Social Items

TPQ
Guardian 📺 Written by Lucy Mangan. 

This delicate documentary about an Anglican’s child abuse is deeply harrowing.

It’s humbling to witness the eloquence and dignity of these survivors as they talk about their experiences with John Smyth – possibly the most prolific serial abuser ever associated with the Church of England

John Smyth was a sadistic predator who used to groom the boys in his care then beat them with such viciousness that he would have to provide adult nappies for them to wear afterwards lest they leave blood on the chairs in his home when he brought them back from his shed. He upgraded the shed at one point, to make it soundproof. 

One of the men who suffered at Smyth’s hands as a boy remembers bleeding for weeks after. Another says: “I honestly thought I was going to die.” Another says that despite the pain the worst part was afterwards, when Smyth would cover the boy’s bloodied body with his and nuzzle his sweaty face into the boy’s neck and give him butterfly kisses. In his nightmares it is “that draping” he relives.

Smyth, who died in 2018, was also a husband, a father of three children, a respected barrister, a prominent Christian evangelist, a moral campaigner . . .

Continue @ Guardian.

See No Evil

Right Wing Watch 👀 Written by Kyle Mantyla,



On Tuesday's episode of the American Family Association's "At The Core" program, Trump-loving Christian nationalist pseudo-historian and self-proclaimed "Constitution Coach" Rick Green urged President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the anti-ICE protests occurring in Minneapolis.

Green insisted that what is happening in Minnesota is "an actual insurrection," unlike when hordes of MAGA activists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's electoral loss, which Green declared was nothing more than American citizens simply "asking government to do its job."

"[There's a] small little thing going on in a little town there in Minnesota," Green said. "Like, an actual insurrection. We've thrown that word around a lot since 2021—Jan. 6th—and wrongly used for a long time."

Now, you're actually trying to prevent law enforcement and the nation from enforcing its laws and fulfilling its duty, whereas on Jan. 6, people were asking government to do its job, to actually do what it's called upon to do under the Constitution and under our law.

Rick Green Claims Jan. 6 'Was The Opposite Of An Insurrection'

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

 


Pastords @ 28

 

A Morning Thought @ 3038

Pádraig Drummond  ✊There’s a stink coming off the American empire, the kind you’d recognise from a damp bedsit after a long weekend of bad decisions and cheap whiskey. 

Only this isn’t a hangover, it’s policy. The Trump administration, under the twitchy command of The Faux-Führer, has turned the machinery of the state into a roaming protection racket, and ICE are the lads sent out to collect.

What’s happening in Minnesota isn’t some administrative hiccup or “border enforcement gone wrong.” It’s occupation. Plain and simple. Masked men lifting people off the streets, battering workers at their jobs, dumping human beings like rubbish bags miles from home. That’s not law enforcement, that’s counter-insurgency, the same dirty playbook the Yanks perfected from Da Nang to Baghdad and now feel bold enough to run at home.

They murdered Renee Nicole Good and then did what empires always do: they shot her twice, once with bullets and again with lies. Before her body was cold, the Faux-Führer and his mouthpieces were already smearing her as a threat, because empire cannot admit innocence among the dead. If the state kills you, you must be guilty. That’s the rule. Truth gets bundled into the van with the victim.

ICE, bloated with cash and staffed up like a pub brawl with a federal budget, has been reshaped into a loyalist militia, faces covered, badges hidden, fists swinging. Anyone from a Republican estate in the occupied six counties knows this look. We’ve seen it before: uniforms without accountability, authority without consent, violence without consequence. Call it homeland security if it helps you sleep. We call it what it is, state terror.

And still, the most dangerous thing facing them isn’t a brick or a slogan, it’s refusal. That’s why the call for a general strike in Minnesota matters. When workers stay home, when buses don’t run, and tills don’t ring, the empire starts to sweat. Labour withheld is the one weapon they can’t drone-strike or spin away. Profits dry up, and suddenly the men in suits start talking about “stability” and “dialogue.” Funny how that works.

