Savage Minds Podcast

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ricardo Vaz, a journalist and political analyst based in Venezuela, discusses the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and how US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to frame the operation as if it were just a question of domestic law enforcement, even though Venezuela lies clearly outside of US jurisdiction. Examining how corporate media is deeply intertwined with US imperialism while playing a vital role for Empire, Vaz considers how the New York Times and the Washington Post failed to report information to which they were privy: that the US military operation in Venezuela was going to happen, yet they chose not to publish on the impending invasion in order to not endanger US soldiers. Vaz also analyses what he terms the “schizophrenia inside imperialist circles,” whereby US Democrats disapproved of the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores, primarily because there was no plan to install Maria Corina Machado into office. Exploring Venezuelan politics, Vaz articulates the resentment of both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro by the elite who have long struggled to regain power while viewing themselves as the ideal US surrogates to run Venezuela while paradoxically never having found a viable way to take power without US support. However, Chavez's entry into office dashed the hopes of the elite to regain power while also offending their sense of entitlement, given their resentment that the working class might have any political representation within the national government. Vaz also scrutinises the situation in Cuba, which has become very desperate in recent weeks, noting how for the past 20 years Venezuela has been the biggest supplier of oil to Cuba, fuel which powers public transportation, the airline industry, and electricity plants. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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?” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a research economist at the World Inequality Lab and co-editor of the 2026 World Inequality Report, discusses his research on the benefits of early schooling and how early human capital investment closes the “inequality gap” and the effects of such research within current Mexican educational policy. Focusing on the finding of this year's World Inequality Report, Gómez-Carrera elaborates on the increasing wealth disparities on a global scale such that wealth is becoming even more concentrated, as demonstrated by the fact that the top 10% earn 53% of the global income, “the top 10% own three-quarters of global wealth, while the bottom half holds only 2%,” and, for the top .001%, the distribution of wealth growth is as high as 8% per year. Gómez-Carrera argues that if we don't address inequality, only the privileged will have rights, opportunities, assets, and control over politics. Ultimately, even if 90% or 99% of the population are paying their taxes and contributing to society, the top 1% maintain a disproportionate influence over politics and access to opportunities, which in turn influences the decisions that ensure they maintain their privilege. While power, as Gómez-Carrera clarifies, is becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the negative effects of such power, such as ecological damage, will be felt disproportionately by the poor, as they are more vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, despite their contributing less to this damage. Examining one of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 World Inequality Report, he notes how the top .001% increased in their charitable donations since 1960, a gesture which moves the wealthy beyond strictly economic realms of power. Noting how the economic patterns suggest a rising top-end inequality, Gómez-Carrera claims that this not only translates into ideological capture and unequal influence over philanthropy and politics, but it invariably translates into public policy, law, campaigning, and, invariably, political choices, or lack thereof. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Diego Sequera, award winning journalist and writer based in Caracas, Venezuela, discusses the recent kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and former member of the National Assembly, Cilia Flores, delving into Venezuela's complex historical landscape. He begins with the Caracazo uprising of 1989, which revealed deep socioeconomic inequalities while uniting the working class against President Carlos Andrés Pérez's austerity measures. Sequera notes that this context set the stage for the rise of Chavismo, notably through Hugo Chávez's transformation from a coup leader to an elected president by 1999. Sequera critiques the neoliberal policies, growing foreign debt, and the resulting polarization exacerbated by anti-Communist sentiments while linking Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution to contemporary global conflicts, scrutinizing political figures like Maria Corina Machado for their role in societal divisions. Furthermore, he addresses the role of US foreign policy, detailing the sanctions imposed, starting with the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014 and culminating in the 2015 “Obama decree” ((Executive Order 13692), which targeted the Venezuelan oil industry ultimately aiming to destabilise the country both economically and politically. Sequera critically analyzes the rhetoric of US politicians who categorize Venezuela as a “narco-state” and suggest foreign interference in the 2020 US elections, as he draws parallels between Venezuela, Iran, and Gaza in critiquing the selective moral blindness of Western nations towards their participation in human rights abuses and loss of life in these regions, reflecting on the broader implications of foreign policy decisions on Venezuela's plight. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology at New York University, discusses neocolonial history and the formation of anti-colonial movements, which effectively began as an elite-dominated push for power, to widen the colonial apparatus for more participation by wealthy Indians. Historicising how anti-colonial, national liberation movements only took off when the internal agendas of national liberation struggles were set as the people unified their narrow struggles to join the mass struggle, Chibber notes that the modern identitarian left has failed in assessing and addressing class struggle. Moving between decolonising countries and the United States, Chibber tells the story of how, in the neoliberal era, as all the institutions of ordinary people were dismantled—bowling alleys, civics centres and neighbourhood organisations—there is no longer a sense of a collective endeavour. As a result, the groups best positioned to get something for themselves were all upper-middle-class and upper-class citizens who sought positions in the halls of power. Chibber narrates how these groups, having abandoned collective struggles, chose to access social power through a language that drew upon identity—gender and race—cashing in on identity while parsing out the universe into smaller and smaller slices, with each group staking claims to being “the most oppressed.” Appraising how such a tiny, minoritarian movement like the transgender movement was given such an enormous amount of power in the United States by the Democrats, Chibber maintains that this adornment of power from above immediately absolved that lobby of the responsibility or necessity of having to seek alliances, thus leading to a toxic political culture of calumniation and slurs.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Almut Rochowanski, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, critiques the “NGO-industrial complex,” particularly concerning the impact of foreign funding on civil society development within new democracies. Covering her testimony at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the US Congress, on the topic of “Laws Regulating Foreign NGOs: Human Rights Implications,” Rochowanski draws from her experience with NGOs in former Soviet states, including Russia and Ukraine, and discusses the structural realities of foreign-funded NGOs at the intersection of class, education, nepotism, and accountability failures. Rochowanski highlights the complex relationships between foreign donors, governments, and NGOs, stressing how the actual beneficiaries often become secondary to donor agendas. She argues that foreign funding cannot be neutral, as it embeds donor priorities into recipient countries, corrupting local policies and necessitating NGOs to align more with Western mandates than local needs. This tendency results in NGOs, widely deemed “foreign agents” by domestic authorities and citizens, undermining local governance and democratic sovereignty, ultimately harming the societies they aim to assist by displacing state roles in service provision and policy development, while these bodies often encroach on democratic sovereignty. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Marta Havryshko, a historian specializing in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, examines Ukraine's ethno-nationalist legacy and its anti-Semitic past. She highlights instances of anti-Jewish violence and pogroms, noting that many Ukrainians, including prisoners of war, collaborated with German auxiliary units during World War II, particularly in the formation of a Ukrainian SS battalion within the Waffen-SS. Havryshko points out a significant gap in the national memory of Ukraine, where the suffering of Jewish individuals is acknowledged only superficially, while Ukrainian involvement in pogroms remains largely unrecognized. She critiques the portrayal of Ukrainian nationalist heroes—freedom fighters who often engaged in ethnic cleansing—as central figures in history, with their narrative overshadowing the suffering they inflicted on others, thus creating a hierarchy of suffering in the retelling of Ukraine's past. Havryshko traces the revival of historical celebrations of ethno-nationalists, such as Stepan Bandera, while noting the reluctance of contemporary Ukrainian leaders to confront the existence of neo-Nazi elements within the military. Referencing her research on the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Havryshko discusses how Ukraine's neo-Nazi groups have historically found support in the West, largely due to their value as intelligence sources during the Cold War, despite being specifically labeled as “fascists” and “murderers” in CIA reports. Similarly today, Havryshko notes how the mythology of the Ukraine hero continues within the current war with Russia, as the stories of the sexual violence perpetrated by Ukraine forces are elided, not least because the victims of sexual violence in this conflict are primarily men and boys. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Volodymyr Ishchenko, currently at the Institute for East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, discusses his latest book, Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War (Verso, 2024) and forthcoming paper “Post-Soviet vicious circle: revolution as a reproduction of a crisis of hegemony” (co-authored with Oleg Zhuravlev). Historicising how post-Soviet revolutions in Ukraine have functioned, Ishchenko considers how the 2014 Euromaidan revolution produced a weaker state whose fate, instead of being decided by Moscow, has been directed by Washington or Brussels. Delineating how the 2022 war is, in part, the culmination of Ukraine's history in relationship to Russia, where cross-national capital allied itself with the local professional middle classes and where anti-nationalist arguments clashed with the tendency to understand the war within the context of Ukraine's perceived colonial struggle, Ishchenko observes how these primordial, ethno-nationalist readings lend themselves to a larger teleology. Detailing how the war in 2022 becomes the culmination of this story, a sort of parable of the struggling, emerging nation, Ishchenko explores how the narrative construction of Ukrainian nationhood mirrors the creation of the nation-state, like many countries from the 19th century onward. He also interrogates the various theories that proffer origins of the war as being rooted in the Russia-NATO conflict, as maintained by Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer. Instead, Ishchenko considers an alternative reading of this history, positing that the war in Ukraine has little to do with the inclusion of Ukraine within NATO, nor is it about NATO's inclusion of neighbouring countries. Instead, Ishchenko contends that the 2022 war is a culmination of Russia's exclusion from the process and dialogues by and around NATO. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nidhi Srinivas, Professor of Management at the New School, discusses his latest book, Against NGOs: A Critical Perspective on Civil Society, Management, and Development (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which brings together management and development studies to offer a critical perspective on NGOs, describing how they emerged as key agents of development. Analysing the historical and shifting roles that NGOs play as agents of development and disseminators of management doctrines, Srinivas elaborates how these organisations function in this current epoch of capitalist crisis, where universities today retain direct links to NGO managerialism and policy creation. He reviews the current age where we are on the verge of another global recession and world war while relying on Gramsci's Prison Notebooks as a beacon for reading how we might see the world “differently” which he views as a political task, stating: “I would argue that the problem today is that a lot of education and the spheres of civil society where NGOs are based are not actually eager to offer that kind of a critique.” Observing how NGOs are often intimately connected to the system of power and delineating how the earliest definition of an NGO had nothing whatsoever to do with international development, Srinivas examines the mechanisms between governments, international agencies and civil society interrogating the relationship each holds to power, shying away from simplifying the role of NGOs as merely bad actors or glorifying the role of civil society. Srinivas emphasises the importance of critical theory and the Frankfurt School in his analysis of NGOs, confirming how ideas are shaped by history and that, in order to tackle the stages of capitalism, it is incumbent upon us to interrogate capitalism's commitment to wealth, inequality, and how these ideas work within our souls. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alison Gaffney, a mother of two from Corby, Northamptonshire, discusses how she and her partner, Andy Hinde, learned in 2018 that their seventeen-month-old son was diagnosed with a rare cancer, which they believe was caused by the botched disposal of millions of tonnes of contaminated waste after the closure of Europe's largest steelworks in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1980. While a 2009 civil case linked the council's negligent clean-up of the site to a cluster of birth defects in local children in the 1980s and 1990s, dramatised earlier this year in the Netflix series Toxic Town, Gaffney tells a different part of this story which addresses the environmental contamination in Corby and those who have experienced childhood cancer dating back to 1984. Now, leading a campaign which represents approximately 50 families, Gaffney recounts the group's struggle to access environmental information and how recently these families have been denied valuable data by the council after requesting a list of sites in Corby that were potentially contaminated following the steelworks' closure in 1980, through the reclamation of the steelworks that began in 1984 and continued through the 1990s. Expounding the group's ongoing struggle to have the local council cooperate with the parents' request to reveal the areas of contaminated land in and around Corby, to test for contamination, and for the government to create a national registry that records the precise locations of environmental damage as per Zane's Law, Gaffney maintains that her mission is to ensure that there will never again be cases of childhood cancer due to preventable ecological damage such as that which occurred in Corby. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Maung Zarni, UK-exiled Burmese dissident, scholar, rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, discusses his role within the Jury in the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Sri Lanka, observing the similarities between the use of starvation perpetrated in Sri Lanka against the Tamil minority and the exercise of starvation used against Palestinians in Gaza. Zarni also discusses his participation in two separate delegations to Gaza and the West Bank (August 2024 and January 2025) witnessing first-hand Israel's ongoing genocide in Palestine, as he elaborates the freedom he and other members of the delegation had to roam and to discover—unscheduled and unchoregraphed visits—the reality of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and of Israelis living in Israel. Zarni describes the myriad human rights violations, starvation, and conditions of genocide in Gaza, in addition to attesting to the violent attacks by settlers and the threat of genocide already in vigour in the West Bank. Interrogating a vast system of colonial occupation and repression exercised by the state of Israel against Palestinians for the past 78 years, Zarni notes how this is a “collective genocide” whereby many countries and their politicians are “directly participating in Israel's genocide” through political, military, and economic contributions. Zarni discusses how people need to be educated about genocide, especially “when it is done by our own country, in our own name,” as he connects his work in educating the Cambodians about the “Killing Fields” and their own history of genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. Maintaining that this genocide is “far worse than what was happening in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe,” Zarni remarks how “the entire ecosystem of corporate and public legacy media is performing” what the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels did to create the political ethos to destroy European Jewry. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Fabio Vighi, Professor of Critical Theory and Italian at Cardiff University, discusses dominant themes from latest books, Emergency Capitalism: Financial Hubris, Economic Collapse, and Systemic Manipulation (2024) and Unworkable: Delusions of an Imploding Civilization (2022), that address the “age of crisis capitalism” and the post-productive hyper-financialised stage of capitalism that is driven by debt and the loss of work society. Relating how the acceleration of the emergency paradigm is maintained by a constant flux of “states of exception” that exclude people while also allowing for the creation of credit and debt which have become the prime motors of capitalism today, Vighi narrates how just before the pandemic in 2019, we were already approaching a gigantic financial crisis, observing, “The system needed what then Covid allowed the system to have, which means massive injections of credit.” Vighi historicises the acceleration of the emergency paradigm over the past decade, which is fundamentally connected to debt and the creation of credit “out of thin air” to balance a system that is both inherently inflationary and increasingly “imbalanced and out of control.” Noting how the release of emergencies has become the mechanism to balance the economy—first with the pandemic in 2020 and then immediately thereafter with the war in Ukraine—Vighi characterises what is happening today as an “apocalyptic, eschatological type of mood where war is always immanent…and therefore that justifies the rearmament of entire continents like Europe,” while underscoring how modern wars have always been mechanisms for creating credit while also the vehicles for connecting the arms and financial sectors. Criticising the perception management systems that are more focused on the personalisation of struggles rather than critiquing systemic structures, Vighi scrutinises how, as a result, we are incentivised into very simplistic polarisations and conflicts that are, in themselves, ideological forms of destruction, distracting us from examining the deeper causes of conflict. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Hala Shoman, a Palestinian PhD researcher in Sociology at Newcastle University, discusses her life in Gaza before 7 October 2023, the conditions under which Gazans have been living since, and the physical and political realities on the ground for Palestinians today. Shoman elaborates how Israel's violence since 2023 has left Palestinian society shattered, since the aggressions are so vast and profound that, unlike previous decades of aggressions that did not wipe out entire neighbourhoods and communities, the current genocide has left few able-bodied bodies alive who are can help their communities after each attack. Observing the harsh reality for Gazans today under the daily threat of murder, Shoman appraises how not only does every Palestinian personally know hundreds of people murdered over the past two years, but Israel's aggressions and control over every aspect of Palestinian life—their access to food, water and vaccines—have become so intensified that Palestinian infants are dying from the lack of drinking water necessary for baby formula. Confirming the direct links between Israel's violence and the increase in domestic violence in Gaza, Shoman recounts how the structural violence of colonialism and genocide has been reproduced: from the Israeli theatre of occupation and murder to the intimate space of family life within Palestinian communities. Expounding upon Israel's pathological desire to control Palestine, Shoman remarks that the very war criminals directing this genocide are the same individuals who are asked to lead Palestine in what is this latest farce of a “peace plan.” Shoman also elaborates her academic research that explores decolonial feminist frameworks and the concept of reprocide while also distinguishing between adapting to the horrors of this genocide and surviving it. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Rebecca Ruth Gould, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and author of Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom (Verso, 2020), discusses the political reframing of “antisemitism” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) which tailored a new definition designed specifically to silence criticism of both Zionism and the state of Israel. Recalling how she was caught within the radar of the IHRA's definition of antisemitism in 2017 while an academic at the University of Bristol for a short article she had written years earlier, Gould analyses how the IHRA definition has very clear implications far beyond Israel and Palestine, even to the extent that it exists as a quasi-law that is treated as law while never having gone through any kind of democratic parliamentary vetting process. Moreover, Gould observes how the IHRA definition of antisemitism basically set out to define what we can and cannot say about Israel while also serving to foreshadow how free speech on Palestine would be persecuted for the following decade. Considering the language of mass starvation and famine within the media, Gould confirms how the famine of the Holodomor, in a 1933 New York Times piece, was narrated in an eerily similar way to how the famine in Gaza is currently represented. Articulating how “Never again” has never really been true, given the numerous genocides since the Holocaust, Gould describes how older generations have internalised the state-based nationalist “Holocaust memories” which have blinded them from seeing, much less understanding, that Israel is currently carrying out a genocide of Palestinians. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dario Guarascio, Associate Professor of Economic Policy at the Department of Economics and Law at the Sapienza University of Rome, discusses two articles he co-authored with Andrea Coveri and Claudio Cozza, “Big Tech and the US Digital-Military-Industrial Complex” and “Monopoly Capital in the time of digital platforms: A radical approach to the Amazon case.” Coveri examines the power of digital platforms whose systemic size rivals that of nation-states, positioning them as counterparts to national authorities. Revisiting social sciences history, especially economic and imperialism theories, Guarascio highlights John Hobson's contributions that illustrate the reliance of large capital and financial corporations on new markets as national markets become saturated. He details how the intertwining needs of states and monopolies drive a strategic internationalization essential for competitiveness, a concept reflected in Vladimir Lenin's work influenced by Hobson, which connects international competition with states' imperialistic strategies aimed at expanding trade routes and eliminating competitors. Guarascio posits that amidst economic strains, military means have historically facilitated market penetration, forcing foreign governments to capitulate to external capital while obstructing competitors. He draws parallels between the intense competition for market dominance leading to the world wars and present dynamics characterized by monopoly capitalism and the dominance of multinational corporations that now dictate economic policies, thus transforming states into instruments of corporate interests. Furthermore, Guarascio argues that contemporary corporate imperialism promotes capital internationalization and fosters economic dependencies, while militarization becomes integral to these economic narratives. This relationship outlines a modern imperialism defined by collusion among the state, military, and multinational corporations, particularly between the US and China, alongside Big Tech's growing influence and strategic military affiliations. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Penny Arcade—poet, actress, essayist, spoken word, video and theatre maker—discusses her trajectory from an immigrant family, originally from Basilicata, Italy, to her upbringing in a working-class Connecticut town to her entry into the art world of New York's East Village. Looking back on her life as a homeless teen in the Village, her discovery by Jamie Andrews who introduced her to John Vaccaro's Playhouse of The Ridiculous, becoming a Warhol Factory Superstar, and her departure to Amsterdam, Arcade narrates the story of how she set off for Formentera, in Spain's Balearic Islands, where she started a school for children there, some of whom were children of drug smugglers. Recounting her return to New York City in 1981 and her split from Vaccaro, which marked the beginning of her independent work, Arcade recollects the state of the various art scenes in New York City during the Reagan era, the loss of friends to AIDS, and the censorship of the era. She vituperates the class divisions within the art world and the Manhattan Downtown art scene into which she never fit neatly, while underscoring her desire to “create theatre for people who had no theatre,” a fact which made her extremely unpopular within academia and among arts administrators because her work challenges these very elite systems. Pondering the values she espouses in her art and the fact that her audience has always been unique in maintaining a shared investment in her performances, Arcade considers how the catharsis in reaction to her art takes place well beyond the theatre hall. As an outsider to the art scene, noting how she hasn't received institutional support and has operated without funding, legacy media coverage, or any form of academic sponsorship, Arcade criticises the state of art funding from even before the 1980s, when the Moral Majority took aim at the art world and at the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) funding structures. Calling out the academic art world as a “pyramid scheme,” Arcade observes how the academic-produced genre of “emerging arts” has become a way for the elite class to ensure that their children would have a guaranteed “entry level position” post-graduation in the arts akin to the professional tracks for finance and law, proclaiming: “Art is not a profession—it's a vocation.” She also delves into the problems of identity politics that have permeated into arts funding and the art world and culture at large, remarking how these institutions recycle not only the same personas and narratives, ultimately limiting the “professionalised” scope of art. Responding to the recent “queering” of Marsha P Johnson, Arcade argues that Johnson was not transgender but was a drag queen, contending that the only reason why Johnson was recategorised as “trans” is because “Marsha is dead and black.