Josh White is an associate editor at Souciant. A philosophy graduate, White wrote his thesis on Marx’s theory of history and international relations. He has also written for the New Statesman, Novara Media and EurActiv.
As the UK gets ready to leave the European Union, the old unanswered questions of the British union have been accelerated. Despite all the talk of national unity, British society is sharply divided and deeply unequal. Even the English are split over Brexit, let alone the rest of the Kingdom. (More…)
Now the UK faces a second referendum on Scottish independence, and a more distant prospect of a reunited Ireland, it looks like the end times for Great Britain. (More…)
Watching Lost Highway (1996) at the Soho Curzon, my friends and I began to connect the dots between David Lynch’s films and the rise of populist demagogues (we’ll get to this later). In more ways than one Soho was the perfect place to watch Lost Highway, those famous twin poles of Freudian thinking – sex and death – are a vital part of the Lynchian universe. (More…)
The English conservative likes to see the world as an organic whole free from ideology. Politics is something separate from society at large, and the main purpose of the state is to leave existing social relations intact. The real truths about the world are found elsewhere. (More…)
Watching the joint press conference, it was clear Theresa May and Donald Trump deserve each other. Hoping to buy-off populism, May has gone in for a hard Brexit and now has to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the most vulgar populist of all. The May plan for Brexit depends on US support, but not the kind offered by ‘the Donald’. (More…)
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher died last week. He was just 48 years old. Ideologically committed to the ethos of Punk Rock, Mark Fisher was an influential music critic and blogger at K-Punk. Unlike liberal critics, Fisher did not engage with pop culture without recourse to critical theory and politics. And by politics, I mean radical politics. (More…)
Remember the funeral of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama stood before the South African people to pay tribute to Madiba. “He makes me want to be a better man”, the American president confided with his audience. (More…)
The last time Barack Obama intervened in European politics was during the Brexit referendum campaign. Coming out for the Remain camp, Obama backed the UK’s membership of the EU on the grounds of economic stability. (More…)
As 2016 comes to an end, we’re hearing a lot of talk about the end of liberal politics, and even democracy itself, after the UK voted for Brexit and Donald Trump won the US election. These two events seem to capture the year. (More…)
I remember when I was on Any Questions. Of course, I was just another civilian in the audience, not actually on the panel – which included Sadiq Khan and UKIP’s Patrick O’Flynn. My own contribution to the programme was shouting “Liar!” at Chris Grayling as he held forth on privatisation. This was 2013. (More…)
Many people see the death of Fidel Castro as the end of an era. Yet the Castroite legacy is alive in one form. Cuba has played a key role lending support to national liberation movements around the world. One major site of struggle during this period was Southern Africa. (More…)