No More Heroes 4: Larry David - From Social Assassin to Court Jester

No More Heroes 4 (Larry David)

(SA/2026) [1]

 

I. 

 

This is the fourth and final post in the No More Heroes series. 

 

We have already seen how Malcolm McLaren disappoints due to his stuckism; how Nietzsche disappoints because of his not dying at the right time; and how D. H. Lawrence disappoints due to his determination to always remain a priest of love. 

 

Now it's 79-year-old Larry David's turn to be criticised for letting me down - becoming just another Hollywood liberal and, worst of all, unfunny.  

 

 

II.

 

 

Larry David is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer, who has received various accolades and numerous awards for his work.  

 

He is loved by people like me for his cynical and at times nihilistic humour, comic portrayals of awkward social situations, and misanthropic observations on everyday life. 

 

The fact that he laughs at everything - even the most tragic events, such as the death of a parrot [2] - and promotes an irreligious ethos of curbed enthusiasm [3] - means that David is accorded a privileged status on Torpedo the Ark alongside the three figures named above. 

 

 

III. 

 

David started his career as a stand-up comedian with a famously confrontational and uncompromising stage persona. Rather than attempt to please his audience, he took a willfully hostile and uningratiating approach. 

 

If a crowd wasn't laughing or paying attention, he would frequently drop the mic and walk off mid-set. David was even known, on occasion, to walk on stage, assess the room, and, if he sensed the crowd was going to be unreceptive, depart without telling a single joke.

 

As Dewey Finn would say: That is so punk rock [4] - and torpedophiles will therefore understand his appeal to me.  

 

  

IV. 

 

Eventually, David made the transition to TV - briefly (and unsuccessfully) working as a writer on Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s [5], before striking comedy gold when he and Jerry Seinfeld created the NBC sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), eventually picking up Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. 

 

David left Seinfeld amicably after the show's seventh season (returning two years later to write the series finale in 1998). He then gained further critical recognition for creating, writing, and starring in the long-running HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999–2024), which frequently revisits many of the themes, obsessions, and even story ideas from Seinfeld. 

 

David has often said that his character in the show - a fictionalised version of himself - is what he would be like in real life if he lacked social awareness and sensitivity. In a sense, it's this Larry that most serves as inspiraton for Torpedo the Ark and my disappointment is more with real life Larry, as I'll make clear below.  

 

 

V.

 

I don't care that Larry David has a huge amount of money [6]; or that he resides in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, California, with an additional coastal home in Montecito [7].

 

I don't even mind that he's a registered Democrat who is deeply involved in party activism and fundraising and has become a kind of court jester in Obama's circle (or Bamelot as it has been dubbed by some). 

 

He's got to live somewhere, after all, and he's entitled to his political views.  

 

However, I'm really not keen on left-leaning celebrities with phenomenally privileged lifestyles using their public platform to lecture others and judge others.  

 

And it's disappointing that someone who was genuinely funny is now becoming just another out of touch Hollywood liberal who holds a large number of his fellow Americans in contempt because of their support for Donald Trump, whom he describes in a CNN interview as an insane sociopath [8]. 

 

I want Larry the libertine who doesn't care about which side of the ideological, religious, or ethnic divide someone is on, provided they can make great chicken and satisfy his sexual needs [9]; someone who refuses to be blackmailed and when forced to choose between sides chooses not to choose.

 

Instead, I get a Larry who returned to TV last month with a deeply disappointing seven-episode sketch show [10] celebrating overlooked figures and absurd moments in U.S. history. Titled Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, it premiered on HBO on 26 June, 2026.  

 

Co-written by David and his longtime collaborator Jeff Schaffer, who also directs, the series was produced in collaboration with Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. The former President even makes an on-screen appearance as himself. It's basically like watching Curb but in historical context and period costume - but without the laughs. 

 

Many of David's A-list Hollywood friends appear and there are cameos from former Curb co-stars, including Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman, and JB Smoove. But not Cheryl Hines, who is conspicuously absent. This exclusion was reportedly at the insistence of the former First Lady who actively opposed Hines's involvement due to her marriage to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. [11]. 

 

If that's true, then it's another cause of disappointment in David. 

 

It was mildly amusing - although out of character and unbelievable - when TV Larry declined the opportunity to sleep with Cady Huffman because she was a Republican who had a photo of George W. Bush in her dressing room [12], but his personal snubbing (and professional blacklisting) of close friend Cheryl Hines in this way is petty and way more spiteful than anything done to Mocha Joe by Latte Larry.

 

And so, when it comes to Larry David, consider my enthusiasm well and truly curbed ...  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] I've given this picture a pinkish hue (or rosy glow) as I thought fans of Seinfeld season 3, episode 16, 'The Fix Up' (dir. Tom Cherones, 1992), would appreciate that. Unfortunately, whilst Larry David was the writer (or co-writer) of around 60 episodes of Seinfeld, one can't give him credit for this particular episode, which was written by Larry Charles and Elaine Pope.   

 

[2] See the posts 'On Learning to Laugh at Everything' (9 Feb 2019) and 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' (14 Nov 2017).   

 

[3] I would remind readers that the word enthusiasm derives from the Ancient Greek term ἐνθουσιασμός meaning possessed by a god. It first entered English around 1600, still retaining the idea of religious fervour (taking on a more secular modern sense by the 18th century). 

      Torpedo the Ark opposes ideas of rapture, ecstasy, divine inspiration, etc. affirming as it does a materialist (and anti-theistic) philosophy. As far as I'm aware, Larry David identifies as an irreverent atheist born of a Jewish cultural background that has shaped his worldview and comedic style.

 

[4] I'm referring to the character played by Jack Black who utters this line in what is probably my favourite scene in School of Rock (dir. Richard Linklater, 2003). 

