I am writing a review of this book for publication elsewhere, so I will be fairly brief here.

Rob Walker’s latest book, Radical Jung: Emancipatory Politics and the Search for Meaning in the Ruins of Capitalism, released just days ago by the amazing , is a work of great importance for us all.

Reclaiming Carl Jung from figures on the right, such as Jordan Peterson, Faure Walker applies Jungian thoughts and insights as guides “through the crises of digital capitalism.” The result is a fascinating and thought-provoking read, one that puts forward creative suggestions to our current condition.

Writing compellingly on the power of dreams, the potential healing properties of psychedelic drugs, and ecotherapy, Faure Walker’s book is essentially a call for a slowing down, a decentring, and ultimately, degrowth. It is a call for reconnection, with nature and our inner selves, in order to gain collective understanding on what must be done if we are to implement profound, critically needed change.

A must read.

I’ll start at the end with this one.

Kane Parsons’ Backrooms (the movie, not the creepypasta) has a lot going on. Too much, I think. And in the end, and as much as I enjoyed the cinematic experience of watching it, I think it ultimately falls short, and, like our current grip on reality, is a bit of a convoluted mess. Though does that convolution actually make it the zeitgeist film of 2026? I think it does, doesn’t it? In an inverted reality, where nothing makes sense, it’s only fitting that a film that struggles to make sense under the weight of so much influence and so many themes takes centre stage as the defining film of the era. Right?

To be honest, I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Which is, probably, the premise of this piece.

“Imagine describing a dog to someone who's never seen one before and then asking them to draw it.”

This is the film’s pivotal moment, when Clark, the furniture store owning embodiment of male loneliness and insecurity (theme #1), attempts to articulate the backrooms to his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline. It is confirmation of the film’s channelling of Jean Baudrillard’s simulacra and simulation theory, and of the backrooms themselves being a manifestation of a hyperreality (potential theme #2) - the end point of the simulacra process, by which point the boundary between reality and representation has completely dissolved. The backrooms are not, or no longer, a simple copy of a liminal, office-like space. They have even extended beyond being a copy of a copy. Entering the backrooms is to enter an uncanny valley-like liminality, the unheimlich of the unheimlich of empty or abandoned office spaces, you could say.

It is in this area where the film really works. The backrooms are legitimately creepy. Terrifying even. There is a palpable malevolence to them, even without the appearance of grotesque, simulatory human or human-like replications.

The divergence from this into Stranger Things territory, where the backrooms have already been discovered by a specific body (in this case the Async corporation), who have been probing, exploring and messing around in that space for some time, something that is reminiscent of the shows Upside Down and its discovery by the US and Soviet governments (note also the evocation of Jordan Peele’s Us, in the existence of underground/underworld copies of places and people), is where the film begins to lose that quality of unknowing, and ceases to be a compelling work.

In hindsight, I realise this divergence was unavoidable, as Async is central to the creepypasta origin story of Backrooms. But still, it’s a divergence that feels symptomatic of a broader problem within the contemporary, conventional storytelling of the mainstream as a whole - the false belief that there must be a prescriptive template that all stories must follow. It’s like everyone knows the rules of storytelling, but no-one dares to break them anymore. It’s why, or one of the reasons why, there is a prevalence of generative AI within storytelling industries. If there is just one set structural template for storytellers to follow, it makes it easier to cut a few corners and succumb to the AI temptation, especially when there is time and money involved (note: generative AI - potential theme #3).

After watching Backrooms I came across some harsh reviews. I say harsh because I think we can’t be too critical of a 20-year-old filmmaker. What I mean is, what is the best you could expect from a 20-year-old? Backrooms, the film, is a very good effort for one so young. You can even forgive the film its convolution, picturing yourself as a young creative, armed with a great concept, mind buzzing with a great many ideas and of so many things to say, given a $10 million budget to see it come to fruition on the big screen.

But unfortunately, once you take that almighty dollar, you become one of many components of an industry that takes all great ideas and condenses them into the packaged product that is a Hollywood movie. In this sense, Backrooms is in and of itself a kind of simulacra - a copy of a copy of the Hollywood movie. It is, in its original incarnation, a work of art, taken and genrefied into a processed ingredient within the staple diet of Hollywood storytelling.

Of course, conventional storytelling structures are fine most of the time, but there is an irony, I think, in a work of art where simulacra and simulation play such a pivotal role being taken and adapted for the endlessly recyclable template that is the standard Hollywood movie script. Backrooms didn’t need this treatment. Other than the Hollywood guarantee of lots of exposure and lots of dollar, adapting Backrooms into a Hollywood film appears to have desiccated it of any real artistry, and robbed it off any meaningful, artistic statement. It has lessened its overall quality, despite transforming it into a more digestible, easier to watch cinematic work. The intrigue of watching the discovery and exploration of a liminal place, one that is representative of hyperreality, though could just as easily be an imagining of being lost in an AI generated space, is usurped by an everyday story arc centred around a lonely man and his lonely therapist, whose crossed paths lead them to a conspiracy much bigger than themselves. Yes, the idea has legs, but it is a lot less compelling than the backrooms.

I think the thing I mourn most about Backrooms is the missed opportunity for any potential metaphorical depictions of online encroachment and consequent subversion of the human minds ability to understand reality that has, since the invention of social media, wreaked havoc on our political landscapes. This encroachment and consequent subversion accelerated rapidly during the early days of the pandemic, and the hysteria of lockdown conspiracies and anti-vaxx terror that we have not yet recovered from.

But in conjunction with exacerbating distortions of reality, the pandemic exposed on a depressingly large scale the extent of the damage caused by decades of neoliberal ideology and the uber individualism that is its by-product. Witnessing people who were, before the pandemic, functioning as normal, coherent people suddenly espousing quasi-Nazi survival of the fittest logic towards vaccinations and lockdown measures was especially jarring. Sentiments like, “why should I suffer because the old and the weak are in danger,” or “if lots of old and weak people die from this virus then so be it, doesn’t mean that we should stop the world,” were as strong an indicator as any I have seen to the extent of our alienation - as good a proof as any of the atomisation of individuals in capitalist society, and of that atomisation being the real cause of community breakdown and loss of compassion and empathy. To make a useful comparison, you could imagine how such a mindset would have coped during the Blitz. Such a person would likely have left their lights on, arguing that they shouldn’t suffer the inconvenience of shuffling about in a dark house just because there was a risk to the lives of others.

In essence, such logic is borne out of a profound misunderstanding of the word ‘freedom’, and of the limits to any supposed freedoms we have in a liberal democratic society. The reality is, and this used to be common knowledge, that any freedoms we have have limits, and those limits are dependent on the consideration of others. Yes, those considerations, and therefore limits, have shrunk in recent times, as collectively, as a society, we have become more self-oriented and self-obsessed. But that doesn’t mean that the initial principle still holds. Nobody has total freedom. You cannot say or do whatever you want, whenever you want. And sometimes, there is a responsibility to act in accordance with the greater need, for the greater good, for the benefit of all, even if that inconveniences a great many people.

The fact that conspiracies around lockdowns and hysteria around vaccinations still linger, as if the lunatics were right the whole time, reveal the extent of our current malaise. Rather than accepting the temporary nature of lockdowns, and the fairly modest uptake in COVID vaccinations, as proof that no conspiracy regarding COVID-19 as a means to ‘control us’ (whoever ‘we’ are) ever existed, that vaccinations were always optional, despite the equally unhinged call by some to make them mandatory, you still hear idiotic notions of, say, living in 1984, that Orwell had it right, despite nothing bearing any resemblance to Orwell’s fictional, totalitarian nightmare exists outside of North Korea.

Though you can understand why, due to the nature and magnitude of what was going on, the year 2020 saw a collective detachment from reality, in the Western world, as great as anything you could have imagined beforehand. It was a moment in which reality, as in the general understanding of things, collapsed in on itself, when the mish-mash of ideas, influences, opinions and of all those 20th century moments in time that refuse to leave us, were condensed into one incoherent mess.

When George Floyd died under the knee of Derek Chauvin, and the moment of his death was shared with the billions of people inhabiting this planet, I saw it, like most people, as a what the fuck moment. My initial, natural response was, “What is that guy doing? Get off him. He’s telling you he can’t breathe, dickhead. Get off.” Then, when the protests began, I wasn’t surprised in the least. It was the US of A, after all. In the context of US history, it was following a trajectory set in motion long ago - meaning that the protests were inevitable, that the sight of a black man dying under the weight of a white man’s knee on his neck was, for black Americans, a deeply, and understandably, upsetting sight, more so than any other ethnic group could fully comprehend.

