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Right Wing Watch đź‘€Written by Kyle Mantyla.


One day after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, MAGA cultist and self-proclaimed "prophet" Hank Kunneman used his Sunday service to announce that God was thrilled by the Trump administration's actions.

Kunneman, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has steadfastly refused to admit that his multiple prophecies that Trump would win the 2020 election were wrong, took to the stage on Sunday to deliver what he claimed was a message from God praising Trump for seizing control of Venezuela's oil.

"They say you have seized Venezuela for the oil," Kunneman proclaimed, purporting to speak on behalf of God. "Yes, this is true."

"The enemy has sought and was seeking to bring war and to bring conflict through Venezuela and to control the oil of the Earth," Kunneman thundered. 

But the spiritual oil and the natural oil does not belong to the forces of darkness or to those who thought that they could bring a One World Order. This is my reset and the oil of the natural and the oil of the spirit is mine, says the Lord.

 

Continue @ Right Wing Watch.

MAGA Cultist Hank Kunneman Claims God Praised Capture Of Nicolás Maduro

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Eight Hundred And Forty Seven

 

Pastords @ 26

 

A Morning Thought @ 3024

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ Amongst those who died in 2025 and obituarised on TPQ was my sister, Lori. 

Alfie Gallagher
Yet the death that floored me, the one that was most emotionally upsetting, the most difficult to come to terms with was that of my closest of friends, Alfie Gallagher.

Almost a year on I am still drawn like a moth to the flame by intensely sad memories of Alfie's passing. It remains raw, the mental sutures keeping the wound in place fragile. In time the weal will lose its angry red hue and fade, leaving only a scar that will blend in with the rest of the psyche. I guess what people put into our lives is measured by the depth of the loss we feel when they depart. A vacuum has been created which will take a long time to fill.

Alfie and myself go back about fifteen years. He began commenting on TPQ under a pen name, always courteously. After a while he acquired the confidence to reveal his identity and gradually began to open up about the trauma in his life. Alfie had suffered depression from a young age. He was diagnosed as having a number of psychiatric illnesses.

When he explained to me that he would be going into St Patrick's in Dublin I told him I was in the city many times each week and would drop in on him. It was an act that would develop into a habit. Every year or almost, Alfie would be readmitted or would have an appointment with his medical team. Whether an outpatient or on the wards, I would head off to see him. If he was an inpatient our forays into O'Connell Street or one of the near-by coffee shops would see our tipple of choice, whiskey or beer, replaced by flat white for him, a cappuccino for me. 

Alfie introduced me to the wide range of teas he would indulge in, bringing me into one of the speciality shops he visited in Dublin to study the blends. The last time he was in hospital was towards the end of 2024. On this occasion at a branch of St Patrick's out at Lucan. Each week would see me head out. The first time we sat and drank coffee on site as he did not have a pass to be off the hospital grounds. After that it was the local pub in Lucan where we would sip Guinness zero zero and solve the problems of the world. I never looked on visiting Alfie as a chore, something that had to be dutifully done. I loved visiting him. It was sheer joy. Our exchanges in the hospital were often about matters like domestic politics, the Palestinian question, Trump, Boston College, Intelligent Design inter alia. 

Many years ago he came and stayed with us in Drogheda. Brilliant at maths he soon had the children mastering the homework challenges which frustrated me. More often I would jump on the train at Connolly and make the three hour plus journey up Ballymote in Sligo where Alfie lived on the family farm. I came to know his nearest and dearest, Frank, Kate, Paddy, Jenny, Katie, Seany and Rosie. Before he went on the dry, we would sip whiskey into the small hours, discussing the problems of the world. Alfie had his own blog, Left From The West. His knowledge of international and current affairs was huge and he had an insatiable appetite first for learning, and then communicating what he learned to those around him. There was little that Alfie did not have insight into. In the farmhouse kitchen his mother Kate would ask him to sing towards the evening's end. He had a great voice that amazed me.


Over the decade and a half that was our friendship we did so many things together that it would take a book to detail them all. There is so much to recall and as much that has been forgotten. Going to soccer matches in Sligo to watch the Drogs play the Rovers, eating out in Pizza restaurants, shopping in either Dublin or Sligo, drinking in the pubs of both, visiting the grave of William Butler Yeats, the intense exchanges . . . Alfie could be intense to the point of fixation. If a problem could not be solved it didn't stop him from trying to find the solution. So much comes flooding back. 

