The Appeal of Unreality

Recently, and for the first time, I read a copy of Lewis Carroll’s famous book for children Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Its pleasure was undimmed by my (relatively) advanced age, and the whole experience was genuinely delightful. I immediately read Through the Looking-Glass, its successor.

Civil Strife in Spain and Ukraine

There is said to be something which binds together instances of conflict and strife throughout the human experience. Maybe it is the suffering such things cause, which is a pain all societies experience and which is never entirely distinct from previous iterations; perhaps it is the required impulses of savagery – temporary though they may be – which are necessary in war; possibly this includes the fact that war shapes and forges societies, even if it does not affect their borders, simply by the force of its trauma and the fact of its happening at all.

The General Election Campaign and the Decline of British Foreign Policy

The General Election and its campaign are over; and David Cameron has been returned to Downing Street with an increased majority, something which mystified commentators, humiliated pollsters, and seemingly drove a substantial portion of the nation into a state of profound political nihilism. All of this is certainly important – not least because it was so unexpected – but the rush to analyse certain aspects of the election campaign has left other facets almost entirely unexamined. Some of them are very interesting, while others are deeply concerning; the seeming decline in the importance of British foreign policy fits into both categories – and the effects of this shift could be tremendous not just for us here on some windswept islands in the North Sea, but for the world at large. 

Rise of the Political Technologists

Review ­– Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev

For a generation such as mine, which attained political consciousness after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet system in the last century, it can sometimes seem strange that the iron fist of dictatorship persists in this era. New technologies have made speech, dissent and discourse practical possibilities for many in nations previously in thrall to tyranny. Satire and dark humour thrive in the shadow of oppression and even horror – much can be made funny even when contemplating the rise and expansion of Islamic State, for example – and dictators are, or so we believe, ever fearful of the destructive power of a joke.

Occasionally, however, we must update our perceptions. Russia has seen the creation of a postmodern dictatorship, one which uses the tricks and pitfalls of new media – the unpleasantness, the clamour, the tendency among many to eschew authority in pursuit of the “real story” – to advance its stranglehold at home and to proliferate its propaganda abroad.