This was true whether George Floyd was murdered by a racist cop or not; whether he was killed because he was black or not; whether he was killed deliberately or not. To insist on ignoring the racial aspect is to simply not understand, or care about, the horror that is American history, and its treatment of black people. And if anyone is going to overwhelm society with mass protests in response to police brutality, it is going to be black people. Why? Because it is black people, more than any other group, who have been subjected to it.

Yet before coming to the point, and if we are to understand the whining and tantrums of the white victim mentality that has sprung up in the wake of George Floyd’s death, there is, as always, some nuance we have to address. There is some truth in the madness.

One of the most triggering sights for many people in the UK, of all backgrounds, was the weird sight of knee bending before football matches, by politicians, by local councillors even, and at protests. Though for Colin Kaepernick, and Americans fighting racism in the US, bending the knee while the US national anthem played made perfect sense. But for the rest of us, appropriating that gesture was, to speak plainly, pure cringe to say the least.

The performative nature of it - the falseness of it - pissed off a lot of people. As did the BLM thing. Again, in the US, BLM might make sense, but in the UK, not so much. The truth is that black people in the UK have not been murdered by the state, or have seen murders covered up by the state, on the scale that has been seen in America. By some immeasurable distance, too. That’s not to say the UK isn’t, or hasn’t been a racist country, or that non-white people have been treated appallingly. It’s not to say that nothing should be done about our problems. Don’t worry, I’m coming to that. All I am saying is that appropriating a US organisation, whose existence and slogans only make sense in the context of the USA, a catastrofuck of European colonialism and genocide, that therefore can never function as a coherent nation state, or offer anything good to the world in its current, and historical, state of being, is absurd.

On top of all that, is the fact that if George Floyd’s death had only been read about, and not seen, very few people in the UK would have hijacked the cause for their own benefit - which is undeniably true by the way. If you genuinely believe that corporations and politicians adopted BLM slogans and bent the knee out of sincere anti-racism, as opposed to smelling some good PR, then you are tragically naive. But whatever. The occurrences of BLM slogans and bends of the knee (as if Keir Starmer would ever bend the knee in protest to the US national anthem lol), were an embarrassing replication of what was being seen in the States. Though it was surprising, in hindsight it shouldn’t have been, considering the influence Americanness has had on UK generations since the 1980s, an influence that is now so bad, that there are English people actually pronouncing the word ‘arse’, ‘ass’ (incredibly jarring and makes me want to rip my ears off). I swear to god, if I ever hear pavement being called sidewalk…

Anyway, the point to all this is that we cannot explain the events of the last week without that BLM context. Over the last week, I’ve been seeing a ridiculous number of social media posts by middle-aged white men bending the knee in honour of Henry Nowak. The slogan White Lives Matter is doing the rounds. And then, yesterday, 2nd June, thousands of white people descended on a police station in Southampton chanting “I can’t breathe”. Okay, the last one makes sense, considering they were the last words of Henry Nowak, as they were the last words of George Floyd. But using them in the way they were yesterday was truly obscene.

There are some key differences in the tragic deaths of Henry Nowak and George Floyd, but one that matters more than any other in dismantling the ongoing narrative on the Right - Henry Nowak was not killed by the police. One of the wounds, inflicted by his murderer, Vickrum Digwa, would have been fatal no matter how he was treated in police hands. The injustice done to Henry was in his treatment as he lay dying from his stab wounds, with the police believing the lies of his killer, who claimed he was acting in self-defence after being subjected to a racially motivated assault (this has been proven to be categorically false), and handcuffing him, with his hands behind his back, as he was bleeding out from his chest and legs. George Floyd, of course, was killed by a police officer. There was no-one else involved in his death.

There are some others considerations to make in Nowak’s treatment, that in no way serve to admonish the officers who handcuffed him, but, again, are mentioned only to bring a sense of rationality to the irrational reaction that is being played out. Firstly, it is not uncommon for people to feign injury whilst being arrested. Bear in mind that it was Henry’s killer himself who called the police, who gave the false story of being the victim of a racially motivated attack, and who met officer’s, with his family, all of whom acting as accomplices (his mother has also been imprisoned for her role in hiding the murder weapon), at the scene, bombarding them with his fictional version of events. As soon as it became clear that Henry had been stabbed, that he was losing consciousness, the handcuffs were removed and attempts were made to save him.

As bad as the bodycam footage is, then, it is proof of police negligence, disgraceful in and of itself, and the individual stupidity of the officers who attended. But it is not evidence of anti-white racism carried out by white police officers. It isn’t even evidence of police officers fearful of being seen as racist. Only the biased, the usual suspects acting on their own agendas, without genuine consideration for the victim and his family, would push this narrative, and only a genuine idiot would believe it. Unfortunately, we’re not short on them.

If this has become a tangent then that’s because I’m writing in anger at the insanity of this world. And if you are scratching your head wondering how a review of Backrooms got here, then let me walk you back.

White Lives Matter, and the idea that there is anti-white racism within the overwhelmingly white Metropolitan Police, or featured in the policies of white political leaders, or that white people in the UK are being subjected to racism, or being harmed by anti-racist actions, belongs in the backrooms. It is a product of an upside down, an underground inversion of the world, something evocative of an Us universe. It’s a simulacra - a copy of a copy, where the original copy has no original. They’re calling Henry Nowak the real George Floyd. Some are even bringing up Stephen Lawrence. The truth is that there is no white equivalent to Stephen Lawrence. Institutional racism cannot exist towards white people in a predominantly white society. It is impossible. To believe it does is to fail to understand what institutional racism means.

Imagine describing racial injustice to someone who’s never experienced it before and then telling them to act as if they have…

Exactly 100 years before South Africa became the first, and only, African nation to host the World Cup, the colonial entity became the first non-European nation to register as a FIFA member. Of course, this was only true geographically. Nothing about the 1910 South African Football Association (SAFA) was non-European. As an institutional body of Empire, the SAFA was whites only, representing only white British and Afrikaner footballers within what was, after the Anglo-Boer War (1899 – 1902) and subsequent South Africa Act 1909[1], an entirely British domain.

As FIFA member, white-only South African sides would play a series of matches versus an England FA XI in 1910 and 1920, losing all six fixtures, including a 9-1 thrashing on the 7^th July 1920, in Cape Town (worse than any score OFS Bantu recorded). Their first official match, however, would not take place until 1924, against Bohemians FC of Ireland (at the time in structural disarray as a result of their fight against British rule). The South African side would win this match 4-2, notable for the two goals scored by a 20-year-old Gordon Hodgson, son of English emigrants[2] (of course) who would be signed by Liverpool later that year after scoring a hat-trick against them in a friendly match. Hodgson would go on to have a long career in England with Liverpool, Leeds and Aston Villa, and is fourth in the list of all-time top goalscorers in the English top-flight.

Two years before the English themselves would withdraw as FIFA members, and perhaps in anticipation of this withdrawal, the SAFA would disaffiliate from FIFA in 1926 (after briefly doing so in 1924). Citing disputes over voting representation and lack of consultation of British domains regarding rule changes, the SAFA ultimately acted out of loyalty to the mother country, seeing a stronger affiliation with the English FA as more beneficial long-term. This could be viewed as another example of British imperial arrogance – the chief cause of all division between the English FA and FIFA at the time – whereby the British considered themselves the primary voice in all footballing matters on account of the game being established in Britain and exported as a British product.

By the time the SAFA rejoined FIFA in 1952, the country’s segregated make-up under Apartheid was receiving more vocal opposition as a result of more prominent non-white football associations within the country.

Despite being banned from playing with white colonial settlers, indigenous and other non-white populations had been organising their own football matches between their own established clubs since the turn of the century, with associations and leagues being set up in Kimberley, Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and within “the elite mission schools[3].” One such school was Adams College, initially called the Amanzimtoti Institute until being renamed in honour of American missionary Newton Adams in the 1930s.

It was at Adams where future African National Congress (ANC) President Albert Luthuli would discover his own love for football. Becoming a teacher at the school, Luthuli would also oversee the running of Adams College Shooting Stars FC in the 1920s, who had already, at that time, been in existence for three decades.[4]

Born into a “privileged class”[5] of black South Africans, immersed in missionary school education and Christian doctrine, Luthuli was of the British mindset in his attitude towards sports. Football, he believed, was a healthy, “moralizing” leisure activity for African youths, contributing to the “highest manhood,” and providing occupation in “moments when otherwise the devil would be finding work for our idle hands”[6] (a strikingly Victorian England mentality).

