David Klemperer

I hadn’t come across Barber, but he sounds like an interesting guy?

As I say in the thread, I’m mainly influenced here by Jean Zyromski’s theory of internationalised class struggle!

I’m not sure I get your reference?

The way I'd put it is that there's currently a global struggle between democracy and nationalist gangster-capitalism, that this struggle is simultaneously unfolding both within and between states, and that the US currently sits at its epicentre

This sort of carving up of the national population into discrete ethnic blocks based on familial origins is just so much more profoundly unBritish and antithetical to the Western tradition than *anything* happening in Hackney or Tower Hamlets or Birmingham etc

Dialogue doesn't mean much against an enemy with determination to destroy a sovereign state and people.

It's interesting that British politics has been so slow to master social media/internet distribution, given how quickly British politicians mastered newspapers, radio & TV when they were new tech. Baldwin would have built a podcast studio in Downing Street & be pumping out content all the time

Every interview with a right-wing politician is like: "Mr. Hitler is adamant: If we sacrifice enough children, Santa Claus will come back and deliver 5% GDP growth. But I have to ask him: Do you ever worry that your relentless advocacy for working folks offends the rootless cosmopolitan parasites?"

I’m partial to the old radical demand of 6 hours work, 6 hours rest, 6 recreation, 6 hours education

The tech oligarchs are the most organised, determined anti democratic force we’ve seen this side of World War II

For way too long this has been ignored, elided and under estimated

What someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time

cannot stress enough how bad it is to give teenage boys a "see this person naked" button. massive, multi-axis disaster

Popular fronts, re-armament, and an anti-fascist military and diplomatic alliance encompassing as many states as possible

This is precisely the dynamic Jean Zyromski observed and analysed back in 1938 - the "internationalisation of class struggle"

The online review analogy is brilliant, such a clear way of describing why old-school triangulation is dead. I've been talking about it in all our sessions on comms, narrative and campaigning since reading it!

When I was a young parliamentary researcher, a hereditary peer called the office to ask if the MP I worked for would support his red squirrel campaign. He said “I was going to call it the grey squirrel annihilation league but thought that might get marginally less support”

British politics is now wealth tax vs anti-immigration. And Labour own neither.

If they want to intervene they will need something of comparable emotive power that does drive some controversy

The budget was ok but obviously an exercise in shoring up MPs. They needed to go much bigger

Thanks! While I think Labour would need to deploy it differently, you could’ve predicted Green’s recent success from the dynamics laid out here. They are very much capitalising on the attention economy.

In this context I think there is actually some utility in returning to Jean Zyromski's late-1930s theory of "internationalised class struggle":

bsstock2.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

The way I'd put it is that there's currently a global struggle between democracy and nationalist gangster-capitalism, that this struggle is simultaneously unfolding both within and between states, and that the US currently sits at its epicentre

Re-upping this excellent little essay @demofuturist.bsky.social wrote for @renewaljournal.bsky.social, which I continue to think is an extremely pithy and insightful bit of analysis on this topic:

Went for drinks last night and the Olivia Nuzzi fiasco really brought people together in a spirit of festive celebration. What a gift to conversation

Rent Strikes Since the nineteenth century, working-class families have predominantly relied on tenements for housing, with rents often consuming a large portion of their household budgets. There is a long and cont...

Just published!

Rent Strikes: A history of collective tenant actions across the world, the book I edited with @hannesrolf.bsky.social, is out now from @uclpress.bsky.social

It's OPEN ACCESS, part of the "Work Around the World" series by @iisg-amsterdam.bsky.social

uclpress.co.uk/book/rent-st...

"neutrality" isn't worth much if you can't enforce it

Are Brits really leaving the country in droves? No. We estimate that emigration is lower now than it was five years ago

In this week's Economist I've written about how, contrary to the breathless hot-takes last week, the emigration of British citizens from the UK is actually falling. (A thread 1/17)
www.economist.com/britain/2025...

Four unidentified military-style drones breached no-fly zone to target Zelenskyy's arrival in Dublin Gardaí are investigating whether the drones took off from land in Dublin or from an undetected ship.

Looks like Ukrainian president Zelensky narrowly survived an assassination attempt.

This is exactly it. What's killing Labour on social media is "the mentality of the message". There simply is no way for the party to get back in the game without loosening up and allowing its MPs and councillors to start being themselves and saying what they think.

you were the literal prime minister!!!!! are you not embarrassed!!!!!

Excellent to see this from The Economist. We are slow walking into a constitutional crisis driven by the electoral system, and very few people are taking it seriously enough yet.

Ultimately this is the point where the wider state needs to step in with a massive banhammer

Block the website from UK IPs, imprision anyone involved with the company who visits the UK. The state does have power here, but has learned helpnessness with tech

I'm still thinking about this exchange. As is often the case, we see Nuzzi acting out the most extreme version of a phenomenon that is actually pretty common in elite media: people taking umbrage at the idea that they're supposed to exercise moral judgment, and can be blamed for not doing so.