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Catherine Liu, Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine, discusses her forthcoming book, Traumatized: The New Politics of Suffering (Verso, 2026), wherein she elucidates the emergence of trauma culture, tracing it back to psychoanalysis and the reification of mental health in post-war America. Analysing the fetishisation and recognition of feelings, Liu historicises the explosion of psychoanalysis in the United States in the 1950s and the rise of New Left in the 1960s, which advanced “the personal is political,” an idea quickly adopted by second-wave feminists. Observing how the discourse of trauma has permeated all areas of society, such that feelings have been prioritised over knowledge and “centering feelings” has replaced scientific inquiry, Liu critiques how the professional managerial class thrives on rebranding, promoting credentials, and creating new identities, all in order to advance the collapse of the separation between work and leisure. Noting how workers have fought for years to maintain a separation of work from leisure time, Liu muses on the invasive, destructive force of the Silicon Valley New Left and professional middle-class feminists who have driven the insistence of a non-differentiated space where “we are always at work”, therefore our private lives are expected to be “on display through our performance virtue.” She examines the dynamics of how anti-normativity and transgression function within the writings of Michel Foucault, since they invariably strengthen normativity. Nonetheless, Liu vituperates the bastardisation of these valences under the scope of identity politics, which forces the merging of one's personal life, politics, and intellectual practices. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, historicises the way “famine” in the postcolonial era was an extremely emotional word for which, fifty years ago, there were no appropriate structures nor any objective scientific metric for understanding where or when famine was occurring. By 1984-1985, however, the neoliberal governments of Thatcher and Reagan became deeply embarrassed by the famine in Ethiopia, de Waal narrates. From this embarrassment, an industry of refining the metrics of understanding what counted as famine, and what did not, was born, and from this, the IPC, or Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, was developed as the standardised UN system used to classify the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition in a specific area. De Waal discusses how the international aid system has been shackled into into viewing famine in a very apolitical way, refusing to exam the structural causes driving famine largely because international NGOs steered away from criticising governments in order to maintain cooperation for their relief work and that Western publics give assistance to victims of natural disasters as part of the “white saviour” theatre which depends upon eliding the political causes. Declaiming the importance of photography in chronicling the history of famine—from the Warsaw Ghetto, to the famine in Ethiopia (1983-1985), and Gaza—de Waal observes the dual role of these photos: first, that the perpetrator of famine was not only absent from the frame, but was often the person taking the photo; and second, that because the perpetrator was rarely within the frame, the subjects of these photos were often blamed as the true perpetrators of famine, such that Jews attempting to preserve a “veneer of normality” in the Warsaw Ghetto or Palestinians in Gaza who are more portly, were ultimatley inculpated as the cause of the famine. Considering the merits of Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), he notes that it lacks the key element of examining the policies and intention of those doing the starvation. De Waal underscores that “to starve” does not just refer to the experience of people starving, but it also means the act of starving people, as he goes on to describe how the East India Company, through onerous taxation from 1769 to 1770, created a famine in Bihar and Bengal, ultimately killing one-third of the population. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Celine-Marie Pascale, professor emerita of sociology at American University, discusses her book Living on the Edge (2021), wherein she details her research into the struggling communities across the United States—from Appalachia to the Standing Rock and Wind River reservations to Oakland, California—who face the hardships of stagnant wages and rising costs of living. Analysing the experiences of people emanating from communities that deal with systemic, entrenched levels of poverty, Pascale uncovers the “social organisation of power relations that keep people submerged in poverty, that actually make poverty profitable,” calls out the “American dream” as much more of a myth than a reality, similar to the adjacent myth of “class mobility.” Considering how “capitalism depends upon a large, poorly paid workforce,” Pascale observes that in order to maintain the workforce without rebellion, these myths are turned against the workers and the poor, essentially telling workers that if they are struggling to put food on the table or take care of their families, that the fault lies with the worker and not with the system, not with capitalism. Historicising the lack of class consciousness in the United States, she notes how workers are cannibalised by capitalism while advanced capitalism, Pascale contends, “cannibalises itself.” Pascale critiques the federal measure of poverty, narrating how such standardisation for the cost of living is “untethered from reality” since it makes no distinction for food or rent costs in areas where food is imported (eg, Alaska and Hawaii) or where rent is extremely high (eg, San Francisco and New York). Covering her work on the violence against Native American women, Pascale assesses the high rates of violence and sex trafficking networks which fuel “man camps”—temporary housing facilities for a large workforce, typically in isolated areas where men are recruited to work on resource extraction or construction projects (eg, oil, gas or mining)—that have a documented correlation with increased rates of sexual assault, violence, and sex trafficking. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Heather Brunskell-Evans, philosopher of politics, author, and academic, speaks about her experience of having protested against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, whereby she held a placard upon which she wrote “I oppose genocide” and “I support Palestine Action.” After holding up her sign, within seconds, Brunskell-Evans was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and was swiftly detained. Describing being held in solitary confinement overnight and detailing her treatment in detention, to include being enclosed in a caged area, Brunskell-Evans observes the juxtaposition of two types of police partisanship where, the Pride fluffy arm bands that adorned some of these officers symbolise the wider police support of gender ideology and the concommitant endangerment to women's safety, on the one hand, and on the other, the police force's disregard for civil liberties and the freedom of expression to protest a genocide. Criticising the gender-critical feminist movement which has remained tighly affixed to its Zionism and Islamophobic core, Bruskell-Evans vituperates contemporary feminism pointing to its “intellectual paucity” and “lack of ethics” at the heart of western feminism that denies the many incidents of sexual violence recorded by international and national NGOs, documenting decades of rape and sexual assault perpetrated by the Israeli forces against Palestinian men and women. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