Throughout the 1920s and up until 1936, Luthuli would play a significant role in improving football-related organisational and administrative standards in his work with the Durban and District African Football Association (DDAFA) and as the first secretary of the South African African Football Association (SAAFA). It was in these areas, as a pivotal figure in a “black-run organization”[7], where Luthuli would first challenge directly the ruling white minority, harnessing the skills and laying the foundations for later struggles against Apartheid rule.

As evidence of football’s growing popularity among the indigenous population of South Africa, black football clubs continued to spring up everywhere, allowing for “inter-provincial”[8] competitions and leagues. These structures, in essence, were an inversion of football’s colonial functioning as a means of social control and cultural recalibration. Whereas the British and other European entities sought to pacify indigenous populations through sports, the black-run football leagues organised by Luthuli and others sowed the seeds of later radicalisation. In their demands for structural equality, football organisers in South Africa were fostering black solidarity in their regions, something that in itself is an emphatic dismantling of the FIFA adage that “politics and football” don’t mix. Quite the opposite. The chief lesson from Luthuli’s period in football is that, in our world, moulded as it is through colonial and imperial conquest, fundamentally dependent on class and racial divisions, sports and politics, as with everything, are structurally inseparable. FIFA’s adage is pure deflection – a way of leaving structural hierarchies and injustices unopposed.

ko-fi

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw7/9/9/pdfs/ukpga_19090009_en.pdf

[2] https://backpagefootball.com/a-springbok-ran-in-solitude-south-africas-international-debut/93529/

[3] https://sahistory.org.za/article/football-south-africa

[4] https://sahistory.org.za/article/sport-race-and-liberation-apartheid-dr-peter-alegi

[5] https://sahistory.org.za/article/sport-race-and-liberation-apartheid-dr-peter-alegi

[6] https://sahistory.org.za/article/sport-race-and-liberation-apartheid-dr-peter-alegi

[7] https://sahistory.org.za/article/sport-race-and-liberation-apartheid-dr-peter-alegi

[8] https://sahistory.org.za/article/sport-race-and-liberation-apartheid-dr-peter-alegi

16 days to go until the World Cup and hotel bookings are said to be well below expectations (according to numerous sources). This correlates with poor ticket sales, including for the opening game between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City. Even the USA matches are not said to be selling well.

To remedy this, ticket prices are falling (though the costs of them are still obscene - you’re looking at £500 - £1,000). But as mad as prices are, World Cup tickets are always expensive, and attendances are good.

Much of the blame is being put onto FIFA, and of course, they do share the bulk of the blame. Primarily for choosing the US as one of three hosts in the first place. But the truth could be much more simple than the effects of tickets costs. The truth is that most people just don’t see appeal in expensive trips to the US.

Aside from the nations who are subject to travel bans or partial travel bans (Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Senegal and recently, Congo), in wealthy, football loving nations such as England and Germany the general consensus is that travelling to the US is simply not worth it. Having seen the farce that was the US hosted inaugural World Club Cup, with it’s half-time show for the final and the insistence of the ego-maniac commander-in-chief to hand over the trophy to some confused looking players, this isn’t surprising.

But then you have the groups who are outright calling for a boycott (me included) on political grounds and on the back off legitimate concerns for people’s safety in the hands of US immigration officials. This are quite large in number.

Bear in mind that the issue is not the choice of US itself (note that yes, Mexico and Canada are hosting as well, but the majority of games are in the US). The last World Cup to be held in the US (1994) was a commercial success. The issue is clearly the current US regime, its non-transparent information on who is and isn’t allowed to travel (fans from those banned nations have been told they can “waive visa bonds” for a laughable deposit of £11,000 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c392dj4xwy4o), and general concerns around safety, travel inside the US itself, and the impossibility of avoiding, you know, Americans (sorry, guys).

As it stands, the World Cup is being described by US hotels, according to Forbes, as a “non-event” - https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2026/05/05/hotels-world-cup-non-event-so-far/ - which is a crazy thing to say about a World Cup but which could prove to be true in terms of attendances. In terms of TV audience, of course it will be massive, but I think people everywhere are disillusioned with the whole thing. Hopefully, we do get the sight of poorly attended stadiums. Anything to get the message across that people are fed up of being ripped off, and expected to travel to countries with poor human rights records. Yes, America. I’m not talking about Mexico. In this case I mean you!

ko-fi

Consider this quote from disgraced football pundit Pierre Ménès:[1]

“My 11-year-old son stopped playing football after three training sessions. [...] In the team, there were only North Africans and black players, that’s the reality of French football. That’s the reality of football in Île-de-France, and of French football as a whole. If you go to watch an honour division match in the Paris region, you’ll usually see just one white player on the pitch. He’s either the goalkeeper or the right-back. And look at the French national team, today there are eleven black players.”[2]

Though spoken with malicious intent, Ménès’ cited Parisian location and specified pitch positions are fragments of a much wider picture. Speaking from a conspiratorial mindset, bordering, perhaps, on Replacement theory, Ménès appears to see the cultural make-up of his national team, and no doubt his country as a whole, as either product of catastrophic immigration policies or sinister globalist design. Whatever the reason, it reeks of historical illiteracy, not just in relation to the complicated history of nations like France, and their most shameful periods in particular, but of French football itself.

Such nuance rubbishes the traditional FIFA response (some would say deflection) - politics and football don’t mix - whenever political issues are made visible on the football pitch. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Like everything in life, sport is not immune from politics, and football, more than any other sport, being of huge global significance, cannot be separated from social and cultural political climates.

Not to say, as Bill Shankly once did (though like my former colleague, his tongue was in his cheek), that football is “much, much more important” than life or death[3], what happens in the world of football reflects what goes on in wider society. And as with the make-up of Western European nations, the make-up of Western European national football teams is a consequence of their imperial colonial pasts. It is a complexity that is, of course, on one hand, given more time than it deserves. But it is also important in what it says not just about those nations themselves, but, in a footballing sense, about FIFA as, historically speaking, a body contingent on Western (white) hegemony.

Looked at from this perspective, France’s victory in 2018, as adopted representatives of Africa by Africans, is a, somewhat perverse, kind of poetic justice. Having had football introduced by colonial masters[4] as a means of exerting control and cultural expansion, Africa has never operated on a level footballing playing field. Under FIFA, African nations, and African footballers, in conjunction with systemic and institutional racism, have gone from being ignored on the basis of perceived inferiority, ridiculed, patronised, and divided, to being central to the success of those former colonisers.

To tell the story of African football, we must begin with the first recorded games to take place on the continent in the 1860s. These games involved British civil servants and soldiers and took place in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, in South Africa. They would not have been highly competitive. In fact, it wouldn’t be too wide of the mark to see them as an exercise in R & R[5]. Taking place not only 26 years before the establishment of a football league in England, but a year before the establishment of the English Football Association and final agreement on the basic laws of the game[6], it is probable that the game played by those British men in South Africa had elements of Rugby, or the American NFL, in that outfield players would have been allowed to handle the ball.

The R & R comparison carries weight wherever we find football in the annals of colonial history between the 1860s and 1890s. During these decades, recorded games of football took place in South Africa, and therefor were exclusively white, with black Africans only allowed to watch as spectators from afar. Initially, it is likely that football was an activity encouraged among military personnel as a means to keep fit, alleviate boredom, maintain discipline, and instil a sense of teamwork. As a consequence of the Diamond rush frenzies, and the opening of the Kimberley Mine, games of football would soon be including traders and engineers.[7] A lesser-scale mirroring of the establishment of football clubs among working men in England, the urban centres that sprung out of colonial industrialisation in South Africa saw football matches becoming more structured. Due to the presence of military garrisons in the area in the aftermath of the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, alongside the rapid urban growth of settler colonies within the area, the first football association was established in Pietermaritzburg, in 1880 (the Natal Football Association), shortly after the founding of Pietermaritzburg County Football Club.[8]

In 1882, Savages FC were formed in Pietermaritzburg by English and Welsh soldiers who had fought in the Zulu and Boer wars[9]. Savages are still in existence today, albeit at amateur level. They are Africa’s oldest surviving football club, and the 9^th oldest football club in the world. Unfortunately, not much is known about their early years, only that they were named after an English team that the soldiers liked, and that they played in all black. The badge contains an assegai spear and shield, as used by Zulu warriors. Though Savages exist as an all-inclusive community club today, and had incorporated black players into their team well before Nelson Mandela’s first multi-racial government of 1994, the name, and the choice of badge and kit colour, point to something far less wholesome than today’s incarnation.

