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David S. Moon

@daimoon.bsky.social

Senior Lecturer in Politics, teaching and writing about politics, ideology and pro-wrestling, with a bit of Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 when I can. https://www.davidsmoon.co.uk

475 Posts1085 Follower899 Folgt
Peter Allen@peterallen.bsky.social · 7d ago

To quote Mark Blyth, the climate crisis is ‘a giant non-linear outcome generator with wicked convexities. In plain English, there is no mean, there is no average, there is no return to normal. It’s one way traffic into the unknown’. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown | Mark Blyth

As the IPCC report makes clear, there are now only unknown and unfamiliar alternative futures that we can choose from, says political economist Mark Blyth

theguardian.com

James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · last wk.

It's not going to become 'the norm' though, is it? That's what so fucking terrifying about it. It's going to become a lot worse, very quickly.

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 4w ago

On Count Binface being elected *as Count Binface*: In Japan, at least 3 pro-wrestlers have been elected having run as masked gimmicks: Great Sasuke, Super Delfin & Skull Reaper A-Ji. The first two wore masks in the legislature. Skull Reaper had to unmask. In Mexico, Tinieblas ran for Mayor but lost.

Top left: Great Sasuke, elected to Iwate Predectural Assembly in 2003. Bottom Left: Super Delfin, elected to Izumi City Council in 2012. Top Right: Skull Reaper A-Ji, elected to Õita City Council in 2013. Bottom Right: Tinieblas, ran for Mayor in 2021 for Redes Sociales Progresistas. Won 0.81% of the vote.
David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 4w ago

Absolutely key that Count Binface does not break Kayfabe. Stay in gimmick, brother. Don’t let the media work you into a shoot.

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · last mo.

I’m writing about Jesse Ventura currently and IMO his is a truly authentic populist performance. Read his books, follow his career & the persona he enacts in political arenas is at once the one he developed as a pro-wrestler, action star, shock-jock, *and* his authentic self barely dialled-up. (1/2)

The many faces of Jesse Ventura
Will Jennings📉🗳️@drjennings.bsky.social · last mo.

I've been spending increasing amounts of time thinking about 'authenticity'. It is such a slippery concept both theoretically and empirically, yet seems increasingly important to contemporary politics. Populists are often seen as authentic, yet that authenticity can be highly performed...

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · last mo.

This is a point I made in my recent piece for @renewaljournal.bsky.social - when it comes to the current cast of characters who dominate politics, anyone who hasn’t been listening to QAA, True Anon, Chapo, etc is playing serious catch-up. Constant shock @ known stuff. renewal.org.uk/articles/in-...

From social media’s margins, left-wing ‘shitposters’1 have long replied to jour- nalists’ encomia to Mandelson with the infamous photographs of him alongside Epstein. Listeners to podcasts such as True Anon, Chapo Trap House, and The QAA Podcast (formally, QAnon Anonymous) were familiar with Epstein’s British elite connections. As outlined below, enough evidence to warrant an investiga- tion into both Mandelson’s and Mountbatten-Windsor’s private dealings with Epstein while in public office had been evident since 2023 at the latest. From this vantage point, the professed shock of broadsheet columnists and elected politicians felt less like surprise and more like gaslighting. Many in the media treated any mention of Epstein’s association with British power as conspiracy theory. Such narrowing of reasoned public discourse was made easier because these concerns were largely voiced by people already dismissed as ‘unserious’: ‘dirtbag’ podcasters, unapologetic left-wingers such as Zarah Sultana, and the aforementioned social media shitposters. The whole episode ultimately revealed a cognitive failure amongst the class of people paid to understands and explain politics: an inability, or unwillingness, to recognise the role of elite networks in politics and situate events within them. In short, a deficit of healthy concern about political conspiracies. Anxiety about conspiracism is understandable. From anti-vaccine activism to the seepage of ‘great replacement’ rhetoric into mainstream politics, the harms associated with disinformation have been turbocharged by the Internet age. For most of the democratic left, the reflex is instinctive: defend reason, pluralism, and a healthy public sphere against the paranoid style in politics. Yet in the rush to repudiate fantasy and defeat hatred, serious analysis of real conspiracy has too often been dismissed. The result, as the Epstein affair illustrates, is an incomplete grasp of politics as it actually operates, and a vacuum readi
ashlynn_b@ashlynnb.bsky.social · last mo.

I was also very confused at the ‘Tulsi associated with a cult’ story being framed as some revelation since I listened to this QAA podcast episode FOUR YEARS AGO detailing all the same things… 🤔

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · last mo.

This is a point I made in my recent piece for @renewaljournal.bsky.social - when it comes to the current cast of characters who dominate politics, anyone who hasn’t been listening to QAA, True Anon, Chapo, etc is playing serious catch-up. Constant shock @ known stuff. renewal.org.uk/articles/in-...

From social media’s margins, left-wing ‘shitposters’1 have long replied to jour- nalists’ encomia to Mandelson with the infamous photographs of him alongside Epstein. Listeners to podcasts such as True Anon, Chapo Trap House, and The QAA Podcast (formally, QAnon Anonymous) were familiar with Epstein’s British elite connections. As outlined below, enough evidence to warrant an investiga- tion into both Mandelson’s and Mountbatten-Windsor’s private dealings with Epstein while in public office had been evident since 2023 at the latest. From this vantage point, the professed shock of broadsheet columnists and elected politicians felt less like surprise and more like gaslighting. Many in the media treated any mention of Epstein’s association with British power as conspiracy theory. Such narrowing of reasoned public discourse was made easier because these concerns were largely voiced by people already dismissed as ‘unserious’: ‘dirtbag’ podcasters, unapologetic left-wingers such as Zarah Sultana, and the aforementioned social media shitposters. The whole episode ultimately revealed a cognitive failure amongst the class of people paid to understands and explain politics: an inability, or unwillingness, to recognise the role of elite networks in politics and situate events within them. In short, a deficit of healthy concern about political conspiracies. Anxiety about conspiracism is understandable. From anti-vaccine activism to the seepage of ‘great replacement’ rhetoric into mainstream politics, the harms associated with disinformation have been turbocharged by the Internet age. For most of the democratic left, the reflex is instinctive: defend reason, pluralism, and a healthy public sphere against the paranoid style in politics. Yet in the rush to repudiate fantasy and defeat hatred, serious analysis of real conspiracy has too often been dismissed. The result, as the Epstein affair illustrates, is an incomplete grasp of politics as it actually operates, and a vacuum readi
ashlynn_b@ashlynnb.bsky.social · last mo.

I was also very confused at the ‘Tulsi associated with a cult’ story being framed as some revelation since I listened to this QAA podcast episode FOUR YEARS AGO detailing all the same things… 🤔

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · last mo.

Anyone feeling sympathy for how Keir Starmer was treated by newspapers should recall: 🔴 as DPP he rejected bringing charges on phone hacking; 🔴 he was therefore found ‘culpable’ for phone hacking; 🔴 he then called to end prosecutions for criminality early; 🔴 & he refused to bring back Leveson Pt.2.

Four news headlines. Top Left: “No charges in News of the World phone-hacking probe”. Top Right: “John Yates and Keir Starmer ‘Culpable’ for phone Hacking, say MPs. Bottom Left: “Time to wind up phone hacking probe, says top prosecutor. Bottom Right: “Keir Starmer confirms he has no plans to revive second stage of Leveson inquiry.”
Will Jennings📉🗳️@drjennings.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This rather speaks to this analysis of the value of political paranoia. Sometimes they are out to get you! Sometimes world affairs are run by a small group of people!

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I have a provocatively titled piece in the latest issue of @renewaljournal.bsky.social, in which I propose that among the lessons of the “Epstein files” revelations is the value of a properly directly, healthy paranoia suited to an age of opaque networks, dark money, and unaccountable elites. (1/2)

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I have a provocatively titled piece in the latest issue of @renewaljournal.bsky.social, in which I propose that among the lessons of the “Epstein files” revelations is the value of a properly directly, healthy paranoia suited to an age of opaque networks, dark money, and unaccountable elites. (1/2)

Title: In defence of paranoia: rethinking politics after the Epstein Files Abstract: Th is article argues that a refl exive dismissal of ‘conspiracy’ has left political analysis blind to the routine operations of elite collusion, a failure exposed in stark terms by the Epstein case. It calls for a disciplined, evidence-led ‘paranoia’ capable of tracking power across the opaque ‘parapolitical’ networks that structure contemporary politics.Just as politics itself has a ‘Too Difficult’ box32 – long-term problems such as climate change or media regulation that are quietly shelved because they are complex, unpopular, or resistant to accessible solutions – so too, it seems, does political studies. Structural questions about the influence of security services, corporate lobbyists and/or organised crime on democratic outcomes are almost entirely nudged to the margins, bracketed as conspiratorial and excluded from peer-reviewed publication. Instead, answers are sought where data is more accessible and ostensibly transparent – elections, legislatures, policy pro- grammes – and approached in turn from a perspective buuilt upon broadly pluralistic assumptions. This matters, because despite their relatively small readerships, the outputs academia produce provides a key evidential basis that structures wider political discourses. When political scholarship declines to grapple with these darker dimensions and subsequently fails those seeking reliable, authoritative sources, it cedes fertile ground that can, in turn, be exploited by more malicious or misguided actors. Movements like QAnon weave genuine historical conspiracies – such as MK-ULTRA, Operation CHAOS, or Project Paperclip – into their narratives of mass deception. In doing so they blur truth and fabrication to increase the per- suasiveness of their fantastical claims.33 In short, when scholarship fails to offer rigorous analyses that take account of the darker workings of power, demagogues and opportunists readily fill the void.
Renewal@renewaljournal.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Subscribe to read: @daimoon.bsky.social on how the Epstein Files show the need for "political paranoia", and why social democrats should pay attention to "parapolitics" renewal.org.uk/articles/in-...

