Monthly Archives: November 2025

Late Capitalism, Beauty Standards and the War Against Aging

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Perhaps you’ve noticed something. The faces of so many celebrities and influencers are beginning to look, well, not human. There has been a noticeable shift in aesthetics in Western society. One that supposedly defies the aging process, but that has ended up being unsettling and rather frightening.

Full disclosure, I have had micro-derm abrasion, botox and other procedures in the past and I love facials and other similar services. Without a doubt, I do care how I look. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling good or enhancing your appearance. In fact, I have great respect for people who become aestheticians.

But this is about the beauty industry under late capitalism. It is an industry that preys upon the insecurities they foster. And their primary target is young girls and women. The saddest example I have seen of this were 15 and 16 year old girls buying “anti-aging” serums at Sephora.

In fact, the language that the beauty industry uses is telling in and of itself. “Age-defying” or “anti-wrinkle.” It is as if these things are medical conditions that must be treated before you die from them. Wars against time that must be fought by expensive procedures that literally alter the contours of your face.

And influencers peddle these ideas with astonishing speed and success. Watching them on the screens we carry around in our pockets, we are transfixed by both the spectacle and the soothing ASMR.

Hollywood also plays an enormous role, as an older female actor is constantly under scrutiny for her “youthfulness.” How many young women in the industry today have faces that appear less human because they fear being “aged out” of acting? Overly filled lips. Foreheads that do not move. Emaciated bodies. None of this is to shame or make fun of them. But to examine the pressure that people, especially young women, endure daily to conform to this specific aesthetic.

The significant medical risks involved in such procedures, from fillers to botox, should not be ignored either. I won’t go into detail about that here, since I would be out of my depth. But there is ample evidence of botched cases, infections and problematic health consequences one can find on a simple internet search.

The wellness movement under capitalism has adopted these tactics too, joining the beauty aesthetic to health and well being. If you are tired or your face is showing the signs of fatigue, it isn’t that soul-sucking, under-waged job you have to go to in order to live on this planet that is at fault. It is your face, literally. Essentially, it is shaming us for still being alive and showing the signs of that aliveness, while ignoring the real factors that cause a person stress.

There is also an underpinning of racialized aesthetics that should be addressed. Whiteness has always been elevated as the pinnacle of beauty in Western society. And it still resonates today. Actor and model Sydney Sweeney recently came under fire for her American Eagle jeans ad. The implication was that while she was selling the clothing product, she was also giving a racist dog whistle about her “superior” genes. And in a subsequent interview, she did not deny these accusations. The point being that there is a persistent standard of beauty in the West that glorifies white youthfulness while denigrating or disappearing those who do not conform to it.

The pursuit of youth and beauty is nothing new. We can see evidence of it throughout human history, and it has taken a wide variety of forms. But late capitalism has warped culture in a way never before seen. It cynically uses our deepest fears against us and promises us fulfillment through technology and spending lots of money. And that technology takes its toll on social interactions and cohesiveness in society.

How often have we looked at a face that does not seem real? That doesn’t emote in a way we can relate to? That doesn’t move? This kind of facial alteration severs the normal social dynamic we rely on for social cohesion, one that has evolved over millions of years.

Regardless of what the beauty industry says, aging is not something we must wage a war against. It is a fact of our existence. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with going to the spa, getting facials or even undergoing treatments or procedures that make us feel better, we should not feel pressured to do so or go into debt because of it. We should try to understand the forces at play that often make us feel unworthy or unattractive and the enormous amount of money being made from reinforcing those insecurities.

Aging isn’t always easy. But there are cultural attitudes that make it unnecessarily harder. In truth, we should be appreciated for how we look at any age. And we should not be mocked or rendered invisible if we do not conform to a largely unobtainable and incredibly exorbitant notion of beauty.

Even as we take care of our skin, we should not feel the need to hide its age by buying expensive concealers, deform it with risky fillers or numb it out of existence through paralytic drugs. Humans can be beautiful at any age, but most especially when they hold on to the very things that make them human to begin with.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Trials of Jair Bolsonaro

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The Supreme Court of Brazil is sending the notorious, fascist dictator, Jair Bolsonaro, to prison for 27 years and 3 months for trying to lead a coup after he lost the presidential election in 2022.