Their first recorded opponents, Hilton College, who they beat 3-1 in August 1882, were among many teams set up within educational institutions. By this point, football in the colonies was no longer just pastime for military men, but was now, along with rugby and cricket, a means to export British culture, and exert cultural dominance. While still a segregated activity, missionary schools began to reach out and encourage the local, indigenous population to take up the game in place of traditional activities, part of a much broader “process of assimilation and mobilization”[10] in all areas of African life. A signifier of the success of this process was in the emergence of “a new class of literate, missionary educated” people, who began to “grope for involvement in the new economic and social order.”[11] As a means of instilling British ethics and values, football, rugby and cricket were considered key features of missionary school education.

At this point, however, it is important to distinguish briefly the role of individual sports within the British Empire, as, like in Britain itself, sport was very much stratified by class. While cricket and rugby were introduced in the colonies, these sports were the preference of the ruling classes, whereas football was the game for working men. This is important, as it separates football from cricket and rugby as not being “the imperial game”[12] these latter sports were perceived to be.

To look more broadly at this, in order to enforce the point, the essential reason as to why cricket is more popular in India, for example, than it is in Africa, is due to the make-up of the British presence. Whereas Africa, with its mining and industrialisation, and the influx of tradesmen, engineers and missionaries, along with working class soldiers, the British Raj comprised, overwhelmingly, of members of the upper classes, who viewed cricket as the ultimate embodiment of Britishness. In essence, cricket was seen as the gentleman’s game, reflecting British values and morality. Though, as with football, cricket was initially played amongst the British only, as a means to relax in their usual ways and maintain their own customs and traditions, the sport was branched out to Indians themselves. This branching out, however, was slightly different to what was happening with football in Africa.

Events such as the Indian Uprising in 1857 jolted the British out of any state of comfort they may have found themselves in, alerting them to an alarming vulnerability[13], and the response to which were of critical importance. Understanding the reality of them being massively outnumbered[14], the British were wise enough (not meant in a complimentary way, just to say they weren’t entirely ignorant) to recognise the need for what we now refer to as ‘hearts and minds’[15], and adopted strategies to win over those populations they considered inferior to themselves, and who would benefit from British rule. This led to the Empire taking up the perverse ‘Mission to Civilise’[16] position of colonial rule, seeing themselves as duty bound to civilise the world in the British/European manner, to “serve (their) captives’ needs,”[17] something that the English poet Rudyard Kipling would phrase as ‘The White Man’s Burden’. As was happening with football in Africa, cricket would be used as a means to exert influence, instil Britishness, present the British as benevolent rulers, and establish positive relationships with Indian leaders.

Yet as with everything in life, other nuances played a role in the popularising of British sport in specific regions. Racial stereotypes, or “scientific racism”, were one factor in who the British considered well-equipped, or in need, of what sport[18]. Another factor aligns with class demographics, and the relative simplicity of playing a game of football in contrast to a game of cricket. Football can be played anytime or anywhere. You don’t even need an actual ball really. As kids, me and my brother sometimes substituted a ball with rolled-up pairs of socks, not because of poverty, but as a way of playing football in the house, the point being that a game of football, “flexible” in setting with no requirement for specific equipment[19], can be kicked-off anytime, anywhere - a quality that makes it easily accessible to those who are poverty-stricken and those from working-class areas.

But while other factors can be pointed to as to why one sport flourished in one part of Empire, and a different one flourished in another, the reasons why football and cricket grew in popularity among indigenous populations long after the end of British colonial rule share some important commonalities – attempts to prove their worth to colonial masters, a desire to beat those colonial masters at their own game, thus humiliating them, before providing functions of solidarity and resistance in the form of national self-assertion and unity in a post-colonial construction of identity.

By the turn of the twentieth century, black Africans had adopted football for themselves, and were beginning to establish their own clubs, albeit at the auspices of colonial overlords, and thereby hindered by them. Possibly the most famous, and pioneering, example of an all-black African football team from this period was the Orange Free State Bantu Football Club, who became the first Black South African team to tour overseas and play in Europe, including a tour of England in 1899.

Much of the press given to the OFS Bantu players is abhorrent, and even the more respectful reporting was saturated in racial stereotyping. Such as this one from the Manchester Times:

“(T)he team is said to be strong, the players being of splendid physique.”

Or the one in The Scottish Sport, that described Bantu players as “big, powerful men, with a rare turn of speed.”[20]

In South Africa itself, news of the tour was met with hostility, with newspapers such as Cape Argus positing that the tour was as “farcical as it is unsportsmanlike,” bringing to their mind’s a spectacle reminiscent of “hippodrome”.[21] In a tragic way, they weren’t a million miles from the truth. Being scheduled in to play teams such as Aston Villa, the dominant force in English football of the time, having won the league title four times in the 1890s and the FA Cup twice in the same period, OFS Bantu were being set up for ridicule. As amateurs (OFS players were grocers, tailors, tradesmen, carpenters and clerks[22]), denied the opportunity to develop their footballing skills on an even keel, OFS were at a huge disadvantage to say the least. In contemporary terms we could understand, and in terms of experience and training, I suppose it would be like taking a local pub team (if that team consists of players introduced to the game a year ago and having only been allowed to play among themselves or others at a similar level) and putting them up against a professional team from the English Championship or even the Premier League itself.

Not that the white footballing press of the time recognised that patent disadvantage, with journalists writing as if engaged in sick racial voyeurism, or “spectatorial lust,”[23] akin to the human zoos and ‘exhibitionary spectacles’[24] taking place in England at that time. In the South African Cape Times, the OFS players were despicably derided as a “nigger troupe,” certain to provide a “burlesque of the game.”[25] In The Football Echo, one journalist “wondered ‘what sort of football will these dark beauties play?’”[26]

Introduced as “representatives from Darkest Africa,”[27] The Football Evening News sought to reassure readers of English player safety, stating in all seriousness that the OFS players would be dressed “in proper football costume, and not be allowed to carry assegais when charging.”[28] Stranger still, however, the paper made note of “no arrangements” having been made “to exclude ladies from witnessing the games in which the Kaffirs take part.”[29]

Unfortunately, but predictably, things didn’t improve once the tour got underway. Having had a delayed arrival into Britain, OFS would play their first game against Newcastle United, at St. James’ Park, and not league champions Aston Villa, as scheduled, where spectators “laughed more than they would do at the most successful comic opera.”[30] Unaccustomed to the grass pitches, and no doubt the weather conditions so far up in the North of England and later Scotland, and taking into account, also, the psychological effects of their dehumanisation as a ‘kaffir’[31] football team, on top of the aforementioned gulf in footballing ability that exists between professionals and amateurs, OFS unsurprisingly struggled against all but few of their opponents. Losing that first game at Newcastle 6-2, they recorded losses throughout the UK, including a 13-3 mauling against Bolton Wanderers and a 9-3 thrashing by Scarborough.

Recording similar results north of the border, the Scottish Sport considered the mere presence of African footballers on Scottish pitches against Scottish teams “one door off sacrilege,” suggesting instead that the “Kaffirs and the ‘lady footballers’ should combine their forces…and stump some less civilised part of the world than Great Britain – France, for instance.”[32]

In newspaper columns and published correspondence from their readers, opinions of the tour were one-sided and volatile, to say the least. In Bantu’s defence, team officials (white men who had settled in South Africa) stated that “the Kaffirs” had been showing football skills “just as good” as the whites back home, and that a European tour would do “an immense amount of good,”[33] not just for the OFS players themselves, but in expanding the scope of the game. This bit is key, as it shows that the primary motivation was that expansion, and of Africans being seen, by some at least, as part of that expansion. “Surely,” they pled, “Scotsmen and Englishmen will not grudge to sow a few seeds of the game into soil which promises to be fruitful.”[34]

Though their reasons were despicable and perverse, OFS officials clearly saw something in the African players. Looking at the tour fairly, discounting the matches played against professional teams from the top-flight in England and Scotland, OFS matches played against opponents of lesser standards saw, not surprisingly, improving results. These included OFS’ only victory on the tour, a 3-1 win against French amateur side Sporting Club Tourcoing,

Contextually, of course, that 1899 tour cannot be seen in any positive light. Historically speaking, its importance lies in the shaming of the so-called civilised nations and the dismantling of any notion of benign Empire. From a personal point of view, it is just another historical embarrassment that makes it impossible to get on board with romanticised attachments to my country of birth. Looked at from a purely footballing perspective, it serves as an introduction to the functioning of football as pacifier, or mechanism of control. For contemporary relevance, knowing this history starts is off on the story of African football, a story of deliberate, systemic racism, injustice and bias that has hindered the successes of African teams.

