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Paul Mason

Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His forthcoming book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Paul Mason

Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His forthcoming book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Ukraine, NATO and a Zeitenwende

Paul Mason 11th April 2022

Russia has upended the old rules-based order, Paul Mason writes. Europe needs to shape a new one.

Boris Johnson: a political career in freefall

Paul Mason 7th February 2022

The Conservative Party used to be famed for its pragmatic retention of power, Paul Mason writes. It’s lost that muscle memory.

Putin, pugilism and pusillanimity

Paul Mason 29th November 2021

Paul Mason finds the democratic world in the very disarray the authoritarian in the Kremlin has sought.

Britain heads further down the Brexit rabbit-hole

Paul Mason 4th October 2021

Despite petrol shortages and empty shelves, Labour is adrift—and Johnson may press the Northern Ireland protocol nuclear button.

The soft underbelly of British politics

Paul Mason 5th July 2021

A by-election in northern England highlights the corrosive atrophying of the UK body politic, Paul Mason writes.

Democracy, activism and the rule of law—key weapons against fascism

Paul Mason 8th June 2021

Fascism is not just sepia images of yesteryear but a contemporary threat. A liberal-left alliance is needed to counter it.

Hard Labour

Paul Mason 10th May 2021

Labour’s electoral debacle, Paul Mason writes, epitomises European social democracy’s coalition-building challenge. It just doesn’t see it that way.

Lost an empire, not found a role

Paul Mason 15th March 2021

Paul Mason finds in the UK’s foreign and defence review a wilful refusal of its natural European engagement.

Unsplendid isolation: Britain after ‘Brexit’

Paul Mason 18th January 2021

Paul Mason writes that a Biden US presidency allied to an EU pursuing ‘strategic autonomy’ leaves a ‘sovereign’ UK with a bit-part role.

Barrelling towards the ‘Brexit’ cliff edge

Paul Mason 23rd November 2020

The most frightening thing is not the UK government’s end-game strategy, Paul Mason writes. It’s that there isn’t one.

Golden Dawn verdict—no sunset for the far right

Paul Mason 12th October 2020

Paul Mason argues that with authoritarian conservatives in the White House and the Kremlin it’s no surprise the far right is thriving in Europe.

Technological sovereignty—and a sepia-image Britain

Paul Mason 30th June 2020

Paul Mason bemoans how ‘Brexit’ has left the UK a beached whale in a world in need of technological regulation driven by European values.

Brexit: deaths, more deaths … and no-deal calculations

Paul Mason 18th May 2020

In a nightmare-scenario ‘Brexit’ denouement, the UK government provokes no-deal chaos from which it hopes to profit after its Covid-19 shambles.

How his ‘Brexit’ project explains Johnson’s dithering on Covid-19

Paul Mason 6th April 2020

Paul Mason explains how Boris Johnson’s idiosyncratic initial response to the coronavirus stemmed from his particularistic empire nostalgia.

With the UK’s European door closed, it’s open season for xenophobia

Paul Mason 24th February 2020

Paul Mason explains how, even after the UK has technically left the EU, ‘Brexit’ has escalated into a culture war over immigration.

Leaving Europe

Paul Mason 13th January 2020

Paul Mason turns in his Social Europe column from postcapitalism to the theme of post-Brexit Britain.

The Manchester revolution

Paul Mason 23rd October 2019

Paul Mason reimagines the Manchester of his birth in a postcapitalist age—and raises the challenge of getting there.

Could a progressive phoenix arise from the ashes of the UK’s political meltdown?

Paul Mason 10th September 2019

The solidly bourgeois Financial Times fears Labour could come to power with a potentially postcapitalist programme, Paul Mason writes.

Time for postcapitalism

Paul Mason 1st July 2019

Paul Mason continues his sketch of a postcapitalist world by drawing out its implications for something in increasingly short supply—time.

To the postcapitalist city … via Amsterdam circa 1619

Paul Mason 21st May 2019

What makes the 21st century city the harbinger of a postcapitalist world is that for the first time in modern history the network can transcend the market.

The new spirit of postcapitalism

Paul Mason 8th April 2019

Capitalism emerged in the interstices of feudalism and Paul Mason finds a prefiguring of postcapitalism in the lifeworld of the contemporary European city. Raval, Barcelona, March 2019. The streets are full of young people (and not just students)—sitting, sipping drinks, gazing more at laptops than into each other’s eyes, talking quietly about politics, making art, […]

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