5th of June 2025 In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother’s state of Oceania is perpetually at war. This never-ending conflict is not a conventional war to be won, but rather a tool of control. The paradoxical party slogan “War is Peace” is the key idea. Continuous war justifies continuous surveillance. Orwell’s novel vividly illustrates how … Continue reading 1984 Revisited – Robert Skidelsky and Attila Mesterházy Jr.
history
15th of May 2025 As John Lanchester recently remarked (LRB 27 April 2025) ‘However little money there is for anything else, there’s always enough money for a war’. The failures of neoliberal economics threaten all kinds of political backlashes, some of which have already been seen in the nationalist turn of international relations. ‘Military Keynesianism’ … Continue reading Military Keynesianism?
8th of May 2025 It is right to be suspicious of Putin’s intentions without falling for the idea that he will never stop. In 1836 the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that Lord Melbourne’s government was smitten with the “epidemic disease of Russophobia,” an irrational panic that had triggered an unnecessary increase in defense … Continue reading The Nation: Russophobia—an Epidemic Disease?
Pulitzer-winner Kathleen DuVal on Indigenous power in colonial times
The post A Truer Story of Native America appeared first on Nautilus.
Etchings in ancient Hebrew artifacts reveal nuanced social dynamics
The post The History Hidden in Names appeared first on Nautilus.
A few weeks ago the historian Perry Anderson published an essay “Regime Change in the West?” in the London Review of Books. Like many of Anderson’s essays this is a wide-ranging splurge full of bon mots and *apercus” delivered from some quasi-Olympian height. My attention was caught, though, by the following couple of sentences which […]
Eighty years ago today, the monstrous machinery of the Third Reich was finally ground to dust. The swastika was torn from the Reichstag, the death camps liberated, and Europe—bloodied, traumatised, but unbowed—emerged from history’s darkest night. It was not merely a military victory; it was the triumph of solidarity over fascism, of internationalism over racial […]
The post Some thoughts on the 80th Anniversary of Victory over Fascism appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
Political philosophers are criticised for their idealism, but when it comes to immigration they try to be ‘realistic’. Their aspiration to ‘realism’ often leads to nationalism (which I have analysed elsewhere as an implicit but heavy bias), but I still don’t understand why they aspire to realism on this issue. Philosophers have neither voters to […]
On 11th April 2025, Melissa Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis addressed an audience at the University of Westminster dedicated to the memory of Tony Benn – almost 100 years from his birth. This is what Yanis had to say about Tony’s legacy at that event. (Click icon above for audio)
The post Yanis Varoufakis on Tony Benn’s legacy – 11 APRIL 2025, audio appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.
It started with farm animals—now it's revealing secrets of the cosmos
The post The Surprising History of Scientific Ballooning in 11 Missions appeared first on Nautilus.