But make no mistake, this brutality on America's home soil is stitched directly to slaughter abroad. The same hands funding raids in Minnesota are signing cheques for mass graves in Gaza. Just days ago, the Faux-Führer quietly pushed through another multi-billion-dollar weapons package for Bibi the Butcher, ensuring that Israeli jets, bombs, and missiles keep raining down on a trapped population already starved, bombed, and displaced beyond recognition.

This isn’t aid, it’s a supply line to genocide. Billions funnelled through “foreign military financing,” delivered at speed, no questions asked, while Palestinians are punished for daring to exist politically. Assistance to Palestinian communities is choked off unless they meet impossible loyalty tests, keep quiet about torture, and promise never to seek justice at international courts. Even the act of asking the world to recognise Palestine as a state is treated as a crime worthy of collective punishment.

The hypocrisy would be funny if it weren’t soaked in blood. Israel receives guaranteed military grants year after year, locked into long-term deals that stretch decades into the future, while Gaza is flattened and the West Bank is strangled inch by inch. Tens of billions have already been spent arming Israel since October 2023 alone, missile systems, ammunition, replacement stockpiles, expanded arms production, enough firepower to erase a people several times over. And more deals are queued up behind it, like orders at a weapons drive-through.

This is how empire works. The colonised are placed under a microscope, demanded to prove their humanity, while the occupying power is handed bombs and legal cover. Resistance is labelled terrorism. Survival is labelled extremism. And any attempt to seek justice outside Washington’s approval is crushed with financial blackmail.

Irish people should recognise this script instantly. Criminalise resistance. Starve the population. Arm the occupier. Call it peace. We lived it, and Palestine is living it now.

The same empire that bankrolls genocide in Gaza and bombs Venezuela for its oil is the one kidnapping workers in Minnesota. There is no contradiction here, only consistency. Imperial violence abroad always comes home eventually. You can’t normalise mass killing overseas and expect civil liberties to survive in your own streets.

So when workers strike in Minnesota, when students walk out, when communities refuse to cooperate with ICE, they’re not just fighting for migrants or civil rights; they’re striking a blow against the entire imperial system. The same system that funds apartheid, sanctions starving nations, and treats the world like a balance sheet soaked in blood.

The question isn’t whether a new world is coming. It is. The only question is who builds it. The Faux-Führer and his butchered alliances want a world ruled by force, fear, and permanent war. We want one built by solidarity, refusal, and memory.

Empires look eternal right up until the moment they crack. And history has shown, time and again, that organised working people can bring even the biggest, loudest, most violent machines to a halt.

They’re terrified of that. They should be.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

January 23 🪶 Day of Truth and Freedom

Raw Story ★ Written by Ewan Gleadow. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

The UK government has hit back at a US administration official's threat over a probe into Elon Musk and X.

Online safety watchdog OFCOM is investigating the social media app for the sharing of non-consensual sex images which are artificially generated through the Grok tool, Sky News reported. Concerns over the deepfakes spread on the platform have since been aired in the UK's House of Commons, the elected house of representatives.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said:

I have been informed this morning that X is acting to ensure full compliance with UK law. If so, that is welcome, but we're not going to back down, and they must act . . .  We will take the necessary measures. We will strengthen existing laws and prepare for legislation if it needs to go further, and Ofcom will continue its independent investigation.

Donald Trump's administration representative, Sarah B. Rogers, weighed in on the investigation into X yesterday (January 13).

Rogers, an under secretary of state for public diplomacy, says the department will wait for the verdict of OFCOM on Musk's platform before it responds.

Continue @ Raw Story.

'We're Not Going To Back Down' 🪶 UK Hits Back At Trump Admin Over Elon Musk Probe

Róisín McAleer ☭ There is a growing tendency within liberal and pseudo-radical spaces to frame men, particularly working-class and politically militant men, as a problem to be managed rather than equal comrades in struggle. 

