The series unveils uncomfortable truths about youth alienation and online radicalisation — but the real crisis lies in austerity and the absence of class consciousness in addressing young people’s disillusionment, says teacher ROBERT POOLE
Clinging to the Anthropocene
Are the latest fashionable ideas about environmentalism going to help us correctly identify profit as the engine of ecological destruction – or are we simply going to revisit discredited Malthusian tropes, asks ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

“ANTHROPOCENE” is a 21st-century word — not that it never appeared before the current century. But its wide acceptance, its broad usage is a feature of the last two decades or so.
Like its late 20th-century counterpart, “globalisation,” its currency, its popularity in social policy circles, has far outstripped any common, agreed upon understanding of its meaning.
In a very broad sense, the word “Anthropocene” could refer to the era when the appearance of Homo sapiens made an impact upon the Earth.
More from this author

The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people

ZOLTAN ZIGEDY argues Trump’s victory shows the deep failure of liberal calculations that write off huge swathes of the electorate and mirrors the worldwide rise of right-wing populism amid Establishment collapse

From ‘middle class’ to ‘microaggressions,’ from ‘fascism’ to ‘terrorism,’ ZOLTAN ZIGEDY makes an anguished cry for us to turn away from the most misused and misleading terms and tropes – or at least use them accurately