[5] During his time at SNL, David was able to get only one sketch on the air and he quit his job as a writer on the show within the first year, after angrily disparaging the quality of the show to producer Dick Ebersol. On the plus side, he did meet cast member Julia Louis-Dreyfus who would later play the role of Elaine Benes on Seinfeld.    

 

[6] David's estimated net worth is around $500 million, with most of his wealth originating from syndication deals for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.    

 

[7] These are exclusive, affluent, and it has to be said beautiful neighbourhoods: located on the Westside of LA, just north of Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades is known for its stunning ocean and mountain views (as well as its high-end real estate); Montecito is situated in Santa Barbara County and is a highly exclusive enclave famous for its sprawling estates and celebrity residents like Oprah Winfrey and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.   

 

[8] David blasted Donald Trump during a March 2024 interview on CNN's Who's Talking to Chris Wallace? As well as describing him as a "sick man", he accuses Trump of throwing "250 years of democracy out of the window" and of "fooling everybody" - though presumably not those who were smart enough to vote Democrat in the presidential elections in which Trump stood. 

 

[9] I'm thinking here of the genuinely transgressive and risk-taking episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from season 8 titled 'Palestinian Chicken' (dir. Robert B, Weide, 2011), written by Larry David in collaboration with Alec Berg, David Mandell, and Jeff Schaffer. 

      The closing scene linked to from the episode illustrates my point about rejecting the binary logic of the either/or. Motivated by desire, Larry wants both A and B (and C and D and ... and ... and); in this case, great food and great sex and his loyalty is not so much to 'his people' as it is his penis.        

 

[10] I am not alone in finding Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness lame, lamentable and unfunny. Many critics found it disappointing and derivative, noting that it largely recycles and relies upon material from his earlier work. 

      It was noted also how the series sometimes leaned heavily into overtly partisan talking points and political satire, rather than keeping observational objectivity. For me, all the star-studded guest performances - and Barack Obama's introductory appearance - couldn't save it and, in fact, only added to the impression that David had run out of ideas. 

      Writing in a review for The Guardian (27 June 2026), Lucy Mangan rightly describes the show as "a total TV shambles" with overlong sketches mostly consisting of a lot of shouting rather than clever writing and witty punchlines. The official HBO Max trailer can be watched by clicking here. 

[11] See, for example, Matt Wilstein's report in The Daily Beast (13 July 2026): 'Why Cheryl Hines Is Missing From Larry David's New HBO Show'. According to this report, David's creative partner Jeff Schaffer has confirmed that RFK Jr.'s wife is persona non grata.   

 

[12] Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4, Episode 10, 'Opening Night' (dir. Robert B. Weide, 2004). 

 

 

We're Born Naked ... Notes on Simon Doonan's Complete Story of Drag (Part 3: On Popstar Drag, Movie Drag, and Radical Drag)

Simon Doonan: Drag: The Complete Story (2019) [a]

Alt. cover feat. Curtis Dam-Mikkelsen (aka Miss Fame)  

Photo by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

 

 

I.

 

And so we come to chapter 7: Popstar Drag ...

 

Doonan claims that for most of the 20th century, "the guiding principle for men's clothing design was anonymity" (163) and that's true, though perhaps requires some qualification - and I don't believe it's because the average male is "terrified of being stared at" (163). 

Actually, the desire for anonymity - founded upon uniformity of dress and the will to conformity - can be traced back to a shift in sensibility known as the Great Male Renunciation, which began in the late- 18th century and saw men abandon ornate and colourful clothing in favour of more sober, functional attire. 

 

It was the age of the dark suit, designed to signal seriousness and professionalism as well as social conformity. But the aim was not anonymity per se, but to look the business whilst not being conspicuous [b].   

 

It's the modern pop star - that 20th century dandy born of the music business in the 1950s - who challenges this: "In order to sell records, the male popstars of the conservative American mid-century needed fans to take notice, and a sure-fire way to stand out was to raid the feminine repertoire." (163)

 

Doonan continues (in a passage that again rather reinforces the argument often put forward by conservative critics; namely, that pop music was an assault on manly virtue):

 

"The boys were encouraged in their flamboyance by a select and influential group of homosexuals, such as gallery owner Robert Fraser, interior designer Christopher Gibbs, Brian Epstein (manager of The Beatles), Robert Stigwood (Cream and Bee Gees), Simon Napier-Bell (The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan), Billy Gaff (Rod Stewart) and Ken Pitt (David Bowie). These gay Svengalis were drag enablers ..." (165) [c]  

 

For Doonan, two names in particular stand out when it comes the golden age of glam rock in the 1970s: Bolan and Bowie - but they were by no means the only two camping it up:

 

"Billowing bohemian blouses and cascading tresses became the norm. Boys wore girls' skimpy knits and crop tops with unisex crushed-velvet bellbottoms. Ladies' accessories [...] were piled on with gypsy-ish abandon. The emerging popstar drag was nothing if not radical." (166)

 

At this point, Doonan return us to his (strangely unisex) vision of utopia "where men and women overcame their vast differences by dressing alike" (168). 

 

I'd really like to know what he thinks these differences are exactly; is he here talking about differences that are constructed socially, or differences that have a crucial biological basis? If these differences are so vast - his word - then can they really be overcome simply by wearing the same clothing or shade of eyeshadow? I doubt it. 

 

And I'm pretty sure also that Doonan's claim that glam rock (or what he calls popstar drag) was "repellent to the establishment" (171) is simply not the case. It may have been viewed by some members of the older generation with mild disdain and dislike, but, in general, it was met with confusion and amusement. It was certainly not feared and hated in the way that punk rock would be a few years later (or even the countercultural, drug-taking hippie movement had been in the '60s) [d]. 

 

While androgynous fashions, a garish use of makeup, and gender troubling behaviour were scandalous to some, glam was a popular, commercial force that was ultimately tolerated - and often enjoyed - by the wider public; Bowie and Bolan and company were regulars on Top of the Pops and their records were not banned (cf. the Sex Pistols). 

