What if... what really makes Britain "ungovernable" is... the nature of its political media and of its political class?

No, Western Marxism Wasn’t a CIA Plot Gabriel Rockhill’s polemic against Western Marxism seeks to condemn a set of postwar left-wing intellectuals such as Herbert Marcuse. Heavy on innuendo but light on evidence, the result is more like a...

Credit where credit is due: this is good

jacobin.com/2026/04/revi...

Memorial to the ~3000 German International Brigaders who fought against Franco in Spain.
El Fossar de la Pedera, the mass grave of the victims of the Franco regime in Barcelona.

The generation that taught me not to believe everything I heard in the school yard or read in the newspapers certainly seem to believe a lot of what they see on social media. Not all of course but it's certainly a trend I've observed.

Fredric Jameson | April 14, 1934 - September 22, 2024 Fredric Jameson contributed some of the most important Marxist cultural criticism of the twentieth century. To honor the great writer's life, we've discounted his titles and encourage everyone to read...

Fredric Jameson was born on this day in 1934.

To honor the great writer's life, we've discounted his titles and encourage everyone to read the works he produced in his 90 years.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-co...

Twenty-third Annual Conference - Historical Materialism Call for Paper is Online and submission form open! Planetary Warscapes Ablaze: Imperial Mutations in Infernal Times 5-8 November 2026, SOAS, Russell Square, Central London Deadline for abstracts: Fr...

The CfP for this year's Historical Materialism annual conference in London, under the title 'Planetary Warscapes Ablaze: Imperial Mutations in Infernal Times', is now online!

Mark it in your calendars, prepare your abstracts, book your travel!

Ministers working with Labour backbenchers to temper Mahmood immigration plans Exclusive: Starmer urged to go further with exemptions if he wants to avoid widespread anger from his own MPs

You can't "temper" so fundamentally toxic proposals, both for asylum and immigration in general. Labour's "reform's" are utterly inhumane, as well as unworkable, costly and counterproductive. They need scrapping entirely, Mahmood fired, and a complete rethink.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Brendan Glesson is 71.
Colin Farrell, newly sober, on first meeting Gleeson:
‘He said ‘willya have a drink?’ & opened his hotel fridge ‘I’ve still or sparkling’.
In that moment, I fell in love with him as he had gone out & bought them. I thought ‘that’s a fella who’ll look after you’

Thanks for sharing, an enjoyable read so far.

It’s time to stop posting on X There aren’t any good arguments left to stay on Elon Musk’s platform

Elon Musk took over Twitter and turned it into the anti-woke, fascist-amplifying X.

There’s been debate about whether to stay since he bought it. But seeing how it’s evolved and the recent Grok deepfake scandal, there’s no good argument to stay.

I stopped posting there. You should too.

Matt Goodwin’s previous book being published by Penguin and his latest coming out from ‘Northstar’ — which appears to be a cover for self-publishing — has a real Mark in Peep Show working with British London vibes.

In his last political act, Habermas tied the survival of the public sphere & the democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany to genocide denial & the state repression of its critics. He died in principled solidarity with the barbarism of 21st century liberalism

Sudanese students say UK visa ban has dashed hopes of studying at top universities More than 200 applicants fear they will lose places after home secretary suspends study visas from four countries

Sudanese scientists have their careers trashed so Shabana Mahmood can burnish her credentials with the Daily Mail and a "government spokesperson" talks of "the UK’s steadfast commitment to bringing about an end to the conflict and supporting the people of Sudan". For shame.

130 | Max Horkheimer: What Makes Critical Theory Critical? | What's Left of Philosophy Get more from What's Left of Philosophy on Patreon

new episode out today! we discuss Horkheimer's essay "Traditional and Critical Theory", asking what actually makes critical theory critical, and whether there's any genuinely critical theory going on right now. the social totality causing all kinds of problems rn fr www.patreon.com/posts/130-ma...

Nothing they talk about more in "left behind communities" than reinstalling the Shah.

I cannot wait for the insights on this! He's going to:

1. Sample some local street food.
2. Ride a train.
3. Visit a temple.
4. Not mention the pogroms that the serving Prime Minister presided over.
5. Smile at some elephants.
6. Top up his kids' private school fees.
7. Say "India is changing".

