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The past misses you: the dangers and radical potential of nostalgia  

How the right is weaponizing nostalgia and why the left should be more nostalgic


28/10/2025

Recently, a new type of AI-generated video has been making the rounds. The clips usually follow the same format. A group of (almost always white) teens talk directly to the viewer, reminding them of all the cool things they were doing in the 1980s, 1990s, or early 2000s. Set in colorful environments reminiscent of shows like Stranger Things, these teens hang out in parking lots after dark, wander through cozy-looking malls, or cruise around immaculate suburbia in their vintage cars. The twin towers of the World Trade Center make regular appearances, still standing tall in all their glory. The fake AI-teens all convey a similar message: the past misses you. While you have been lost in a world of phones and social media, “back here” things are still real, kids are still talking to each other and summers never end. You should “just come back”. The teens are blissfully unaware of the realities of those decades: Chernobyl, the AIDS epidemic, the Iraq War or the damage wrought by neoliberalism.

These videos seem to be created mostly by AI content farms or hustle-bros trying to monetize nostalgia. They’re not the product of sincere longing, but a means to boost engagement and make money.

The use of AI to milk nostalgia for attention and clicks feels inevitable. Generative AI is, by definition, a regurgitative technology — it can’t truly invent anything new. It is always rooted in reinterpretations of the past, remixing information that already exists: recomposed, maybe, but never legitimately unique. 

As such, AI and large language models are the logical continuation of decades of technologies that have exploited our appetite for nostalgia to harvest data and keep us engaged.

Social media and algorithmic nostalgia

Social media platforms and their algorithms are designed to function as perfectly optimized nostalgia-production machines. Recommender systems work by suggesting content similar to what a viewer has already liked, with the ultimate goal of keeping the user engaged.

Nostalgia triggers a powerful emotional response, which correlates with high engagement (clicks, likes, and shares). It also helps algorithms infer a user’s supposed tastes. If a user likes 1960s psychedelic rock, for example, they will get more of the same style, along with some early-2010s revival of ’60s music, and — why not — an entire AI-generated band of the same genre.

The end goal of this strategy — what nostalgia researcher Grafton Tanner calls retrobait — is to use the lure of nostalgia to persuade users to give up their data. 

On the other side of the culture-production machine, artists will create more work that they know might perform better (such as 60s psych rock in this example), thus creating a sort of cultural feedback loop. 

The weaponization of nostalgia by Big Tech doesn’t just mine the past—it also actively blurs and distorts it, reshaping history into a perfectly cozy, sellable simulacrum of itself.

This folding of time in on itself is most visible in cinema, with its endless avalanche of remakes, reboots, and sequels to long-dormant “IPs” (in 2024, not a single original film broke the box-office top ten). But the trend has long infected every corner of the culture industry, down to your local rock band trying to make it on Spotify.

Nostalgia in politics

In politics, nostalgia has been a feature of right-wing conservatism for what feels like forever. Nazism was rooted in the Völkisch movement, which was itself trying to oppose modernity by going back to a mythical German past, untainted by the ills of christianity or technological progress. 

More recent political phenomena — from Brexit to Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, or the AfD’s Deutschland. Aber normal.— all seem driven by a longing for a long-lost, idealized past.

It has now almost become a meme to call AI the new aesthetic of fascism. Nostalgia has been the aesthetic of fascism for way longer: from the Nazi’s back-to-nature romanticism, to the “Trad Wife” lifestyle; from the 1970s “Hitler-Wave” in Germany, to the AfD-youth considering a Nazi-like eagle for its new logo. 

Yet, the leftist critique of nostalgia is too often a shortcut — a simple way to make the other side look like backward idiots, without engaging with the real struggles that animate them.

Nostalgia is a way to declare someone non-contemporaneous, to say that someone—or their ideas, attitudes—belongs to the past. This is what makes the nostalgia charge so suitable for political rhetoric and, by the same token, so bad for political analysis which tends to merely reproduce one’s own political bias.

Tobias Becker, The Politics of Nostalgia

Instead, it’s more helpful to see nostalgia as a valid articulation of loss: our way of emotionally expressing that something is wrong. Of course, this feeling can easily be exploited by nefarious forces, but it can also be harnessed for revolutionary aims.

Is nostalgia really all that bad?

The term nostalgia was first coined by Johannes Hofer in the seventeenth century to describe the symptoms of Swiss mercenaries stationed far from home who were suffering from a mysterious illness. The word comes from the Greek nostos and algia — meaning “homecoming” and “ache”. Before it became associated with time, nostalgia was understood as a yearning to return home.