Bolsonaro, who had been lauded by many Western political leaders and capitalist rags like the Wall Street Journal, lead an unprecedented assault on Brazil’s biodiverse regions and accelerated the genocide against Brazil’s indigenous peoples for the profit of multinational corporations.

Backed by a cadre of evangelical fanatics, racists and homophobes, Bolsonaro tried to dismantle the remaining protections for the besieged ecosystems and communities of his country. He emboldened loggers, ranchers and mining interests with his fascist rhetoric, many of whom have threatened Indigenous peoples with violence.

One example was in the state of Amapá, where gold miners stabbed an Indigenous leader to death in a protected reserve. Other reports of attacks on Indigenous people, women, environmental activists and the LGBTQ community mounted and deforestation of the Amazon increased by 67% in the first seven months of his reign.

Bolsonaro’s sentencing is a bright spot in a world where the powerful seem to get away with their heinous crimes against the biosphere and the most vulnerable among us. Crimes exemplified by the Epstein files and the genocide in Gaza. So, if this causes any of them to shudder, even for a moment, then this is a very good day.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Condescension and Genocide Apologetics of Hillary Clinton

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Like a bad penny (actually, a penny soaked in blood), Hillary Clinton keeps showing up when virtually no one asked her to. Making the rounds, Clinton has pulled out one of the things that made her presidential campaign such a gleaming success: elitist condescension.

On one particular panel, Clinton bemoaned the increased sympathy Palestinians are receiving for being the victims of a US-backed, Israeli-led genocide. She was bewildered at young people who, for some reason, don’t like seeing children being blown up with US munitions or being starved to death through a carefully curated policy of annihilation. And that young Jews, in particular, don’t like it being done in their name.

She said:

“We have done a miserable job teaching young people history. I had so many conversations, and frankly, they often started as confrontations with students, not just at Columbia, but elsewhere. Where were they getting their information? They were getting it from social media. They were getting it most particularly from TikTok, which is governed by an algorithm until — at least up until now, still largely manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party.” – Hillary Clinton

Talking down to her constituents has been a hallmark of Clinton’s public persona since her early days of demonizing young Black men. Her and her husband, Epstein Island regular Bill “Bubba” Clinton, ruined countless lives with an excessively punitive and nakedly racist policy that targeted supposed “super predators.” A racist dog whistle that I am sure excited some of their white friends in Arkansas.

Clinton now joins her colleagues Van Jones and Sarah Hurwitz in the Hall of Genocidaires and their Sycophants. Like them, she isn’t outraged or even mildly upset by the “wall of carnage” we see every day in Gaza. To her, they are an optical problem. One that should be dealt with by some good ole fashioned American censorship.

Ironically, Clinton doesn’t seem to see the Israeli soldiers or politicians proudly posting their crimes online for the world to see. She is going to find it very hard to censor the criminals she supports when they simply refuse to shut-up about their atrocities.

Clinton’s “Chinese Communist Party” boogeyman is a particularly laughable remark, given that almost all of the mainstream media outlets in the US are now owned by a handful of corporations. But this is a desperate attempt to deflect from that, as well as the fact that they are no longer seen as the arbiter of truth. Turns out, you cannot keep lying or omitting facts to the public and not suffer some backlash.

But no boogeyman she summons will obscure her own criminality. The record is clear. Clinton supported the war on Iraq, a country that never attacked the US. She supported the far-right coup in Honduras, a regime responsible for attacking and murdering countless Indigenous, LGBTQ and environmental activists. She was instrumental in the destruction of Libya, plunging it into turmoil and the creation of a new slave trade in Northern Africa. And she helped to draw up one of the most recent blueprints for the oppression of the Palestinians and the cementing of the Israeli apartheid ethnostate.

