneur has been ‘keeping his wife alive’ with AI’ “you can’t tell the difference!” Grief effects people different, of course it does, and being married for 55 years, I can perhaps understand…
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The Limits of Marx in the Age of Trumpian christofascism
For me, it is increasingly perplexing to witness traditional class-based critiques being clumsily deployed to analyse our contemporary social crisis in the age of Trumpism 2.0. That is not to say that the well-trodden frameworks of capitalist critique, particularly those rooted in Marxist analysis, aren’t relevant in understanding economic exploitation,…
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Excess as Resistance: The Panacea of Collective Joy in an Age of Fascism
The spectre of fascism that once loomed with unsettling persistence, has now firmly taken root in the American heartland. While it was always present for some, it is now the politics for all. The question of how to resist it is not merely academic but essential. Fascism, as history and…
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Architecture and Power: Trump 2.0 and what it means for the city
Anyone who has sat through one of my lectures on cities will be sick of hearing that the built environment is never a politically neutral plane. Architecture and urban planning have always served as tools for political ideologies, shaping not only skylines but also the societies that inhabit them; and…
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Woody, a fascist: A contemporary reading of Toy Story
Toy Story is a fantastic film, let me say that straight away. Indeed, the first 3 films are considered one of the finest trilogies in all cinematic history and there is no doubting that they have had a profound effect on many people all over the world. And yes, Woody…
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The Doppelgänger in the Machine
The internet used to be amazing. It was a bustling agora of human thought and debate, where we could share ideas and ideas free from the mechanisms of the market. But now it’s a discombobulating hall of corporate mirrors, with every reflection slightly warped to the will of an extractive…
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Benjaminian Aura in the Age of Swift
Swift performs at Gillette Stadium on May 19, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass., during her Eras Tour. Scott Eisen/TAS23 via Getty Images My children are Swifties. I take this as an abject failure on my part to indoctrinate them with various hues of ‘dad rock’, but given that Taylor Swift has…
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Hauntology: The Persistent Echoes of Lost Futures and Unfulfilled Promises
I sat down over the weekend to watch a Muppet’s Christmas Carol with the kids, and despite it being a tale a about a super-rich oligarch that is essentially guilt tripped into being a charitable entrepreneur, yet maintains his exploitative corporate enterprise but with just slightly higher wages in lieu…
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From Le Guin to Afrofuturism via Fisher: Decolonising revolutionary futures
The late, great American science fiction and anti-capitalist novelist, Ursula K. Le Guin said in 2014 these now oft-quoted words: “Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the…
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Brexitrump, neoliberalism and microfascism
Fascism has been catapulted into the mainstream narrative of late, thanks to the election of a certain Mr. Trump to the position of ‘leader of the free world’ (perhaps the most oxymoronical statement of them all). The comparisons to Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s have not gone unnoticed,…
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