At first, nostalgia was regarded as pathological, a new disease for a new world. It was also closely linked to war: during the American Civil War and World War I, nostalgia was frequently diagnosed among soldiers. For a time, the powers that emerged from the Industrial Revolution viewed nostalgia with suspicion. It was seen as a threat to progress—a backward impulse incompatible with the capitalist ethos of endless growth. Later, once it became clear that no one was actually dying from nostalgia, capitalism realized it could be used to sell. Nostalgia soon became a prominent feature of marketing campaigns around the world. 

Psychologists mostly agree that nostalgia is a bittersweet — but predominantly positive — emotion that arises when people feel a lack of meaning, when they are displaced and lost. It often accompanies periods of rapid social change. In a capitalist society, where change seems less like a smooth flow and more like a constant, battering storm, nostalgia is ever-present.

Nostalgia is both an unavoidable emotional reaction to the reckless missions of capitalism and an emotion often induced to justify them. 

Grafton Tanner, The Hours Have Lost Their Clock

But are we too hard on nostalgia? The left has historically viewed nostalgia as an inherently conservative — and therefore right-wing — impulse: the opposite of radicalism. This presents a paradox, as the left has often longed for a time before, sometimes naively, and occasionally in racist terms: before money, before urbanization, before hierarchy, before “civilization.”

Although nostalgia has largely been antagonized by the mainstream left, it has assumed a far more significant role for activist groups seeking to reclaim their cultural identity from colonial domination. Here, nostalgia is not an empty, AI-generated husk draped in stylish ’80s cool; it is a powerful tool used by activists to relocate and revive a culture that was violently taken from them. Nostalgia points to what has been lost: communal bonds, rootedness, and shared history. Recognizing these losses strengthens critiques of capitalism and modern alienation.

Taken in this way, nostalgia can be a powerful instrument for anti-capitalist struggles. It can be used to remember elements of the past that are genuinely worth being nostalgic about — such as a functioning social safety net, a rich local culture, or a time when capitalism didn’t seem like the only available option. Nostalgia, then, can be used to weave a new narrative that counters the “official” storytelling of capital. 

The breakdown of narrativity in a culture, group, or social class is a symptom of its having entered into a state of crisis. For with any weakening of narrativizing capacity, the group loses its power to locate itself in history, to come to grips with the necessity that its past represents for it, and to imagine a creative, if only provisional, transcendence of its ‘fate’.

Hayden White, Getting out of History

In his latest book, Foreversim, Grafton Tanner takes something of a U-turn from his previous works about the weaponization of nostalgia. He argues that what we are seeing is not a world gorging on nostalgia, but a system still pathologizing it. In this reading, what Disney, Trump or the AfD are doing is not serving us more nostalgia, but trying to alleviate the nostalgic “disease” altogether by offering a constant presentism. After all, how can we be truly nostalgic for Star Wars if a new Star Wars movie comes out every year?

Whatever we think of the current use of nostalgia by capitalists — whether as a numbing agent for the masses or as a disease to be fought — there is no doubt that a certain form of nostalgia can be restorative.

The past has to be continually re-narrated, and the political point of reactionary narratives is to suppress the potentials which still await, ready to be re-awakened, in older moments.

Mark Fischer, Acid Communism

The question, then, is how to incorporate nostalgia into leftist thinking. On the one hand, it seems vital to resist being numbed by the consumerist, racist nostalgia weaponized by social media algorithms, AI companies, and fascists. On the other hand, there may be much to gain from embracing a form of progressive nostalgia — one that helps us value past struggles, question the illusion of capitalism as the inevitable outcome of history, and remember that it is still possible to forge new paths informed by the potential of the past.

30 October 1947 – Berthold Brecht appears before the House Un-American Committee

This week in working class history


The United States ended the Second World War as the world’s strongest power, both economically and militarily, and was determined to maintain that dominance. Abroad, the “Truman Doctrine” allowed the Soviet Union to control Eastern Europe while Communist uprisings were crushed in Greece. At home, McCarthyism denied public-sector jobs to anyone suspected of being a Communist. Most famously, writers and directors in the Hollywood Ten were jailed and blacklisted from working in film for 13 years.

The Hollywood Ten were originally the Hollywood Nineteen, but only eleven people were called to trial. The eleventh was the left-wing German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who had fled from Hitler and eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1941. He wrote the screenplay for just one film, Hangmen Also Die. On 30 October 1947, Brecht appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the congressional body responsible for implementing McCarthyism. (You can see a recording of part of the hearing here.)