In the end, Clinton will go down as one of the most loathsome figures in the American political class. A friend to Kissinger, a champion of far right regimes and military interventions that have decimated the Global South, a supporter of Israeli apartheid and apologist for its current genocide. She lost the presidency to a narcissistic fascist with the morals of a botfly when even a damp, salmonella-tinged, kitchen sponge could have run a better campaign. And now she is determined to inflict her intellectual brain rot years after most of us thought it impossible or even necessary.

Hillary Clinton and most of the political elite class have lost control of the narrative, but don’t expect any ‘come to Jesus’ moment. I am sad to say that it is extremely unlikely she is done with her yawn-inducing “I told you so” tours for a long time to come.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Misogyny Behind the Ridicule of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo

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There has been a lot of shade cast on Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo regarding their recent interviews for the movie Wicked. Apart from legitimate criticisms of vapid celebrity culture and the toxic nature of the Hollywood film industry, the commentary I have seen has taken a truly meanspirited turn.

Grande and Erivo are being called “cringe” with some influencers complaining that their public affection makes them feel “uncomfortable.” Unsurprisingly, their physical appearance is also being picked apart.

The two actors have apparently bonded. And in interviews, they have shown a lot of platonic physical affection toward one another. But whether or not it is sincere is beside the point.

Western culture has always hated femininity and softness. It has always portrayed it as weak, silly or even crazy. Thanks to the toxic influence of British imperial culture in North America, which touted “stiff upper lip” nonsense, any display of emotion in public is grounds for being lampooned and ridiculed.

Even Western liberal feminism has been a victim of this loathing of emotional displays that are traditionally associated with femininity. The implication is that women need to emulate the very worst aspects of masculinity to succeed. The “Girl Boss” being the most prominent example.

And the impact can be seen beyond this in such places as the INCEL movement. Alienated young men, divorced from their emotions and atomized by the loneliness of a truly abysmal late capitalist hellscape, have been conditioned to hate anything feminine.

Grande and Erivo’s public affection isn’t abnormal. It is also not cringe to people with a healthy sense of what it means to be human. To be in possession of a body and a mind and a soul. All of which not only desire affection, but need it to survive and thrive in this world.

So, the next time you see an influencer disparage them for this, ask yourself why are they so bothered by it? Why is anyone bothered by it? In a world where empathy and kindness are in terrifyingly short supply, why would such public displays of caring garner so much animus?

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Dark Power of American Empire

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Whatever you might think of Marjorie Taylor Greene, her untimely exit from the cesspit of Washington is instructive. She didn’t go willingly. Anyone who thinks this misunderstands the dynamics of power in American Empire.

For all her flaws, and there are many, Greene ended up doing things no one is permitted to do. She demanded the release of the Epstein files and she demanded an end to US support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinians. These two things sealed her fate.

She defied the order of powerful white men who rule the empire. And she dared to question the undying devotion it has to its primary colonial asset, Israel.

Greene had some genuinely insane and loathsome political positions. She peddled far right conspiracy theories, antisemitism, racism and transphobia. But in that sense, she wasn’t a grifter. She was truly deluded. She believed these loathsome things. And she was embraced for them by the cult of MAGA.

Her devotion to what she believed was the truth inevitably led her to some dark conclusions. And after that first press conference about the Epstein files, her life in politics was doomed. Since then, she has had to hire private security. And I think it was at this point she might have begun to realize what she had put some of her colleagues through.

Greene will likely make the rounds in the miasma of far right talking heads and insufferable blowhards for some time. She will likely go silent for a while to regroup. And maybe she will resurface down the road with a new brand and look.