[1] Menes was arrested in connection with sexual assault accusations in 2021

[2] Comments made on an episode of the far-right French Web TV show Bistro Libertés in 2025

[3] “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that” – Bill Shankly

[4] British, French, Belgian and Portuguese

[5] Military slang for rest and recuperation first associated with US Airforce personnel in WWII

[6] The Cambridge Rules of 1848 were the foundation for the laws laid out in 1863

[7] https://www.blaetter.de/en/2011/07/the-emancipation-of-african-football

[8] It appears that the names of the founders of Pietermaritzburg County Football Association have been lost to history

[9] Ben Hartshorne, current custodian and executive committee member of Savages Football Club - https://www.goal-click.com/football-photography-stories/south-africa-pietermaritzburg

[10] https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4164/1/Andre_Odendaal_-_South_Africa%27s_balck_victorians%2C_sport%2C_race_and_class_in_South_Africa_before_union.pdf

[11] https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4164/1/Andre_Odendaal_-_South_Africa%27s_balck_victorians%2C_sport%2C_race_and_class_in_South_Africa_before_union.pdf

[12] https://www.britishempire.me.uk/sportandempire.html

[13] https://www.britishempire.me.uk/sportandempire.html

[14] It is an incredible fact that a cadre of up to 150,000 people, at most, ruled over 300 million people on the Indian subcontinent

[15] A term first used by French general Hubert Lyautey when countering the Black Flags rebellion during the Tonkin campaign of 1895 and later used during the Malaya Emergency by British Field Marshall Gerald Templer – “The shooting side of this business is only twenty-five percent of the trouble. The other seventy-five percent is getting the people of this country behind us. The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle but in the hearts and minds of the people.”

[16] https://www.britishempire.me.uk/what-was-the-mission-to-civilise-.html

[17] Kipling

[18] In India, some communities were deemed “martial races” (suited for military service but lacking governance skills), while others were labelled effeminate or intellectually cunning. In Africa, the general consensus was (as seen in previous chapters) of Africans being physically robust and quick but lacking in areas of intellect. This prejudice was common until very recently, with African players being presumed to suit certain positions more than others (defensive midfield, winger and forward).

[19] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03932729.2023.2182021#d1e188

[20] https://physicalculturestudy.com/2016/07/09/pioneers-and-pariahs-orange-free-state-bantu-f-c/

[21] https://physicalculturestudy.com/2016/07/09/pioneers-and-pariahs-orange-free-state-bantu-f-c/

[22]https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/38656/1/The_1899_Orange_Free_State_Football_Team_Tour.pdf

[23] https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobson-imperialism-a-study

[24] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/23/theme-parks-pubs-and-human-zoos-how-the-victorians-invented-leisure

[25] Cape Times, 21 September 1899, p. 5.

[26]https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/38656/1/The_1899_Orange_Free_State_Football_Team_Tour.pdf

[27] The Northern Echo, 8 September 1899, p. 4.

[28] The Football Evening News, 2 September 1899, p. 3.

[29] Ibid

[30] The Newcastle Daily Journal, 6 September 1899.

[31] Racial slur adapted from the Arabic word (meaning “infidel” or “unbeliever”) used to dehumanise Africans, to distinguish them as non-human.

[32] Scottish Sport, 15 September 1899, p. 4.

[33] Scottish Sport, 19 September 1899.

[34] Idib

In our times of political incoherence, nobody seems able to recognise, in mainstream media at least, the curious split between new factions of Left and Right on the issue of Israel and Palestine forged since the invention of social media. In particular is the seemingly paradoxical support of right-wing groups, embedded with fascistic traits, afforded to Israel and wider Zionism. Obvious examples are the Tommy Robinson’s, Douglas Murray’s and the Nigel Farage’s (though not concrete allies, they inhabit the same space on the political spectrum – the only difference being one is more vocally extreme than the other).

The strange irony here, of course, is that we have a group of people vehemently opposed to mass-immigration, under the paranoid, prejudiced belief of “white replacement”, supporting another group that has achieved replacement of an indigenous population through mass-immigration. It is in this context that we have a Robinson, Murray or Farage who, if alive in the 1930s, would likely have directed their hate towards the Jewish Other, siding today with the Zionist entity of Israel in favour of the contemporary Other so despised by the modern Right - Muslims.

As with European Jews in the 1920s and 30s, Muslims today are subject to harmful generalisations and conspiracy theories that have gained significant traction in mainstream discourse. To cite Islamic terrorism as a key difference would be to ignore absurd 1920s and 30s notions of Jews being responsible, depending on your politics, for Germany’s defeat in WWI, the Wall Street Crash, and Bolshevism, among a great many other things. Though it would be hyperbolic to compare the two, the hysterical, nonsensical, generalisations of Muslims in modern times (since 9/11 especially), has echoed the type accusations thrown at Jews a century ago.

What makes this more bizarre is the support given to these figures on the Right by Israeli supporters and even from the State of Israel itself. Take Douglas Murray and his IDF escorted tours of Gaza, a despicable exercise in propaganda akin to being escorted through late-1930s/early 1940s Warsaw by German soldiers, reporting the war solely from their perspective, for which he was awarded with a special recognition by President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.

Though there are differing contexts for both sides, Israel and its supporters – Liberals and Conservatives, Socialists and Nationalists alike - are allied with the modern Right in their Islamophobia. Simply put, both want to either expel Muslims from their societies, or significantly eradicate the presence of Islam. And while debates can be had on Islamic fundamentalism and the more oppressive practices of Islam, the same can very much be said for strains of Christianity and Judaism. To pretend otherwise is to be ignorant at best, woefully hypocritical at worse.

It is because of this strange alliance that we had the weaponisation of antisemitism aimed at Jeremey Corbyn back in the last 2010s, and aimed now at Zack Polanski, the only Jewish leader of a UK political party, today. It also puts those of us who seek to defend and support him in an excoriatingly awkward position. Polanski, and indeed those of us who support him, shouldn’t have to make reference to the fact that he is Jewish. It should be neither here nor there. But such is the absurdity of our political discourse, this is where we find ourselves.

In recent years, the word “traitor” has been dragged up from less civilised times and brought back into everyday use. Predominantly used against Centrist politicians such as Keir Starmer, and against anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Tommy Robinson-infused, quasi-fascist attitudes to immigration, Jewish people who criticise the State of Israel for atrocities carried out against Palestinians are smeared as such as well, but to a much more sinister, offensive extent.

Criticism, misrepresentations, and outright abuse towards Polanski have been heightened in the last week, since a mentally ill man, recently released from the care of mental health services (the real scandal here), with a history of (indiscriminate) violence, stabbed three people in London. Though only two of these are acknowledged in the media, a fact from which we can deduce that the third man, not being Jewish, doesn’t matter in that he doesn’t fit the desired narrative.

Sticking specifically to mainstream media treatment of Polanski (social media is far too unhinged to talk about extensively or from a point of respectability), it is as if we are all supposed to pretend that journalists have suddenly become non-fluent in English or are just a bit thick. Of course, neither is true, it’s just that the journalists in question don’t have the dignity to report on Polanski in a truthful manner.

For those who don’t know, I’m talking about Polanski’s comments made before the Golders Green stabbings on the difference between perceptions of unsafety and actual unsafety, and the pretence by journalists to not understand this. Rather than being covered as the rationale, reality-based observation it was, media coverage has gone with the falsehood that Polanski was insinuating that racially motivated targeting of Jewish people in the UK doesn’t exist, being simply a figment of the Jewish persons imagination. This despite Polanski being subjected, before and after the stabbings, to antisemitic abuse himself.

More a convenience than by design (there are some on the Left who would mirror their ideological opponents in promoting conspiracy theories), the timing of the stabbings, so close to local-elections, has presented mainstream media and all political parties with the opportunity for a pile-on. Polanski, and the Green Party as a whole, find themselves victims to the same smear campaign used to such great effect on Corbyn’s Labour Party.

To understand this, we need to confront the accusations. Being against Israel, and the Zionist project, for its treatment of Palestinians since 1947 is not antisemitism. Supporting the Palestinians in the face of such long-standing aggression is not antisemitism. Chanting “From the river to the sea…” isn’t antisemitism. I’d go as far as saying that refusing to “condemn Hamas” isn’t antisemitism, though it isn’t a position I would advocate for so wholeheartedly myself. And none of these things are really up for debate, in the same way that the Earth being flat, the moon landings being faked, 2Pac being alive, and, you know, Jews controlling global finance, are up for debate.

At best, you could argue that there are certain buzzwords or phrases bandied about by those who maybe insensitive or unaware of the connotations they hold for some people. But again, that does not equate to prejudice towards those people. What it does do is shut down free speech because of the sensitivities of a few – another ironic, paradoxical way of thinking among the “Anti-Woke” brigade who have been shrieking about a perceived cancel culture since the mid-2010s - especially when those few espouse extremist views themselves.