Although Brecht’s appearance before HUAC makes for compelling—often hilarious—theatre, it is also an example of how not to resist repression. Brecht did not confront McCarthy directly. Instead, his answers were riddled with the phrase “I don’t remember.” While his colleagues in the Hollywood Ten refused to testify, Brecht insisted that he had never been a member of the Communist Party in any country. Whether or not that was true is beside the point. Answering questions his colleagues had refused to address amounted to a form of scabbing.

In fact, Brecht’s individualistic resistance was typical of the protagonists in many of his plays—from Mother Courage to Galileo to Schweik in the Second World War. Each portrays persecuted individuals outwitting the authorities. Brecht later said he felt compelled to testify because he was not a US citizen, but it seems more likely that he chose the strategy with which he was most familiar. As he noted in his testimony, Brecht refrained from political activity during his six years in the United States.

We shouldn’t be too hard on Brecht. Many writers and workers in other industries lost their jobs in the McCarthy purges, and some were jailed. Given the balance of forces in 1950s America, Brecht’s choice was between self-preservation and persecution. The day after his testimony, he flew to East Germany, where the government had promised him his own theatre, the Berliner Ensemble. Despite some misgivings about East German “socialism,” he remained there until his death in 1956.

For Berliners who are interested in Brecht and McCarthy, I will be engaging with the subject more in my talk: Spartacus – the film that broke the McCarthy blacklist? on Sunday 2nd November at the Unframe festival.

Writers at The Berliner strike over censorship and pro-Israel ad

Writers at Berlin’s biggest English-language publication have called a strike over ad for the Nova festival exhibition


On October 5, freelancers for the English-language magazine The Berliner went on strike after negotiations with management failed. The main point of contention was an ad promoting the Nova festival exhibition, a travelling show meant to portray the October 7 attack by Hamas on a music festival. As it avoids any mention of the genocide in Gaza, critics accuse it of being war propaganda. 

This decision came after management had suppressed articles relating to Palestine for many months. While this editorial line was never formally stated, the magazine’s editor-in-chief repeatedly called for the need to remain “neutral.” This supposed neutrality was then breached by the Nova ads, while reports about Palestine demonstrations or repression in art spaces are forbidden. This comes in the context of the German and Berlin governments censoring speech about Palestine while promoting pro-Israeli propaganda.

Walter Crasshole, a queer columnist for the magazine, said: “In September 2024, I pitched a column about the Palestine/Israel conflict among queers in Berlin and was told no. I later got a private WhatsApp saying, ‘It’s an editorial decision above my pay grade, and I can’t really offer a specific explanation beyond that.’ That’s when I realized the subject was off-limits and that management had created real unease among the editorial team.”

On October 5, the ad was posted on The Berliner’s Instagram page. A member of the writing staff commented that the issue was not with the exhibit itself but rather “the hypocrisy in how this ad was pushed to the forefront after over a year of sidelining and ignoring reporting on Israel-Palestine. Surely if the idea were to ignore the issue simply, it would follow that we would also not publish the ad.”

The Berliner has no editorial statute. Employees of the magazine report that the owner, Yoram Roth, makes editorial decisions about what topics can be reported on. As one writer put it: “We were forbidden from writing certain stories. There was an explicit order: ‘no more Palestine.’ We tried to work around it at first, but the boundaries of what was acceptable kept tightening. For a while, culture was okay—but then we were told to remove events, demos, and exhibitions that mentioned Palestine. So, it became more and more restrictive.” 

Roth is the owner of multiple cultural sites around Berlin, including Clärchens Ballhaus and the Fotografiska museum (as written about in this puff piece). In 2023, Spiegel magazine reported that he acquired a 2.5% stake (1.3 million euros) in Aliada, the parent company of the spyware firm Cytrox—which later became part of the Intellexa Alliance. That company provided spy software to Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Libyan military dictator Khalifa Haftar, as well as to countries like Kazakhstan, Singapore, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The software was used to spy on journalists, creating a terrible conflict of interest for the owner of any publication.

When writing staff found out about the ad in early October, they organized a meeting with management. Together with the editor-in-chief, Jonny Tiernan, they called for the magazine to abandon these ads. They even offered to pay the fee out of their own salaries. However, management refused—and the resulting discussions made it clear that this was an ideological, not just a financial, decision. The people in charge were uninterested in the views of their entire workforce.