Reform fury as someone else wins by Our By-election Editor Tim Shipsink The losing candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matt Goodwhinge, has demanded an immediate re-run of the election on the grounds that he lost comprehensively to someone else. "It's totally unfair and rigged," said Goodwhinge. "I shouldn't be required to sit there and suck it up, just because I lost." Mr Goodwhine continued, *I can't believe that all those voters I demonised failed to back me. Especially after I was endorsed by Tommy Robinson and ten million Russian bots on X. "We have clear evidence of family voting, where people voted in order for me to stop deporting their families." Mr Badloser concluded. "I'm the victim of colour prejudice. They didn't vote for me simply because I'm not green." Reform leader Mr Farage, speaking from a sun lounger on a rock near the Chagos Islands said, "It's a tragedy that the people of Manchester won't see Matt in Westminster, but my constituents don't see me in Clacton either." PLUMBER DEFEATS MATT GOODWIN Photo of Hannah Spencer with speech bubble saying… I've stopped the cock

Beautiful from Private Eye on the massive toddler-tantrum that Matt Goodwin and Reform are having, because they got whooped in Gorton and Denton.

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work.

This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public.

Please spread the word.

🧵 1/4

Call for Abstracts: 11th annual conference Freedom Eleventh annual conference of the Danish Society for Marxist Studies Copenhagen Business School, Denmark2-3 October 2026 Open call While we particularly encourage engagements with the theme…

🚨CALL FOR ABSTRACTS🚨

We are proud to announce the call for abstracts for our 11th annual conference: FREEDOM.

The conference takes place at Copenhagen Business School on October 2-3 2026.

Read the full call here 👇 and submit before 1 May 2026 💌

marxistiskestudier.com/2026/03/03/c...

My experience of the upper echelons of the Labour Party involved being condescended to by the incredibly thick & unpleasant, & thinking that in any other walk of life you would get punched in the mouth for treating people like that. Impossible to overstate how high on their own fumes they are.

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

Anyone on the left who wasn’t actively involved from 2015-19 needs to know what’s coming.

1, they’re going to throw multiple, often contradictory lies at the wall to see what sticks. Polanski will be simultaneously weak and strong, timid and aggressive, passive and dictatorial, old fashioned and

This is utter batshit, then again the drugs and prostitution stuff was proof Starmer is a dead man walking.

translation of Horkheimer’s “last letter” to Henryk Grossman in Jan 1943, which I read not as a breakup letter (it is one, & most do) but as a missed encounter over a shared problem: conceptualizing the unity of “evolutionary” & “revolutionary” moments in Marx’s critique of political economy 🔗 ⬇️

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The Inquiry brought up the case of Denholm Elliott's daughter - PAUL McMULLAN: Oh, yeah - BROOKE GLADSTONE: - which is one case that you truly do regret. PAUL McMULLAN: I do, yeah. After Denholm died, she hit rock bottom, was allegedly doing methadone. And although she had, you know, the half-million-pound flat that Denholm had bought her, she didn't have any money to get her ten-pound bag in the morning. So she'd get up and go begging at the tube station. Here was a young girl crying out to be helped, and she met a police officer who didn't help her but rang up the News of the World and asked for money because he couldn't believe that this is the same girl who'd walked down the red carpet behind Eddie Murphy with Denholm Elliott, you know.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you offered her 50 pounds - PAUL MCMULLAN: Yeah. BROOKE GLADSTONE: - if she would come to your place and have sex. So you led her into prostitution, which she wasn't in that space for. PAUL McMULLAN: No, indeed. But she was in such a bad place that someone offering her 50 pounds for sex. I mean, that's five bags.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So how do you justify that? Yes, she was a drug addict, yes, she was begging. Why push her that extra step? Why take pictures of her topless? PAUL McMULLAN: I was keen. It was in my first year. I wanted to impress Piers Morgan, who was my boss at the time, and just wanted to say, not only have I caught this girl begging, but l've got pictures of her topless and I've got her offering me sex for 50 quid. How great am I? BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is a pretty dehumanizing enterprise, not just for Jennifer Elliott, but for you, yourself. PAUL McMULLAN: Yeah, that's why I feel terrible about it, not just 'cause she killed herself afterwards, but I, I actually liked her as a person.

Sharing from a friend, a passage from the Leveson Inquiry regarding the British actor Denholm Elliott, who died of AIDS in 1992. Three years after her death, the News of the World journalist Paul McMullan did the following to his daughter—neither a celebrity nor even someone of public interest.

"Manhunter" (1986): Tiger Scene YouTube video by hiilppp

RIP Tom Noonan
A gifted writer, director & actor. His portrayal of Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter was unforgettable.
It was deeply sympathetic, nuanced & disturbing. You felt for the deeply damaged human being inside the monster.
This scene in particular is extraordinary: youtu.be/y07Z8YVbjbs?...

Robert Duvall has passed away at the age of 95

NEW from @tbij.bsky.social:
The government has rejected calls by its OWN independent Migration Advisory Committee for visa reforms to protect migrant farm workers from exploitation

Labour seems wedded to a model of immigration based on creating a subclass of exploited worker.
It's sick.