NM's blog

Capitalist power in the twenty-first century does not travel only through tanks, warships, and armies. It also travels through copyright, algorithms, supply chains, and popular culture. And that is precisely why Taylor Swift can sometimes tell us more than a military map about how empire works today. Taylor Swift does not build empire. But the Taylor Swift phenomenon offers us a remarkably clear glimpse of what the imperialisation of cultural life can look like today. This essay is not asking anyone to delete their playlists. A Marxist critique of culture should not collapse into a moral purity test of consumption, where individuals are expected to prove their innocence by avoiding every product touched by capital.

It should be The Character of the British Regime under Starmer, for Britain is not Labour or the regime. “Labour approved more arms sales than the Conservatives permitted over the previous four years…  [W]e cannot accuse Starmer of ‘inaction’ or ‘complicity’. For he is not a bystander, but a perpetrator…  [A]n adamantine commitment to upholding the interests of the powerful which sanctions even the most intense forms of violence, including the crime of genocide. “Rather than trying to resolve the war in Ukraine, Starmer proposed a major provocation: sending UK troops to the front line as part of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Rather than calming tensions with China, his government inflamed them by announcing that it is ‘ready to fight’ in the Pacific.” Palestine Action. “ The decree is without precedent in British history. Never before has the state taken such extreme measures to eradicate a protest movement. “During his time in office, environmentalists have reportedly receive...

An opinion article on the FT

“Donning yourself with an Israeli flag while demonstrating for freedom in Iran is a travesty: this a flag that today represents a genocidal state led by war criminals. Equally, waving the American flag shows identification with an administration that executes violent policies informed by economic greed, Islamophobia, racism and overt imperialism. “I can understand pragmatic alliances. It is not always possible to be purist when one builds an alliance against injustice, but there must be red lines that cannot be crossed even in the face of calamity . Once the bombing subsides “ Palestine and the Palestinians will still be the most important issue facing Israel and its allies in the region and in the world. Americans will be left with a president that destroys their economy, their international standing and social cohesion and it is very likely that Iran will still be ruled by the same regime, be it weakened or more challenged. The political map of the region will not change much, neithe...

An interview with Gilbert Achcar

“A complex social field of millions of people is reduced to a symbolic reserve for regional politics.”  The image of Kurdistan “does not emerge from the real complexity of society. It is produced through selection, erasure, and compression. “Erasing class is necessary if a deeply uneven society is to be turned into a single unified body that others can speak for.”