One of my enduring memories of Alfie was our talks on the phone. I would leave the house with the dog and immediately ring him. Along the Boyne we debated whatever was under the sun, even beyond. Two hours later as I approached the front door on my return journey I would tell him it was time to hang up. Alfie was focused, fastidious, fascinating - never boring. That Boyne river walk is one that I have never made since.

Alfie was a kindred spirit, although there was no detectable spiritual side to him. Like myself he was a physicalist, believing that what the laws of physics had not already explained at some point they might. Nothing else would. Ask Alfie about science and he would come up with the answers or well informed opinions. Biology, chemistry, physics, Alfie was super sharp.

He had often spoken to me about how his life would end, by his own hand. Equipped with an inbuilt bullshit detector there was no point in trying to bluff Alfie. Besides, he deserved better. I was philosophical and rational in our exchanges about death. His illness left him feeling life was a curse rather than a gift. His main concern was that his life did not end prior to the lives of his parents. He felt his siblings would cope but not his mother and father. I had asked him if the moment arrived when he made the decision to leave us that he contact me first. On the Thursday before he died I took a call from him as I was rushing to catch a train to Drumcondra for coffee with my daughter. He told me he had a problem. I explained that I was about to hop on a DART and would catch him at some point over the weekend. Long conversations with Alfie tended to help him overcome whatever difficulties he experienced. I thought no more of it, saw no reason to be concerned. Whatever was worrying him could be addressed on the weekend walk and talk. It was a moment that never came to pass. Alfie passed before the call was made.

On Sunday morning I took the most difficult call from his mother informing me that Alfie had taken his own life. She was heartbroken, I was shocked to the core of my being. My fatalism did little to protect me. The enormity and finality of his decision was so suffocating I flailed around in search of understanding. But deep inside I did understand. This gentle soul had been through enough. That he ended his life before his parents had passed, coupled with the fact that he had not rang to inform me of his decision, led me to feel that the pressure became unbearable and he opened the only pressure release valve he could reach. 


For a while I felt he might not have reached out to me as he did not want talked down from the ledge. Now I am no longer so sure, feeling more that the burden of life could no longer be sustained. There was no ledge to talk him down from. The leap had been made.

The journey to Ballymote for his funeral was subdued. Accompanied by my son and daughter, small talk came in small portions. Gazing upon him as he lay in the coffin, the word 'why' crossed my mind. But it was redundant. I knew why.

The following day we made our way to the local cemetery. As they laid Alfie into the ground I held my gaze firmly on his coffin until it sank out of view. Alfie had gone, forever, and with it a part of me.

Yet he left his mark. The joy, love, knowledge, friendship that he transfused into the lives of so many others is where Alfie continues to reside. No longer alive, there are many who feel much more alive because of him.

Eternal Dreamless Sleep, Alfie.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Alfie Gallagher

Ciaran McClean ✍ As events unfold in Venezuela with America appropriating it's natural resources to bring the people there prosperity after firstly seeing to USA oil companies, the Omagh based international mining company, Dalradian, must look on with envy as they enter their seventeenth year of financial failure in Northern Ireland.

Dalradian's investors would take the Sperrins Venezuela-style in a heartbeat had they the wherewithal to do so. Unfortunately for them Northern Ireland isn't Venezuela.
 
Going nowhere fast, Dalradian fall between two stools in their quest to enrich themselves at the expense of this little place. The outdated colonial playbook on how to buy your way into a country has proven worthless in the face of well organised local opposition who saw the miners' play from day one.

Secondly, the attempt to industrialise the Sperrins can't meet minimum environmental standards in law. With community activists understanding the planning system better than slothful politicians and inept civil servants, every move to facilitate Dalradian is counter checked. Unlike the last major scandal in Northern Ireland, there are no RHI type off-ramp options to allow the mining proposal to gain traction.

The scales of justice also refuse to tip in Dalradian's favour as protection of the common good, particularly environmental cases, increasingly prevail via the courts. Meanwhile, citizens see the Northern Ireland Executive support for (FDI) Foreign Direct Investment, at any cost, exposed as an exercise which trades their health and wellbeing to financially benefit privately operated businesses. They will not countenance that type of deal for the Sperrins.

