Savage Minds

Ricardo Vaz, a journalist and political analyst in Venezuela, critically discusses the US operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, highlighting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s framing of the incident as a domestic law enforcement issue, despite Venezuela being outside US jurisdiction. He critiques the role of corporate media, particularly The New York Times and The Washington Post, which he argues ignored the impending US military action to protect US soldiers, demonstrating their complicity in supporting US imperialist objectives. Vaz characterizes a division within the US political landscape, noting that while Democrats opposed the execution of the kidnapping due to the lack of a plan to install Maria Corina Machado, they continue to support underlying imperial ambitions. Vaz further explores the dynamics of Venezuelan politics, highlighting the long-standing resentment from elite factions towards both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. He underscores the elites’ aspirations to re-establish themselves as US-aligned powers in Venezuela, illustrating their predicament where regaining control without US assistance has proven unfeasible. The ascendance of Chávez disrupted their ambitions and engendered a sense of entitlement among the elites who resented the prospect of working-class representation in government. Additionally, Vaz draws attention to the deteriorating situation in Cuba, establishing a critical link to Venezuela’s oil supply, which has been vital for Cuba’s public transportation, airline industry, and electricity generation for the past two decades. This connection emphasizes the broader implications of Venezuela’s political crisis on its regional relationships, marking it as a pivotal issue with significant socio-political ramifications.

Alex Howlett, an independent scholar affiliated with The Greshm Institute, discusses Universal Basic Income (UBI). Beginning with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), an offshoot of post-Keynesianism, he addresses its key principles: notably Keynes’ belief that the Great Depression was caused by a deficiency in aggregate demand, leading to sustained involuntary unemployment that the market could not self-correct. Howlett deflates Keynesian theory that assumes that economic policy aims for full employment, asking, “To what extent actually does it make sense for people to be workers?” while explaining that labour is not the most effective or efficient way to get money to people. Howlett sees UBI as solving this problem of distributing money to people while dispensing with the need to ensure that everyone has a job, dispelling the notion that only if every single person is working can an economy run at full capacity. Assessing some of the major criticisms of UBI—from fiscal feasibility, economic incentives, and social justice—he responds to the fears of inflation, worries that borrowing will lead to reckless fiscal policy and a loss of central bank independence, or that UBI would dismantle already established welfare programmes. Responding to counter-arguments to UBI, such as the claim that the economy will not have the labour pool it requires or that people won’t be working as much, Howlett turns these arguments on their head demonstrating how the demand for labour is artificially inflated as a way of getting people jobs, noting the historical overstimulation of the financial sector to encourage firms to borrow so they hire workers. Howlett contends that with UBI, the economy does not have to play into the push and pull of labour supply and demand, stating, “You hear this fear that people aren’t going to work as much at the same time that you hear this fear that there aren’t going to be enough jobs available, right? It’s like, well, wait a minute…. Isn’t it good if those things kind of go together?”

Peter Salerno, a retired licensed psychotherapist, nationally recognised expert on personality disorders and pathological relationships, and author of The Nature and Nurture of Narcissism and Traumatic Cognitive Dissonance (2024), discusses his work in the field of narcissism. Beginning with his appearance in the Hulu documentary on Ted Bundy, Salerno rejects the claims by those who believe Bundy’s serial killing was a kind of reactive aggression, criticising those who believe Bundy’s actions were somehow a result of a childhood trauma. To the contrary, Salerno notes how Bundy was able to sustain relationships, even working on a suicide helpline, such that he was able to earn the trust of others, all while Bundy kidnapped, sexually attacked, and murdered others. Salerno draws parallels between this type of psychological assessment of serial killers and the narcissist, where there has been an inclination in the field to understand the narcissist’s aggression and control as reactive instead of proactive. Covering the genetic and biological roots behind narcissism, he highlights the scientific findings and neuroimaging that reveal the physiological underpinnings and genetic propensities towards narcissistic behaviour, noting, “This isn’t just personality. This is all psychopathology and all mental health or mental disorder.” Salerno historicises research in this field, which is rapidly changing in how it frames narcissism and its victims. For instance, he elucidates the damage that narcissists inflict upon others, what he terms “traumatic cognitive dissonance,” observing how narcissists inflict damage by “insert[ing] a dilemma inside of you, and you don’t know what’s real or not.” Evidencing how narcissists often intentionally give mixed messages, causing distress in their victims, Salerno explores how this creates a constant state of ambiguity and confusion in “a normal person who simply wants to collaborate and cooperate,” while chronicling how the trauma of narcissistic abuse plays into the victim’s goodwill as victims often attempt to understand why the narcissist would terrorise another person. Salerno relates how those suffering from traumatic cognitive dissonance are caught in a double-bind as they attempt to rationalise such behaviour by believing that this was reactive abuse which actually keeps them from seeing this person as a proactive abuser as they think: “Well, you know, they must have been really traumatised. That makes sense why they would be treating me this way.” Salerno carefully examines how narcissists seek out loving and trusting victims to exploit, while self-justifying their actions, even reversing and externalising the blame.

