Savage Minds

Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a research economist at the World Inequality Lab and co-editor of the 2026 World Inequality Report, discusses his research on the benefits of early schooling and how early human capital investment closes the “inequality gap” and the effects of such research within current Mexican educational policy. Focusing on the finding of this year’s World Inequality Report, Gómez-Carrera elaborates on the increasing wealth disparities on a global scale such that wealth is becoming even more concentrated, as demonstrated by the fact that the top 10% earn 53% of the global income, “the top 10% own three-quarters of global wealth, while the bottom half holds only 2%,” and, for the top .001%, the distribution of wealth growth is as high as 8% per year. Gómez-Carrera argues that if we don’t address inequality, only the privileged will have rights, opportunities, assets, and control over politics. Ultimately, even if 90% or 99% of the population are paying their taxes and contributing to society, the top 1% maintain a disproportionate influence over politics and access to opportunities, which in turn influences the decisions that ensure they maintain their privilege. While power, as Gómez-Carrera clarifies, is becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the negative effects of such power, such as ecological damage, will be felt disproportionately by the poor, as they are more vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, despite their contributing less to this damage. Examining one of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 World Inequality Report, he notes how the top .001% increased in their charitable donations since 1960, a gesture which moves the wealthy beyond strictly economic realms of power. Noting how the economic patterns suggest a rising top-end inequality, Gómez-Carrera claims that this not only translates into ideological capture and unequal influence over philanthropy and politics, but it invariably translates into public policy, law, campaigning, and, invariably, political choices, or lack thereof. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Almut Rochowanski, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, critiques the “NGO-industrial complex,” particularly concerning the impact of foreign funding on civil society development within new democracies. Covering her testimony at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the US Congress, on the topic of “Laws Regulating Foreign NGOs: Human Rights Implications,” Rochowanski draws from her experience with NGOs in former Soviet states, including Russia and Ukraine, and discusses the structural realities of foreign-funded NGOs at the intersection of class, education, nepotism, and accountability failures. Rochowanski highlights the complex relationships between foreign donors, governments, and NGOs, stressing how the actual beneficiaries often become secondary to donor agendas. She argues that foreign funding cannot be neutral, as it embeds donor priorities into recipient countries, corrupting local policies and necessitating NGOs to align more with Western mandates than local needs. This tendency results in NGOs, widely deemed “foreign agents” by domestic authorities and citizens, undermining local governance and democratic sovereignty, ultimately harming the societies they aim to assist by displacing state roles in service provision and policy development, while these bodies often encroach on democratic sovereignty. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Volodymyr Ishchenko, currently at the Institute for East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, discusses his latest book, Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War (Verso, 2024) and forthcoming paper “Post-Soviet vicious circle: revolution as a reproduction of a crisis of hegemony” (co-authored with Oleg Zhuravlev). Historicising how post-Soviet revolutions in Ukraine have functioned, Ishchenko considers how the 2014 Euromaidan revolution produced a weaker state whose fate, instead of being decided by Moscow, has been directed by Washington or Brussels. Delineating how the 2022 war is, in part, the culmination of Ukraine’s history in relationship to Russia, where cross-national capital allied itself with the local professional middle classes and where anti-nationalist arguments clashed with the tendency to understand the war within the context of Ukraine’s perceived colonial struggle, Ishchenko observes how these primordial, ethno-nationalist readings lend themselves to a larger teleology. Detailing how the war in 2022 becomes the culmination of this story, a sort of parable of the struggling, emerging nation, Ishchenko explores how the narrative construction of Ukrainian nationhood mirrors the creation of the nation-state, like many countries from the 19th century onward. He also interrogates the various theories that proffer origins of the war as being rooted in the Russia-NATO conflict, as maintained by Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer. Instead, Ishchenko considers an alternative reading of this history, positing that the war in Ukraine has little to do with the inclusion of Ukraine within NATO, nor is it about NATO's inclusion of neighbouring countries. Instead, Ishchenko contends that the 2022 war is a culmination of Russia’s exclusion from the process and dialogues by and around NATO. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Fabio Vighi, Professor of Critical Theory and Italian at Cardiff University, discusses dominant themes from latest books, Emergency Capitalism: Financial Hubris, Economic Collapse, and Systemic Manipulation (2024) and Unworkable: Delusions of an Imploding Civilization (2022), that address the “age of crisis capitalism” and the post-productive hyper-financialised stage of capitalism that is driven by debt and the loss of work society. Relating how the acceleration of the emergency paradigm is maintained by a constant flux of “states of exception” that exclude people while also allowing for the creation of credit and debt which have become the prime motors of capitalism today, Vighi narrates how just before the pandemic in 2019, we were already approaching a gigantic financial crisis, observing, “The system needed what then Covid allowed the system to have, which means massive injections of credit.” Vighi historicises the acceleration of the emergency paradigm over the past decade, which is fundamentally connected to debt and the creation of credit “out of thin air” to balance a system that is both inherently inflationary and increasingly “imbalanced and out of control.” Noting how the release of emergencies has become the mechanism to balance the economy—first with the pandemic in 2020 and then immediately thereafter with the war in Ukraine—Vighi characterises what is happening today as an “apocalyptic, eschatological type of mood where war is always immanent…and therefore that justifies the rearmament of entire continents like Europe,” while underscoring how modern wars have always been mechanisms for creating credit while also the vehicles for connecting the arms and financial sectors. Criticising the perception management systems that are more focused on the personalisation of struggles rather than critiquing systemic structures, Vighi scrutinises how, as a result, we are incentivised into very simplistic polarisations and conflicts that are, in themselves, ideological forms of destruction, distracting us from examining the deeper causes of conflict. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Hala Shoman, a Palestinian PhD researcher in Sociology at Newcastle University, discusses her life in Gaza before 7 October 2023, the conditions under which Gazans have been living since, and the physical and political realities on the ground for Palestinians today. Shoman elaborates how Israel’s violence since 2023 has left Palestinian society shattered, since the aggressions are so vast and profound that, unlike previous decades of aggressions that did not wipe out entire neighbourhoods and communities, the current genocide has left few able-bodied bodies alive who are can help their communities after each attack. Observing the harsh reality for Gazans today under the daily threat of murder, Shoman appraises how not only does every Palestinian personally know hundreds of people murdered over the past two years, but Israel’s aggressions and control over every aspect of Palestinian life—their access to food, water and vaccines—have become so intensified that Palestinian infants are dying from the lack of drinking water necessary for baby formula. Confirming the direct links between Israel’s violence and the increase in domestic violence in Gaza, Shoman recounts how the structural violence of colonialism and genocide has been reproduced: from the Israeli theatre of occupation and murder to the intimate space of family life within Palestinian communities. Expounding upon Israel’s pathological desire to control Palestine, Shoman remarks that the very war criminals directing this genocide are the same individuals who are asked to lead Palestine in what is this latest farce of a “peace plan.” Shoman also elaborates her academic research that explores decolonial feminist frameworks and the concept of reprocide while also distinguishing between adapting to the horrors of this genocide and surviving it. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Rebecca Ruth Gould, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and author of Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom (Verso, 2020), discusses the political reframing of “antisemitism” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) which tailored a new definition designed specifically to silence criticism of both Zionism and the state of Israel. Recalling how she was caught within the radar of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism in 2017 while an academic at the University of Bristol for a short article she had written years earlier, Gould analyses how the IHRA definition has very clear implications far beyond Israel and Palestine, even to the extent that it exists as a quasi-law that is treated as law while never having gone through any kind of democratic parliamentary vetting process. Moreover, Gould observes how the IHRA definition of antisemitism basically set out to define what we can and cannot say about Israel while also serving to foreshadow how free speech on Palestine would be persecuted for the following decade. Considering the language of mass starvation and famine within the media, Gould confirms how the famine of the Holodomor, in a 1933 New York Times piece, was narrated in an eerily similar way to how the famine in Gaza is currently represented. Articulating how “Never again” has never really been true, given the numerous genocides since the Holocaust, Gould describes how older generations have internalised the state-based nationalist “Holocaust memories” which have blinded them from seeing, much less understanding, that Israel is currently carrying out a genocide of Palestinians. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dario Guarascio, Associate Professor of Economic Policy at the Department of Economics and Law at the Sapienza University of Rome, discusses two articles he co-authored with Andrea Coveri and Claudio Cozza, “Big Tech and the US Digital-Military-Industrial Complex” and “Monopoly Capital in the time of digital platforms: A radical approach to the Amazon case.” Coveri examines the power of digital platforms whose systemic size rivals that of nation-states, positioning them as counterparts to national authorities. Revisiting social sciences history, especially economic and imperialism theories, Guarascio highlights John Hobson’s contributions that illustrate the reliance of large capital and financial corporations on new markets as national markets become saturated. He details how the intertwining needs of states and monopolies drive a strategic internationalisation essential for competitiveness, a concept reflected in Vladimir Lenin’s work influenced by Hobson, which connects international competition with states’ imperialistic strategies aimed at expanding trade routes and eliminating competitors. Guarascio posits that amidst economic strains, military means have historically facilitated market penetration, forcing foreign governments to capitulate to external capital while obstructing competitors. He draws parallels between the intense competition for market dominance leading to the world wars and present dynamics characterised by monopoly capitalism and the dominance of multinational corporations that now dictate economic policies, thus transforming states into instruments of corporate interests. Furthermore, Guarascio argues that contemporary corporate imperialism promotes capital internationalisation and fosters economic dependencies, while militarisation becomes integral to these economic narratives. This relationship outlines a modern imperialism defined by collusion among the state, military, and multinational corporations, particularly between the US and China, alongside Big Tech’s growing influence and strategic military affiliations. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Penny Arcade—poet, actress, essayist, spoken word, video and theatre maker—discusses her trajectory from an immigrant family, originally from Basilicata, Italy, to her upbringing in a working-class Connecticut town to her entry into the art world of New York’s East Village. Looking back on her life as a homeless teen in the Village, her discovery by Jamie Andrews who introduced her to John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of The Ridiculous, becoming a Warhol Factory Superstar, and her departure to Amsterdam, Arcade narrates the story of how she set off for Formentera, in Spain’s Balearic Islands, where she started a school for children there, some of whom were children of drug smugglers. Recounting her return to New York City in 1981 and her split from Vaccaro, which marked the beginning of her independent work, Arcade recollects the state of the various art scenes in New York City during the Reagan era, the loss of friends to AIDS, and the censorship of the era. She vituperates the class divisions within the art world and the Manhattan Downtown art scene into which she never fit neatly, while underscoring her desire to “create theatre for people who had no theatre,” a fact which made her extremely unpopular within academia and among arts administrators because her work challenges these very elite systems. Pondering the values she espouses in her art and the fact that her audience has always been unique in maintaining a shared investment in her performances, Arcade considers how the catharsis in reaction to her art takes place well beyond the theatre hall. As an outsider to the art scene, noting how she hasn’t received institutional support and has operated without funding, legacy media coverage, or any form of academic sponsorship, Arcade criticises the state of art funding from even before the 1980s, when the Moral Majority took aim at the art world and at the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) funding structures. Calling out the academic art world as a “pyramid scheme,” Arcade observes how the academic-produced genre of “emerging arts” has become a way for the elite class to ensure that their children would have a guaranteed “entry level position” post-graduation in the arts akin to the professional tracks for finance and law, proclaiming: “Art is not a profession—it’s a vocation.” She also delves into the problems of identity politics that have permeated into arts funding and the art world and culture at large, remarking how these institutions recycle not only the same personas and narratives, ultimately limiting the “professionalised” scope of art. Responding to the recent “queering” of Marsha P Johnson, Arcade argues that Johnson was not transgender but was a drag queen, contending that the only reason why Johnson was recategorised as “trans” is because “Marsha is dead and black.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Haim Bresheeth, filmmaker and historian, discusses the growing trend in Britain and the West to curtail free speech concerning criticisms of Israel and Zionism as he details his arrest in London for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. Declaring that the freedom of expression, ostensibly guaranteed in Western democracies, no longer exists, Bresheeth observes how criticism of Gaza is being silenced through changes in the laws regarding the demonstrations and reporting on the current genocide perpetuated by Israel. He notes the irony in how today it is perfectly acceptable for Israel to commit genocide, killing tens of thousands of children, but it is not acceptable to criticise the crime of genocide as such criticism has been criminalised. Declaiming that there is “nothing Jewish” about genocide, settler colonialism, or killing children, he notes