In 2026 goldmining licences are expiring, environmental surveys outdated, legal obligations unfulfilled, even Dalradians camp in the Sperrins must be dismantled and returned to a green field site in the next short while. 

All of the above points to a harsh reality for anyone foolish enough to buy into the fairy tale about digging up untold riches in the Sperrins. The question now is not, if the goldminers leave Northern Ireland, but when? Having relocated from South America to Northern Ireland some years ago believing political circumstances here looked favourable to assist their scheme, Dalradian would be well advised to avoid returning to that region. Regardless of who wears them, American jackboots will be resisted in Venezuela, Northern Ireland or anywhere else they try and impose themselves.

⏩Ciaran McClean campaigns against the rape of the Sperrins.

Resisting Gold Diggers In Sperrins

A Digest of News ✊ from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 15-December-2025.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Fighting for least unjust peace.
⬤ Ukraine’s fortress belt.
⬤ Persecution of Crimean Tatars.
⬤ Trade sanctions.
⬤ Seizure of Ukrainian assets.
⬤ Torture of POWs.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Chillingly lawless armed raid on Crimean Tatar lawyers defending victims of Russian repression (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 12th)

Poland detains Russian archaeologist wanted in Ukraine for illegal excavations in occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 12th)

The Prosecutor’s Office of Crimea has summed up five years of work: hundreds of indictments and court verdicts (Zmina, December 12th)

A Mother in Captivity: Snizhana Kozlova (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 11th)

Human Rights Violations in Occupied Crimea Discussed in Sweden (Crimea Platform, December 11th)

Botox, drones, 250-kilo bombs: eyewitness in the Donbass (El Mundo America, December 10th)

Human Rights: A Perfect Storm (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 10th)

Russia sentences 61-year-old Ukrainian to 12. 5 years for donation to Ukraine’s defenders (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 10th)

Crimean Occupation “Court” Sentences Mother of Two, Niyara Ersmambetova, to 15 Years in Prison (Crimea Platform, December 9th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, December 9th)

Abducted Crimean Tatar mother of two sentenced to 15 years on Russia's cynical ‘treason’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 9th)

Crimean Tatar political prisoner Tofik Abdulgaziev diagnosed with a brain tumour (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 8th)

Russian legislators formalize mass plunder of Ukrainians’ homes on occupied territory (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 8th)

Ceasefire: life in the temporarily occupied territories (Solidarity Collectives, 3 December)

News from Ukraine

Cedos experts presented a report on housing rental in Ukraine (Cedos, December 10th)

The Bloodiest Attack in Western Ukraine (Tribunal for Putin, December 9th)

‘I have a question for the Russian authorities: why did you kill our children?’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, December 9th)

Waves of Terror (Tribunal for Putin, December 8th)

Culture as Security: Ukrainian Experts Brief International Partners on Cultural Challenges and Reforms During the War (Tribunal for Putin, December 8th)

News from the front and ‘peace’ talks

Kremlin officials are reportedly demanding that Ukraine cede to Russia strategically vital unoccupied territory in Donetsk Oblast (Hanna Perekhoda, Facebook, December 11th)

The Importance of Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk (Institute for the Study of War, August 12th)

War-related news from Russia

Hackers paralysed Russia’s military draft database (Meduza, 12 December)

Feminist search for alternatives (Posle.Media, 10 December)

Analysis and comment

Interview with US socialist politician Tanya Vyhovsky: Why socialists must support Ukraine (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, December 13th)

Free Snizhana. Ukrainian civilian hostages! (Tribunal for Putin, December 11th)

Fighting for the Least Unjust Peace (Oleksandr Kyselov, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, December 10th)

The Forgotten Detainees of the Russian Aggression in Ukraine (Tribunal for Putin, December 10th)

The first Chechen of German nationalism (iStories, 9 December)

Stop the War’s Ukraine Betrayal: When ‘Anti-Imperialism’ Becomes Apologetics for Empire (Ecosocialist, December 8th)

General Valerii Zaluzhnyi: Ukraine’s path to victory (New Statesman, November 19th)

Research of human rights abuses

Russia’s Systematic Torture of Ukrainian POWs (Human Rights Watch, December 11th)