 

In sum - and despite what Doonan likes to think - popstar drag was considered frivolous rather threatening and its huge commercial popularity meant it was soon just seen as another form of showbiz. That was true in the 1970s and it remained true in the 1980s, when figures like Boy George and Marilyn [e] were dominating the charts and airwaves.     

 

And don't get me started on Eurovision - an annual festival of "gloriously naff pop, easy to mock but never boring" (181) - if Doonan really thinks this is in anyway radical or presents a positive vision of the future, then, I'm afraid to say, he's more naive than I thought he was.  

 

 

II. 

 

From the world of pop drag to the world of movie drag ... 

 

Those of you who read part 2 of this post will recall I have already noted my favourite celluloid scene involving drag. 

 

For those of you who haven't read part 2, it's the one in Carry On Constable (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1960), in which officers Benson and Gorse - played by Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey respectively - drag up as Ethel and Agatha in order to go undercover as store detectives.      

 

For me, this scene is as good as it gets when it comes to comedy drag on film and I rank it above the work even of Laurel and Hardy in Twice Two (dir. James Parrott, 1933), or Curtis and Lemmon in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959). But, funnily enough, Doonan doesn't mention the film - so I guess it's not amongst his favourites, although he predictably raves about the latter as "the most beloved movie of all time" (187).  

  

Doonan also indicates how movie drag is often associated with pervy horror and homicidal insanity - starting with Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and coins the amusing term dragsploitation. Being dressed to kill often means putting on a frock and wig in the mainstream cinematic imagination.   

 

Meanwhile, underground movie makers - including Andy Warhol - also liked to include elements of drag: 

 

"What was unsavoury and objectionable to a mainstream audience - as we've seen, drag was acceptable only as laughable slapstick or the prelude to a homicidal bloodbath - was given a warm and rousing reception in the art houses of yore." (192) 

 

What he had done for soup cans, Warhol also did for drag queens and trans women: 

 

"Warhol's genius was to plonk [... marginal figures and] unconventional attention junkies in front of the camera and let their natural charisma do the rest. Plots were thin but the screen magic is undeniable." (192)

 

I don't mind Candy Darling, but, I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Divine; described by Doonan as the "empress of underground movie drag" (192), so will skip past the films made by John Waters ... 

 

And, because I hate them so, I'm also not going to say anything either about those "upbeat, non-sexual, non-homicidal, and worthy" (195) films made in the 1980s, when drag became family-friendly, Tootsie (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1982), starring Dustin Hoffman, and Mrs. Doubtfire (dir. Chris Columbus, 1993), starring Robin Williams. 

 

Similarly, I don't wish to say anything about The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994) - although that's not a film I've seen (and, by the sound of it, don't think I want to, either; even Doonan describes it as shrill and cartoony).   

 

Ultimately, whilst I'm all for films spreading joy and celebrating individuality, I don't want to have sequins thrown in my face and an ideological message shoved down my throat to do with the need for greater DEI. 

 

In other words, I prefer those films involving drag and/or trans actors that are non-shrill and non-cartoony and don't invite audiences to dress up and sing along à la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (dir. Jim Sharman, 1975) - films such as Sean Baker's Tangerine (2015), described by Doonan thus:

 

"Tangerine is a groundbreaking 2015 movie that combines the early Warhol approach - find charismatic gender-fluid individuals and let the cameras roll - with more solid plotlines. It is is also very Warholian in that the individuals are not presented as noble or worthy." (204)    

  

 

III. 

 

And finally ... chapter 9 - Radical Drag - and a chance to really examine the politics of the topic (or at least Doonan's understanding of such) ... 

 

Before we turn to the material in chapter 9, however, I'd like to pick up on a sentence from earlier in the book (ch. 8), which suggests where I think Doonan will be heading:   

 

"In these trans-positive times [...] nobody is going to high five a hetero dude for frocking up unless he actually means it. Dragging up purely for attention or dough would, in our era of increased sensitivity, be viewed as less than respectful." (185)

 

That, I think, is true - but it's also a call for authenticity that I find problematic and something which has led to a lot of recent debate within the acting profession: should a straight cis male actor be able to play gay or trans (even if he does so in all sincerity and his performance is sympathetic and convincing)? [f] 

 

I would answer 'yes' to this, but understand the controversy surrounding the issue - particularly when it is presented in terms of representation and opportunity, rather than in terms of authenticity or the need for lived experience in order to play a part (lived experience is the most overrated thing in the world - something that the unimaginative unempathetic pride themselves on). 

 

And surely, if drag is radical in any sense, it's precisely because it deconstructs gender roles; how does that square with a modern sensitivity that insists only certain people have the right to inhabit certain identities? Answer: it doesn't.    

 

Moving on ...

 

Predictably - but still a bit disappointingly - in chapter 9 Doonan returns to all his favourite themes to do with Victorian prudery and puritanism in contrast to the subversive fuck you attitude of drag queens whose rebellion against the binary nature of society is to be uncritically lauded:

 

"Even when done in jest, the donning of a frock or a drag king suit is a provocation that automatically messes with the stale conventions of any society." (208)

 

Subscribing to this line of thought gives Doonan a good deal of what Foucault called speaker's benefit - i.e., a false sense of pride in one's own courage and rebelliousness in daring to speak up and speak out on issues which are (mistakenly) believed to still be feared and subject to censorship by mainstream society. 

 

Foucault argued this perceived transgression actually reinforced existing power structures and that the benefit of speaking in terms of repression and resisting power is merely a way to feel edgy and enlightened, while still adhering to an old-fashioned and untenable model of sexual politics.  

