Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“The identitarian creed has since been removed from its anti-capitalist roots, Sarkar argues, and used to justify the persistence of inequality and split the working class…  It is ultimately the ruling classes who fix the terms of engagement of the so-called culture war, and use it as a strategy for discouraging dissent.” Splitting games Related What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules

“Elon Musk possesses a huge fortune not because he ‘earned’ it but rather because the rules of the game under capitalism permit capitalist investors like him to accumulate vast personal wealth at the expense of the larger working population. Musk has proven to be a particularly lucky and adept contestant in the game. But an appraisal of his personal attributes should in no way obscure this simple fact: outside of the socio-economic order based on private ownership of the productive assets of society and the pursuit of private profit through the exploitation of wage labour, a success of Musk’s type and magnitude is simply inconceivable.” —  Murray E.G. Smith and Tim Hayslip in Thinking Systematics, 2024

From Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump, the country has been devastated by US air strikes Related “Made in France” war in Yemen ‘ Houthi Hunting Club. Red Sea 2023-2024’

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.  —Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932 It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.  —Upton Sinclair It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.  —Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871 People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think. When we inquire why things are as they are, the answer is, the foundation of society is laid upon a basis of individualism, conquest and exploitation, with a total disregard of the good of the whole. The structure of society built upo...

—Siyavash Shahabi  on  March 26, 2025 Recommended  Liberalism – A Counter-History by Domenico Lesurdo

During a closed-door meeting  with the local Jewish community in Innsbruck on Thursday, Roet said that "there should be a death sentence" for teenagers for "holding a gun" or a "grenade".  He provided no evidence of children carrying weapons in Gaza.”  Has Austria expelled him? No. Envoy suggests executing Gaza children

“Tens of thousands of Britons are set to lose almost two-thirds of their income as a result of welfare cuts announced by Sir Keir Starmer’s government, according to Financial Times calculations.  “Tougher eligibility for personal independence payments (Pips) and incapacity benefits will mean some people now in line to receive £15,000 a year, excluding housing support, will instead receive just £5,400 — a drop of 64 per cent “Changes to the assessment for Pips will mean people qualify for the daily living payment only if they face major barriers to performing everyday tasks. Many who require assistance washing, or supervision or prompting to go the toilet, would no longer be eligible.” — Financial Times The UK private sector employs 26 million people. The public sector employs 6 million. The government wants to save money because there is a productivity crisis since 2008. The private sector has been responsible for that crisis as well ad the gernment's economic model pursued over th...

What Sinclair Lewis “is trying to do here is to trace the way these ideologies develop and how the negligence of liberal or tolerant ‘ordinary’ people allows monsters to emerge. What he’s also keen to do is to illustrate just how seemingly civilised, decent people can transform into brutal oppressors when they are given permission to behave in that way. “But this is not an issue that is exclusive to Trump’s rise in the USA. What Lewis has to tell us might well apply equally to the rise of the populist Right in Poland, Hungary, Holland, Italy and France. It should also have echoes for us here in the UK as we try and understand the way in which a populist Right is being allowed to set the political agenda – Brexit and all.”

Towards freedom or tyranny

History, or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet. We flush and flush, but the shit keeps rising. —Günter Grass, Crabwalk , quoted by Pankaj Mishra

“The book suffers from American exceptionalism that sees Trump as an aberration of the post-WWII order.”

   فرنسا و«الساحل العلوي»

A two-part essay from 2018 Secularists, Secularism and the Syrian Uprising Part 1 Part 2

The limits of right Gramscianism

A genocidal state says the truth: The "world map won’t change if all the people of Gaza were to vanish.” "No one will notice you, no one will ask about you. You are left alone to face your inevitable fate," the leaflets read . "Neither the US nor Europe care about Gaza. Even your  Arab states  don’t care, they are now our allies, they provide us with money, weapons and oil. They only send you shrouds."

The military is making a come back Related The BBC on Indonesia's 'democracy'

 Starmer says cost of sickness and disability benefits ‘devastating’ One of the richest economies in the world has been disable for a while: low or no economic growth. A capitalist economy which is dominated by the private sector and cannot resume growth. Who should the capitalist government go after to save money? The vulnerable.  Meanwhile, a man who used to earn 142 times the average salary of a nurse is lecturing British boys how to be ‘role models’ . Shouldn't he be at least attacking the British regime and the culture that is complicit in mass killing of Palestinians?

By  Brett Christophers  (Verso 2020) Who is a rentier? What is rentierism? “Arqiva, a private telecommunications company, “makes money, in other words, thanks to what it controls rather than what it does, and the money handed over by its customers is accordingly remuneration not for something received – a raw material, product or service – so much as for something accessed or used. The word typically used to refer to such an access or usage payment is rent (the transmission sites, spectrum and towers are essentially being rented out); and Arqiva, insofar as such rents are its lifeblood, is what is typically referred to as a rentier. “[I]n essence, rent, at least as understood in this book, is payment to an economic actor (the rentier) who receives that rent – and this is the key factor –  purely by virtue of controlling something valuable . The ‘something’, whatever it happens to be, is referred to generically as an ‘asset’: an ‘item of value owned’ (to borrow the st...