‘Mankind’s . . . self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic.’ — Walter Benjamin In 2014, in response to Israel’s attack on Gaza, which was the most deadly in decades, … Continue reading Gaza Funeral
Author: Simon Elmer
Khan Younis, February 2024
‘We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth. It will cease to exist.’ — Yoav Gallant, Israel Minister of Defence At one minute and fifty-one seconds In the drone footage you’re alive, a man Walking up a hill, swinging his legs and arms With a will and intentions, and, … Continue reading Khan Younis, February 2024
‘For as long as it takes’: NATO’s War on Russia
‘The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.’ — Emmanuel Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, 1984 When the governing executives of the United Kingdom, the European … Continue reading ‘For as long as it takes’: NATO’s War on Russia
Extremism
Because I do not own a rifle My loaded words must serve as bullets And when you tell me they’re not legal I’ll know exactly where to shoot it. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, a statutory duty was placed on U.K. police, education, health and local authorities to prevent terrorism by identifying citizens … Continue reading Extremism
On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to call everyone with a different skin colour to me ‘racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to denounce the country that has welcomed me within its borders as ‘institutionally racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I will not demand that I be described as the same nationality … Continue reading On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
It is six years since Alice Oswald’s last book was published, and although this is not an excessive time in the work of a poet, the interruption has been occasioned, of course, by the ‘lockdown’ of the UK for two years between March 2020 and April 2022 and the unprecedented changes to our society it … Continue reading An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Regulatory Apparatuses of Biopower
‘The technologies at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are connected in many ways — in the way they extend digital capabilities; in the way they scale, emerge and embed themselves in our lives; in their combinatorial power; and in their potential to concentrate privilege and challenge existing governance systems.’ — Klaus Schwab, Shaping … Continue reading Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Regulatory Apparatuses of Biopower
South Winds
When I met the ‘you’ of this poem in 2011 and began to write poetry again, she told me of an encounter years before when, during a period of sadness in her life, she had travelled to the north coast of Cornwall and, from a cliff top, saw a grey seal with whom she performed … Continue reading South Winds
10 Questions About Gaza
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. — W. H. Auden 1. What is a Jew? ‘Their barbaric acts are acts of evil. There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel. We stand … Continue reading 10 Questions About Gaza
Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
Among the many things the last three-and-a-half-years of cowardice and complicity have demonstrated is that the West, as an idea, is now dead. If it continues to haunt the world, it is only as an interdependent financial sector rapidly reaching the day of its reckoning, military alliances against whatever bogeyman the US identifies for ‘liberation’ … Continue reading Woke, Racism and the Great Reset
A Communist in Hong Kong 