David Abdulah, a Trinidad and Tobago trade unionist, economist and politician and the current leader of the Movement for Social Justice, speaks about the vigil for peace in Woodford Square, Port of Spain, which is one of many popular efforts by the citizens of his country to ask that the United States government stop its strikes on vessels from the region. Analysing how the president of Trinidad and Tobago, Christine Kangaloo, has been supportive of the US actions over the past two months, where vessels have been destroyed and people killed (the death toll from these campaigns now rests at 70), Abdulah notes how the people of his country oppose military deployment, war, and regime change. Recalling the history of US interventionism in Latin America and the Caribbean, Abdulah underscores how this operation by the United States is simply a refashioned WMD, where, instead of alleged weapons of mass destruction, the US government has simply utilised the “drug war” narrative, while contending that the boats it has destroyed have allegedly been the vessels of drug trafficking operations. Noting how the US has absolutely no right to lecture anyone on the “drug trade,” Abdulah recalls how, during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the US government authorised the transport and sale of cocaine from Latin America to support and finance its efforts to destabilise governments in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Even if these boats were those of drug traffickers, Abdulah insists upon the rejection of the Monroe Doctrine while underscoring the moral principles of peace, while also observing that due process is being completely obliterated and that the US is engaging in extrajudicial killings with zero regard for the law. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American scholar and Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, reviews the definition of genocide as established within the Genocide Convention of 1948 as he analyses the trajectory of events in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to the Spring 2024 when the IDF moved into Rafah and proceeded systematically destroy Gaza with the goal of making it unhinhabitable for its population. Noting that the Knesset used 7 October as an opportunity to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, he observes that Israel's actions proved unsuccessful since there was no place to push the Palestinians. This is the moment, Bartov observes, when the situation devolved into genocide, resembling many other genocides throughout the 20th century, which began as ethnic cleansing but ended up as the mass killing of populations. Declaring that by July 2025, a consensus had been formed among the majority of genocide scholars and experts in international law, he expresses astonishment at the fact that legacy media have still not begun to employ the term “genocide” to describe what is now an agreed fact by international experts. Historicising how ethnic cleansing often turns into genocide, Bartov offers examples from the Germans' ethnic cleansing turned genocide of the Herero in what is present-day Namibia, the Armenian genocide by Türkiye, where vast numbers of Armenians were pushed into the Syrian desert and perished, to the coextensive labour and extermination camps of the Nazis during World War II. Addressing the reality that many Israelis and Jews, when they hear the word “genocide,” they think of the Holocaust, Bartov criticises this mentality since the Holocaust has become a central theme within Israeli national identity since the 1980s. He contends that Israelis view the Holocaust as “not only something that happened in the past, it is something that can happen any moment. That we are always under existential threat…And that threat is represented by the Palestinians.” Bartov explains that this genocide is, in part, a reaction to fear within the core of Israeli identity that has resulted in Israel's mass murder of Palestinians, largely because Israelis view Palestinians as their existential threat. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Haim Bresheeth, filmmaker and historian, discusses the growing trend in Britain and the West to curtail free speech concerning criticisms of Israel and Zionism as he details his arrest in London for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. Declaring that the freedom of expression, ostensibly guaranteed in Western democracies, no longer exists, Bresheeth observes how criticism of Gaza is being silenced through changes in the laws regarding the demonstrations and reporting on the current genocide perpetuated by Israel. He notes the irony in how today it is perfectly acceptable for Israel to commit genocide, killing tens of thousands of children, but it is not acceptable to criticise the crime of genocide as such criticism has been criminalised. Declaiming that there is “nothing Jewish” about genocide, settler colonialism, or killing children, he notes the paradox of how Israel has weaponised the Holocaust and Jewish identity to support its current genocide while besmirching anyone who disagrees with claims of “antisemitism.” Historicising Europe's role in genocides and colonialism for centuries, Bresheeth compares this genocide to that of the Nazis and considers the role of the 300,000 Israeli citizens who have been drafted in order to carry out this genocide and the social psychosis that enables them to do so. Considering the role Islamophobia plays in the genocide of Palestinians, he discusses the historical importance of the convivencia, when Muslims and Jews co-existed in harmony in Andalusia. Bresheeth observes how Europeans would never have had their Renaissance without the rich cultural, artistic, and scientific heritage of Arabo-Muslim societies which preserved and translated Western literature and scientific texts due to the widespread burning of these texts by Western churches. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, joins Heather Brunskell-Evans and Julian Vigo to discuss her mission as United Nations Special Rapporteur and the consequences, changing dimensions, and the greater challenges of her role. Responding to the criticism she has received for her views on gender ideology, on the one hand, and criticisms by feminists who view women in hijab as less deserving of human rights protections, Alsalem relates how occupation and colonialism impacts this demographic quite differently as she notes how both the degredation of women in hijab and women who “identify as men” are similarly rendered invisible through the very ideologies that pretend to speak for them. Alsalem tackles the divisive issue of the alleged rapes claimed by the Israeli government and legacy media on 7 October 2023 and the incoherence of Western feminism that parrots the debunked reports while simultaneously egging on a genocide. Analysing the report by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), Alsalem underscores how the mandate for this report was not investigative noting that a later investigation, undertaken by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry in June 2024, issued a report that clearly states that it “has not been able to independently verify such allegations, due to a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.” Alsalem details how the lie that Israel spun regarding the alleged rapes of Israeli women on 7 October has been completely debunked by an independent body, while noting that the widespread evidence documenting Israel's pattern of sexual violence towards Palestinian men and women has been completely ignored by Western media and governments. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Amit Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra, discusses Hindutva, a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India, as well as the dangers it poses to religious minorities today. Covering Narendra Modi's trajectory from Gujarat's Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014 to the Indian head of state, Singh explains how the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and other far-right Hindutva groups have created conflicts between Hindus and Muslims in order to destabilise communal balance, Singh describes how India's colonial past has been polarised by far-right Hindu nationalist groups who have aimed at Christian, Muslim and other Indian minority religious groups in order to create division within India on a social level, while Modi and other BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) cohorts have enacted draconian legislation which is aimed at maintaining the Hindutva majority status with the political and bureaucratic plateaus while conterminously creating conflicts throughout the country. Covering the recent history of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian territory with a Muslim majority, Singh contends that the application of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which divides Kashmir into regions while artificially populating the area with Hindus, is all part of a greater plan by the BJP to further sow sectarian divides politically which nourish the growing social divide between religious minorities and Hindus, while completely abandoning the forty-second Amendment of the Indian Constitution (1976) whereby the Preamble to the Constitution asserts that India is a secular nation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ori Goldberg, an independent analyst and specialist in Middle Eastern Studies, analyses the profound militarisation within his country, Israel, that involves the “desensitivisation as to the very existence of Palestinians as human beings” such that Israelis themselves know nothing about Palestinians, resulting in the only permissible history of Israel being that of the Jewish narrative. Covering the deeply ideological and historical “zero-sum game” whereby Israelis are uniquely allowed access to the narrative of victimisation, Goldberg explains the refusal of Israelis to see the humanity of Palestinians, remarking, “If they are acknowledged as full-fledged humans, then there is something wrong with us, there is something that undermines our right to live here.” Observing how the desensitisation of Israelis to Palestinians functions, Goldberg claims that Israelis do not possess the language to describe Palestinians “except as a threat” in the second order; however, Israeli's first order of understanding the Palestinian is that of “nothingness” where Palestinian deaths “don't even register.” Assessing the greatest weakness of Israel—that it does not register the reality of Palestinians—Goldberg describes how a member of Knesset stated that the only health risk facing Gazans is “obesity,” noting, “That is not how you want to talk about a people who actively, consciously want to vanquish—it's how you talk about a people whose existence seems like a fantasy to you to begin with.” The fact that Israel attacks at will and kills indiscriminately, Goldberg asserts, is not significant in terms of its strategic power. To the contrary, Goldberg suggests that Israel's main weakness, despite its aggression, is that it has alienated even its closest allies while also coming very close to being a failed state. Suggesting that Israel can only be saved through a “strategic implosion” that will ultimately shape its “response and its willingness to accept externally imposed positions,” Goldberg confirms that the light on the horizon is that vast majority of the world's population no longer cares about Israelis' feelings or their sense of victimhood, noting that Israel can blame itself for the position in which it has created for itself. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Isla MacGregor, a free speech and whistleblower advocate in Tasmania, Australia, relates the blowback she has experienced by gender-critical feminists for her criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza that is reminiscent of the very same type of behaviour enacted by the gender ideologues whom these feminists had heretofore criticised. Observing how the slurs and slogans that have been used by those feminists defending Israel's genocide of Palestinians are remarkably similar in both form and spirit to the slurs used against women's rights activists over the past two decades, MacGregor analyses these tactics as part of a wider war propaganda machinery. Summarising how many feminists whose “absolute ignorance of the history of Palestine and the Israeli conflict” functions in oppositional incoherence to these same feminists' critique of gender ideology, MacGregor discusses how gender ideology's complete absence of any hard evidence or rigorous peer-reviewed research is eerily similarly to Zionist and pro-genocidal beliefs: many people in these groups do not care about evidence or reality, nor do they care. MacGregor notes the irony in how many feminists who had long fought against the anti-reality, counterfactual discourse of gender ideology are now adopting an anti-factual posture when it comes to Israel as they shut down other women who recognise the reality of the current genocide in Gaza, asking, “What did we learn from the trans rights debate?” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Boaventura de Sousa ​Santos, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, discusses his professional training from law, to the philosophy of law and then to sociology, covering his time studying in Cold War Berlin, then Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his eventual involvement with the World Social Forum and his efforts to densify class struggle. Bouncing off his recent article on cancel culture, de Sousa Santos analyses the “narcissism of belongingness” and how identity politics is sabotaging the left, where the connection to the political economy is lost to the language of inclusion. Analysing the weaponisation of victimhood and lies that are used to create narratives that uniquely rely upon the perverse assumption of female innocence and male guilt, de Sousa Santos observes the current social discourse and protofascistic regimes of our times, where the Inquisition of the Dark Ages has returned. Noting the rise of social fascism, which he believes may potentially slide into political fascism, de Sousa Santos argues that the proliferation of victimhood narratives creates the subject as a type of inert res extensa, in Cartesian terms, that simultaneously negates the Spinozean notion of human potentia, something he believes will ultimately kill the feminist movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ramzy Baroud, journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, discusses being born and raised in Gaza while also covering the greater history of Palestine: from British colonialism, the rise of Zionism and the decision that someone made to mythologise Palestine as “a land with no people,” a historical exchange to rewrite, rename, and reinvent the land of Palestine to belong to someone else, except the land indeed had people. Responding to the claims of those who deny the genocide or who have clung to the rape fictions that were created by the state of Israel in tandem with legacy media, which resorted to racist stereotypes of Arabs “as rapists” in order to seamlessly encourage the public acceptance of Israel's genocide of Palestinians. Baroud notes how the Western focus on “the treatment of women in Palestine” has become a convenient derail to the larger issue of genocide, to which he recounts the story of his sister, a physician who was assassinated by Israel last year and whose life's work has left a legacy for both Palestinian men and women. Baroud narrates how the legacy of Palestinian women, including his grandmother, have always been at the centre of their society, observing that Western feminists have simply embraced Orientalist language of old while completely forgetting that it is colonialism and military occupation that oppress women. Baroud also relates how many Palestinian women have given birth at checkpoints, as the IDF blocks their access to hospital care, and he asks: Where were these Western feminists who didn't say a thing while these women were forced to give birth at checkpoints, during a most intimate moment in their lives and under the gaze of IDF soldiers watch? Where were these Western feminists' voices when the 17.000 women were butchered and raped by the Israeli army? Baroud goes on to narrate Israel's direct attacks on the storytellers of Palestine—the journalists, historians, and scholars—many of whom have come under legal attacks and various other forms of intimidation while also addressing the hasbara replete within western media representations of Palestine. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and Director of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College, discusses the relevance of Edward's Orientalism in the face of the current genocide in Gaza as he addresses the challenge of our times in “unlearning Zionism in fascist times,” which necessitates an “ontological upheaval.” Zalloua discusses the racial logic at the heart of the Zionist project which is a reproduction of colonialism and European racism which, he argues, not only still has purchase, but which also undergirds the historical horrors of what Europe allowed to happen on its soil, whereby the mass dipossession and subjection of Palestinians became the byproduct of European guilt. Addressing the problems of Western feminists who perpetuate the racist fantasy of the “black rapist” that has plagued feminist communities for decades, noting how, during the height of the MeToo movement, white women were shocked by black women who resisted joining this movement, entirely oblivious to the racist backdrop of Empire and of false rape accusations historically levied against men of colour. Arguing that we need to stop seeing Palestinians merely as victims, as this leads to numerous actors being blamed for their victimhood (eg. Hamas, the extremist politicians in Israel) while eliding the major structure responsible for the situation into which Palestinians were forced in 1948, Zalloua undescore the need to directly address the settler-colonial framework in both its historical inception and current practices. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Thomas Fazi, independent researcher, writer and journalist, discusses the current situation of the war in Ukraine and how the European elite have utilised this conflict to continue waging economic warfare on their own people, which he explains, together with the sanctions imposed, is a tale of self-sabotage. Detailing how Western nations assumed that their sanctions would “cripple the Russian economy,” Fazi elaborates how the precise opposite has occurred: Russia has weathered these sanctions quite steadily because the West and NATO have lost their “blackmail power” to isolate countries. Additionally, Fazi notes the paradox of how Russia's economy benefited from these sanctions, giving it the drive to focus on its production while western countries were the ones that were harmed most by the blowback of these sanctions, as Europe has driven up poverty rates while industrial nations have been forced to deindustrialise. Analysing the economic devastation that has ravaged Europe as a result, Fazi highlights the collapse of meaning and direction within European culture and society that has cumulatively resulted in significant discontent and anti-immigrant sentiment, while Europe, in supporting the current genocide in Gaza and in having provoked the war in Ukraine, even ensuring its continuation, have fallen into a complete moral vacuum. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

