Links I Liked

January 11, 2021

     By Duncan Green     

Who's the banana republic now?
Page 3 of Kenya’s The Daily Nation

Nuff said ht Declan Walsh

‘What was essentially a big biker gang dressed as circus performers and war-surplus barbarians – including the guy with a painted face posing as horned bison in a fur coat – stormed the ultimate country club, squatted on Pence’s throne, chased Senators into the sewers, casually picked their noses and rifled files and, above all, shot endless selfies to send to the dudes back home.’ Mike Davis in New Left Review. Ht Aditya Chakrabortty. This piece in by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic is also worth a skim, even if, like me, you have to look up ‘eschatological’.

Are you a change-maker committed to fighting inequality? If so, you have til 31 Jan to apply to join Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity.

Bosses of top British companies will have made more money by teatime last Wednesday than their average worker’s entire yearly wage. Ocado takes the biscuit – its CEO gets 2,605 times the average £22,500 paid to the online grocery delivery company’s staff

Want to hear me banging on this Wednesday? Thought not. ‘Join Duncan Green to discuss “How Change Happens,” 13 Jan, 19:00 UK time’. If you do, register here

Working politically and adaptively in practice. Another great set of links from ABT Associates

Of those who broke into the Capitol building last week, I got a bit obsessed with the most photogenic (not a high bar, I know) – Jake Angeli, aka the ‘Q shaman’, aka Yellowstone Wolf, aka the guy in the Jamiroquai hat. He has now been arrested, but before then, in a long and thought-provoking piece on Medium, Jules Evans argued that there is a high degree of overlap between ‘new age culture’ and Alt Right protests and denialism. The thread linking them all is a rejection of ‘factiness’ – the idea that facts exist, objectively and outside ourselves, and can be generally agreed through research, experiment and debate. He calls it ‘conspirituality’ (conspiracy + spirituality).

If you think Evans is exaggerating, here’s the man himself, interviewed on the steps of the Capitol. There’s a whole other alternative reality world on display, and as Mike Evans argues, it moved from online to real life last week. Not a pretty sight.

January 11, 2021
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Duncan Green
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