But her time in the belly of the beast should serve as the clearest example of the banal evil of American Empire. Although it is in steep decline, it protects its interests. Those interests lie in the capital investments made by the most powerful and wealthy men on the planet. And they will do anything to preserve that status even if it means sinking the whole ship to the bottom of the sea.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

Losing the Narrative: the Moral Panic over Social Media

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“People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They’re not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That’s really threatening.”
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

The story is to culture what the memory is to the individual. Like any story, memories can be inaccurate, clouded by biases or prejudices, and full of gaps or plot holes. But those memories also guide us. They inform how we interpret our world and interact with it. And we are living in a time where the dominant stories of who we are as a people are shifting in monumental ways.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a reactionary response to this. The old guard is threatened by a thinking public. For instance, the moral panic over the supposed dangers of social media is no different than the ones of the past. The ones that claimed comic books or television or jazz or hip hop or cannabis or pornography were destroying morality, breaking the family apart, or dumbing us down. This is what is behind the push for “age verification.” But it is not about protecting children, it is about censoring words and expressions that challenge power. And the younger generation is the biggest threat to that current arrangement of power.

Stories are what connect us. The ones we tell each other. The ones we tell ourselves. They give us meaning, especially when they are shared. To control this discourse is to control society itself. For many decades, the narrative was controlled by the wealthy and the powerful via the mainstream media. This is still largely true. But there have been seismic shifts that have deeply altered this pattern. Social media has been the most instrumental, in this regard.

None of this is to say social media is without problems. There are many. But most of them come from the billionaire class and Silicon Valley, who elevate some algorithms over others. It is they who flood the internet with AI slop and vapid celebrity gossip, while downgrading or disappearing content that is important, encourages curiosity and imagination, or persuades people to be more active in their world.

There is no doubt that the far right uses social media to peddle conspiracy theories and stoke racism and other social hatreds. The rise of MAGA is an example of this. But these voices were also amplified by the billionaire class, which sees division and divisive politics as a means to an end. And that end is social control.

Despite its copious flaws, social media has galvanized movements, from Black Lives Matter to the anti-genocide/pro-Palestine movement. This is a threat to the established classes that hold power. And it is why they seek to control and censor it like never before. They prefer spectators, not participants. Consumers, not citizens.

To many young people, the old narratives are dying. Racist tropes, the whitewashing of colonialism and genocide, misogyny, homophobic fearmongering, and pro-imperialist or capitalist slogans or puff pieces, are no longer satisfying. They fall flat when they witness masked ICE thugs smashing car windows or storming apartment buildings in the middle of the night, or see blown apart or starving children in Gaza, or hear the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and other powerful white men, or experience the exploding cost of living, from groceries to rent to healthcare. They see the monsters around them, and no spin will put those blinders back on.

Every current attempt to make the internet safer or more civil is a thinly veiled attempt to stifle dissent, critical thinking and free speech. It is why social media outlets like TikTok and Facebook are employing Zionists and former IDF soldiers to monitor “hate speech.” It is why the Trump regime has gone after various media outlets who defy his version of the truth. It is why politicians from both sides of the political aisle are pushing for more restrictive legislation.

They are losing control of the narrative, and they are terrified. This is why they have been buying up platforms and installing agents of propaganda at every level. But these measures are desperate attempts to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. It is too late and, on some level, they know this.

Now matter what bludgeon they chose, this generation is beyond their machinations and manipulations. They have seen too much. Whether the powerful understand it or not, they have lost. And their old myths are dead in all but name.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Depraved, Moral Gymnastics of Liberal Zionists

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This is the former speechwriter for Barrack Obama, Sarah Hurwitz, at the Jewish Federation of North America General Assembly this past Sunday. She made some rather provocative remarks there regarding the “disconnect” between younger and older Jews in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I would like to respond to those remarks directly.

Sarah- “I think since Oct 7, and even before, there have been huge shifts in America on how people think about Jews and Israel and I think that is especially true of young people. So, we are now wrestling with a new generational divide here. And I think that is particularly true in that social media is now our source for media.”

“And it used to be the media you got in America was American media and it was pretty mainstream. You know, it generally didn’t express extreme anti-Israel views. You had to go to a pretty weird bookstore to find global media and fringe media. But today we have social media, which is a global medium. Its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don’t really love Jews.”

“So, while in the 1990s, a young person probably wasn’t going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes, today those media outlets find them. They find them on their phones. It’s also this increasingly post-literate media, less and less text, more and more videos.”

