Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a Swedish author, literary critic, and journalist, addresses the "two-front war" against women, marked by the conservative right's abortion rights backlash and the progressive left's problematic views on prostitution and gender identity. She critiques neoliberal and far-left perspectives on sex work, advocating for the term "prostitution" to highlight the dangers and exploitation within the industry, especially on platforms like OnlyFans. Ekman also discusses the global exploitation of surrogacy and calls for its ban due to the suffering of women and commodification of babies. Furthermore, she criticises the exploitation of empathy for women to justify military interventions and the selective empathy displayed by some feminists towards certain victims while ignoring others. Ekman defends feminism as a relevant force against violence and inequality, emphasising the importance of feminists focusing on the dialectical conflict between men and women and advocating for ad hoc movements and alliances to address specific issues like prostitution and surrogacy. She touches on the gendered fear-mongering used to garner support for geopolitical conflicts, the instrumentalisation of women's rights for Western agendas, and the need for feminists to hold their line and avoid conflating issues. She also reflects on the state of contemporary society, criticising the pursuit of money and fame at the expense of values and equality, drawing parallels with the Epstein scandal and the P. Diddy documentary. Finally, Ekman emphasises the need for analytical tools that fit the task at hand, arguing that feminism is not a geopolitical tool and should not be used to justify military interventions or ignore the complexities of international relations.

David Rovics, a Portland-based songwriter and podcaster, articulates his experiences with censorship and cancellation, noting a troubling trend of intolerance within both the left and right. He recounts his recent YouTube cancellation, during which his complete discography was removed and his channel deleted only to be restored later. Rovics explores the factors contributing to the current state of societal fragmentation, where individuals increasingly engage in social interactions primarily through social media platforms, driven by algorithmic addiction. He argues that these algorithms, while designed to keep users engaged, predominantly foster conflict and division, thereby maximizing advertising revenue through prolonged user engagement. To provide context, Rovics references historical struggles of industrial workers and free speech movements from the 1960s in Berkeley, reflecting on a time when political discourse centered around ideas rather than identity politics. He critiques the left's adoption of authoritarian tendencies, which have become fodder for ridicule from the right, sharing his encounter with efforts by Rose City Antifa to cancel him. Drawing a parallel to a scene in the film Barbie wherein Barbie goes into the high school cafeteria and is almost immediately called a “fascist,” Rovics asserts that today’s cancel culture, though pronounced, is not without precedent. Furthermore, he contrasts the current fixation with online habitual behavior to previous generations' “couch potato” lifestyle, suggesting that while the media landscape has transformed, the alienation from authentic life experiences persists.

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.