But such is the incoherence of modern politics.

While I’m not the biggest fan of autofiction I’m not tyrannically opposed to it either. In my own writing, I got perilously close to autofiction in the Young Mancunians story, ‘The Rain’. I put this down to the fact that the book came about at a crossroads period in my life. We all have, or will have, these moments, where we assess where we are, what we’ve done, and agonise over any regrets.

Anyway, ‘The Rain’ includes two scenes based on real-life events from many, many years ago. I included these as a kind of homage to my friends because a) they’re hilarious, and b) they’re good stories in their own right.

But it would be difficult for me to write an entire piece of autofiction (short-fiction-sized, let alone novel-sized) simply because my life hasn’t been that eventful. I’m a simple guy who likes simple things, spending time solely with the people I like. Which means, at the moment, I’ll never be out in a group of more than 5.

To get an idea of what good autofiction looks like, I suppose the obvious is the work of Jack Kerouac, particularly On the Road. Ironically, I don’t find Kerouac’s stories that interesting. For me, the interesting thing about Kerouac, and the reason why I can stick out a Kerouac novel, is the writing style which I obsessively tried to replicate for too long a time.

And its not because I find Kerouac’s stories necessarily dull. To be honest, its not something I can put my finger on. Same with the other famous Beat, Allen Ginsberg. There are poems of Ginsberg that I love, such as Howl and America, but the bulk of his work is, for me, all a bit over the top.

Oh, just realised I forgot to mention Burroughs when talking about famous Beats. I fucking despise Burroughs.

Back to the point. My interest with the Beats is purely aesthetical, I think. As mentioned, I like the style of writing, and the philosophy behind the style. I’m fascinated with the way they lived and the segment of 1950s America they inhabited. They’re lives (and I don’t think many would disagree with this) were book-worthy, in the sense that they made good stories and had a point to them, in that they had cultural relevance.

What do I mean by that?

The Beats lived during a transformative decade and were part of a generation who embodied that transformation. Kerouac was clearly aware of this. In the context of 1950s America, it could be said that the Beats were brave, even heroic. Consider Ginsberg’s Howl, the obscenity trial it was subject to, and the widespread homophobia of the time. Undoubtedly, the Beats were part of something else, existing outside of regular, acceptable society, a society that was dying. To have testimony from this period in the form of autofiction is historically meaningful. This is what I mean by saying the stories have a point to them. They’re relevant. At the time, they were an insight into what was going on within a cultural movement. Reading something like On the Road now is to gain some understanding into the story of America, and Western culture as a whole.

There is a difference, then, in what Kerouac was writing about and the ethos of ‘write what you know’. Though attributed to Mark Twain, my introduction to ‘write what you know’ came from Notorious B.I.G. of all people. If I remember rightly, he was explaining why his songs were all about criminality and life in the ghetto.

To explain it succinctly, ‘write what you know’ is about authenticity. For example, I would struggle to write a convincing novel about a Nigerian police detective, having never been to Nigeria, and having never served in the police, or the trials and tribulations of rich white women going through a messy divorce, having never been rich, and being not a woman. And it is painfully obvious when a writer is attempting to write about something they know nothing about, or have experience of.

This is where it gets a little complicated. What about sci-fi? What about horror?

‘Write what you know’ doesn’t eradicate the possibility to write great genre fiction. But it is crucial that a writer of genre fiction produces an air of authenticity in their characters and their themes. I would argue that theme is key here. You simply need to know what you’re talking about, and be genuinely invested in talking about it. It is less about providing entertainment, or escapism, and more concerned with what good fiction should do - provide insight into the human condition.

For those who don’t know how it works, I release a journal/magazine type thing full of essays, articles and occasional poems (if you’re lucky, or unlucky depending on your opinion of it!). The intention was to release this monthly but it just hasn’t worked out that way due to other work commitments and the consequent reduction of time available for my own writing.

Each issue is put out through my Substack for paid subscribers as a PDF document. I do this because I want to be paid for my writing but don’t feel 100% comfortable asking for paid subscriptions for occasional essays and opinion pieces. I wanted to actually produce a body of work which would justify the £4 a month, or whatever it is in your currency. I suppose it’s the commie in me struggling to combine writing with the necessity of paid work. Like all writers, I just want to write and be paid for it. But because writing is among the most neglected, or disrespected, areas of work, seen more of a hobby than something that requires a lot of effort and time, there is this part of me that actually feels guilty for charging someone to read my thoughts. This is preposterous on one hand, because it’s my work, it’s what I do, it’s my only use. But on the other hand, I’m also a reader of books, and it is on physical books that my money for literary outputs is spent on.

There is also the element of imposter syndrome that I will never shake off. Being of the working-class, from a background where literary pursuits are seen as pretentious and above one’s station almost, I have this voice in my head that’s like, “Who do you think you are, writing all this like you’re important?” Then I just cringe at myself.

But still, I am a writer, amongst other things, and like the vast majority of writers, I’d imagine, want my work to be read. Not in a pretentious listen to me way, but as a way of participating in society. And I may be wrong on some of the things I write about for The Existential Reader. In fact, I definitely will be. Nobody is right all of the time. But that’s the beauty of reading and writing in the area of non-fiction, or of the real world. The primary objective is to share thoughts, opinions, and knowledge, and to open up a discourse. I’d go as far as to say that everyone should write and have the means to share their work with people. But yeah, I’m going on a tangent now.

The theme for the third edition is the Spectacle, so Guy Debord and his incredible work, The Society of the Spectacle, informs each piece. This came about by my reading of the book, which has been nothing short of a revelation for me. I have been studying it now for three months, and highly recommend that others study it too.

Through this theme I have explored the murder of John Lennon, the emergence of YouTuber’s going by the label of ‘Citizen Journalists’, the functioning of TV shows like The Traitors, and more. Some of the articles that will feature in the 3rd issue are already up on my Substack behind a paywall. This is because I was feeling guilty for those who do pay me and felt that I had to put something out for them. And it was only right that I did.

I’m also toying with the idea of putting this out in physical form, and will keep you all updated on that. Feel free to share your thoughts. Is that something you’d like to see?

The second upcoming release is a project I started serialising on here a few months ago, but has again been delayed due to there being not enough time in the day. I am intent, though, on seeing this work put out before the upcoming World Cup, which gets underway in June. This work is on the history of FIFA, the corruption that is embedded within the organisation, and the disturbing recurrence of alliances with far right and/or authoritarian governments as a means of sportswashing. This will be released as a book through Cooper Lee Press, and I will keep you all updated on its development.

It is likely that the next thing you hear from me is regarding the release of The Existential Reader #3. Fingers crossed it’s a success!

So this is a brief one. Last Friday I came across my book on the Waterstones website. This was really unexpected and at first I was like, how did that happen? Turns out my owning the ISBN and having it registered through Gardners makes it available for wholesalers and retailers. Though with it being print on demand, it won’t be in physical bookstores. Just yet. I’m working on that.

It feels like a real achievement, having developed the book from start to finish and having published it through my own independent press. It’s confirmation that I can do this, that I have done this, and that I can continue to do it.

So yeah. Young Mancunians, available everywhere online. Get your copy, or take out a paid subscription on the Substack where the book was serialised!

https://www.waterstones.com/book/young-mancunians/craig-lee-snelgrove//9781919345208

There are two commonly accepted facts we need to address:

1. Readership is in decline

2. Publishing models are failing.

Yet while both may be true, there are nuances to be found in the wider context. According to various online sources, over 700 million units of printed books were sold in 2025. This won’t be an accurate figure, of course. Such statistics are found only within the capitalist market and are, on the whole, tracked by US companies. But as an indicator into the general state of readership, it helps.

700 million may be a small number in terms of global human population, but 700 million in itself is not a small number. It’s a long way down to zero, put it that way. Consider also the books that were either sold outside of the capitalist market or books that were borrowed, given or found. The point is, a great many people still choose to read books, and the big question, really, is who these readers are, what they are reading, how books are accessed, and most importantly, who is writing and who gets to see their work in print and in book shops.

By far the lowest demographic of readers, and I don’t think you need statistics to know this, are young men. For clarity, we are talking men under 25, but you could push this up to men under 30, maybe even 40. To narrow the scope further, the number of male readers continues to reduce when you factor in class. Class remains, in our time, the number one cause of illiteracy and general disinterest in reading. There are numerous reasons we can point to, all of which relate to the society in which we live, and the cultural attitudes and approaches we take to class, and gender, race, etc within class. Due to gender-based stereotypes and misconceptions, for example, working-class boys are less likely to be given a book than working-class girls. A working-class lad who actually reads for pleasure is a rare thing.

