Thomas Fazi

I haven’t written anything in a while since I’ve been busy completing our upcoming book (with Toby Green) The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor – A Critique from the Left (it’s gonna be awesome – stay tuned!).

However, I’ve got two new pieces out. One is an article for UnHerd on how elites, just like in the 1970s, are exploiting an inflationary surge of their own making to engineer a recession and drive up unemployment in order to pre-empt a potential rise in labour bargaining power.

The second one is a review of Sahra Wagenknecht’s book on the neoliberal left in Compact – in which she makes her case for “left conservatism”: a left that returns to its original mission of improving the lives of the working and middle classes, but which also recognises people’s need for “recognition, belonging, and community”.

I’ve been falling a bit back with the posts, so here you’ll find links to three articles I’ve written over the past few weeks.

In the most recent one I take a deep look at Macron and Le Pen’s track records and electoral manifestoes, to see if the labels we attach to politicians – left-right, progressive-conservative, etc. -, and the political compass we use to navigate contemporary politics, still make any sense.

In this other article, I explain the real reasons for the EU’s arm-wrestling with Hungary and Poland. Hint: it has less to do with culture-war issue than one may think, and much more to do with the age-old question of where sovereignty ultimately sits in the EU – in Brussels or in the member states?

Finally, in this article from a few weeks back, I explained why the Western sanctions – being based on economic orthodoxy (i.e. fantasy) – would totally fail in their aim of “crippling” the Russian economy, and would actually backfire on the West. Update: yesterday the ruble has surpassed pre-invasion levels.

Hi. In this article I explain how the conflict in Ukraine is a godsend for America, allowing it to reassert its economic and military hegemony over Europe under the guise of a new Cold War against Russia/China, relaunch a declining NATO, replace Russia in the field of gas exports and turn the clock of West-East relations back by several years. The Old Continent, on the other hand, will pay a heavy price for all this.

Toby Green and I have a new article out on the way in which the pandemic (or better, the governments’ response to the latter) has fundamentally altered the landscape of Western capitalism, dramatically accelerating pre-existing trends and heralding the rise of an even more concentrated, oligarchic and authoritarian capitalist mode of power – what we might call hyper-neoliberalism or neo-feudalism. In particular, we are witnessing the rise of a new ultra-powerful complex — the techno-media-pharma (TMP) complex — capable of shaping every aspect of our lives. An unprecedented collective effort will be needed to fight for a different future.

We were told Brexit would cause massive damage to the British economy; it turns out it’s doing pretty well, at least compared to many of its European counterparts, as I explain in this article.

Sergio Mattarella has been re-elected as Italy’s president. In this article, I explain why this will further strengthen Draghi’s authoritarian and anti-democratic grip on the country. Indeed, the Draghi-Mattarella regime puts Italy at the forefront of the technopopulist revolution: a deeply disturbing mix of anti-democratic technocracy and populist demagoguery.

In this article Toby Green and I make the left-wing against compelled — and in places mandatory — Covid vaccinations: while vaccines have proven very effective in reducing mortality among the elderly, vulnerable, and most at risk from the disease, it’s hard to see the collective or even individual benefit of vaccinating everyone against a virus that targets only a minority of the population – especially if this achieved through highly discriminatory and segregational policies.

I’ve written a short piece on Italy’s decision to introduce a vaccine mandate for over-50s, in which I claim that the measure has little to do with public health. Rather, the motive is political: to further alienate the small minority of vaccine hesitant Italians (which will continue to be blamed for all the government’s failures), exacerbate social conflict and thus justify the maintenance of the permanent state of emergency necessary to continue with the de-democratisation, neoliberalisation and oligarchisation of the country.

Toby Green and I have written a new essay looking at the question of the “collective good” in the pandemic, whether the latter has been served by lockdowns, and whether alternative approaches – such as that of the Great Barrington Declaration – would have proven more effective in safeguarding the collective good, and even saving lives.

I’ve written an article (along with Paolo Cornetti) on the upcoming election (by parliament) of the Italian president (probably Draghi), the growing power of the latter, the role of the EU and what it means for Italian democracy.