Michael John-Hopkins, a legal scholar and a senior lecturer in law, discusses the theory of international law and its practice—from its conceptual foundation to what international law promises (sovereignty, non-use of force, equality of states, the UN Charter, rule of law) versus how it is actually applied (power politics, selective enforcement). He delineates the historical context of US foreign policy in Latin America, including the Monroe Doctrine, to show its continuity with current events, explaining why certain actors fail to observe international law and what contributes to this failure. Querying if the recent US kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores is uniquely egregious under international law, John-Hopkins delves into the broader patterns within US foreign policy and the myriad historical examples throughout US history of its regime-change and resource-grab colonialism, now set within a modern context. Vituperating the use of economic boycotts and sanctions as a means of strong-arming democracy, he notes how such acts of hybrid warfare constitute violations of international law while also signalling the erosion of the rules-based order. John-Hopkins considers Israel’s repeated violations of international law from the inception of its statehood through the present, scrutinising Israel’s illegal military operations, settlement policies, responses to terrorism, and the genocide of Palestinians all of which demonstrate the gap between norms and practice globally.

Professor Sandra Walklate, Emeritus and honorary professor at the University of Liverpool, discusses her work in victimology and violence against women, including her work in the field of femicide. Drawing upon historical paradigms where the concept of feminicide has been previously employed, Walklate notes various examples from the Americas where femicide was used as a tool in drawing attention to the complicity of the state in hiding the numbers of women’s deaths at the hands of men, only then to be disappeared by the state “with no compunction on the part of the state to pursue why those lives were disappeared.” Noting how some scholars and writers have attempted to extend the definition of the way in which we count femicide into femininicide, she argues the merits of “slow femicide” and accounting for the number of women’s lives lost because of the illnesses that follow on from living with the stress of violence—from their propensity to commit suicide to the long-term effects of experiencing strangulation as a feature of that violence to the associated diseases. Conversely, Walklate questions whether creating a separate legal category for “femicide” in addition to related concepts like “coercive control” in cases of domestic violence truly benefits victims or simply expands the power of a system that has already failed these victims. Underscoring how the law cannot always offer respite to the victims of IPA (Intimate Partner Abuse) due to the reality that the number of people prosecuted for such crimes is infinitesimally small, Walklate observes how “the power of the advocacy voice over the reality of the evidence” has also affected the ways in which policing and the judiciary react towards specific types of violence.

Alex Gordon, Marxist and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), discusses the current state of affairs regarding Britain’s participation in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the normalisation of extreme violence meted out to black and brown people taking place through social media and mobile phone technology. Where Gordon states that we have a choice today between socialism or barbarism, he elaborates on the hypocrisy of European leaders who, while quick to disassociate themselves from any condemnation of the US kidnapping of Maduro and Flores, were inversely outraged about European nations’ sovereign rights and those of Denmark the moment Trump expressed his intent to take over Greenland. Highlighting the current wars—many of which are over rare earth minerals—he historicises the links between the military-industrial complex, Big Tech and capitalism, and the ways in which these powers maintain their hold on power. Gordon also touches upon political bipartisan control over electoral politics in many Western “democracies,” which he regards as in danger of being breached as political stability continued to rise with the decline of American jobs and the decline of American industry. Observing how the British government dispensed with the need for regulated labour, he covers the thorny issue of how working-class Britons have been set against migrants, since they had become a perpetual reservoir for cheaper labour while simultaneously serving to drive down wages for skilled trades. Gordon also remarks upon Re-Arm Europe’s rebranding to SAFE (Security Action for Europe) while vituperating Germany’s Merz, who has recently introduced a law, the Wehrdienstmodernisierungsgesetz (WDModG) reform, requiring all men upon reaching the age of 18 to register for military service, as Europe has ideologically prepared the masses for war.

Wolfgang Streeck, a German economic sociologist and emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, discusses the current political situation of leftist political organising and the condition of seeking “justice” in our society, an idea he puts under scrutiny. He points to the complexities and contradictions of justice, while highlighting how today political parties are abandoning their constituents, refusing to help unify differences through connecting people, a praxis Streeck maintains is “the precondition of collective action in pursuit of collective left egalitarian goals.” Discussing how capitalism has captured the social relations between people, Streeck ponders alternative media, what he terms the Samizdat of hyper-modernity—a space where humans can still maintain serious, analytical dialogues—whilst both legacy and social media attempt to obscure deeper social and political critiques. He notes the swift decline of deindustrialisation and the social welfare state of Europe, commenting upon the rise of the billionaire class in conjunction with the number of people who can barely make it to the end of each month. Streeck observes how state violence is enacted with such precision today that it not only has the technological ability to locate the supreme commander of Hamas from a population of two million people in Gaza during a genocide, but it can also proceed to kill him whilst filming his murder. Appraising Friedrich Engels’ theories on the means of destruction alongside the means of production, Streeck hypothesises that one of the motives to continue the war in Ukraine has always been to test the next generation of war machinery while paying billionaires like Elon Musk, who has the power to switch off his Starlink satellite network, to effectively keep the war technology going.