Yet even if that is true, if we do, as a society, indirectly discourage reading in young boys, it barely scratches the surface of the problem. The biggest factor in readership decline over the last few decades is the emergence, and general preference, for visual and auditory mediums like TV, movies, music, video games, and social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. It is in these areas where the real problems lie. And though we can take a simplified approach and explain the preference for media in the ease of its consumption as visual and auditory stimuli, a proper diagnosis can only be done by assessing the use of these forms of entertainment, education, and pastimes within capitalist society. To approach the problem away from this (constructed) reality of our society, to palm it off in the capitalist realist mindset of “it’s just the way it is,” or “it’s just business” is akin to seeking a cure for cancer whilst denying that cancer exists. Such an approach is meaningless, useless even, as we are effectively operating within the problem itself. All we can attempt to do is manage it out of defeated acceptance, to find a way to survive because there are no other options. It’s just the way it is.

In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord identified capital as having accumulated “to the point that it becomes images;” but rather than being “a collection of images,” this Spectacle is the “social relation between people that is mediated (my use of italics) by images.” For Debord, the Spectacle is the culmination of commodity fetishism, the superseding of perceived value with appearances - the totalisation of commodity fetishism across all areas of social life, where images and representations of commodities are worth more than the commodity itself.

In such a society, where everything “that was directly lived has receded into a representation,” the appearance of something is worth more than the usage of said something. Nike trainers, for example, do the exact same thing as Ascot trainers, they may even look the same sometimes, but to be seen in Ascot trainers, to wear that brand, has lesser social value. The popularity of Nike trainers is more to do with the image of the trainer than with its uses. There is huge value in the brand itself, something that didn’t just happen, but was achieved at great expense through marketing campaigns: the generation of the image and the recurrence of it in daily life.

The very image of Nike is also an example of the image as a social mediator. Commonality is found in the wearing of Nike clothing. It may, in certain social groups/environments, make it easier to establish relationships. It may also put people off. Some people will associate Nike with social groups they themselves are not a part of, or even wary of. Though not so much nowadays, due to the success of the brand and the commonness of its logo, Nike is a signifier of coolness and uncoolness, of elevated social status and lowered social status. Effectively, Nike’s dominance of its market, and through its crossover into others, has succeeded in the making of the brand a regular feature of everyday life, so much so that it is now part of the fabric of society itself.

It is a sad fact for those of us who love literature that books have lesser social value than other, more easily consumable, forms of art, entertainment, and pastimes. To remedy this, writers and publishers adopt the tactics of Hollywood, resorting to marketable gimmicks, an over-emphasis on presentation (film trailer, poster, book cover), and the creation of stories with consideration as to what will sell. In essence, books exist within the Spectacle, the commodity of everything, subjected to the same conditions as any other product. Writers write under the influence of the Spectacle (an issue in itself), publishers act in compliance with it.

Some writers even accept the demand to cede creative control to publishers. A book, as commodity, may have great promise (in terms of saleability), but there could be an element of the text that could be seen as being problematic among wider audiences. Though a writer should take on feedback, the writer knows best when it comes to their own work. When writing, everything is done for a reason. Omitting something that would detract from the writing itself should be resisted aggressively by the writer. If that makes the work less marketable then so be it.

But what can be done when the capitalist model of our society is acknowledged as a fundamental factor in readership decline? When we recognise that the only difference between what is deemed most marketable is based purely on the superficial qualities of the product? That those superficial qualities are made up of conscious consideration for market demand? We ultimately have two choices. We can accept the absurdity of it, and the futility of competing in such a rigged space, with an awareness of that absurdity, and carry on regardless in acquiescence with the endless conditions and concessions that determine the marketable success of a book. Or we can play the game according to our own rules.

Certain standards of book publishing are merely an insistence on the superficial. Yes, books must have some basic level of presentation. They have to be readable and linguistically correct (note that linguistically correct relates to narrative style as well as correct use of language – it may be that a narrator speaks in a grammatically incorrect way due to a regional dialect, or they may speak in a vernacular that exists only in the world of the book). But there is lots of money, and time, wasted on the commodification of books, a Spectacle logic applied to the production of them that detracts from the substance of the text. Many will disagree, but what is typically published by mainstream publishers is based solely on its marketable potential. In other words, how closely aligned the book is to current Spectacle trends.

Yet in the society of the Spectacle, books will always be treated as lesser than. In the grand scheme of things, a book, in particular a novel, cannot compete, in this society, with the movie or TV show. The average person is far more likely, after a long day, or when at rest, to engage with the least challenging form of visual or auditory stimuli. Reading requires effort, a certain level of concentration, that the average person just doesn’t have the time or energy for.

This isn’t said as an insult, by the way. It’s not that people are more stupid these days (though it can sometimes feel like that). The simple fact is that we are, as a society, over-worked and over-stimulated for long periods of time. And yes, the brain rot that is prime time TV, for example, is part of that over-stimulation, but it is a lulling one, far less demanding than the book. No matter how exciting a book may be, for the non-reader it’ll have you falling asleep within minutes. Heavy on the eyes is the written word.

It should also be said that attempting to compete within the Spectacle, as a book publisher of any kind, is a noble cause. But it is one that can only achieve limited success. For books to remain a relevant part of this society in the coming decades requires us to put in some work. In my PhD exegesis, I made the case for the short story, not just in arguing against its supposed inferiority to the novel, but as an effective starting point to reach people with the written word. As Ailsa Cox rightly argues in her book, Writing Short Fiction, the short story is well-equipped to thrive in a society that is over-saturated with distraction. For those who can’t, for whatever reason, commit to prolonged periods of reading during their day, the short story provides an obvious gateway.

Poetry, also, has potential to thrive in contemporary society. A strong case could be made to say it already has. Through spoken word, and with its loose association with Hip-Hop, poetry has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent times. But this has triggered the old debate of what is good art and bad art that afflicts literature in general. Instagram poets, for example, are widely derided despite their enormous popularity. And while some of the criticism is valid, is it not a good thing to have perceived bad poetry? Though we all have opinions (I certainly have mine), what is deemed good and bad is, or should be, subjective. The important thing is that poetry lives; that people write poetry. Unless you are the most extreme literary snob, perceived bad poetry, or writing in general, should be as acceptable as a bad film, a bad song, or a bad football team. Poor standards can be improved. Writing is a craft that must be continuously worked on. It is a skill that gets better with practice. Ultimately, the most important thing for any writer is the artistic mind, the je ne sais quoi that compels a person into the attempt at writing. If the artistic instinct is there, and the compulsion to create through words, then good writing is possible.

The frustrating aspect of perceived bad writing is in the perceived prevalence of it. This is a consequence of the Spectacle, the demands of which cannot be overstated. The Spectacle doesn’t allow for rigorous practice. The Spectacle wants a constant stream of commodity. It wants ‘content.’ Precedence is given to the tried and tested, the derivatives, the most basic and easy to grasp. There is no room for contemplation, only the immediacy and brevity of the superficial.

But still, snobbery and pretentiousness are regularly encountered within literary circles, a trait that reduces accessibility and inclusivity. The irony here is that the gatekeepers of literary pursuits are supposedly all about inclusivity, rallying against the dominance of the white male writer. Fair enough, nobody wants to hear from white male writers exclusively. I’m not arguing against that sentiment. But the white male writer feels an easy target for the middle-class liberals who, I’m afraid to say, are the ones who actually do have total dominance over the publishing industry.

Consequences of this dominance are depressingly predictable. With the middle-class liberal comes the supposed safe space, the middle of the road blandness that the liberal “hive mind” believes is actually good. This is another irony – the ones who are most snobbish and bitchy about writing are actually quite bad themselves. If not bad, then incredibly dull.

This is the state of most creative writing today that is put out within the Spectacle. And again, it can hardly be surprising that this is the case, considering the factors of class outlined at the beginning, and the ostentatiousness of literary gatekeepers. As any non-liberal will tell you, pretensions of inclusivity and accessibility are among the liberals most dislikeable characteristics. And what is more liberal than the misguided belief that capitalism can be made good if we can just dish out a little more equality, as if capitalism can even begin to function with equality as an ingredient.