This tendency does not challenge patriarchy as a material system rooted in class and imperialism. Instead, it substitutes moral policing, behavioural surveillance, and individual shaming for revolutionary analysis and collective liberation.

Men are increasingly disciplined not for what they say, but for how they speak. A loud voice is labelled “aggression.” Anger at genocide, or injustice more broadly, is rebranded as “toxicity.” Passion in political struggle is pathologised as domination. When accused of being too gruff, I am often reminded of Yeats' line in the poem 'September 1913': "the best lack all conviction, the worst are full passionate intensity" where the poet observed the vilification of passion and dedication, and the elevation of the petty-bourgeois who "fumbled in the greasy till" and who were "born to pray and save".

The material conditions producing anger around oppression, such as precarity, dispossession, war, unemployment, or alienation are too often left untouched by those who pose as radical feminists. This is what liberal social control looks like.

This trend represents a shift away from structural analysis toward idealism. Patriarchy is treated as a set of personal traits embodied by men rather than a historical system tied to class rule and imperial power. Men are asked to police their tone, posture, and emotions, while capital, the state, and imperial violence go unchallenged. The result is a politics of manners instead of a politics of power.

This anti-men moralism disproportionately targets working-class men, racialised men, and men engaged in militant, anti-imperialist politics. The banker, the general, and the corporate executive are rarely told to “lower their voice.” But the trade unionist, the protester, the revolutionary speaker is. What is being disciplined is not masculinity in the abstract, but resistance.

Ironically, this reproduces the very gender essentialism it claims to oppose. Men are cast as inherently dangerous, emotionally suspect, and in need of constant correction. Women are positioned as moral arbiters and victims in waiting. This binary does not liberate anyone. It reinforces reactionary ideas about gender while fragmenting the working class along moral and identity lines.

I have been in many situations where I have experienced and witnessed an unspoken rule take hold the moment conflict emerges. If a woman frames herself as feeling uncomfortable, offended, or harmed, other women are expected to line up behind her, regardless of the political substance involved. In fact, one such incident at a protest at the British Embassy illustrates the point more clearly.

In December 2025, I chaired a demo organised by the Peadar O'Donnell Socialist Republican Forum in support of the five demands of several hunger strikers, who were, at the time, protesting British state collusion with the Zionist entity and its active participation in genocide. As the demo closed, calls for a protest encampment at the British Embassy were made by a woman. This seemed like a good time to remind the audience whom she was addressing—that an encampment was already in existence for over 100 days, five minutes down the road at UCD: the Break the Academic Chains of Zionism Encampment.

As I was encouraging the crowd to support, or just visit the camp over the Christmas holidays, another woman, unknown to me, who had taken to the railings and had been chanting repeatedly, interrupted me and shouted, "Do not support the racist camp at UCD." Naturally, I was not expecting such an attack, which was clearly designed to disrupt and divide.

When my comrade and I questioned her, in holding her serious accusations of racism to account, we were abruptly shut down—not with counterarguments, but with appeals to gendered harm. The woman who interrupted me, who threw the "racist" card at me and the encampment, was surrounded, protected, and minded, as if she were the victim.

To challenge this most serious and harmful accusation was treated as cruelty. When I asked for evidence or political clarity, I was recast as just siding with my comrade...who is a man, surprise, surprise.

What troubled me most was how quickly class analysis vanished in that moment when one woman, who cast serious aspersions on an on-going 24/7 hour encampment, the like of which has never happened before in Ireland, suddenly became the victim.

Our comrade’s material role at UCD Break the Academic Chains of Zionism, their principled, dedicated, political conduct, and their alignment with working-class interests all became secondary. I was expected to suspend my criticism of the provocateur, as an anti-imperialist, and speak only as a woman, and to automatically take the side of a woman claiming to be victim, irrespective of the fact that she attempted to politically damage our work, and reputation. That demand itself is reactionary. It reduces women to an identity bloc and strips us of political agency.