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I have a provocatively titled piece in the latest issue of @renewaljournal.bsky.social, in which I propose that among the lessons of the “Epstein files” revelations is the value of a properly directly, healthy paranoia suited to an age of opaque networks, dark money, and unaccountable elites. (1/2)

Title: In defence of paranoia: rethinking politics after the Epstein Files Abstract: Th is article argues that a refl exive dismissal of ‘conspiracy’ has left political analysis blind to the routine operations of elite collusion, a failure exposed in stark terms by the Epstein case. It calls for a disciplined, evidence-led ‘paranoia’ capable of tracking power across the opaque ‘parapolitical’ networks that structure contemporary politics.Just as politics itself has a ‘Too Difficult’ box32 – long-term problems such as climate change or media regulation that are quietly shelved because they are complex, unpopular, or resistant to accessible solutions – so too, it seems, does political studies. Structural questions about the influence of security services, corporate lobbyists and/or organised crime on democratic outcomes are almost entirely nudged to the margins, bracketed as conspiratorial and excluded from peer-reviewed publication. Instead, answers are sought where data is more accessible and ostensibly transparent – elections, legislatures, policy pro- grammes – and approached in turn from a perspective buuilt upon broadly pluralistic assumptions. This matters, because despite their relatively small readerships, the outputs academia produce provides a key evidential basis that structures wider political discourses. When political scholarship declines to grapple with these darker dimensions and subsequently fails those seeking reliable, authoritative sources, it cedes fertile ground that can, in turn, be exploited by more malicious or misguided actors. Movements like QAnon weave genuine historical conspiracies – such as MK-ULTRA, Operation CHAOS, or Project Paperclip – into their narratives of mass deception. In doing so they blur truth and fabrication to increase the per- suasiveness of their fantastical claims.33 In short, when scholarship fails to offer rigorous analyses that take account of the darker workings of power, demagogues and opportunists readily fill the void.
Renewal@renewaljournal.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Subscribe to read: @daimoon.bsky.social on how the Epstein Files show the need for "political paranoia", and why social democrats should pay attention to "parapolitics" renewal.org.uk/articles/in-...

Laura Jedeed@laurajedeed.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The UFC is doing a very clever thing: they have given each fighter an honor guard that includes a medal of honor recipient, which means every service member must salute as the fighter walks past

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Judged against Trump & UFC’s own goals, the White House event looks like a huge success. Trump pulled off a spectacular hyperbolic celebration of the MAGA aesthetic, framed by U.S. state symbolism and military power - upsetting all the people they’d want… (1/2) www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

Trump’s White House UFC fights marred by ugly Michelle Obama smear

Justin Gaethje stunned Ilia Topuria in the main event as a night of military pageantry, political theater and cage fighting veered into conspiracy-laden culture-war rhetoric

theguardian.com

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Roman Reigns previously announced he’d voted for Trump, despite being a registered Democrat, so choosing to attend the UFC White House event is on brand I guess. But he seems to have been the only non-exec there. www.cagesideseats.com/post/RZbtV8f...

Triple H and Roman Reigns at UFC 250
David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Miz and. Charlotte Flair at the White House UFC event. I’m very interested the extent to which this event will see greater blurring across the TKO lines in terms of visuals of WWE workers at Trump events - and the extent to which it’s noticed.

X post titled THE MIZ AND CHARLOTTE FLAIR AT THE UFC FAN FESR FOR THE WHITE HOUSE CARD. THE MIZ STARTS A USA CHANT
David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Miz and. Charlotte Flair at the White House UFC event. I’m very interested the extent to which this event will see greater blurring across the TKO lines in terms of visuals of WWE workers at Trump events - and the extent to which it’s noticed.

X post titled THE MIZ AND CHARLOTTE FLAIR AT THE UFC FAN FESR FOR THE WHITE HOUSE CARD. THE MIZ STARTS A USA CHANT
C.R. Denis@crdenis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Last night sixteen service members lined the path of UFC fighters at the Lincoln Memorial. The military’s highest honor. Reserved for funerals for heroes. Today they enter the ring from the Oval Office. Where Kennedy sat during the Missile Crisis. He owns the stock. That is the institution now.

David S. Moon@daimoon.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If, as reported, there’s a larger than already reported no. of WWE wrestlers at the UFC 250 event this weekend, it could be a key breaching moment in the evidently conscious attempt to separate the brand from Trump. Having executives at the WH different to workers. cultaholic.com/posts/severa...

Several WWE Wrestlers Interested In Attending UFC Freedom 250 At The White House

UFC Freedom 250 is taking place this weekend on the south lawn of the White House, and WWE wrestlers want to be there.

cultaholic.com