David Miller, sociologist, writer and investigative researcher, discusses how his 2019 lecture on Zionism encourages Islamophobia at the University of Bristol resulted in allegations of antisemitism by students against Miller for which there was an investigation, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism was suddenly adopted by the university, and his comments were found not to be unlawful, after which Miller faced reprisal for his own innocence in the matter, even after his sacking from the university in 2021. Miller discusses the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which he observes is the new antisemitism, as the product of the Zionist regime and has been purposefully designed to “blur the distinction between racism against Jews…and criticism of Israel.” Noting that we are “past the time” for such conflations to be made, Miller rightly indicates how this definition is an ideological construction that exists uniquely to silence criticism of Israel and its many atrocities. Underscoring how the central cultural references in the West that inform our cultural memory focus upon the horrors of the Holocaust, while rarely, if ever, referring to myriad other genocides, Miller considers how these other genocides have not had the advantage of hasbara that has ensured that only one type of genocide is recorded. Miller ponders the founding of Israel and the terrorism of the Haganah and other terror gangs, which paradoxically have admitted to rapes and the throwing of young children into ovens, noting how these details of Israel's historical origins almost eight decades ago, to include the many pogroms committed against Palestinians, mirror and perfectly recycle Israel's propaganda about Hamas. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nick Cleveland-Stout, a Research Associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses his research into Israel's having hired a conservative-aligned firm, Clock Tower X LLC, led by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, to create websites and content designed to train AI models like ChatGPT with pro-Israel messaging aimed primarily at Gen Z audiences. Discussing how Israel is also paying a cohort of 14-18 social media influencers around $7,000 per post, Cleveland-State observes how none of these influencers are neither registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) nor are they marking their social media posts as being distributed on behalf of Israel, Cleveland-Stout notes how Parscale, having previously engaged the services of the microtargeting firm Cambridge Analytica, is influencing how AI GPT models like ChatGPT are being trained to frame topics and respond to them on behalf of Israel. Cleveland-Stout notes how Larry Ellison is poised to establish a media dynasty with his recent purchase of CBS News, of which his son David has taken control, while Ellison is planning a bid for CNN's parent company, as well as Trump having tapped Ellison to purchase TikTok. All this in addition to Ellison having donated $16.6 million in 2017 to Friends of the IDF, which was the largest-ever donation to the organisation.Cleveland-Stout also details his research into how tens of millions of dollars have been flooding American think tanks directly from foreign governments and defence contractors, with the hope of influencing the analysis of these think tanks, which usually are rubber-stamped as objective analysis and whose experts frequently are invited onto legacy media programmes to disseminate their research. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, discusses his latest book Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy (Routledge, 2025) and why sociocide is a most relevant and pressing societal issue facing our societies, what Derber views as a collective suicide of society by the “we” and the rise of the “me” superceding all social connections. Covering the disappearance of labour unions and their participation in the United States, Derber details the vanishing of vital social spaces, such as family and work, resulting in the breakdown of social relations and a conterminous increase in authoritarianism. Historicising the sociopathy of early American capitalism with the rise of the “robber barons” such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie, Derber notes how capitalism skewed society's dominant values towards the antisocial, leading to the breakdown of society. Derber also notes how, despite the exploitative nature of employment throughout the 19th century, workers could count on a certain measure of continuity. With the rise of neoliberalism and Big Tech in the late twentieth century, Derber details how today's worker exploitation by far surpasses the exploitation of previous eras, as the employment relationship today is now largely contingent, with workers burning out much more quickly whilst being paid less than survival wages, making the exploitation of the 19th century look almost desirable by comparison. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Gilbert Achcar, Emeritus Professor at SOAS, University of London, discusses his latest book, The Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective (2025), while also analysing the violence and scope of Israel's response to 7 October 2023, to include the clearly stated genocidal intention by Israeli leaders. Covering how the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) started to flatten Gaza with 1-tonne bombs dropped on urban settings with the end goal of killing tens of thousands of people with no regard for civilian lives, Achcar notes how the Israeli government seized the opportunity of 7 October in order to effect its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Historicising the US-Israel relationship, Achcar chronicles how Israel did not always have a strategic alliance with the United States, but that this alliance grew sharply in the mid-1960s just as the US was losing ground in the Middle East due to the rise of Arab nationalism and Israel's blow to Egypt and Syria during the Six-Day War. Achcar examines the deterioration of Israel's image on the international stage from its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the First Intifada in 1987, the Second Intifada in the 2000s, and 7 October 2023, while he elucidates how the Zionist movement has resorted to the instrumentalisation of the Holocaust and false accusations of antisemitism to deflect criticisms of its genocidal actions. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Joti Brar, chair of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist CPGB-ML), discusses the compassionless media coverage of the genocide in Gaza and the obfuscation of the horrors of the siege in Gaza, much less the fact that contrary to legacy media, the violence has gone on for far longer than two years. Similarly, workers of the world recognise the pervasiveness of similar propaganda within their own trade unions which are often complicit with the bourgeois propaganda of the ruling elite. As a result, workers today, Brar relates, feel powerless in the absence of strong leadership within their unions. Stressing the need for workers to start making demands of their unions and governments, Brar runs through a list of demands upon which we must all insist, from the breaking of links with the pseudo-leftist parties such as the Labour Party in the UK or the Democratic Party in the US, to refusing to allow the state to oversee the running and organisation of unions, and the building up of strike funds. Brar also notes how workers are increasingly disenfranchised and angry as governments promote culture wars and tribalism (eg. climate change, immigration, and gender ideology) in order to pivot workers against each other, while media and politicians collude with each other, promoting one side as wrong, the other as right, leading populations to bypass reason and to identify with the ruling class. Brar also chronicles the root problems of mass migration, a phenomenon primarily caused by wars and the follow-up looting process promoted by Western nations, all while the imperialist class benefits from paying the bare minimum in immigrant wages while driving a wedge between members of the domestic working class and the immigrant working class, creating an anti-migrant fear. Covering the positive influence of her father, Harpal Brar, on her political education, Brar historicises mid-twentieth century Marxist organisation within Britain in which both her father and mother participated. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nina Power, writer and editor, discusses the collapse of the left-right divide that has characterised the contemporary era of political thought, along with the exhaustion of concepts that have plagued Western discourse. Analysing the “perpetual present” where hyperbole dominates mainstream discussions, such that “Nazi” and “fascist” are lazily involved to such a degree that these terms and their signified have become virtually meaningless, Power notes the political divide today, which is drawn between those who stand on principle and those who do not. In an era where asking certain questions will mark the subject, Power analyses the mechanisms within society today that have vested interests in repressing free speech, such that today approximately thirty people a day are arrested within the UK for their written words and even their thoughts (for praying outside abortion clinics). Power notes the current cultural focus upon semiotic violence that punishes the subject more severely than actual violence, while observing that this “semiotic psychosis” lends more weight to words than to reality and truth, fomenting a “conceptual, abstract terror.” Weighing in on those who have engaged in impassioned speech, such as the online post made by Lucy Connolly in the wake of the Southport killings which led to her imprisonment and an ensuing row over free speech in the UK, Power questions the lack of clemency for those who have been caught up in the legal clash between laws that ostensibly guarantee freedom of expression and opposing laws which denote certain speech as “hate speech.