Ukrainian human rights defenders called for strengthening support for the International Criminal Court amid political pressure (Zmina, December 11th)

Consequences of the Russian occupation for children and the civilian population: ZMINA co-organised an event at the UN Headquarters (Zmina, December 4th)

International solidarity

Trade sanctions (Bank of Finland Institute of Emerging Economies, December 11th)

Standing firm for Ukraine: USC AGM unites against authoritarianism and fascism (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, December 7th)

Upcoming events

Various dates and places: make those frozen assets available now (European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine, December)

Wednesday 17 December: London protests: Make Russia Pay, Send the Assets to Ukraine. 5.30pm: Europe House (EU building), 32 Smith Square, SW1P 3EU. 6.30pm: Opposite Parliament, at statue of George V, Abingdon Street, SW1P 3JY


đź”´This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.

We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.


We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

The bulletin is also stored on line here.

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News From Ukraine đź’Ł Bulletin 175

Anthony McIntyre  ☠ I woke up this morning to the news that the US has attacked Venezuela. 

This batch of Trump's bombs is now raining down on Caracas rather than making its way to Tel Aviv for use on the civilian population and infrastructure in Gaza.

Trump has also threatened to attack Iran. He menaces that his forces are locked and loaded, ready to be unleashed if the theocratic Iranian regime continues to kill protestors. If the same protestors were on the streets in opposition to genocide in Gaza, Trump would not lift a finger to prevent any of them being shot. His regime and that of Genocide Joe before him provided the Israeli military with deadly hardware knowing that it was to be used in the mass murder of civilians with a particular focus on children, each Trump bomb conveying a message to Gazans about their future - obliteration. Why would he give one flying fornication about the civilian population of Iran?

There is also a message being transmitted to the international community: that international law counts for nothing; a United Nations exists only in name, the very concept reviled by those who do not wish to be united with fellow nation states but to dominate them. There is no sense of a spirit of cooperation aimed at maximising the best outcome possible for humanity. Hearts and minds are not valued. Tooth and claw are all that matters in the barefaced savagery that is unleashed in pursuit of untrammelled power in the areas the dominating nation states regard as their spheres of influence. The US, Russia and Israel can grab whatever they want, fortified by the deeply unethical assertion that might is right.

Against the backdrop of last night's bombs today's bitter chill will not prevent Drogheda Stands With Palestine gathering for the first vigil of 2026. When we first assembled in West Street, few felt we would still be in position for a fourth calendar year. We continue to dissent when it sames easier to despair. 

Over forty years ago a line from a poem penned by a South African political prisoner resonated in my mind where it has stayed. I think it was called Handcuffs. The words have hope comrade, despair is for the defeated, motivated me in the worst of times. Yet the world we live in erodes that hope, a world where terror not talking gets to decide who is boss. People having the freedom to talk to each other is much like the United Nations - a formality, a fantasy, a fallacy - when we lack the ability to hear each other because the sound is drowned out by the constant blasts of bombs.

While we often overcome despair through inspiration from Palestinians who battle on in the face of great diversity, there are others too, who are not Palestinian and whose actions help us avoid being dragged down into the quicksand of inert hopelessness. Yael Levkovitz, a math teacher at a Tel Aviv elementary school, has not balked at swimming against the tide and refuses to defer to the logic that it is much easier to be wrong than it is to be ostracised. 
 
Last month she was summoned to a meeting in her school where she faced disciplinary action. Her gross misconduct was that she had made “remarks against the government.”, an action prohibited by Israeli law:

Clause 5.1 in the memo of the director general of the Education Ministry 5769 [2008-2009] 8A, which prohibits levelling “insulting criticism” at the government.

This is the type of law which draws commentary that 'Israel is increasingly resembling a grotesque dictatorship.' It is becoming more like the the Nazi state whose actions served to bring Israel into being.

According to Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières:

The facts are not in dispute. Levkovitz participated in the demonstrations on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv against the war in Gaza and for the return of the hostages, she volunteers to protect Palestinian communities against settler violence and she expresses her political opinions on Facebook. On one occasion, she voiced outrage at the killing of hundreds of Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. During the summer months this year, when hundreds of Gazan civilians died of starvation because of the Israeli siege of the enclave, she joined demonstrators who held up photos of hungry Gazan children or of others who had been killed in attacks by the Israel Defense Forces.