the paradox of how Israel has weaponised the Holocaust and Jewish identity to support its current genocide while besmirching anyone who disagrees with claims of “antisemitism.” Historicising Europe’s role in genocides and colonialism for centuries, Bresheeth compares this genocide to that of the Nazis and considers the role of the 300,000 Israeli citizens who have been drafted in order to carry out this genocide and the social psychosis that enables them to do so. Considering the role Islamophobia plays in the genocide of Palestinians, he discusses the historical importance of the convivencia, when Muslims and Jews co-existed in harmony in Andalusia. Bresheeth observes how Europeans would never have had their Renaissance without the rich cultural, artistic, and scientific heritage of Arabo-Muslim societies which preserved and translated Western literature and scientific texts due to the widespread burning of these texts by Western churches. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Boaventura de Sousa ​Santos, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, discusses his professional training from law, to the philosophy of law and then to sociology, covering his time studying in Cold War Berlin, then Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his eventual involvement with the World Social Forum and his efforts to densify class struggle. Bouncing off his recent article on cancel culture, de Sousa Santos analyses the “narcissism of belongingness” and how identity politics is sabotaging the left, where the connection to the political economy is lost to the language of inclusion. Analysing the weaponisation of victimhood and lies that are used to create narratives that uniquely rely upon the perverse assumption of female innocence and male guilt, de Sousa Santos observes the current social discourse and protofascistic regimes of our times, where the Inquisition of the Dark Ages has returned. Noting the rise of social fascism, which he believes may potentially slide into political fascism, de Sousa Santos argues that the proliferation of victimhood narratives creates the subject as a type of inert res extensa, in Cartesian terms, that simultaneously negates the Spinozean notion of human potentia, something he believes will ultimately kill the feminist movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In questa puntata, Olivia Guaraldo, professoressa ordinaria di filosofia politica presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Umane all’Università di Verona, discute il libro scritto in collaborazione con Adriana Cavarero, Donna si nasce (2024), che offre uno sguardo al femminismo e ai concetti di “donna” e “gender” da Simone de Beauvoir ai giorni nostri. Guaraldo storicizza concetti come “patriarcato” e “differenza sessuale”, soffermandosi su come queste valenze siano state mutuate dall’antropologia culturale, assorbite dal femminismo e poi complicate con l’introduzione dell’“identità di gender” nei paesi prevalentemente anglofoni. Analizzando il discorso dei “diritti” in Occidente a partire dalla Rivoluzione francese, Guaraldo discute di come il pensiero moderno sia stato plasmato da un orizzonte simbolico in cui i soggetti maschili erano di fatto soggetti di “liberazione”, mentre le donne venivano invariabilmente eclissate. Approfondendo il paradosso secondo cui i diritti “universali” concessi nel corso del XVIII e XIX secolo erano specificamente rivolti agli uomini, mai all’altra metà della popolazione umana, dove gli uomini erano “la misura dell’umano”, Guaraldo evidenzia anche alcune delle differenze tra il femminismo italiano e francese e il femminismo anglo-americano, dove il primo presenta un femminismo della differenza e il secondo un femminismo dell’“uguaglianza”, e dove i diritti conquistati sono invariabilmente pagati con il prezzo dell’“assimilazione” postulata all’interno di un “modello neutro” in cui i diritti della persona vengono assunti sul corpo (ad esempio, diritti riproduttivi, accesso all’aborto, ecc.) e dove le conquiste sono sempre parziali. Guaraldo sottolinea anche l’attuale paradosso socio-politico in cui il linguaggio della differenza e del gender, così come inscritto dal poststrutturalismo francese nella seconda metà del XX secolo, ha portato a un nuovo dogmatismo e a una rigidità sociale tale per cui le giovani generazioni di donne si stanno opponendo al definirsi “donne” a causa della deliberata diluizione del significato del linguaggio. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alex Howlett, an independent scholar affiliated with The Greshm Institute, discusses Universal Basic Income (UBI). Beginning with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), an offshoot of post-Keynesianism, he addresses its key principles: notably Keynes’ belief that the Great Depression was caused by a deficiency in aggregate demand, leading to sustained involuntary unemployment that the market could not self-correct. Howlett deflates Keynesian theory that assumes that economic policy aims for full employment, asking, “To what extent actually does it make sense for people to be workers?” while explaining that labour is not the most effective or efficient way to get money to people. Howlett sees UBI as solving this problem of distributing money to people while dispensing with the need to ensure that everyone has a job, dispelling the notion that only if every single person is working can an economy run at full capacity. Assessing some of the major criticisms of UBI—from fiscal feasibility, economic incentives, and social justice—he responds to the fears of inflation, worries that borrowing will lead to reckless fiscal policy and a loss of central bank independence, or that UBI would dismantle already established welfare programmes. Responding to counter-arguments to UBI, such as the claim that the economy will not have the labour pool it requires or that people won’t be working as much, Howlett turns these arguments on their head demonstrating how the demand for labour is artificially inflated as a way of getting people jobs, noting the historical overstimulation of the financial sector to encourage firms to borrow so they hire workers. Howlett contends that with UBI, the economy does not have to play into the push and pull of labour supply and demand, stating, “You hear this fear that people aren’t going to work as much at the same time that you hear this fear that there aren’t going to be enough jobs available, right? It’s like, well, wait a minute…. Isn’t it good if those things kind of go together?” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Peter Salerno, a retired licensed psychotherapist, nationally recognised expert on personality disorders and pathological relationships, and author of The Nature and Nurture of Narcissism and Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance (2024), discusses his work in the field of narcissism. Beginning with his appearance in the Hulu documentary on Ted Bundy, Salerno rejects the claims by those who believe Bundy’s serial killing was a kind of reactive aggression, criticising those who believe Bundy’s actions were somehow a result of a childhood trauma. To the contrary, Salerno notes how Bundy was able to sustain relationships, even working on a suicide helpline, such that he was able to earn the trust of others, all while Bundy kidnapped, sexually attacked, and murdered others. Salerno draws parallels between this type of psychological assessment of serial killers and the narcissist, where there has been an inclination in the field to understand the narcissist’s aggression and control as reactive instead of proactive. Covering the genetic and biological roots behind narcissism, he highlights the scientific findings and neuroimaging that reveal the physiological underpinnings and genetic propensities towards narcissistic behaviour, noting, “This isn’t just personality. This is all psychopathology and all mental health or mental disorder.” Salerno historicises research in this field, which is rapidly changing in how it frames narcissism and its victims. For instance, he elucidates the damage that narcissists inflict upon others, what he terms “traumatic cognitive dissonance,” observing how narcissists inflict damage by “insert[ing] a dilemma inside of you, and you don’t know what’s real or not.” Evidencing how narcissists often intentionally give mixed messages, causing distress in their victims, Salerno explores how this creates a constant state of ambiguity and confusion in “a normal person who simply wants to collaborate and cooperate,” while chronicling how the trauma of narcissistic abuse plays into the victim’s goodwill as victims often attempt to understand why the narcissist would terrorise another person. Salerno relates how those suffering from traumatic cognitive dissonance are caught in a double-bind as they attempt to rationalise such behaviour by believing that this was reactive abuse which actually keeps them from seeing this person as a proactive abuser as they think: “Well, you know, they must have been really traumatised. That makes sense why they would be treating me this way.” Salerno carefully examines how narcissists seek out loving and trusting victims to exploit, while self-justifying their actions, even reversing and externalising the blame. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Michael John-Hopkins, a legal scholar and a senior lecturer in law, discusses the theory of international law and its practice—from its conceptual foundation to what international law promises (sovereignty, non-use of force, equality of states, the UN Charter, rule of law) versus how it is actually applied (power politics, selective enforcement). He delineates the historical context of US foreign policy in Latin America, including the Monroe Doctrine, to show its continuity with current events, explaining why certain actors fail to observe international law and what contributes to this failure. Querying if the recent US kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores is uniquely egregious under international law, John-Hopkins delves into the broader patterns within US foreign policy and the myriad historical examples throughout US history of its regime-change and resource-grab colonialism, now set within a modern context. Vituperating the use of economic boycotts and sanctions as a means of strong-arming democracy, he notes how such acts of hybrid warfare constitute violations of international law while also signalling the erosion of the rules-based order. John-Hopkins considers Israel’s repeated violations of international law from the inception of its statehood through the present, scrutinising Israel’s illegal military operations, settlement policies, responses to terrorism, and the genocide of Palestinians all of which demonstrate the gap between norms and practice globally. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Professor Sandra Walklate, Emeritus and honorary professor at the University of Liverpool, discusses her work in victimology and violence against women, including her work in the field of femicide. Drawing upon historical paradigms where the concept of feminicide has been previously employed, Walklate notes various examples from the Americas where femicide was used as a tool in drawing attention to the complicity of the state in hiding the numbers of women’s deaths at the hands of men, only then to be disappeared by the state “with no compunction on the part of the state to pursue why those lives were disappeared.” Noting how some scholars and writers have attempted to extend the definition of the way in which we count femicide into femininicide, she argues the merits of “slow femicide” and accounting for the number of women’s lives lost because of the illnesses that follow on from living with the stress of violence—from their propensity to commit suicide to the long-term effects of experiencing strangulation as a feature of that violence to the associated diseases. Conversely, Walklate questions whether creating a separate legal category for “femicide” in addition to related concepts like “coercive control” in cases of domestic violence truly benefits victims or simply expands the power of a system that has already failed these victims. Underscoring how the law cannot always offer respite to the victims of IPA (Intimate Partner Abuse) due to the reality that the number of people prosecuted for such crimes is infinitesimally small, Walklate observes how “the power of the advocacy voice over the reality of the evidence” has also affected the ways in which policing and the judiciary react towards specific types of violence. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alex Gordon, Marxist and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), discusses the current state of affairs regarding Britain’s participation in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the normalisation of extreme violence meted out to black and brown people taking place through social media and mobile phone technology. Where Gordon states that we have a choice today between socialism or barbarism, he elaborates on the hypocrisy of European leaders who, while quick to disassociate themselves from any condemnation of the US kidnapping of Maduro and Flores, were inversely outraged about European nations’ sovereign rights and those of Denmark the moment Trump expressed his intent to take over Greenland. Highlighting the current wars—many of which are over rare earth minerals—he historicises the links between the military-industrial complex, Big Tech and capitalism, and the ways in which these powers maintain their hold on power. Gordon also touches upon political bipartisan control over electoral politics in many Western “democracies,” which he regards as in danger of being breached as political stability continued to rise with the decline of American jobs and the decline of American industry. Observing how the British government dispensed with the need for regulated labour, he covers the thorny issue of how working-class Britons have been set against migrants, since they had become a perpetual reservoir for cheaper labour while simultaneously serving to drive down wages for skilled trades. Gordon also remarks upon Re-Arm Europe’s rebranding to SAFE (Security Action for Europe) while vituperating Germany’s Merz, who has recently introduced a law, the Wehrdienstmodernisierungsgesetz (WDModG) reform, requiring all men upon reaching the age of 18 to register for military service, as Europe has ideologically prepared the masses for war. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Wolfgang Streeck, a German economic sociologist and emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, discusses the current political situation of leftist political organising and the condition of seeking “justice” in our society, an idea he puts under scrutiny. He points to the complexities and contradictions of justice, while highlighting how today political parties are abandoning their constituents, refusing to help unify differences through connecting people, a praxis Streeck maintains is “the precondition of collective action in pursuit of collective left egalitarian goals.” Discussing how capitalism has captured the social relations between people, Streeck ponders alternative media, what he terms the Samizdat of hyper-modernity—a space where humans can still maintain serious, analytical dialogues—whilst both legacy and social media attempt to obscure deeper social and political critiques. He notes the swift decline of deindustrialisation and the social welfare state of Europe, commenting upon the rise of the billionaire class in conjunction with the number of people who can barely make it to the end of each month. Streeck observes how state violence is enacted with such precision today that it not only has the technological ability to locate the supreme commander of Hamas from a population of two million people in Gaza during a genocide, but it can also proceed to kill him whilst filming his murder. Appraising Friedrich Engels’ theories on the means of destruction alongside the means of production, Streeck hypothesises that one of the motives to continue the war in Ukraine has always been to test the next generation of war machinery while paying billionaires like Elon Musk, who has the power to switch off his Starlink satellite network, to effectively keep the war technology going. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Vladimir Bortun, a critical political scientist based at St John’s College, University of Oxford, discusses his research into the politics of right-wing populist parties and the state of leftist parties in Europe today. Analysing how right-wing figures like Tommy Robinson attempt to appeal to the working classes by pretending to be on their side while presenting themselves as being on the side of the people to win their support, Bortun notes that when it comes to working-class rights, these figures are nowhere to be seen: “They are never on a picket line to support workers. They are never joining any campaign in defence of jobs and wages and workers’ rights.” Considering how the Constitutional Court of Spain squashed efforts in Barcelona to establish rent control due to such laws undermining private property rights, Bortun relates how capitalism has a “repertoire of tactics and all kinds of violent instruments” to defeat democratic institutions. For him this is the cause du jour, whereby he invokes the urgency of the need for the left to organise in workplaces and communities, for individuals to run for office, and for people to take to the streets in order to engage with and contest institutions that protect capital over human life. Observing the continued colonialism of the United States with the recent kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Bortun calls these actions “a logical consequence of the current stage of US imperialism” given that this is just one in the latest instalments of what the US has done to other countries throughout its history. In underscoring the importance of making criticisms of the US political machinery while not “overemphasising the persona of Donald Trump”, Bortun stresses that we look at Trumpism—which he views as a form of Bonapartism—while focusing on the forces driving Trumpism and not the people who voted for him. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Oliver Villar, a political scientist at Charles Sturt University in Australia, discusses his research on US imperial power and Latin American politics, covering his co-authored book, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia (Monthly Review, 2011). Villar historicises the role that the US-led counternarcotic policies, specifically Plan Colombia, have played in serving as a pretext for advancing imperialist interests and undermining popular, leftist movements in the country and how the official “wars” on drugs and terror in Colombia are a pretext for the US to maintain an imperialist relationship while ensuring its business interests, as well as the local “narco-bourgeoisie,” can monopolise the cocaine trade. Exploring how US strategy intensified violence by supporting state-linked paramilitary forces, ultimately suppressing domestic labour and peasant struggles, Villar observes that it was during the Clinton administration “where everything starts to unravel” and when the US began to propagandise and brand the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, leftist guerrillas, as the new “narco-terrorists.” He assesses how the US narrative surrounding Maduro flows in the same direction as propaganda from this earlier era, whereby anyone who “gets in America’s way is now fair game for the narco-terrorist label”, underscoring, “It has nothing to do with drugs.” Oliver relates what is happening in Latin America in conjunction with China’s rapid trajectory as a superpower and its clash with the United States over the control of resources (e.g., minerals and metals in Latin America) and its augmenting global influence. He dissects how the cocaine drug trade and the US-China rivalry in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe form part of a larger picture of US global hegemony while offering a critical history of US imperialism, its hegemonic decline, and the so-called “rising threat” of China to explain recent events. Responding to events in Venezuela, Greenland, and the “great power competition” that is unfolding between the US, China, and Russia, Villar elaborates on research from his most recent book, The Political Economy of Dissent (Routledge, 2026), in critically analysing 21st-century imperialism—that is, capitalism in its most aggressive and developed form, which is the driving force behind an intensifying rivalry between the US and China. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Saskia Garner, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the UK’s leading personal safety and stalking charity, covers the charity’s history and work in research and policy advocacy across stalking, harassment, online harms, bystander intervention and workplace safety. Recounting the challenges faced in getting stalking recognised in law after the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (PHA) failed to capture the fixation and obsession towards an individual, she describes the efforts to push for the legal recognition of stalking, which was finally realised through the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 that made stalking a specific criminal offence and by adding new sections (2A and 4A) to the PHA. Chronicling her charity’s work in gathering evidence that demonstrates the lack of identification and recognition of a range of stalking behaviours which cause a range of damage in the victims, Garner notes how sometimes police officers will downplay the risk if the stalking does not manifest itself with direct threats or harm. She describes the Trust’s super-complaint, made in collaboration with the Stalking Consortium in 2022, which led to an official investigation into the super-complaint which found “clear evidence” of systemic failures in the police response to stalking in England and Wales, resulting in a total of 29 recommendations which the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has endeavoured to ensure will be implemented. Covering the newer frontiers of stalking through technological forms of electronic surveillance and control—deep fakes, social media, smart home devices, and tracking software—Garner discusses how today stalkers can readily find a way into an individual’s digital and physical life in their endeavour to obsessively surveil, track, and obsess over their victims. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe