Many in the gaming industry have gone to great lengths to declare their products “apolitical”. A strangely reactive defense of a genre that has long sought to be accepted as an art form—few would deny that novels, movies, photography, all other art forms are inherently political. It’s not impossible to
Filip Zahariev
Tightening the Grip: Is Experience Necessary for a Successful Autocrat?
Right-wing populists and autocrats do not accept defeat. Challenged by reality, they clamp down—their position is rigid, very often averse to even the slightest possibility of change. Truth has been devalued, facts are treated as opinion, those who possess knowledge and expertise are treated with contempt. We live in an
An Ideology of Selfishness — How Misinformation Propagates Inequality
Since the 2010s, a sharp uptake in the levels of misinformation can be observed, in the push for so-called austerity, in the war on facts, in the bold attempts of different socio-political organizations to exchange fact for opinion. The mechanisms of propaganda have mastered their most powerful array of tools
Life under the corporate sovereign: human automata and modern serfdom
Consider the basic rights we in the Western world take for granted – the twin pillars of freedom and democracy, which define Western culture. Or so it seems. Strange, then, that when we think of the single most influential institution in our capitalist society, neither of these pillars are to
Bordering reality: how the speculative genre extends and reflects on human experience
Speculative fiction has long been held suspect for one cardinal sin – offering escapism from real-world problems. “How can made-up worlds,” the condemnation goes, “reflect on the issues of today? How can reading about fictional societies in secondary worlds give us …” While the popularity of speculative fiction has silenced
Politically conscious art as backlash: Amanda Palmer’s “There Will Be No Intermission”
Amanda Fucking Palmer is loud, so loud it might seem like she’s screaming for attention – and some people on the Internet hate her for it. But guess what? She has a lot of things to say. This has never been more evident than on Palmer’s third solo album, aptly
The Mythology of Italian Fascism: Beginnings and Endings, Homogenized
It is the unfortunate reality of Italian politics that fascism is alive and well, seventy-five years after the ignoble death of its great European architect, Benito Mussolini. Indeed, though Il Duce’s body may have been hung in the middle of Piazzale Loreto for all to see and revile, Italian politics
