There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
You can't be a pacifist in the culture wars
The ideology of the ruling class will always clash with the ideals of the oppressed — the left cannot and should not stay out of the fight. However it must pick its battles wisely and not allow identity politics to get in the way of solidarity, writes JOHN GREEN
The Me Too movement alongside Black Lives Matter are challenging widely held belief systems and traditional hierarchies — at the same time these are being distrorted and dismissed by the ruling elite and its supporters
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THERE is much talk in the media these days about culture wars, being “woke” and the dangers of “cancel culture” — but they are concepts few people really understand.
In a Times Radio poll in February, respondents were asked what they think “culture war” means. Only 7 per cent came up with a relevant answer, 15 per cent got it wrong, and a whopping 76 per cent said they didn’t know. However, just because people don’t know what a culture war is doesn’t mean they’re not in one.
As long as you have a class system there will be culture wars: a conflict between the hegemonic culture of the elite and that of the oppressed classes. These simply reflect the conflict between class economic interests.
Today, with the sharpening of the class struggle and an increasing awareness of the bankruptcy of capitalism, the global ideological struggle also becomes more acute.
Faced as we are by existential problems, the struggle for ideological and cultural hegemony becomes increasingly significant — but also more acrimonious.
More from this author
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
JOHN GREEN isn’t helped by the utopian fantasy of a New York Times bestseller that ignores class struggle and blames the so-called ’progressives’