The liberal who believes in good capitalism is essentially stuck in a bind. They want both equality and the ability to live very well within the capitalist system, as if capitalism isn’t inherently and absolutely about competition and dispossession of one for the advancement of the other. This effective paradox makes deceivers, manipulators and leeches out of the liberal. The fight against racism and prejudice becomes a marketing gimmick, nothing more than another way of saying we will sell to anyone and everyone (provided they have the same belief systems as us). Businesses will use an anti-racist or LGBT-friendly slogan or symbol as advertising. We are an inclusive space, they say, you should spend your money here because we’re so inclusive, as if being anti-racist or LGBT-friendly is something you should be given brownie points for, when actually, not being a bigot is just a healthy, normative state of being that doesn’t need pompous proclamation.

Many book publishers, indie as well as traditional, are guilty of such over-emphasis, taking great pleasure in declaring the encouragement of submissions from people who have traditionally been marginalised. Such a thing shouldn’t even need to be stated. What does it even mean? Does it mean you aren’t interested in people from a group that traditionally hasn’t been marginalised. Okay, if that’s so then that’s your right as a publisher. You get to publish what you want. But unless it’s related to very specific themes you don’t need to state such conditions. You can be selective without advertising it. Advertising it just makes it creepy. It makes it superficial. And it’s only done as a means to get clout. To put it crudely, it’s all so very white liberal.

Though maybe I’m being too harsh. Publishers who employ such gimmicks are coming from a good place, I’m sure. But that’s the point. If your good intentions are motivated by brand development, you are ultimately doing more harm than good by default. The simple fact of your primary concern being of the image of the brand is problematic. You’re engaged in a marketing strategy, a scheme to gain an advantage over competition, the targeting of a certain demographic with a selling point.

This is one way in which art suffers under capitalism. Gimmicks, trends, and an emphasis on what will sell or help raise brand awareness hurts artists and reduces artistic output. As already pointed out, the gatekeepers of creative spaces are actively on the lookout for specifics, often derivatives of the tried and tested, that they believe will sell to a target audience. But if everyone did this then the output will always be the same – derivatives recycled to produce the derivative of the derivative, or the replica of the replica.

My assessment of the publishing industry being in this state even more so than, say, the Hollywood film industry won’t go down well with everyone. No doubt some will vehemently disagree with me and of course I am aware I could be wrong or just wide of the mark. But it is my opinion based on what I have observed and what I know. My gut instinct is that there is a link between class and gender-determined gifts of books, the way books are treated and consequently perceived, the type of writer who has emerged in recent years, and the marketing strategies employed by book publishers.

The aim, however, for anyone who cares about literature and recognises the importance of the written word and individual expression through the written word, is surely to make the practice of writing as accessible as possible. We should, therefore, be as open as possible to different forms of writing and different types of writer, as well as different means of putting out the written word. If certain standards of presentation cannot be met because of costs, then why should a writer’s work be excluded from public domains? Publishers should seek out and help writers, and should actively participate within local and, if possible, wider communities in combatting the lack of literary visibility and opportunity.

Options include existing methods such as the setting up of workshops, manuscript evaluations, and editorial services. But the ultimate aim is to overcome those perceptions of reading as boring, and of writing as being a practice of the more well-to-do and wealthier sections of society. That is the real challenge. And though we can only do so much, little is better than nothing.

The act of writing is one of the most essential human skills. Witing is empowering, it is a means to share and preserve knowledge, a means of communicating, teaching, and learning. Through writing we can explore the human condition and the state of things. Through writing we learn more about each other and what it means to be human. To deprive someone of this skill, or to accept deprivation of it, is a negligence. And while not everyone will enjoy reading or writing, we’re not all pre-programmed robots after all, a great many people are not even being given the chance of finding expression or inspiration through the written word.

For my part, like any one-person-band, I can only do so much. Furthermore, I’m a person of very little resources. And I know if I am to succeed, I will have to play the game of capitalism. No matter what path in this life we take, capitalism is our current reality. But because I know about poverty, and because I know about the power of writing, and the joy found in writing, and because of my instinctual suspicion of creative pursuits being gatekept, this endeavour is the mission I have chosen.

My primary motivation in setting up Cooper Lee was in the opportunity of putting out my own work on my own terms, free from both the interference and waiting around on publishers and the abomination that is Amazon.com. I sought one or two publishers for my book, Young Mancunians, before deciding to self-publish under my own press, taking inspiration from Virginia Woolf. Though I accept traditional publishing remains the most prestigious form of publication for a writer, I was impatient in the want to see the work published, and resistant to any creative concessions that may be asked of me. For better or worse.

After making that decision, I grew into the idea of being an actual publisher. I enjoyed the act of producing my own book from start to finish, though it was incredibly difficult, tedious at times, and mistakes were made. As a means to make money, I spent 2025 working a part-time zero-hour contract job and working with non-writers in development of written projects that had undertaken. Ghostwriting and editing, essentially. This has been incorporated into Cooper Lee and has seen me stumble into offering a hybrid publishing model as well as stand alone services.

Again, I very much enjoyed this work, finding joy in the development of other’s people’s writing and in seeing their literary projects come to fruition. Yet the typical charge for editing and ghostwriting services is well beyond the means of working-class aspiring writers. I was lucky enough to get enrolled on a Creative Writing programme back in 2013, when I was 29 and dead broke, but government cuts to Arts & Humanities departments across UK universities will no doubt make even this more difficult.

What is so depressing about those cutbacks is the confirmation that creative work is seen at an institutional level as lesser than everything else. Of course, nobody would claim that Creative Writing degrees are as important as Biochemistry, for example, but that hardly makes Creative Writing unimportant. Aside from the identified importance as a human skill, Creative Writing is integral to capitalist society itself. Storytelling, poetry, and the ability to write creatively well is essential to the mass media complex that is a critical component of modern capitalist society. But this isn’t our concern.

The logic behind government cutbacks to Arts & Humanities becomes clearer when taken into account the emergence of generative AI. I’m no luddite when it comes to AI. If put in the right hands, AI could be hugely beneficial to humanity. But it is not in the right hands and, regardless, AI has no place within the Arts. Yet because of the ease of its use, and the cheapness of it, AI is a very real threat to Creative Writing. The notion of AI as having use within Creative Writing needs defeating before it’s too late. Imagine the state of literature if just one entire generation is raised on AI generated stories, poems, movies and songs.

We’re already in trouble with the next generation, with kids starting nursery school swiping books as if they’re phones – a horrific development, one that changes the nature of the problem fundamentally. The task we have, as writers, readers, and publishers, is now political. There is no denying this. Such developments as young children swiping and tapping books can’t be left unaddressed. And while schoolteachers will surely tackle this issue at the source, it is obviously a societal issue. Parents who have no interest in reading will not read to their kids, who won’t read at all. We can’t be complacent about this.

I don’t claim to have any answers. I can’t offer anything truly revolutionary. My mission is an incredibly modest one, but I hope to gain support and establish partnerships with as many creative writers and publishers as possible. As a publishing house, Cooper Lee will be open to genre. Fiction, non-fiction and poetry will all be accepted. I will seek to work in both my local community and online with aspiring writers and those who just want to pursue a particular literary project. My mentoring and editing services will be as affordable as possible, and I will be as flexible as I can in this area.

Publishing-wise, I am very much a novice. I will need investment in the form of grants and funding to not just get things going, but to develop my own skills. Again, any form of partnerships or outside input won’t be ignored. The goal is to not charge people to have their book published, but there may a need to do that in the early stages depending on funding. That is completely up to the writer who comes across this press.

Cooper Lee is as much a passion project as it is a career ambition. Literature will not be treated as middle-class, middle of the road pursuit. It won’t be commodified. You want a fancy book cover? Great. That’s art. But if you can’t afford it, we’ll work round it. Without resorting to AI!

No matter what, everything will be done for the love of the craft.

For practical purposes I’ve decided to incorporate The Existential Reader into Cooper Lee Press. For those who signed up to The Existential Reader, it’s still here. All posts are available in the Archives, and new posts will continue to be published. But the reality is that I don’t have the time or resources to manage two separate projects, especially for free. And while free posts will appear, the aim is to roll out The Existential Reader as a periodical that will be available in both PDF format and as a physical copy.

As will become clear in the upcoming manifesto, Cooper Lee Press will seek to publish non-fiction similar to what you have been reading here. For example, the series on FIFA and the organisation’s corruption and alliances with right-wing, authoritarian regimes will be published as a book. For readers who had been enjoying the series, each chapter’s first draft will still be put out in the newsletter.

Going forward, the emphasis will be more on the literary and the cultural, putting out political pieces where necessary. As I have always maintained, very little can be achieved by preaching to the choir, or worse, screaming into the void on social media. Again, more will be said on this in the manifesto, but the priority of Cooper Lee Press will in itself be political, being a leftist publishing house seeking to reach and give voice to those in the real world.

Expect the manifesto in the next couple of days.