This is not feminism. It is a form of toxic femininity that mirrors bourgeois individualism, where emotion is elevated over analysis, identity supersedes principle, and sympathy trumps truth. It creates a culture where challenge of a female provocateur is treated as callous, and accountability as oppression. What is the overall outcome? This behaviour simply leaves movements weak, fragmented, and easily neutralized. Perhaps that was the intention on 18 December 2025.

Revolutionary movements have never been built by division, or through silencing, but are no strangers to these tactics. Passion for justice is not a male flaw; it is a human response to exploitation. The task of revolutionaries is not to suppress that energy, but to direct it toward collective struggle against the real enemy: capitalism and imperialism.

Anti-imperialist feminism does not fear men’s voices. It challenges men to break with chauvinism, yes, but also recognises them as fellow subjects of exploitation, not perpetual suspects. It understands that patriarchy harms women most severely, but it also damages men by stripping them of dignity, purpose, and humanity under capitalism. Liberation cannot be built on contempt.

The policing of tone, volume, and expression is especially corrosive in movements that claim to be radical. It replaces political line with social etiquette. It rewards conformity over clarity and passivity over courage. In doing so, it weakens movements at precisely the moment when boldness, discipline, and unity are required.

Revolutionary politics does not attack anti-imperialist protest. It does not hurl spurious, unfounded allegations at revolutionaries. It does not ask who spoke too loudly. It asks: who owns the land, the banks, the weapons, and the media? Who benefits from our division? Who fears a working class that speaks with confidence, anger, and collective force? The answer is not men. It is the system.

If our movements cannot provide space for righteous anger, principled confrontation, and unapologetic resistance from all genders, then they are being managed and reshaped to serve liberal order, not revolutionary change. We do not need quieter men. We need organised people, women and men speaking clearly, collectively, and without fear against imperialism and exploitation, without the weaponisation of identity politics. Anything else is not liberation. It is containment. As a working-class woman, I reject this logic.

Anti-imperialist women activists do not want protection from criticism. We want liberation, and liberation requires the courage to assess politics honestly, no matter who is speaking, or driving the movement forward (or backwards, as may well be the case by unknown disrupters).

⏩Róisín McAleer is an activist with Social Rights Ireland. Follow @ Twitter & Instagram

Against Anti-Men Moralism

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

 

A Morning Thought @ 3037

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 16-January-2026.

Photo: GOL. Zipacon, Colombia
When Petro’s presidency kicked off, he announced a grandiose proposal, which never really became a well thought out plan, of Total Peace, i.e. to reach demobilisation agreements with the insurgency of the ELN (in less than three months he said) and with the criminal groups such as the Clan del Golfo and others. It was never a viable proposal and now not even he talks much about his plan. The proposal now seems to be Total War as an ally of the US.

Before the attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president Nicolás Maduro, Petro had already stated that the ELN made cocaine in Venezuela and that was the reason behind the missile attack in Maracaibo. It doesn’t matter that the said attack never occurred, nor that the cocaine lab never existed or that Petro had to retract his statement.[1] It seemed yet another of the stupidities and outbursts from Petro, who doesn’t filter what he thinks before he says it. But no, Petro was inopportunely doing a deliberate favour for Trump in his rapprochement with the Yankee government.

It turns out that whilst Petro was shouting and daring the US to try and kill or imprison him, his functionaries had secret contacts with Trump. Petro called on the Colombian people to march. He loudly and vehemently stated that if Trump attacked Colombia, it would awaken the jaguar. But that jaguar never woke up, rather Petro gave it a strong sedative and called Trump.

