The Brexit Party: All Men Shall (Not) Be Brothers
- July 04, 2019
- by
- Matt
In case anyone ever doubts what a sad, petty and downright nasty country we are becoming, the Brexit Party will always be there to remind us. On Monday, they managed to stage a mighty protest by turning their backs – turning their backs I tell you! – on a young orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the opening of the European Parliament. Courage like this really does leave Tiananmen Square in the shade doesn’t it? It’s even more moving when you think that they wouldn’t turn their backs on their salaries.
Who’s Afraid of George Soros?
- May 14, 2019
- by
- Matt
There was a time, many years ago, when I knew of George Soros as the billionaire who made a billion from speculating on the Pound during ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992. Since then I’ve often came across his name as a philantrophist associated with various progressive liberal and pro-democratic causes, and I once applied for a...
The Caliphate According to Saint Matteo
- May 03, 2019
- by
- Matt
The Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is a busy man. With less than a month until the European Elections, he has been touring the continent to shore up the troops for the new nationalist/populist bloc that he and his cohorts are seeking to establish in the European Parliament
The far-right has tried this before. In 2007...
The ‘Great Replacement’: a Recipe for Murder
- March 18, 2019
- by
- Matt
Historically speaking, few things are entirely new under the sun, and the paranoid fantasies of the ‘great replacement’ and ‘white genocide’ that have gained new publicity as a result of the Christchurch murders are no exception. On Friday Newsnight interviewed Benjamin Jones, the UK leader of the alt-group Generation Identity about the murders. GI is...
Guest Post: Catalonia, the Trials of Shame
- February 11, 2019
- by
- Matt
This week the first trials of Catalan government officials, politicians, parliamentarians, police officials and civic activists for charges relating to the 1 October 2017 independence referendum begin in Madrid. This is a guest post from my good friend Andreu Jené, giving a Catalan perspective on these events, with my translation.
Cartoon credit: Paco Santero
Tomorrow the first...
You Won, Get Over It
- January 20, 2019
- by
- Matt
There are some historical laws that can’t be avoided, and one of them is this: that if a country aspires towards something that is objectively impossible, sooner or later that impossibility, like gravity, will impose itself in ways that are impossible to resist or ignore.
You might be able to get away with this for a...
About Me
I’m a writer, campaigner and journalist. My latest book is The Savage Frontier: The Pyrenees in History and the Imagination (New Press/Hurst, 2018). The Infernal Machine is where I write on politics, history, cinema and other things that interest me.
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