Vladimir Bortun, a critical political scientist based at St John’s College, University of Oxford, discusses his research into the politics of right-wing populist parties and the state of leftist parties in Europe today. Analysing how right-wing figures like Tommy Robinson attempt to appeal to the working classes by pretending to be on their side while presenting themselves as being on the side of the people to win their support, Bortun notes that when it comes to working-class rights, these figures are nowhere to be seen: “They are never on a picket line to support workers. They are never joining any campaign in defence of jobs and wages and workers’ rights.” Considering how the Constitutional Court of Spain squashed efforts in Barcelona to establish rent control due to such laws undermining private property rights, Bortun relates how capitalism has a “repertoire of tactics and all kinds of violent instruments” to defeat democratic institutions. For him this is the cause du jour, whereby he invokes the urgency of the need for the left to organise in workplaces and communities, for individuals to run for office, and for people to take to the streets in order to engage with and contest institutions that protect capital over human life. Observing the continued colonialism of the United States with the recent kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Bortun calls these actions “a logical consequence of the current stage of US imperialism” given that this is just one in the latest instalments of what the US has done to other countries throughout its history. In underscoring the importance of making criticisms of the US political machinery while not “overemphasising the persona of Donald Trump”, Bortun stresses that we look at Trumpism—which he views as a form of Bonapartism—while focusing on the forces driving Trumpism and not the people who voted for him.

Oliver Villar, a political scientist at Charles Sturt University in Australia, discusses his research on US imperial power and Latin American politics, covering his co-authored book, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia (Monthly Review, 2011). Villar historicises the role that the US-led counternarcotic policies, specifically Plan Colombia, have played in serving as a pretext for advancing imperialist interests and undermining popular, leftist movements in the country and how the official “wars” on drugs and terror in Colombia are a pretext for the US to maintain an imperialist relationship while ensuring its business interests, as well as the local “narco-bourgeoisie,” can monopolise the cocaine trade. Exploring how US strategy intensified violence by supporting state-linked paramilitary forces, ultimately suppressing domestic labour and peasant struggles, Villar observes that it was during the Clinton administration “where everything starts to unravel” and when the US began to propagandise and brand the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, leftist guerrillas, as the new “narco-terrorists.” He assesses how the US narrative surrounding Maduro flows in the same direction as propaganda from this earlier era, whereby anyone who “gets in America’s way is now fair game for the narco-terrorist label”, underscoring, “It has nothing to do with drugs.” Oliver relates what is happening in Latin America in conjunction with China’s rapid trajectory as a superpower and its clash with the United States over the control of resources (e.g., minerals and metals in Latin America) and its augmenting global influence. He dissects how the cocaine drug trade and the US-China rivalry in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe form part of a larger picture of US global hegemony while offering a critical history of US imperialism, its hegemonic decline, and the so-called “rising threat” of China to explain recent events. Responding to events in Venezuela, Greenland, and the “great power competition” that is unfolding between the US, China, and Russia, Villar elaborates on research from his most recent book, The Political Economy of Dissent (Routledge, 2026), in critically analysing 21st-century imperialism—that is, capitalism in its most aggressive and developed form, which is the driving force behind an intensifying rivalry between the US and China.

Saskia Garner, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the UK’s leading personal safety and stalking charity, covers the charity’s history and work in research and policy advocacy across stalking, harassment, online harms, bystander intervention and workplace safety. Recounting the challenges faced in getting stalking recognised in law after the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (PHA) failed to capture the fixation and obsession towards an individual, she describes the efforts to push for the legal recognition of stalking, which was finally realised through the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 that made stalking a specific criminal offence and by adding new sections (2A and 4A) to the PHA. Chronicling her charity’s work in gathering evidence that demonstrates the lack of identification and recognition of a range of stalking behaviours which cause a range of damage in the victims, Garner notes how sometimes police officers will downplay the risk if the stalking does not manifest itself with direct threats or harm. She describes the Trust’s super-complaint, made in collaboration with the Stalking Consortium in 2022, which led to an official investigation into the super-complaint which found “clear evidence” of systemic failures in the police response to stalking in England and Wales, resulting in a total of 29 recommendations which the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has endeavoured to ensure will be implemented. Covering the newer frontiers of stalking through technological forms of electronic surveillance and control—deep fakes, social media, smart home devices, and tracking software—Garner discusses how today stalkers can readily find a way into an individual’s digital and physical life in their endeavour to obsessively surveil, track, and obsess over their victims.