 

It strikes me as a little odd that, having compiled a complete history of drag, Doonan sometimes writes as if nothing important really happened before the late-1960s and '70s (i.e., when he was a young man):

 

"When, in the late 1960s, the counter-culture began to bloom - black power, gay lib, women's lib - drag followed suit. With the gays for solidarity, drag finally had the support it needed to hit the streets and to walk tall [...] Harassment and discrimination continued, but this time the dragsters fought back, birthing new and creative genres of drag activism." (210)

 

Out of this period of political upheaval, three radical groups emerged: the Cockettes [i], the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence [j], and the Radical Faeries [k] ... Now, without wishing to denigrate members of these groups - about whom my knowledge is strictly limited - one might ask whether they are truly sticking it to the Man or, actually, just engaging in theatrics and arty provocation?   

  

The fact is that, during the period Doonan specifies, drag was already being recuperated into the Spectacle as a safe (and highly commercial) form of subculture - as he himself has shown in his chapters on popstar drag and movie drag.  

 

I have respect and admiration for those highly idiosyncratic individuals and brave souls who "through a combination of daring, resilience and reckless disregard for their own safety, lubricated the wheels of social progress" (218), but I have to admit I'm increasingly bored by radical activists of every stripe - dragged up or otherwise.      

That doesn't mean I'm a Trump supporter. But it does mean I don't find drag so "wickedly compelling in these new politicized times" (233) and don't believe that drastic times require dragtastic measures. 

 

Doonan closed his 2019 study insisting that, thanks to technology and social media, "mocking, shocking, radical satirical drag" (233) would spread into "every corner of the universe" (233), presumably changing things for the better. 

 

And yet, as we know, Trump won the Presidency for a second time in 2024 - winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote - and his administration has taken a firm stance against drag culture, prioritising the removal of drag performances from public venues like and limiting federal funding for related initiatives. 

 

So it seems that a revolt into a queer politics of style might not be the answer after all ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The page numbers given here (in round brackets) refer to the 2024 concise paperback edition published by Laurence King. 

 

[b] Roland Barthes writes about all this in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter (Berg, 2006).  

 

[c] Some might also suggest that Doonan's enabler narrative strips the artists of their own agency; framing them as puppets of a homosexual cabal (a trope that again feeds into the conservative and homophobic agenda). 

 

[d] Doonan doesn't say much about punk, other than that it was unconventional in every way, but not drag-friendly: "While drag was largely anathema to the genre, the punk makeup styles [...] have proven influential to subsequent drag queens." (175) 

      Again, I'm tempted to push back on this claim ... An openly queer aesthetic - informed by the drag queens, transvestites, and transsexuals associated with Warhol - was crucial to the clothing designed by McLaren and Westwood for their boutique, Sex. Iconic items of punk clothing - such as bondage trousers and the Tits T-shirt - were intentionally transgressive and could be worn by either sex.  

      One might even describe Jordan - with her extreme theatrical look - as a kind of drag queen. And who can forget Malcolm's cross-dressing in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)?  

 

[e] Doonan obviously had the hots for gender-bending popstars Boy George and his pal Marilyn, admitting that he was "totally smitten" (176) with the former and claiming (rather laughably) that the latter's appearance on Top of the Pops in 1983 "is seared into the national consciousness" (178). 

      That might be true of a few ageing new romantics and homosexuals, such as Doonan himself, but I suspect it's not true for most UK residents. 

 

[f] The same debate is also taking place with reference to race and disability; should a black actor, for example, be allowed to play a role previously associated with a white actor (a lot of people were exercised by the prospect of Idris Elba becoming James Bond); or should an able-bodied actor be given the role of a paraplegic - think, for example, of Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic in Oliver Stones's Born on the Fourth of July (1989)? 

      Again, as I say in the main text, I recognise that there are a limited number of roles open to actors belonging to minority groups, but, even so, I can't get behind the idea that an actor must be X, Y, or Z in order to play the part (though the current trend within the profession seems to be moving more and more in that direction).  

 

[h] See Foucault writing in The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge (1976). 

 

[i] With their glitter-encrusted beards, the Cockettes "pioneered a delightfully amateurish do-it-yourself genre of performance drag" (213). 

 

[j] The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a "group of gays [... wearing] nun's habits and a smidgen of makeup" (214), who wished to challenge religious fundamentalism with impromptu street theatre. According to Doonan: "By combining elements of religious piety with rampant decadent artifice, they successfully satirize conventions of gender and morality." (214)

 

[k] Founded in California in the late '70s, the Radical Faeries "embody many aspects of counter-culture, including environmentalism, paganism, communal living and free love" (215). Their drag is characterised by "a wilful randomness and lack of rigour" (215) and often they prefer nudity and body paint.  

 

To read part 1 of this post, click here.

To read part 2 of this post, click here. 

 

 

Welcome to a New Kind Of Tension: Brief Thoughts on Civilisational Erasure and the Great Replacement

Donald Trump and Wajahat Ali

 

 

I. 

 

President Donald Trump's administration has warned in a new report that, due to falling birthrates and mass (largely uncontrolled) migration from the Third World, Europe faces civilisational erasure ... [1]

 

It's a catchy phrase, but is this stark warning something that European leaders should take seriously? 

 

Most don't seem to think so - even if the native peoples of Europe are increasingly concerned with issues around changing demographics and cultural identity (thus the emergence of populist parties such as the AfD in Germany and Reform in the UK).        

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, these remarks from the Trump administration are echoed by (and inadvertently lent weight to) those of Wajahat Ali, an American Muslim commentator and provocateur. 

 

Speaking on The Left Hook - his Substack, which he describes as "a thoroughly opinionated and biased intellectual playground for people who enjoy political, cultural, and religious hot takes without corporate censorship and nonsense centrism" [2] - Ali had this to say to his white viewers: 

 

"You have lost. You lost. The mistake that you made is, you let us in in the first place. 

      

See, that's the thing with brown people - and I'm going to say this as a brown person - there's a lot of us. Like a lot. There's like 1.2 billion in India. There's more than 200 million in Pakistan, there's like 170 million in Bangladesh. Those are just the people there. I'm not even talking about the folks who are expats or immigrants. There's a bunch of us and we breed. We're a breeding people. 