Shortly after the first Nova ad was posted, Tiernan emailed the freelancers about his efforts to mitigate the ad’s impact, which included labelling the post as an “advertisement” instead of an “ad” and withholding editorial coverage of the exhibition. The freelancers rejected these measures and went on strike on October 5, withdrawing their work from the November issue and launching a GoFundMe the next day to cover their lost income.

As of today, management maintains its opposition to any compromise or dialogue on the writers’ demands: ending the Nova festival exhibition ad campaign, removing all related ads, ensuring a transparent editorial policy, and clearly separating advertising from editorial content on the website. Independent, free, and unbiased journalism is more important than ever. The Berliner is one of Berlin’s few English-language magazines. In the strikers’ own words, “We want to put an end to the editorial interference that is weakening one of the city’s most vital independent media voices.” If you would like to support the strikers, click here.

Ireland’s race for the Áras

In post-Higgins Ireland, politics feels drained of poetry, principle, and public passion


24/10/2025

On Friday, the 24th of October, Ireland will vote for its tenth President. Politician, poet, and sociologist Michael D. Higgins will be stepping down after his second term as head of state, a term he won in a landslide. Higgins has enjoyed broad public approval. Formerly a Labour Party TD, he leans firmly to the left, and his tenure has been marked by his advocacy for human rights, social justice, and cultural life. He’s not without his critics—nor should any public figure be—but he’s represented the “Land of Saints and Scholars” with a kind of benevolent charm the rest of the world assumes all Irish people possess: poetic, amiable, and chock-full of integrity. 

In Ireland, Presidents do not wield sweeping political power. The office is largely ceremonial, far from the executive muscle of its American counterpart. But ceremonial does not mean irrelevant. Irish Presidents shape public discourse. They are moral weather vanes as much as constitutional figures. Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese both demonstrated this: Robinson championed women’s rights and global human rights long before such issues were politically comfortable, while McAleese’s emphasis on peace and reconciliation resonated deeply in post–Good Friday Agreement Ireland. Michael D., in his lilting way, set a tone for a more reflective, humane national identity. So while their powers are technically limited, their words and presence ripple through Ireland’s collective psyche.

This year’s race, however, feels stranger—a bit louder, a bit more online. For a brief, chaotic few weeks, Conor McGregor threatened to enter the race. The MMA fighter (who lost a civil rape case to Nikita Hand earlier this year) seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Donald Trump. Much like Trump, McGregor flirts with alt-right rhetoric, indulges racist dog whistles, and rails against “wokeism”. Blessedly, his presidential ambitions collapsed almost as soon as they began. He was never likely to secure the necessary nominations, but the idea of him bounding around the Áras was enough to make most people break into hives. His withdrawal likely owed more to public outrage than self-reflection, but at least the circus left town before it pitched a tent. I did, however, discover that Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley was briefly rumoured as a potential candidate. A Land of Riverdance sounds better than a Land of Rapists, at least.

With the ring cleared, the election has effectively become a two-horse race: independent left-winger Catherine Connolly and Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys. Connolly, the more palatable of the two, comes across as principled but curiously flat. Her foreign policy stance begins and ends with “war is bad”—a sentiment few would dispute, but one that feels hollow without any plan for how to prevent or resolve conflict. It’s a familiar liberal affliction: the comfort of good intentions without the discomfort of detail.

Humphreys, by contrast, is more ideologically coherent but less ideologically appealing. To her credit, she’s been firm in describing Israel’s occupation of Gaza as genocide, but otherwise she remains a classic party-line operator. Her track record in Social Protection and Rural Affairs paints her as pragmatic, but hardly radical. Humphreys also has ties to the Orange Order via her husband and has refused to learn Irish despite previously serving as a Gaeltacht Minister. 

Adding to the general sense of fatigue is the “Spoil the Vote” campaign, a small but vocal movement urging voters to deliberately invalidate their ballots as a protest against the perceived sameness of both leading candidates. It’s not so much anti-political as it is exhausted. The campaign has gained some traction online, tapping into a wider mood of apathy and frustration. Whether it’s a symbolic act of resistance or just disengagement by another name, it speaks to a growing sense that the system itself is no longer listening.

So where does that leave us? The pros and cons are thinly spread. Connolly represents authenticity and independence, but risks being ineffectual. Humphreys offers experience and competence, but is tethered to a party line that feels increasingly out of step with the electorate. Neither inspires much joy—and perhaps that’s the real story. Ireland has moved from a politics of poetry to a politics of paperwork.

