Tag: culture wars

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Oprah, Oz and Phil by Lawson Akhigbe

There is a particular kind of American alchemy in which a Black woman from rural Mississippi, daughter of a maid, builds the most trusted media empire in the country on a diet of empathy, self help and the gospel of "live your best life," and then spends two decades unknowingly running a finishing school for men who would go on to embarrass her politics. Oprah Winfrey did not set out to produce Donald Trump's health czar and a cable news also ran who rides shotgun on ICE raids. She set out to help people cry productively on daytime television. The nursery was warm. What hatched from it was not.

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Two-Tier Policing: When Open Faces Become Terrorism and Balaclavas Become Civic Duty by Lawson Akhigbe

First, the Palestine Action episode. These were people who did not bother with balaclavas or the theatrical anonymity so beloved of the modern political cosplay set. They targeted warehouses and facilities linked to the supply of arms to the Israeli military. The Labour government, with the practised solemnity of a government discovering its inner authoritarian, reached for the terrorism laws. Proscription followed. Arrests followed. Jail terms followed. Even the barristers who dared to represent them found themselves in the crosshairs. The message was clear: damage property in the service of a cause the government finds inconvenient, and you will be treated as the domestic equivalent of Al-Qaeda, complete with the full legal theatre that accompanies such a designation.

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There are lies, damn lies, and then there is the eternal Home Office press release – updated for the age of Blue Labour, Tory one-upmanship and Reform UK’s five-year fantasy. By Lawson Akhigbe

Yet the political theatre continues as if the data never arrived. Immigration remains the ultimate litmus test, the issue on which every faction must prove its manhood by sounding harsher than the last.

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The Obituary of American Democracy Has Been Written So Many Times It Deserves Its Own Rest Home by Lawson Akhigbe

Every generation seems to produce its own undertakers, its own mourners and its own carefully worded obituary announcing that the republic is finally approaching the end.

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Same Shit, Different Hat: A Timeless Fashion Statement in Political Extremism by Lawson Akhigbe

Ah, the internet has done it again. While the rest of us are busy arguing over pineapple on pizza or whether socks with sandals constitute a war crime, some genius has distilled centuries of ideological garbage into one glorious, four-panel roast. Behold the meme that slaps you harder than your uncle at Thanksgiving: "Same Shit, Different Hat."

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