In a public square, like a little child being applauded by his father, Petro boasted that Trump had said it was a great honour to speak to him, and with his minister for foreign affairs smiling like a child that had just been given some sweets as a present when Petro said that she would have to go to Washington.[2] Meanwhile, the presidential candidate for the Historic Pact, Iván Cepeda said in Spain that:

Make no mistake, our government and our people will not be forced on its knees or bent to their will through insults, pressure, threats or military actions. We are not a US colony or protectorate.[3] 

It would seem that Cepeda has forgotten the history of Colombia. Colombia has been under US domination for a long time. It is precisely the task the of the Left to break that, both materially and ideologically. If it doesn’t answer to the US, then whey does it always have to justify its performance on drugs? Cepeda criticised US complicity in drug trafficking, mentioning Marco Rubio by name,[4] and it is worth pointing out that the latter’s family does have proven links to drug trafficking.[5] Germany supplies almost all the acid used to manufacture cocaine, but you won’t see statements from them begging the US to acknowledge their efforts in fighting drug trafficking. They are never ever going to put them on the Clinton List. The president who licks Yankee boots on this issue and many others is Petro, just like Duque, Santos, Uribe, Pastrana, Samper and every other reprobate to hold the post. A country that allows the US to maintain or use seven military bases in its territory is not independent and yes, it is a colony. This claim is not mine; it is similar to what Petro or Cepeda would have said at other times, perhaps at the time of Plan Colombia or when foreign companies bought land all over the place. The issue of the foreign takeover of land has been raised by Senator Wilson Arias for a long time and the current government has tried to regulate through legislation that has still not been passed[6]. Any study on the history of the oil industry would say the same, that the US dominates Colombia. Cepeda knows this, but he is a cynic willing to twist the truth.

Petro wants to make us believe that he is going to convince Trump to leave oil behind and plump for the clean energy sources and in order to persuade him he offers Latin America up on a platter.

I said in my letter to Trump, at the start of his government, and in person to Biden that an American alliance could be set up, if they took advantage of the great annual potential of clean energy in South America: 1400 GW, whilst US demand for energy that comes from oil and coal is 840 GW per annum, i.e. Latin America could generate 100% of the energy needs of the USA and that would be the greatest step made in the fight to halt the climate crisis in favour of Life.[7]


That is for public consumption. It is not real. Trump is not going to do any of that and he knows it. That statement is an attempt to simulate that he tried to talk about great things to Trump before ceding on key points on sovereignty and the armed conflict in the country.

Petro spoke a lot about how he would take up arms in the face of a Yankee invasion and also of his famous jaguar. But in reality, he is going to negotiate US meddling in the internal affairs of the country and perhaps allow their direct participation in the war on the ELN. From early on in his government Petro narcoticized his discourse on the ELN. In fact, that is what his Total Peace policy is about. He put the ELN in the same sack as drug traffickers and now he asks the US to take part in the conflict and help him finish off this group’s insurgency.

If needs be, Petro, instead of waking up the jaguar will ask the vet to put it down.

References


[1] La FM (13/01/2026) Petro retira denuncia contra Trump por bombardeo, pero acusa a EE.UU. de atacar un resguardo Wayúu. Marlon Barros. 

Esto es Histórico. Hablaremos con Trump, de la Paz del Continente, de la soberanía , de un Pacto por la Vida basado en las energías limpias. Se puede descarbonizar la matriz de EEUU si se vuelve real el potencial de energías limpias de Suramérica

4:25 AM · Jan 8, 2026 · 824K Views

2.46K Replies · 3.33K Reposts · 14.9K Likes

[3] See Santiago Barbosa 🇨🇴@smoelno
"Sr. Trump, No se equivoque. Nuestro pueblo no se arrodilla ni se doblega. ¡NO SOMOS UNA COLONIA DE EE.UU!". 👏🏻💯 El futuro presidente de Colombia, Iván Cepeda, le deja claro al gobierno yankee que aquí existe la DIGNIDAD y está por encima de todo 🇨🇴✊🏼 Así se habla, HPTA 👏🏻

9:29 PM · Jan 7, 2026 · 148K Views

360 Replies · 1.82K Reposts · 8.62K Likes

[4]

[5]

[6] See Extranjeración de tierras debe ser prioridad legislative: senador Arias 

[7] SeenGustavo Petro@petrogustavo
Entre las cosas que hablamos, el presidente Trump y yo, fue el desencuentro que tuvimos en su visión de la relación de EEUU con América Latina. Dije en mi carta escrita a Trump en el inicio de su gobierno, y a Biden personalmente que se podía establecer un alianza américana, si


2:27 AM · Jan 8, 2026 · 3.32M Views

6.23K Replies · 4.79K Reposts · 34.2K Likes

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.