 

And the problem is you let us in [...] and once you let one of us in, you know what happens with brown folks? Our grandmother comes, our grandfather comes, our uncle comes, our aunt comes, our cousin comes, our second cousin comes, our third cousin comes, then we have kids, a bunch of kids [...] 

 

So, we're embedded. We are everywhere." [3]

 

 

III. 

 

Obviously, this is designed to be inflammatory - cheap rage bait, as Matt Walsh describes it. And one assumes it's also intended to be satirical; mocking the kind of rhetoric (and hate speech) used by those on the racist far-right whom Ali despises.   

 

The problem, however, is it's also accurate; there are a lot of brown-skinned people in the world and they do tend to have larger families than white westerners. And they are, as Ali says, embedded within European and American society in a way that they weren't fifty years ago. 

 

Thus, as I indicate above, Ali's short video gives credence to narratives concerning the Great Replacement [4] and civilisational erasure spun by white nationalists. In other words, the satire not only fails to be recognised as humour, but it backfires on the satirist and works in favour of the lampooned group by promoting their ideas to a wider audience whilst reinforcing them among their existing followers.   

 

It thus appears that Ali has never heard of Poe's Law, which informs us that without a clear indicator of the author's intent it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that someone somewhere won't mistake it for a sincere expression of those views [5]. 

     

 

Note 

 

[1] See the article by Brandon Livesay discussing the report on the BBC News website (5 Dec 2025): click here.  

 

[2] Wajahat Ali, writing on the About page of his Substack 'The Left Hook': click here.  

 

[3] The full rant (just under a minute-and-a-half in length), from which I've extracted these lines, can be found on Rumble: click here. 

 

[4] Replacement theory has its origins in the work of French author Renaud Camus, who argues that - with the complicity of governments and global elites - the native populations of Europe are being replaced by non-white peoples, particularly from Muslim-majority countries. 

      Although such claims have repeatedly been dismissed by scholars and those in the mainstream media, the idea of a Great Replacement continues to circulate in both European and American far-right circles. Readers who wish to know more, may like to begin with Camus's Le Grand Remplacement (2011). An English edition, translated by the author, was published in 2024 as The Great Replacement: Introduction to Global Replacism. 

 

[5] Poe's Law was named after Nathan Poe who came up with the idea in 2005, or rather nicely summarised what others had already noted about the need to explicitly indicate sarcasm, irony, or parody when writing online or texting on social media; that winking smiley is crucial if you don't want an attempt at trolling to be taken seriously.   

 

More Utopian Than Ethiopian: Thoughts on Michael Anthony's Interview with Johnny Rotten (May 2025)

Screenshot from The Michael Anthony Show with Johnny Rotten 

Episode 189 (27 May 2025): click here 

 

 

I. 

 

Hats off to Irish podcaster Michael Anthony for being able to tolerate being in the presence of the grotesque and abject figure of so-called punk legend Johnny Rotten for over an hour. 

 

For whilst some may still find the former Sex Pistol irreverently entertaining, his witless attempts at humour, cultural analysis and political commentary - combined with rambling reminiscences about his past - surely make him one of the most boorish and boring individuals on the planet.      

 

 

II. 

 

Anthony seems to have graduated from the give 'em enough rope school of interviewers; he knows that if you offer an ignorant and opinionated big mouth like Rotten the opportunity to relax and speak at length they will invariably say something revealing and potentially compromising (particularly if plied with beer and cigarettes throughout the conversation). 

 

Thus, for example, as well as reaffirming his admiration for Donald Trump as an agent of chaos and his contempt for the Palestinians, Lydon concedes that he is primarily driven by anger and the sense that whilst he doesn't have all the answers, he is in the right on most things.  

 

Lydon is also, it turns out, skilled in the dark art of victim blaming (i.e., shifting responsibility for abusive behaviour from the perpetrator to the one who is harmed in some manner). 

 

Thus, he suggests that misogyny only exists because a sufficient number of women are complicit (go to 38:29 in the above interview) and that children of his generation who fell prey to sexual abuse by paedophile priests were either too stupid for their own good, or willing participants (1:04:16). Smart kids, says Lydon, like him and his frends, knew what was what and kept out of trouble.    

 

Whether Anthony should have challenged Lydon on these views more than he did is debatable. As mentioned earlier, his style of interviewing tends toward neutrality (i.e., its non-confrontational and non-judgemental). But this open and empathetic technique often produces the most telling results; interviewees are made to feel so comfortable that they sometimes say things they might otherwise keep to themselves.      

 

 

III.

 

Finally, just as Nietzsche was bitterly disappointed by his one-time idol Richard Wagner when the latter threw himself at the foot of the Cross and embraced Christian themes in his late work, so too am I shocked (though not particularly surprised) to hear Johnny 'I am an antichrist' Rotten declare that, for him, when all is said and done, the person he thinks is the greatest star of all (if only for the longevity of his fame) is ... Jesus Christ!    

 

 

Notes

 

For a pair of posts published in July of 2024 in which I discuss Rotten as an abject antihero, click here and/or here. 

 

For a much earlier post, from January 2013, that anticipates how my love for Rotten would increasingly turn to hate, please click here.  

 

And for those, like me, who now need a reminder of just how charismatic Rotten was back in the day, here's a clip from an interview with Janet Street-Porter for The London Weekend Show (LWT, 28 Nov. 1976): click here.

 

 

Who is Mencius Moldbug?

Photo of Curtis Yarvin 

By David Merfield (2023) 

 

'It is much easier to delude others if at the same time you delude yourself.'

 

 

I. 

 

Curtis Yarvin is one of those shadowy intellectuals who looks a little creepy and in fact is a little creepy (all that long-flowing hippie hair doesn't help).

 

Unfortunately, he isn't someone who can just be dismissed as a creep or ignored as a crank; not when he seems to have the ear of some powerful figures in the incoming Trump administration, including vice president elect J. D. Vance [1], who has spoken approvingly of some of Yarvin's ideas. 

 

Steve Bannon, who briefly served as the White House's chief strategist during Donald Trump's first administration, (before being unceremoniously fired by the President), is also a Yarvin fan.    

 

 

II. 

 

Also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin (b. 1973) is an American writer (ironically from an educated secular liberal background) who - along with the British philosopher Nick Land - is credited as being the founder of the neo-reactionary movement (NRx) or so-called Dark Enlightenment - about which I will be speaking at Kant's Cave next month [2].  

 

In brief, Yarvin argues for a post-liberal, non-democratic America led by a powerful individual who is somewhere between an old-fashioned monarch and a tech-savvy corporate CEO. If you can imagine Elon Musk dressed in ermine, you pretty much get the picture.

 

Yarvin's early influences include those libertarian thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, although he's taken their ideas in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

 

In 2007, he started a blog - Unqualified Reservations - in which he set out his (formalist) political vision and announced his aim of destroying progressive ideas and illusions. This blog - which influenced Nick Land's thinking - was formally abandoned in 2016. 

 

As of 2022, Yarvin blogs on Substack under the page name Gray Mirror, where he continues his assault upon the Cathedral (his name for the liberal elite who determine what passes for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful today via the media and higher education) and advocates for a hard reset of society along neo-cameralist lines.  

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, whilst some may be seduced by Yarvin's utopian vision of Singapore or Shanghai über alles, I'm not. Nor am I convinced that Yarvin really believes what he says and he's clearly not above trolling and provocation for its own sake (which is not to say that we shouldn't take him seriously).

And, given the choice, I'd sooner go down the pub with Old Nick than Mr Moldbug. 

 

Partly, that's for old time's sake - Land was briefly my co-supervisor at the University of Warwick, in the 1990s, when working on my Ph.D. - but it's also because there are significant philosophical differences between the two that incline me towards the former.     

 

As Elizabeth Sandifer rightly says:

 

"The differences between Land and Moldbug, however, are vast. Moldbug is at his heart a utopian, his vision of neoreaction rooted in a Silicon Valley-style idealism that clever people can just engineer solutions to everything. Land, on the other hand, gave his big essay on the matter the deliciously gothically overripe title 'The Dark Enlightenment' and peppers his work with imagery of tentacled horrors and grim eschatology." 

 

Sandifer continues: 

 

"Indeed, what's really interesting about Land is that he presents his take on neoreaction as a logical extension of his earlier work. To him, the point is not so much that neoreaction is 'correct' in any sense, but rather a sort of cynical pragmatism that views reactionary tendencies as an inevitable force that can be harnessed productively for his larger goal of accelerating towards the bionic horizon where we all grow face tentacles." [3] 

 

In other words, Yarvin seems to retain a certain American optimism; whilst Land is a nihilist at heart and thinks that nothing human will make it out of the near-future ... [4]  

  

Notes

 

[1] See Jason Wilson's profile of Yarvin in The Guardian (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[2] Essentially, this post is a teaser for my upcoming paper on the Dark Enlightenment: see the TTA Events page for details: click here. Alternatively, visit the Philosophy for All website and go to the section on Kant's Cave: click here. 

      The paper is based on a four-part series of posts published on Torpedo the Ark back in July 2024: 1: On the Politics of Hate; 2: On Exiting the Present; 3: On the Zombie Apocalypse; 4: On Rejecting Universalism.  

 

[3] Elizabeth Sandifer, 'Haunt the Future', Art Against Art, Issue 3 (Winter 2016/17): click here to read online.  

 

[4] See Land's essay 'Meltdown' on the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website: click here.  

A Brief History of the Mug Shot From Alphonse Bertillon to Andy Warhol

Top: Alphonse Bertillon's self-taken mugshot (1900)

Bottom: A canvas from Andy Warhol's Most Wanted Men series (1964)

 

I. 

 

Thanks to Donald Trump, everyone is talking about mug shots ... An informal term for a police photograph, typically taken soon after an individual's arrest in order to help with future identification [1].    

 

The act of photographing criminals began soon after the invention of photography in the 1840s, but it wasn't until 1888 that French police officer and biometrics expert Alphonse Bertillon standardised the process in terms of lighting and angles, etc. [2] 

 

His mug shot selfie, reproduced above, is typical; one side-view image and one face-on, against a plain background. Such photos are often compiled into a rogues gallery of images or a so-called mug book, although, in high-profile cases, the mug shot might also be circulated via the mass media and feature on wanted posters.

 

It is thanks to the latter phenomenon that mug shots gradually came to have a certain cachet and became fixed within the cultural imagination; the faces of gangsters such as Clyde Barrow, John Dillinger, and Al Capone, became as well-known as famous film stars and a whole host of Hollywood celebrities would eventually pride themselves on having had their own images captured by a police photographer.

 

Fascinated by both crime and celebrity, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol created a large mural of twenty-two mug shots in 1964 entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men - a work which I would like to discuss below ...

 

 

II. 

 

Although Warhol had been commissioned to create a work for exhibition at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, Thirteen Most Wanted Men almost certainly wasn't what those who invited him to decorate the façade of the New York State pavilion had hoped for; in fact, the expectation was that he would produce a celebratory work that would represent the best - not the dark underbelly - of America. 

 

Partly inspired by a 1923 work by Marcel Duchamp, in which the French artist placed his own face on a wanted poster [3], Warhol decided to screen-print large-scale copies of images from a booklet published by the New York Police Department, entitled The Thirteen Most Wanted, and containing mug shots of dangerous criminals (including a child murderer) whom the authorities were anxious to arrest. 

 

As an anonymous critic writing for the Christie's website notes: "By elevating the criminal visage to a form of high art Warhol is aligning these nefarious figures with his own earlier celebrity portrayals." [4]   

 

Unfortunately, two weeks before the fair was due to open, Warhol was officially informed that he must remove or replace the work within 24-hours. Not wanting to do either, Warhol instead gave his permission for the 30-metre wide canvas to be painted over with silver house paint prior to the opening of the Fair [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mug, of course, is an English slang term for (usually an ugly) face, dating from the 18th century. Often, when posing for a mugshot, a person will pull a face in an attempt to distort their features, thereby making future identification by a law enforcement agent a little more troublesome (thus we speak of mugging for the camera).  

 

[2] Bertillon was one of the founding fathers of forensic anthropometry; i.e., a system of identification based on the finding that that several measures of physical features - such as the size and shape of the skull - remain fairly constant throughout adult life. Bertillon concluded that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically, individual criminals could effectively be differentiated. 

 

[3] Created in 1923, Duchamp's Wanted: $2,000 Reward lithograph was the final work of art he completed before leaving New York that year to return to Paris. 

      Duchamp pasted two mug shots of himself on a joke poster he'd come across and had a printer add another alias to those already listed; that of his recently invented alter ego Rrose Sélavy. Duchamp re-created the (now lost original) work throughout his career and hoped it would played a significant role in the (de)construction of his artistic identity.

 

[4] See the essay on the Christie's website entitled 'Warhol's Most Wanted' (16 May 2018): click here.

      One can't help wondering why it is that the male homosexual gaze so often lingers on the faces and bodies of violent felons; is it the inevitable result of criminalising love? Or is it simply an inconvenient truth that evil attracts and has a more photogenic quality? Richard Meyer touches on these questions in his book Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Art (Oxford University Press, 2002).

 

[5] The official reason given was that the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, was concerned that the images of mostly Italian-Americans would be offensive to a significant section of his electorate. However, it is also believed that Warhol himself was dissatisfied with the work and so more-than happy to have been afforded the opportunity to paint it over in his favoured colour of negation. 

      Warhol would later use the original silkscreens to produce paintings in his Most Wanted Men series and many of these were exhibited in Paris, Cologne, and London, in 1967-68.

 

On the Evil Genius of the Image: Notes on the Mugshots of Donald Trump and Hermann Göring

Mugshots of Donald Trump (24 August, 2023) 

and Hermann Göring (22 June 1945)

 

 

So much has already been said about Donald Trump's instantly iconic mugshot taken at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia - apparently the most viewed photograph in the world - that there's not much for me to add. 

 

The muted grey background is rather flattering and deflects from the harshness of the lighting. Trump, wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, stares down not just the anonymous prison photographer, but all of his political opponents and critics in the mainstream media. 

 

It's a fuck you look of angry defiance and with this one image, Trump brilliantly turns the tables on those who had hoped to humiliate him and, perhaps, seals victory in the 2024 presidential election. For this photo, available on a wide range of merchandising (i.e., commercial propaganda), has already helped the Trump campaign to raise millions of dollars.   

 

Malcolm McLaren may have showed us how to create cash from chaos, but it's Donald Trump who best understands how to monetise notoriety and I think that the conservative commentator Candace Owens is right to describe Trump's approach to doing politics as punk rock (something that Johnny Rotten had pointed out years ago) [1]. 

 

Even those who loathe Trump concede that this picture is, in its simplicity, visually compelling. One that has not only historical but cultural significance; i.e., one that can be discussed in relation to art as well as politics. Zach Helfand amusingly - and rightly - discusses it within the context of work by Da Vinci, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Andy Warhol [2].  

 

Helfand also suggests that the Trump mugshot has a precedent in the arrest photograph of Hermann Göring, which, as I think readers will agree, is an excellent spot. For we see in this image of the president of the Nazi Reichstag the exact same mixture of indignation and contempt for his enemies as in the Trump photo; it's a portrait of a powerful man cornered, but unbowed.

 

One wonders, in closing, why it is exactly that good people never seem to produce such captivating images: Is is because they always like to smile and signal their virtue? Is it because they lack menace? Or is it simply the case, whether we like to admit this or not, that evil has a more photogenic quality?  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the Candace Owens podcast on the The Daily Wire (20 August 2023) in which she gives her take on the Trump mugshot and discusses the positive reactions of other black Americans: click here. 

      As for Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistol declared his support for Trump several years ago - and voted for him in 2020 - seeing in him something of a kindred spirit (anti-liberal, anti-establishment, anti-woke). See Drew Wardle's 2021 article in the online magazine Far Out, in which he expresses his disappointment with Rotten's MAGA brand of conservatism and offers a possible explanation for it: click here. 

 

[2] See Zach Helfand, 'The Trump Mug Shot's Art-Historical Lineage', in The New Yorker (28 August, 2023): click here. 

 

 

Video bonus: to watch Trump's own take on having his mugshot taken on Forbes Breaking News (1 Sept 2023): click here.  

Bodies

"I'm not a discharge / I'm not a loss in protein 

I'm not a throbbing squirm"

 

 

I. 

 

The debate around the issue of abortion is often loud and ugly, with those who take up the polarised (and politicised) positions of either pro-life or pro-choice often viewing the matter as one in which there is no compromise possible. 

For the former, abortion is wrong in most if not all circumstances on the grounds that human life begins at conception and an unborn baby deserves protection. For the latter, on the other hand, affirmation of a woman's right to bodily autonomy is sacrosanct over and above all other considerations, including any supposed rights of an embryo or foetus.    

But, of course, no issue is cut and dried and abortion is (in every sense of the word) a messy business. To discuss it fully requires consideration of complex moral, legal, and medical questions. I'm not, however, here to address the question of abortion from the perspective of a priest, a lawyer, or a doctor. Rather, I'm interested in it in relation to a controversial song by the Sex Pistols entitled 'Bodies' ...     

 

 

II.