Me- Let me get this straight, Sarah. You are saying that Al Jazeera and Nick Fuentes are ideologically the same? Nick Fuentes, who openly praises Hitler? And what “weird bookstore” are you referencing? Left leaning ones who sold books with Palestinian voices and perspectives? And are you saying that mainstream media once told a single narrative which was all pro-Israel? On this last one, I would agree wholeheartedly. Seldom were Palestinian voices heard in legacy media. But, unlike you, I wouldn’t call that balanced journalism.

Sarah- “You have TikTok just bashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything we try to say to them they’re hearing through this wall of carnage. So, I want to get data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.”

Me- Oh, Sarah. You poor thing. You are having a really tough time explaining away the racist nature of the Zionist project, decades of ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies, and US support for all of it because of a “wall of carnage.” How terribly inconvenient for you. As your friend Van Jones quipped: these young people are seeing all those “dead Gaza babies” scroll by on their newsfeed. And they are appalled by it. How rude of the Palestinians to post about their annihilation. And how silly of these young Jews to be moved by such images and videos.

Hate to break it to you, Sarah. But you are obscene.

Sarah- “And you know, I think, unfortunately, the very smart bet we made on Holocaust education to serve as antisemitism education, in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit. Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated youngsters and they think antisemitism is like anti-black racism, powerful white people against powerless black people.”

“So, when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising they think, Oh, I know, the lesson of the Holocaust is that you fight Israel, you fight the big powerful people, hurting the weak people.”

Me- My God, Sarah. Where to begin with this one? Are you saying Holocaust education was only about combating antisemitism? It isn’t a lesson on the evil of scapegoating? Dehumanization? Genocide? And that these lessons apply to any marginalized or oppressed people? As someone who has spent a lifetime studying the Holocaust, how did I miss the lesson that it only applied to Jewish people and should be used to defend an ethnostate committing atrocities?

Sarah, normal human beings are appalled by cruelty and sadism. Normal people are repulsed by atrocities and brutality. And they understand that it is wrong for powerful people to violently crush and wipe out weaker people.

Sarah- “The problem is, we’re not just a religion. We’re a nation. Civilization. Tribe. Peoplehood. But most of all we’re a family. And so if you are a young person raised in America who thinks Judaism is a Protestant-style religion, then the seven million Jews in Israel are merely your co-religionists. So, my co-religionists, if I look at them and they’re not practicing my religion of social justice and certain prophetic values then what do I have to do with them?”

“But that’s a category error. The seven million people in Israel, they are not my co-religionists, they are my siblings. But I think if you think of them as merely your co-religionists, it’s easy to slide into anti-Zionism. You don’t necessarily have that connection to them.”

Me- Sarah, if your siblings were murdering children, would you be okay with that? Would you not even say one word in objection? This is not just a dysfunctional family. What you just described isn’t a “family” at all. It is a cult. A death cult, to be more exact.

What a pity, Sarah. You cannot stand atop a mountain of corpses and defend what your “family” is doing any more without push back from young Jews around the world. And the whitewashing spin the legacy media used to employ no longer works.

Sarah, you made opposition to this genocide even more imperative, moral and clear. And for that, I thank you.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

Trump is a Liar, but he is the Embodiment of the Ruling Class

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While speaking before the brutal King of Saudi Arabia, US president Trump said:

“But we also wanna thank all the people living in Gaza, the residents of Gaza. They, as you know, have begun to move back to their homes. A lot more safety, they say, than they ever had before.”

Gaza has been reduced to rubble from 2+ years of Israeli carpet bombing and demolition. Most of it is uninhabitable. A mass grave with thousands of bodies still under the ruins of their homes. Most are living in tents now, and much of Gaza has faced flooding. And the genocide hasn’t stopped. Israel is still carrying out bombings and mass starvation, with assistance from the US and other Western allies, despite the so-called ceasefire.

But Trump’s lies are always grandiose and fatuous. Designed to overwhelm norms of decency in human interactions. And to undermine the importance of truth telling for social cohesion. This is classic narcissist behaviour, and it is eroding the bonds that keep a society together and functional.

