NM's blog

“More on the crisis of liberal expertise. This exchange over Yuri Slezkine's review on the "Western civilization" is a good illustration of how some scholars of Ukraine have managed to miss not only what has happened in the world since 2022 — saying without irony that the West offers an alternative to Russian barbarism in Ukraine, after Gaza and Iran, is simply nauseating — but also the developments within Ukraine itself (or perhaps still strategically obfuscating them). Slezkine's response at the end, on why Ukraine is an ethnonationalist state, is very strong.” —Volodymyr Eshchenko’s comment on Why ‘the West’?

‘Power without a throne’ There is mention, for example, of  Macron's government support of Haftar .

Published in 1967, Guy Debord’s analysis of the society of the spectacle posited that lived reality had “receded into a representation.” In its “concrete manufacture of alienation,” Debord contended, the spectacle obscured social contradictions. But the reproduction of society without consent now involves the formation of a “hyperspectacle”: the reality of contradiction itself becomes an image, a domineering abstract presence; the commodity’s colonization of life is such that it now extends to social contradiction itself. The more we observe Trump’s abstract spectacle of contradiction, the more we struggle to understand the concrete contradiction that has produced it. Amid intensifying alienation, the Trump administration pursues a new geostrategy. —  Juliano Fiori ,   February 19, 2026

“I talk in the book about the special kind of sado-masochism it takes to spend six years reading alarmist literature that imagines people like me to be a genetic nightmare and cultural failure. Yet I find the complexes and psychoses that afflict white supremacists as they contemplate Eurabians both interesting and funny, if I can use that word about something so serious. You never know when porn studies methodology will come in handy, but it does again and again: literature that imagines the Great Replacement can most easily be likened to a snuff film, in which erotic pleasure occurs at the death of the Other. This is why I talk in the book about the erotics of ethnic horror, a literary genre that best fits Great Replacement literature.” Description Interview and excerpt 

Both conservative and liberal economists, in other words, continue to frame economics the way Lionel Robbins defined it, as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends, which has rightfully earned the discipline the description of being the dismal science. For both schools, efficiency remains the prime consideration. Rather, the economic  problematique  should be, according to Deaton, the way his fellow Cambridge economist Keynes defined it: “how to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty.”

 From the mouth of  a former CIA operative – someone who in principle defends the criminal action of US imperialism, inverting the reality of who is the real culprit and the real threat . His only concern is how a crime should be committed. Related Why Iran is not Venezuela

“The real strength of Darolshafa’s text is that it shows the main divide in Iran is not simply about who supports the Islamic Republic and who opposes it. The deeper issue is a struggle over the meaning of change itself. For the first people, survival comes first. For the second, the fall of the regime at any cost. For the third, a secular and legal transition. And for the fourth, social revolution. “This is not just a disagreement over tactics. Each of these projects produces its own people and speaks in their name. One calls on the “Nation of Imam Hussein.” Another invokes the “Nation of the Lion and Sun.” The third speaks of the “Iranian nation” or “the people of Iran.” And the fourth speaks of the working class and the oppressed. The conflict is not really over words. It is over hegemony. It is about which force gets to present itself as the true political voice of society.” A good summary

Just another Brit attacking a whole religion and all Muslims for the actions of a tiny minority. Another Brit who is now 'intellectually' not different from the far-right neo-fascists. Another Brit who has planned a show in Israel, i.e. unashamedly being complicit in the genocidal war. Another leaning far right Brit who quotes from the Quran without historical or present context.  Related As Brooke Ivey Johnson put it on the Metro , “ There is something uniquely deflating about watching a figure once synonymous with sharp, absurdist brilliance slip into reactionary cliché…   Watching him railing against imaginary enemies online, you can’t help but feel that what’s really being lost isn’t ‘Englishness’, but perspective. ”  British historian Simon Schama needs a history lesson

The media manufactures discursive cover, lawfare groups weaponise legal frameworks, institutions enforce discipline, police stage public spectacles of sovereign power, and so on. This division of labour allows repression to appear diffuse, uncoordinated, even spontaneous. Yet the cumulative effect is systematic and constitutes a multi-sited assault that targets solidarity from every direction while granting each actor plausible deniability. No single institution bears full responsibility; no single hand is seen to strike the blow. This insulates each node from legal liability, public outrage, and reputational damage, allowing institutions to maintain their liberal self-images while participating in illiberal outcomes. — European Legal Support Centre ,  The Multi-Sited Repression of  Palestine Solidarity in Britain,  2026, p. 30.

The Alibi of Capital

A review of Adam Hanieh’s A. Crude capitalism : Oil, corporate power, and the making of the world market

“The Minab case was no longer just a military case. It developed three layers. The first was technical and legal: was a school wrongly included in a military target package? The second was political: who, in those first days, denied responsibility or tried to shift it elsewhere?  And the third, perhaps more important than both, was moral: how did the deaths of children stop being a red line and become something people bargained over in the battle of narratives? This report begins with that first layer, but it does not stay there . Because the story of the Minab school is also the story of the moment when war contaminates language itself.”

A discussion between Vivek Chibber and Jason Brownlee Chibber a socialist/Marxist has excluded the political economy of capitalism in this long discussion about the US and Iran. Brownlee, speaking about the American army, used the phrase 'our troops' as a liberal identifying himself with the American state.  Both Chibber and Brownlee have used the words 'terrorist' and 'counterterrorism' when referring to non-state violence without putting them in inverted commas, i.e. in the same way the dominant mainstream narrative uses them. Oxford dictionary defines 'blunder' as 'a stupid or careless mistake'. Is that what should Marxists and socialists employ in describing imperialist actions such as wars, invasions, 'regime change', etc.?

11 perspectives offering a critical lens on the present moment

An update on his case against his dismissal from a UK-funded institute in Jerusalem.

“One thing that tends to happen when war breaks out is that everyone forgets everything that happened up until three minutes before the war.” But saying that “it's  all leading to the fact that this war was a massive mistake” is failing to see or acknowledge that the political economy of the United States at the current context and conjuncture. It fails to see that this war was likely had Biden or Harris was in the government. Biden too would have been influenced by Netanyahu. It also fails to see the connection an imperialist action on Venezuela and the war on Iran. It fails to see that internal contradictions in the US influence imperialist actions. Calling it a mistake remind us of how a few said the same thing about the invasion of Iraq.  “ The only winners at this point are the Israelis .” They are not the only winners. In the long term, American and Israeli interests converge. Other winners include a few Arab regimes, the oil companies…The lack of strategy reflects a lac...

On the Iran war

If the arrangement of society is bad (and ours is), and a small number of people have power over the majority and oppress it, every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase that power and that oppression. This is what is actually happening.  — Leo Tolstoy, On Life and Essays on Religion , 1898

From the Financial Times 22 March 2026 The populist, anti-immigration party is surging in the polls thanks to the support of  young Spanish men, Vox leaders have found that old-school conservative preoccupations such as  bullfighting have lost much of their importance. Instead, Vox has learnt to exploit men’s deep-seated economic and social grievances, which have  become the defining feature of a new strain of Spanish populism. Young women still lean to the left, but there has been a striking shift among males: they identify as  being more rightwing than any other cohort of young men in the past 40 years. Many see themselves as victims of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his policies on the economy and immigration. While Sánchez celebrates Spain growing faster than any other major advanced economy in the past two years, young men complain that their personal hopes have been frustrated. Stoking their discontent are a band of populist rap artists and fa...