The stand being taken by Yael Levkovitz is a clear acknowledgement of the dangers lurking in  the observation of Alexis de Tocqueville "A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." 

In a world of contempt the fightback must be armed with compassion. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Formality-Fantasy-Fallacy

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Eight Hundred And Forty Six

 

A Morning Thought @ 3023

Anthony McIntyre  ⚑ There are not many former IRA volunteers who served more time in prison than Ronnie McCartney.

Ronnie McCartney
Image @ Belfast Media

When he was released in 1995, he was described as the longest-serving republican prisoner. The bulk of it was spent in English prisons of which he saw quite a few as a result of ghosting - a practice which saw prisoners, without any notice, ghosted out of the prison they were in to another, maybe hundreds of miles across the country. A frequent habit of prison authorities was to move prisoners hours before their family visit. The family would then arrive at the prison gates having made the long trip from Ireland, at no small expense, often involving overnight stays.

Last week a former blanketman was reflecting with me on the passing of Ronnie and said that his own nose was out of joint that the blanketmen were always first served when it came to handing out accolades for prison protest. In his view, if anybody merited top table status it was those republicans in English jails. Theirs was truly a horrendous experience. Belfast Media detailed something of Ronnie's experience:

He spent a total of five years in solitary confinement for protesting the severe prison conditions imposed on republican prisoners and was 'ghosted' repeatedly — moved without notice — from jail to jail. He attempted to escape from Wormwood Scrubs in 1977 but was apprehended in the prison yard. He took a leadership role in a series of prison protests, including the Gartree riot of 1978 and the subsequent rooftop protest there. He took part in a further rooftop protest in Wormwood Scrubs in 1980.

Less than two weeks after I had arrived in Magilligan as a young IRA prisoner twenty one year old Ronnie was involved in a shootout with British police in Southampton. 'In spite of one of the biggest dragnets ever mounted by the Hampshire Constabulary' he evaded capture and made his may back to Ireland. But his time there would be short lived. Captured the following year in Tyrone he entered the British penal system and stayed there for almost as long as he had spent outside prison. 

By 1991 Ronnie was back in Ireland, not as a free man but a prisoner in Maghaberry by which time he had served around seventeen years of his life sentence. Most of us in the Life Sentence Review Unit were awaiting our final release. But not Ronnie who continued to be held within the general prison population. The former UDA leader John White said to me in 1992 while on the work out programme that Ronnie deserved a break but the authorities seemed intent on denying him one. I didn't know Ronnie at the time but White seemed to have a lot of respect for him, maybe as a result of both having a shared interest in criminology, which they studied.

It was only after we had both been released from prison that I met Ronnie through my late friend Tony TC Catney. We would often talk politics. He was open minded and not averse to different ideas. I didn't find him greatly at odds with Sinn Fein's direction of travel but unlike many in the party he did not respond with a snarl at the unapproved thought. Ronnie viewed the world through a prism of the left and would often join others from that perspective in the John Hewitt bar in Belfast's Donegal Street where ideas flowed as freely as the beer. Ronnie had a penchant for both so he was good company to be in. 

Something else I was pleased to find he shared with me, alongside a love of beer, was a passion for Liverpool FC. The one area which saw our paths diverge was religion. For some reason Ronnie held onto his faith. Perhaps the years spent in solitary confinement in England left him with no one to talk to or share his thoughts with but his god. 

Ideationally promiscuous, he would turn up at events that Sinn Fein members preferred to avoid. On one occasion he attended an Expac AGM in Monaghan. An ex-prisoners body set up to help any former prisoner seeking advice or direction, it never took the party whip and for that reason while not quite shunned by Sinn Fein, there was no welcome mat laid out for it. Ronnie could fit in, aided perhaps by a level of education that allowed him the confidence to be comfortable with a different idea. This was evident when twenty years ago BBC Spotlight broadcast The Provo and the Policeman in which Ronnie came face to face with the cop he shot in Southampton. The two men talked, shook hands and later went to a restaurant for a meal.