The lies he has told about his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein are an example of this pathology. To the narcissist, it doesn’t matter if lies are exposed. All that matters is if he or she can weave another web of dishonesty and distraction in time to escape the consequences of the previous ones.

This kind of mendacity is staggering to most people because it flies in the face of everything we understand to be normal in human interactions. But the narcissist doesn’t live in this world. They live in a universe where manipulation, grift and deception are legitimate tools for increasing their social control, wealth accumulation and power. Attention, whether negative or positive, is paramount.

Modern American society was fueled by the lies of such narcissists and their sycophants. Primarily by white men who constructed and curated a Machiavellian playbook for obtaining and maintaining power and wealth. They successfully convinced a huge swath of the population that wealth accumulation, hoarding and ostentatious displays are virtuous. This is a class that enjoys extraordinary impunity for their crimes. Few of them ever see a jail cell for such things as theft of wages, labour abuses, sexual exploitation, discrimination or environmental destruction.

Trump is the most glaring example of this. He became president despite a litany of crimes, from fraud to rape. He has enriched himself by peddling valueless coins and pandering to anyone who will give him a lavish gift or shiny award. He is not an aberration. Although he is crass, unsophisticated and vulgar, he is also the grotesque embodiment of the ruling elite in America stripped of all of its pretension.

And he will likely avoid any meaningful consequences for this current scandal. Do not be surprised if names are redacted and swaths of documents are censored because of “national security.” Pam Bondi and her legal team are probably burning the midnight oil to come up with any excuse available to them.

It would be naive and foolish to think that US will do the right thing in regard to the Epstein scandal. The arrangement of power that exists today, and that includes both sides of the political aisle, is incapable of tackling the malfeasance within its own ranks. As I have said before, a nation that has funded and assisted a genocide for two years, the very worst crime against humanity, can easily ignore or whitewash crimes against the most vulnerable among us. Especially when those crimes were mostly committed by wealthy white men.

So, what do we do? Aside from feeling a natural sense of despair, there are some things we can do that are vitally important as human beings. We can and should bear witness. To speak boldly. Speak out against horrendous crimes like genocide. To not buy into the pervasive lie that wealth equates virtue or superiority. To reject any conspiracy theory or idea that demonize, scapegoat or punch down on the marginalized or most vulnerable in society, whether they be immigrants, the transgender community or the unhoused. To support political leaders who espouse our values, without being naive as to their limitations, flaws and the deep rot of the system. Be persuaded by good policies, not charismatic personalities. But, most importantly, to connect with one another in community and learn how to address our own needs by building mutual aid and networks of cooperation.

No one is coming to save us, least of all the wealthy and powerful who run the show. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

How Food Imperialism Hurts Us All

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Ask yourself a few questions: why is it that the only foods in your local supermarket that make health claims are the ultra-processed ones? If your supermarket has a “health food section,” then what does that make the rest of the store? Why are those “health foods” so expensive? Why is even fast food becoming unaffordable? And why are more and more people in the West shoplifting food in supermarkets?

Capitalism commodified food in manner never before seen in human history. In fact, many of the disgraced American tobacco companies who peddled their carcinogenic products to the public through ubiquitous marketing campaigns, went to the Big Food industry and applied the same principles to peddling processed food products. Pushing food that is as addictive as any cigarette, and just as damaging. Companies pay lots of money for the marketing firms that mark chips or cereal boxes “heart healthy.” You won’t see a bunch of spinach, or bananas, or avocadoes, or lemons with such claims.

And America has exported its fast food model around the world. This form of imperialism has made human beings less healthy, more depressed and economically enslaved to an omnicidal system. Thousands of acres of rainforest and other vital ecosystems are razed to the ground each day around the world to make room for lucrative monocrops. Hundreds of thousands of tons of food is wasted every day. And the health of billions of people around the world is declining alongside the biosphere we all depend upon.

