Matthew Sheffield

3 weeks ago | plus.flux.community | Matthew Sheffield

For decades, the American far-right has been screeching constantly that its activists and politicians are being censored by “cancel culture.” It’s nonsense, of course, because almost invariably everyone who supposed canceled ends up with a huge media following and a very profitable victim narrative. But the lies about mass censorship of reactionaries and conservatives aren’t just about manipulating the public into feeling sympathy for completely unsympathetic figures like Donald Trump.

2 months ago | plus.flux.community | Matthew Sheffield

Donald Trump is now once again the president of the United States, but his victory in 2024 was more than just a victory for himself or the Republican Party, it actually is part of a larger advancement that is happening across many different countries around the globe for right-wing reactionary parties who are sometimes incorrectly referred to as populist. (These parties are not populist, in fact, because their policies that they pursue have no material benefit to the people who vote for them.

2 months ago | plus.flux.community | Matthew Sheffield

The second term of Donald Trump has officially begun, but despite all the things he’s unveiled in the past several weeks, we don’t know fully what his policies are going to be over the next four years. That is in part because Trump himself is a very erratic figure who says things that are nonsensical, even by his own standards.

2 months ago | plus.flux.community | Matthew Sheffield

This is the first of a two-part essay on how Friedrich Nietzsche became the lodestar of reactionary Christianity. Please subscribe to stay in touch! Check out more content in the How This Happened series. The world is on fire. Inside the United States, chaos reigns and established institutions are proving utterly feckless in response.

Jan 23, 2025 | plus.flux.community | Matthew Sheffield

As Donald Trump’s second presidential administration takes shape with a host of controversial and unpopular executive orders and numerous unqualified and bizarre nominees like Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, it raises the question, is this what his voters asked for? That question is actually a lot more difficult to answer than it may seem, because people voted for Trump for a variety of different reasons, some of which were even contradictory.