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Charles LeBaron, a former Center for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist, discusses his recent book, Greed to Do Good: The Untold Story of CDC's Disastrous War on Opioids: A CDC Physician's Personal Account (Amplify Publishing, 2024). LeBaron discusses the nationwide opioid crisis which has left, over the past two decades, a million Americans dead from opioid overdoses while noting how each year there are now twice as many deaths from overdoses as from breast cancer or colon cancer and more deaths than from automobiles and firearms combined. Noting how the implementation of CDC interventions had the paradoxical effect of “turbocharging the opioid epidemic,” LeBaron carefully analyses what went wrong, the gross improprieties conducted by Big Pharmaceutical companies, and how bad policy led to the opioid crisis in America. A physician who has seen first-hand the impact of opioids on the poor populations he treated in Appalachia and in prison, LeBaron sheds light on the class and status discriminations that are part and parcel of the wrong-minded approach to drug addiction in the United States that has riddled the country's history. Fundamentally, LeBaron argues for a better and more scientific approach to addressing the crisis while detailing the country's dysfunctional system in handling the crisis and analysing some working models that might actually improve the situation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

In questa puntata, Olivia Guaraldo, professoressa ordinaria di filosofia politica presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Umane all'Università di Verona, discute il libro scritto in collaborazione con Adriana Cavarero, Donna si nasce (2024), che offre uno sguardo al femminismo e ai concetti di “donna” e “gender” da Simone de Beauvoir ai giorni nostri. Guaraldo storicizza concetti come “patriarcato” e “differenza sessuale”, soffermandosi su come queste valenze siano state mutuate dall'antropologia culturale, assorbite dal femminismo e poi complicate con l'introduzione dell'“identità di gender” nei paesi prevalentemente anglofoni. Analizzando il discorso dei “diritti” in Occidente a partire dalla Rivoluzione francese, Guaraldo discute di come il pensiero moderno sia stato plasmato da un orizzonte simbolico in cui i soggetti maschili erano di fatto soggetti di “liberazione”, mentre le donne venivano invariabilmente eclissate. Approfondendo il paradosso secondo cui i diritti “universali” concessi nel corso del XVIII e XIX secolo erano specificamente rivolti agli uomini, mai all'altra metà della popolazione umana, dove gli uomini erano “la misura dell'umano”, Guaraldo evidenzia anche alcune delle differenze tra il femminismo italiano e francese e il femminismo anglo-americano, dove il primo presenta un femminismo della differenza e il secondo un femminismo dell'“uguaglianza”, e dove i diritti conquistati sono invariabilmente pagati con il prezzo dell'“assimilazione” postulata all'interno di un “modello neutro” in cui i diritti della persona vengono assunti sul corpo (ad esempio, diritti riproduttivi, accesso all'aborto, ecc.) e dove le conquiste sono sempre parziali. Guaraldo sottolinea anche l'attuale paradosso socio-politico in cui il linguaggio della differenza e del gender, così come inscritto dal poststrutturalismo francese nella seconda metà del XX secolo, ha portato a un nuovo dogmatismo e a una rigidità sociale tale per cui le giovani generazioni di donne si stanno opponendo al definirsi “donne” a causa della deliberata diluizione del significato del linguaggio. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Christian Parenti, Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and author of Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder (Verso, 2020), returns to the show with a searing analysis of the US political scene and various international theatres. Kicking off with an evaluation of the Trump v2.0 administration, Parenti reviews some of Trump's pre-presidential promises, from the Jeffrey Epstein file dump that was vastly redacted to Trump's enthralment with the Israeli lobby. Delving into the Israeli lobby, deeply entrenched within the US government, Parenti notes that this “lobby” is much more than simply monetary, and suggests that it is much more entrenched within the US political system. Parenti also develops a deeper examination of the war in Ukraine and the “demonology” of Russia within legacy media that has taken up the Cold War era model of anti-Communism by eliding the fact that some of Ukraine's oblasts (Donetsk and Luhansk) are still occupied by Ukrainian Nazis. Observing how the domestic pressure upon Putin is coming from the Communists and the far-right parties, both highly critical of Putn's longstanding abandonment of the Russian people who have been militarily occupied by Ukrainian forces wearing swastikas, Parentis evidences the machinations within the US proxy war against Russia from its provisions of munitions to Ukraine to the Ukrainian government's banning the Russian language in 2019 and Law 5371 which denies unionisation, exempting workers in companies with fewer than 250 employees from the coverage of collective agreements. Parenti also discusses the situation of free speech in the United States that is currently being eroded, specifically regarding any criticism of both the Israeli government and Zionism, as he explores the broader questions of academic freedom and anti-war sentiment within American universities where today the managerial class of university administrators within these institutions outnumbers faculty while itinerant workers with PhDs, the adjunct class, provide approximately 78% of all university teaching. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and professor of history at the University of Exeter, discusses the tragic situation of Palestinians who, for many decades, have been the circumstantial victims of a larger global coalition because their existence was “in the way” of other geo-political machinations. Giving a brief history of Zionism in Palestine, Pappé outlines the early alliances made between various groups, all composed of different members with entirely different motives—often contradictory reasons, to include the cooperation between secular nationalist and religious anti-Semites—who came together with one common goal: to see Palestine as a Jewish state and to expunge Palestinians from their land. Mapping out the various forces that wished to symbolically and/or physically disappear Palestinians, Pappé notes how Christian Zionists and British imperialists weaponised Zionism and Islamophobia to change the demographics of the region while later secular Jews understood the power of utilising anti-Semitism to seek similar ends. Pappé also forays into the paradox of language which has been used to cover up certain actions on behalf of the Israeli state while also providing a “comfort zone” for extending these same abuses of power into the future. Exposing how language has historically been employed to cover up war crimes, Pappé elucidates the current paradigm whereby it is no longer necessary for Israel to cover up its crimes against humanity analysing the shift in political discourse and the tragic reality that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has now been firmly placed on the table. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Charles Piller, investigative journalist for Science magazine and author of The Fail-Safe Society (1991) and Gene Wars (1998), discusses his latest book Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimers (2025). Historicising Alzheimer's research, Piller Piller situates how whistleblower, Vanderbilt professor Matthew Schrag, exposed a massive scandal involving a University of Minnesota lab led by a precocious young scientist (Sylvain Lesné) and a renowned director (Karen Ashe). Examining ego, professional aspirations together with the demands set upon researchers, Piller exposes how falsified data was at the heart of the leading hypothesis about the disease. Piller exposes Schrag's findings and this stunned not only the field of Alzheimer's research, but the ripple effects this discovery had on research institution, the pharmaceutical industry, universities and the public. With the “amyloid hypothesis” now set within a web of scientific deceit, Piller elaborates how this hypothesis allowed a cause and effect, “an injection of hope and belief” whereby targetting these proteins became the dominanting thinking in the field for combatting Alzheimer's disease. With the manipulation of data in plain sight, however, this necessarily put the future of Alzeiheimer's research at risk where research diverging from amyloid focus had been side-lined or even actively deterred all in order to ensure the primacy of the amyloid hypothesis, which Piller terms the “amyloid mafia.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe