The Left Suicide Squad

Fascism is back as the leading political ideology in the world. And we have to face the fact that it's partly our fucking fault. Hooray.

- Gareth Manford

You may have noticed a theme running through this issue, which is that fascism has risen again and, with the capture of the White House, has basically conquered the world for now. Merry Christmas. And it is a worldwide phenomenon; Britain, America and the Philippines fell this year, among others, and although Austria managed to avoid it by the skin of their teeth (despite the Nazi managing to get the election rerun, he didn't manage to win the second time either), in all likelihood France will be next, with their election coming early in 2017 and its probable result being the ascent to the Presidency of Marine Le Pen. Feel free to find the irony of France's first female president being a fascist gently amusing. Whatever gets you through. Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson's back in Australia, but hardly needed, with Malcolm Turnbull's government hopelessly in thrall to the extremist wing of the party that he was supposed to have deposed. The far-right is the wave of the future. Tomorrow belongs to them. And it's partly the fault of the left.

A good illustration of why is the recent shitstorm over Lena Dunham's latest stupid joke. In case you've been paying attention to what's really fucking up the world and/or have actual problems, Dunham was talking about abortion on her podcast, as you do, and joked that she still hadn't had one "but wished she had", in an impressively failed attempt at black humour. It was an insensitive remark that trivilaised the whole issue and wasn't even funny. She got rightly criticised for it and swiftly issued a contrite, sincere apology for saying something so dumb. The end.