None of this is new. Colonialism brought cash crops to Africa, displacing traditional methods of food cultivation, land use and trade norms. It brought slash and burn methods to the lush rainforests of Southeast Asia. It also allowed white European settlers to wipe out the buffalo in North America, Russian imperialists to ruin ancient farming practices in Ukraine, and Israeli settlers to burn down thousand year old olive groves. To dominate the land is to dominate the people who live on it. To settle it and exploit it for every dime they could get. And, in many cases, to eradicate the Indigenous people who stood in their way.

Today, the nation of Nauru is a modern example of how food imperialism has almost destroyed an entire people. Denuded of its natural phosphates for the profit of Western multinational agri-corporations, the little South Pacific island of Nauru became temporarily wealthy. But it lost virtually all of that economic gain through corrupt leaders and the predatory practices of international capital investment firms.

With a fishing industry in tatters, farmland polluted and many old practices abandoned for convenience, Nauru became dependent upon cheap, processed, imported foods. Many foods considered inedible were exported there, from turkey tail to lamb flaps. The result: diabetes has skyrocketed as life expectancy has plummeted.

Blaming the people of Nauru or any other people for their collective health plight is like blaming a drowning person for being in a flood. They have been impacted by the dire effects of food imperialism in the exact same way every other working class person on the planet has been impacted. From highly toxic and addictive additives to aggressive marketing to the unavailability of affordable healthy options, they are victims of a system predicated on maximum profit for the few at the expense of the many. In other words, 99% of us human beings on earth.

Food imperialism impacts our local food markets as well. There is little to no choice what food is made available to us. And this is especially true for where we live. Poorer and more racialized communities are routinely neglected and now prices are exploding for everyone thanks to price gouging from the industry and financial speculators.

Even the highly processed, fast foods are becoming exorbitant. Indeed, the stress of buying modest groceries, even in traditionally “middle class” areas, has increased exponentially. Simply put, we are being priced out of living even a modestly decent life on this planet by wealthy and powerful companies and their lobbyists.

While it is incredibly easy to blame individuals for their food insecurity, obesity or health struggles, it is also incredibly lazy. To make these people the butt of a joke is very convenient. It is also punching down. Even shows like “My 600-Lb Life” end up shaming, otherizing and ostracizing people who are in deep crisis for ratings.

Employing judgmental superiority on those who are faced health issues or lack of access to affordable and good food, and weaponizing compassion in service to capitalist spectacle, has become a national pass time in the US. It has become a virtue in some circles. Just look at many of the recent posts or comments from various people about the Trump regime’s denial of assistance for SNAP benefits. Those individuals bought into the lie that lack of money for food is a personal failure, not a systemic one.

But no matter what lies capitalists and their sycophants tell, everyone deserves healthcare and food. And it is not enough to say that these things alone are human rights. Good, quality, affordable healthcare and food are universal human rights.

So, although it has been said many times before, the answer to what do you do the next time you see someone stealing food is: no you didn’t. Instead, fight against imperialism in all of its forms, and fight for the things we all deserve, not only to survive, but to live this life to the fullest.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Department of War and American Imperialism

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I know that many liberal Americans are appalled by the Trump regime name change of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. But this is actually the most honest thing the regime has done thus far. And that is saying a lot.

The American Empire has always been at war. In fact, it has been in some kind of armed conflict 225 out of its 243 years as a country. Of course, the liberal explanation for this has been to provide justification for its belligerence. “Humanitarian intervention” had oft been the catch all phrase to describe American military action, both overt and covert, in the Global South.

The Department of War is the most accurate moniker for an agency that has committed or supported some of the most heinous crimes in human history. It carpet bombed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It funded military juntas and death squads in Central America. It subverted democratically elected governments in Chile, Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It destroyed Libya and invaded Iraq, a nation that never attacked it. And it has aided and abetted the ongoing genocide in Gaza via its colonial asset, Israel.

The fascist Trump regime is the natural iteration of a centuries long project of domination via violence and threat. “Pax Americana” was a romantic lie that sanitized this reality with the myth of being the world’s “policeman.” Flawed, but noble in its intentions.

The ceremonious name change of this department is merely tearing down that benevolent facade of American imperialism that has obscured its murderous character since its inception.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025