 

To be honest, I never much liked 'Bodies' although it seems to be a fan favourite and the band would often open their live set with the song, so one assumes they always enjoyed playing it. 

 

Found on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977), 'Bodies' tells the true and terrible tale of a female fan from Birmingham called Pauline, who stalked the group whilst carrying an aborted foetus in a plastic bag [1]. 

 

According to the song's graphic and expletive-laden lyrics, this schizophrenic young woman lived in a tree house in the grounds of a mental institution at one time and made even Nancy Spungen seem sane and reasonable in comparison.

 

Apparently, Pauline recounted her experiences of having had several abortions to Rotten at length and in detail and it was these stories that inspired him to write 'Bodies'. 

 

Interestingly, the song is sung from multiple perspectives and is not quite the reactionary and misogynistic anti-abortion diatribe that it is now thought to be by many liberal critics [2], including the loathsome Mark Kermode, who finds the song absolutely reprehensible and thinks it explains why it is Lydon ends up as a Trump supporter [3].

 

What it doesn't do is shy away from the tragic aspect of abortion, which some activists who identify as pro-choice are often keen to overlook, deny, or downplay. It's a difficult track to listen to, but Rotten here as elsewhere captures some of the horror, pain, confusion, and ambiguity that characterises human life conceived as a gurgling bloody mess.             

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To listen to the version of 'Bodies' that appears on Never Mind the Bollocks, click here. To watch the song being performed live at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas Tuesday, on 10 Jan 1978, click here.  

 

[2] It should be pointed out that there are also some on the right who have interpreted 'Bodies' as one of the greatest conservative rock songs; charting, for example, at number 8 on John J. Miller's list of fifty such songs in the National Review (5 June 2006): click here.  

 

[3] Whilst discussing Danny Boyle's 6-part miniseries Pistol with his (equally odious) sidekick Simon Mayo on their podcast Kermode and Mayo's Take (1 June 2022), the former makes clear his moral contempt of the Sex Pistols - particularly Rotten and particularly the song 'Bodies' - click here and go to 4:12 - 4:48.  

     

Beijing Über Alles: On the Western World's Becoming-Chinese in the Age of Coronavirus

Xi Jinping: General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party

President of the People's Republic of China

世界皇帝   

 

 

I.

 

However you wish to term it, Sinofication - i.e., the insidious process by which non-Chinese societies come under the influence of China (be it economically, politically, or culturally) - is an issue of real concern today here in the West [1].

 

Shamefully, however, it is European leaders themselves who - in the name of public safety and protecting their creaking healthcare systems - are actively dismantling liberal democracy and replacing it with an authoritarian model of society obsessed with bio-surveillance inspired by the People's Republic of China: Build Back Better, as they like to say.

 

Thus, for example, the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, has recently called for appropriate discussions concerning the compulsory vaccination of all EU citizens against Covid-19 (or what Donald Trump still insists on calling - with some justification considering where it originated - the Chinese virus). 

 

This comes after incoming chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, announced he too was in favour of mandatory vaccinations and extending use of digital health passes and face coverings, and following Austria's decision to implement forced Covid vaccination from February next year. In Greece, meanwhile, according to Athens-based commentator Maria Thanassa, monthly fines of  €100 will be issued to all over-60s who remain unvaccinated after the end of this month.

 

I mean, this isn't even something we might smile at any longer, is it? Byung-Chul Han is absolutely spot on to warn: "The last man does not necessarily prefer the liberal system. He is, for instance, quite happy to live under a totalitarian regime." [2]

 

The idea that, as a fateful consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, the West is drifting towards a Chinese-style regime of biopolitical sureveillance is one that Han develops in a recent essay entitled 'The End of Liberalism' that I would like to discuss below ... 

 

 

II. 

 

One of the many things I admire about Han is that he doesn't sit on the fence. Thus, he opens his essay by bluntly - and I think accurately - declaring:

 

"It is almost a matter of the inexorable logic of the pandemic that society will be transformed into a permanent security zone, into a quarantine station in which everyone is treated as though they are infected." [3] 

 

And that effectively spells the end of Western liberalism based on the freedom (and right to privacy) of the individual. It's not the past lockdowns that should trouble us, but the "truly fateful insight [...] that only a biopolitics that allows for unlimited access to the individual" [4] can prevent future lockdowns and economic collapse.

 

Today, it's not California über alles which threatens, but Beijing's 21st-century model of disciplinary society that makes possible "the complete biopolitical surveillance and control of the population" [5]. 

 

Who knows the truth of how Covid-19 became a global pandemic, but the virus has entirely transformed the rules of the game and in the name of survival we will willingly sacrifice "everything that makes life worth living: sociability, community and proximity" [6].   

  

 

Notes

 

 [1] It might be noted that European humanity's becoming more Chinese was something that Nietzsche had already identified as a danger in the 1880s; see section 12 of the first essay in the Genealogy, for example. 

      One hundred years later, and it was Prince Philip expressing his concern that Westerners might become slitty-eyed if they succumb to too much Chinese influence.  

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 56. 

      As Han goes on to write: "As a survival society, the palliative society does not necessarily depend on liberal democracy. In the face of the pandemic, we are drifting towards a regime of biopolitical surveillance." [57]   

 

[3] Byung-Chul Han, 'The End of Liberalism: The Coronavirus Pandemic and Its Consequences', in Capitalism and the Death Drive, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 85. 

[4] Ibid., p. 86. 

[5] Ibid., p. 87. 

      Of course, those zen fascist hippies in Silicon Valley will happily support the Sinofication of society; for them it's a kind of digital utopia that allows for total transparency and demands the level of absolute obedience to authority (as mandated by heaven) that Confucius advocated in his political philosophy.    

[6] Byung-Chul Han, 'COVID-19 Has Reduced Us to a "Society of Survival"', a conversation with Carmen Sigüenza and Esther Rebollo of EFE, the Spanish International News Agency, in Capitalism and the Death Drive, p. 120.