At the EU today talking about 'The Internet Left - Progressive politics in the digital age' for The Left in the European Parliament with Marc Botenga of @ptbbelgique.bsky.social and @robtoes.bsky.social (Birckbeck)
Excited to be speaking at 'The Internet Left' at European Parliament tomorrow morning. Very cool mixes of strategists, artists, meme makers and...me.
Join the livestream Tuesday morning!
left.eu/events/the-i...
The right has a well-financed apparatus for amplifying social media momentum. Democrats just try to squash it www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Schwemmer said he would accept a world in which slavery was legal if abortion was criminalised, describes himself as “very much an anti universal suffrage guy” and accepts a supporter’s description of him as “our Mormon Nick Fuentes”
New from me today - some more information on Kai Schwemmer, the Mormon Groyper who was recently appointed as political director of the College Republicans of America www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
My latest in the Guardian:
'The defence from Farage is that he can’t be held responsible for what people do with the messages he sends them, which is perhaps why most politicians don’t send personal endorsements to random people over the internet for money'
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
if Louis Theroux had really wanted to get inside the manosphere he would have sat alone in his bedroom watching Kick streams and spamming the chat
Happy to be quoted in this great piece on Farage's Cameo work, but this line got me:
'Analysis of the 4,366 videos reviewed by the Guardian suggests Farage has been recording the equivalent of almost three videos a day.'
Truly we live in the age of the poster.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
Survey of Silicon Valley coders finds 'feedback loop between beliefs and digital ecosystems':
~75% said CEO worldviews directly shape products
-90% said bias was 'injected' into algorithms
-74% would implement features even if they would restrict human freedom
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
#BrainrotPropaganda: You take the patriotic imagery of the past and strip it of all content. There's no narrative left, no promise of meaning, only vibes. The total destruction of meaning is the content, no matter if it's AI generated or manually stitched together from YouTube clips
#MemeFascism
From LibsOfTikTok to Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson, reactionary watchdogs play a big role in digital politics. A great concept from @sean-phelan.bsky.social
Troops told Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon & mark his return to Earth."
Non-evangelicals might not know the Left Behind series, but it sold like the Da Vinci Code.
Maybe QAnon was just a rapture subplot
jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-...
This is very bad. Handing CNN to Bari Weiss/David Ellison is very, very bad.
Really good piece on the stylelessness of liberals:
'There is no liberal Joe Rogan because his liberal equivalent would rather soliloquize and tweak a couple of ordinances than enter into an unscripted tête-à-tête for hours.' thepointmag.com/criticism/li...
'British centrism tries to defuse extremism by absorbing it, only to find that it hasn’t defused it but amplified it.'
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...
Labour members & MPs need to understand, they aren’t just tarnished by this. They’re soaked through with it. The combination of wealth & sexual abuse is central to the anti-politics worldview (for good reasons). Only slight recovery is possible & it will take a significant purgation.
Sounds great - exciting to hear you've got a book on the way...
This is the last of the three Guardian articles by @robtoes.bsky.social on digital politics - well worth reading
There is a lot to mull on in this line: "The demands of the attention economy exacerbate the age-old leftist tendency toward infighting"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Thanks Sean! Was afraid to post this one because I didn’t want people coming for me…
These pieces by @robtoes.bsky.social are well worth reading
Yes, good point. Mamdani is a unique talent but it’s significant he launched his campaign talking to Trump supporters and actually presenting an alternative offer instead of pandering
Part 2, on the online right, out now:
“The convergence of monetary incentives with ideologically charged engagement produces a kind of ambient extremism in contemporary politics…”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
“The overwhelming liberal focus on disinformation misreads how digital platforms work…cutting-edge propagandists now focus less on policy messaging and more on massaging vibes”.
Start of a new series by the excellent @robtoes.bsky.social
“The overwhelming liberal focus on disinformation misreads how digital platforms work: misleading content is everywhere, but the real battleground is over emotion and attention”
A must read by @robtoes.bsky.social in @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
No worries, I didn’t actually write the headline. Usually subeditors do that. But now that you know it’s not about libs literally owning the internet maybe give it a read if you have the time.
True, and if you read beyond the headline you'll see I make some of these points, and a few others. I definitely agree self-regulation isn't going to help.
The 1st of my 3-part series on digital politics is out in the Guardian.
Read, comment, tell me I'm wrong, attack me. As I argue:
'The real battleground is over emotion and attention, which is what determines whether information – good or bad – finds an audience.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I got a quote in about how to think about penguin posting in this excellent primer on Trump’s AI slopaganda, its reactionary nostalgia, its clumsy white nationalism, its obvious mistakes - it’s all on purpose.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Interview by Aamna Mohdin of my @bisa-bkk.bsky.social colleague @dmf101.bsky.social in which he crisply articulates why we need a reset in our antisemitism debate
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j... @runnymedetrust.bsky.social @shabna.bsky.social
Murray Rothbard wanted to repeal the 20th century. Curtis Yarvin thinks liberalism got out of hand when the Union won the US Civil War.
The 'Donroe Doctrine' fits this line of thinking.
Trump is more erratic now, but his 2nd term is actually more ideologically coherent.
www.ft.com/content/4e0e...