Colombia 🪶 From Total Peace To Total War With Trump’s Help

Anthony McIntyre ☠ While this month's move by the genocidal regime of Israel can be described as vindictive and punitive, it is hardly a new departure.. 

Blocking aid agencies getting much needed supplies to the besieged civilian population of Gaza has for some time been a strategic weapon in the hands of the genocidaires. So when it is learned from Nir Hasson that . . . 

Israel’s decision to prevent 37 international aid organizations from continuing their work in the Gaza Strip is the latest step in a policy that has been both cruel and amateurish in its treatment of Gaza’s civilian population . . .

. . . it is difficult for us to say we have in fact learned anything novel.

Hasson can hardly be faulted for that, and rightly continues to state:

Like other dark regimes around the world, the Israeli government has spun a web of lies and conspiracies around international organizations in an effort to blur responsibility for its own grave failure.

The Israeli modus operandum is to refuse to exercise its obligations under international law, seek to assign such obligations to the United Nations and its humanitarian agencies, then smear the very organisations when they carry out the function Israel has insisted they must. When any aid does get through Israel seeks to take the credit. Israel’s Gauleiters of Government Activities in the Occupied Territories then sing their own praises.

At the end of December Israel, clearly aware of progress being made on the humanitarian front, targeted 37 agencies which it would prohibit from carrying out humanitarian aid work in Gaza. Amongst the organisations effected are ActionAid, International Rescue Committee, Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council. The progress that Israel sought to reverse was revealed in a statement by a UN official Stéphane Dujarric

The January round is the first since October 2023, in which partners had sufficient stock to meet 100 per cent of the minimum caloric standard. 

The UN also stressed the need for the aid to continue unimpeded. Dujarric again expressing deep concern at the draconian Israeli initiative reversing the limited improvement in the lives of the population it has been subjecting to genocide since 2023. 'This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians.'

To press home its Nazi-like contempt for international law Israel began bulldozing the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem in a move described by the head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees Philippe Lazzarini as an “unprecedented attack” against the UN, whose premises are protected under international law.

Israel of course in its assault on the UN and international law is not acting alone but in consort with its ally the United States. The context has been identified by the The Financial Times, a media outlet not known for hoisting the read flag and urging its readers to storm the palace. Analysing Trump's proposed Peace Board for Gaza, the paper commented:

The body was originally conceived as part of the US president’s push to create a new governance framework for the shattered Palestinian enclave in the wake of Israel’s devastating two-year offensive against Hamas. But the text of its charter, which does not mention Gaza but stresses the need for a “more nimble and effective international peace-building body”, suggests its scope would be far broader, and that the body — which will be chaired by Trump himself — could be used as a rival to the UN.

In Gramscian terms, Israel and the US are engaged in a war of position whereby the ground is being laid for a war of manoeuvre against any international institution or law that stands in the way of their unbridled imperialist aggression. If both states succeed in their joint endeavour to refashion the world in their own image, the end game most feared by Marx will have arrived - barbarism.

⏩⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Blocking 37

Christopher Owens 🔖 We’re only 23 days into January and it’s been an action-packed year so far.


From regime changes to staking new terrain for the United States and a mother being killed in disputed circumstances, El Presidente Trump’s bull in a china shop approach certainly keeps us on our toes.

What’s interesting to note is that the anti-Trump hysteria that categorised his first term in office is nowhere near that level today (well, up until the killing of Renee Good). So are we potentially witnessing a vibe shift?