The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, probably no stranger to Ronnie, stressed the importance of a life lived authentically. Whatever faults and foibles might have interloped along the way, when this old dog for the hard road was breathing the last breath of his seventy two years he might have cast his mind back to the days of prison protest in England and thought, with much justification . . . authenticity.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Ronnie McCartney

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Written by 
Adam Novak

The exchange between philosopher Frédéric Lordon and La France Insoumise raises questions central to ecosocialist strategy internationally: whether electoral left formations can genuinely challenge capitalism, and what distinguishes rhetorical anticapitalism from the real thing.

In October 2025, the French philosopher and economist FrĂ©dĂ©ric Lordon published a provocative essay asking whether La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unbowed) — France’s main radical left formation — deserves to call itself anticapitalist. His answer: not yet, and perhaps not seriously. 

Founded by Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon in 2016, the movement took 22% in the first round of the 2022 presidential election — narrowly missing the runoff against Marine Le Pen. It anchors the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP, New Popular Front), the left coalition that unexpectedly won the most seats in the 2024 legislative elections. Its programme, L’Avenir en commun (The Future in Common), combines ecosocialism, a Sixth Republic constitution, retirement at 60, and exit from EU fiscal constraints. LFI represents the most significant left-of-social-democracy formation in Western Europe with a realistic prospect of governmental power. 

Lordon’s essay sparked substantial debate. Antoine Salles-Papou, director of LFI’s Institut La BoĂ©tie training school, published a lengthy rebuttal in Contretemps. 

Continue @ ESSF.

Is France Unbowed Anticapitalist? FrĂ©dĂ©ric Lordon’s Critique Of La France Insoumise

Christopher Owens đź”– with his thoughts on a novel first published in France. 

And all of a sudden, it was steamy. And it was dark. And everyone was off their nut – it was the perfect place for acid house. It really was the uniqueness of the design and the grandeur of the ‘cathedral-like’ spaces...It really lent itself to the music and really came into its moment with the hordes...that wanted to celebrate house music at that time...It seemed to say, ‘whoever you are, whatever you wear, wherever you’re from – you’re welcome here.’

This quote from Peter Hook (as well as a similar one from Ken Hollings that to go into a club and dance was a political act in itself) demonstrates the potent myth of the dancefloor: a place where everyone takes to the floor and, depending on who you talk to:

  • Transcend your ordinary surroundings through the power of music.
  • Create a euphoria so potent that it could solve world problems in that moment.
  • Indulge in a communal atmosphere where everyone is at one.

Individualistic and collectivistic. Quite the combination.

However, there is a dark side to it: shit drugs, the comedowns and the appalling music.

But for some, it’s a way of life. Just like the protagonist of this novel.

First published in France in 2022 under the title L'homme qui danse (which roughly translates as The Man Who Dances), a recent translation into English has seen it being heaped with praise.

Ostensibly about a man named Arthur, it is also a look at the rise and fall of club culture from the 2000’s onwards as the post September 11th hedonism gives way to social media, stopping just before Covid.

Arthur is a simple, yet complex character. He cannot express his isolation in any meaningful or grandiose way, so he simply repeats the same formula (working out, clubbing, sleeping) and never expresses a great desire to do anything else with his life. Yet it is obvious that what was one a lifeline to him has become something that has entrapped him to the extent where he wants to move on but doesn’t know how to.

Crippled by his insecurities and his lack of ambition, he carries on clubbing regardless. He also doesn’t appear to have any knowledge of the outside world (there are no mentions of the Charlie Hebdo/Bataclan murders, the Gilets Jaunes protests, the ban on face coverings and the Lyon synagogue attack) and there are hints that his sexuality is, to quote Bishop Hope, something of a grey area.

With such thin characteristics, it is up to the fast-paced tale which starts in 1990 and ends in 2019 to carry the book. And what it highlights is not just how transient Arthur’s life is but also how we can end up in a routine that, while initially making sense, sees us reach a certain age with little to show for it.

Stylistically, the writing is bare bones. On one hand, this really fits with the theme expressed above but it also makes for a dry and monotonous read at times. It’s possible that something has been lost in the translation from French to English but ones gets the feeling this should be much more philosophical than it is.

Solid, if unspectacular.

Victor Jestin,‎ Sam Taylor (translator) Dancefloor, Scribner ISBN-13: 978-1398531697

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Dancefloor

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