The Neoliberal Virus
This article originally appeared at Counterpunch. To date, and to the extent that alleged political leaders have even tried to come to terms with the origins of the COVID-19 crisis…
The Political Uses of Pandemic
This article originally appeared on Counterpunch. Crisis has long had political uses for ruling groups. As I wrote in a piece for CounterPunch in 2015, elites and their intellectual courtiers…
The Oldest Trick in the Book: Panic-Driven Scapegoating in History and Recurring Patterns of Persecution (Springer 2020)
This book investigates the normalisation of blame-shifting within ideological discourse as a broad feature of history, working from Churchill’s truism that history is written by the victors. To that end,…
Social Ecology in the Capitalocene
New journal piece from yours truly at the revamped website for the journal of the Institute of Social Ecology, Harbinger. Social ecology and world-ecology are two prominent streams of radical…
A Penal State of Mind
Australian nationalism promotes the claim of a nation-state united under the Australian flag, but thanks in particular to racism and xenophobia, we remain deeply divided. What is the meaning of…
Rising Above the Thinking that Created the Climate Crisis
Advance apologies for the not very accessible writing style. As a clear and present threat to humanity, the climate crisis is far too broad a problem to be treated in…
Halal Certification Uproar: The Muslim Scapegoat as National Safety Valve
Debney, B. (2019). Halal Certification Uproar: The Muslim Scapegoat as National Safety Valve. In C. M. Hall, The Routledge Handbook of Halal Hospitality and Islamic Tourism. Routledge. Halal food certification…
Crisis-Afflicted Humanity is like an Alzheimer’s Patient Lost in the Forest
Originally published on Counterpunch. A couple of very useful quotes are attributed to Einstein. The first is his definition of madness as doing the same thing over and over and…
Christchurch, the White Victim Complex and Savage Capitalism
The Christchurch atrocity is a result of the scapegoating dynamic of savage capitalism, built on a white victim complex refusing to acknowledge any difference between respecting other cultures and the…
I think after almost 20 years I finally made sense of Mulholland Drive
I think Mulholland Drive is a movie about how Hollywood seduces and destroys people. Betty (Naomi Watts character) is actually Diane Selwyn—Betty is a representation of her hokey internal self-image…