Brendan O’Neill certainly thinks so.

A former contributor to Living Marxism/LM as well as Spiked’s chief political editor, Brendan O’Neill has certainly made his mark on the culture war. Discussing a 1997 meeting that was organised by Republican Sinn Fein in support of Josephine Hayden and Roisin McAliskey, O’Neill recalled going to it as:

...a critic who was arguing against republican dissidents. I said they were wrong, nostalgic and increasingly illiberal. My brief opening comments were mostly focused on the issue of the Independent Review of Parades in Northern Ireland (which a year later would become the Parades Commission). I argued that in backing the state banning of Orange Order marches, as made clear in their submissions to the review, Irish republicans were behaving in a similar way to the British state that once sought to outlaw civil rights marches. My argument then, as it is now, is that state curbs on freedom of speech and freedom of association are never a good thing. As you can imagine, this did not go down well — at all. I essentially defended the Orange Order (an organisation I am not a fan of) in front of a small gathering of Irish republicans.

This approach, labelled contrarian by some, sums up O’Neill (and, by extension, LM/Spiked): a belief in individual freedom, being unafraid to express unpopular opinions even when it could be argued that the opinions are based on narrow interpretations of events and always willing to question. Regardless of your opinion of Spiked, we need people like them even if we disagree with them 90% of the time.

This, his new book, explores what he sees as the changing social and political landscape around us. In the introduction, he writes that:

Something extraordinary is stirring in the Western world. We are living through the twilight of luxury beliefs. The faux-virtuous postering of the ruling classes is being gleefully called into question by the little people... I like the phrase ‘vibe shift’. It’s pithy, evocative and people know what it refers to – the seismic turn in the moral zeitgeist brought about by popular discontent with the old, knackered order.

With this being prepared before the events of January 2026, it will be interesting to see how much the optimism on display above remains in place by the end of the year. With that out of the way, let’s consider the contents of the book.

Beginning by discussing the trans debate as well as the apocalyptic climate change mentality, things become very interesting is when O’Neill moves onto the so called ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ where various spots around Britain seemingly transformed into the North of Ireland over last summer. Pointing out the hypocrisy of various commentators who approve of Palestine/Ukraine/LGBTQIA on public buildings but not St. George’s flags nor Union Jacks, he ties this to the larger debate around borders and immigration:

The chaos of the borderless ideology expresses itself most clearly in the migrant crisis. There is no denying that mass immigration has become a flashpoint – perhaps the flashpoint – in the war of the vibe shift. In both the UK and the US, polls consistently find that uncontrolled immigration is a key concern of working-class voters. Indeed, it is striking that as the global commentariat rails against President Trump’s deporting of illegal immigrants, a huge majority of working-class Americans support his actions. Working-class voters back the deportation of ‘immigrants living in the United States illegally’ by a staggering 69 to 29 per cent. The chasm between the virtuous anger of the makers of opinion and the practical worries of everyday voters has rarely been so starkly expressed.

Quoting James Connolly and Hannah Arendt in defence of the nation and their ability to control their harbours, it’s hard to disagree that the whole situation has become an intricate mess where the blurring of ideologies has left supposed left wingers deriding the ordinary working class as racist, while far-right types use this veneer to further poison relations.

Closing by describing woke ideology as a project of forced alienation from the gains of history, the connection of nationhood and the Enlightenment, the reader is left with a sense that things are still open for the taking (although the killing of Good may alter matters further). Whether this proves to be over optimistic or not, we’ll find out soon enough.

Those familiar with O’Neill’s writing will know what to expect so it’s not one that’s going to win over sceptics and, running at 80 pages, you wish it could have been a little more substantial. However, as a short and punchy read, it works and might very well make the most ardent doubter think twice on how they view recent events.

Brendan O’Neill, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism And Technocracy, Spiked Books, ISBN-13: 978-1068719325


⏩ 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”.

Vibe Shift

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)