As for the forecast, Connolly is expected to edge out Humphreys, and personally, I’m glad. There are worse things to be than ineffectual, and I would prefer a left-wing independent to take the helm than I would a Fine Gael candidate. That being said, the election feels flat, unmotivated, uninteresting. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a significant drop in voter turnout on Friday instead of mere vote-spoiling. 

Still, it won’t be hard not to miss Michael D.—his measured poetry, his moral steadiness. Whoever replaces him will inherit not just the title, but the expectation of grace. That’s a tough act to follow, even without a UFC fighter in the wings.

The silent victim: Warfare’s enduring environmental scars across the Middle East

A comprehensive analysis of UN data and scientific studies reveals that the environmental damage from the ongoing military occupations will impact the region’s health and stability for generations


23/10/2025

The human cost of mass attacks is measured in lives lost and families displaced. However, a growing body of evidence from international organizations points to another, more enduring casualty: the environment. From the rubble-strewn landscape of Gaza to the fire-scorched lands of Lebanon and the industrial sites of Iran, military actions are unleashing long-term ecological disasters that poison the land, water, and air, threatening the foundation of life itself long after the fighting stops.

Gaza: An Unprecedented Environmental Collapse

In the Gaza Strip, the scale of environmental damage is so severe that experts are describing it as unprecedented.

A Toxic Tide of Rubble: The conflict has generated an estimated 50 to 61 million tons of debris, much of which contains hazardous materials like asbestos, unexploded ordnance, and human remains. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that clearing this rubble could take up to 14 years and poses a severe risk of contaminating soil and groundwater.

Systemic Water Contamination: The destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure has led to a catastrophic water crisis. With 85% of water facilities inoperable, over 100,000 cubic meters of raw or poorly treated sewage are being discharged into the Mediterranean Sea every day, polluting the coastline and the aquifer. This has left over 90% of Gaza’s water unfit for human consumption, creating a breeding ground for waterborne diseases.

Deliberate Destruction of Agriculture: Satellite data shows that the conflict has destroyed or damaged approximately 80% of Gaza’s tree cover, including thousands of olive trees, and over two-thirds of its cropland. This systematic destruction of farmland and orchards has not only wiped out food sovereignty but also stripped the land of its natural defenses against desertification.

A Massive Climate Footprint: The climate cost of the war is substantial. A study shared with The Guardian found that the long-term carbon footprint of the first 15 months of the conflict, including future reconstruction, could exceed 31 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent—more than the annual emissions of many individual countries.

A Regional Pattern of Environmental Damage

The environmental impact of conflict is not confined to Gaza. A similar pattern of ecological damage is evident across the region.

In Lebanon, Israeli military actions have caused widespread destruction. Satellite data shows over 10,800 hectares burned in southern Lebanon in 2024, an area four times the size of Beirut . The use of white phosphorus munitions has been documented, igniting hundreds of fires that have destroyed prime farmland and damaged forests. An attack on the Jiyeh power station in July 2024 also caused a 10,000-ton oil spill into the Mediterranean, creating a major marine disaster.

In Syria, a report from the Quneitra Governorate detailed the “complete destruction” of the 186-hectare Kodna Forest, a 40-year-old natural treasure, with total environmental damages estimated at over $100 million. Furthermore, inspectors found traces of anthropogenic uranium at a site bombed by Israel, raising concerns about long-term radiological and chemical contamination.

In Iran, even a short, 12-day war in 2025 had significant environmental consequences. Strikes on oil refineries and a gas depot in Tehran led to major fires, releasing an estimated 47,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and nearly 579,000 kg of airborne toxins into the atmosphere. Attacks on nuclear facilities, including Natanz and Fordo, prompted warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about potential radiological contamination.

Legal Reckoning and a Long Road to Recovery

The systematic nature of the environmental destruction has led to calls for legal accountability. Research groups and Palestinian environmental organizations have called for the Israeli government to be investigated for the Rome Statute war crime of ecocide, which prohibits “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment“.

Recovery, however, will be a monumental task. A joint World Bank, UN, and EU assessment estimated that rebuilding Gaza would cost $53.2 billion over the next decade, with a significant portion needed for environmental recovery and restoring water and sanitation systems. As one expert starkly put it, the scale of destruction is such that Gaza’s environment may have been pushed to a point where it can no longer sustain life.

The environmental devastation documented across the Middle East serves as a stark reminder that the true cost of modern warfare is not only tallied in immediate casualties but in the prolonged, silent suffering of a poisoned ecosystem. Ensuring accountability and a clean, healthy environment for future generations must become a non-negotiable pillar of any lasting peace.