I recently rewatched The Social Network. Fifteen years on, it stands as a digital autopsy for the birth of “Tech Bro” culture and the death of nuanced debate. The subsequent rise of Facebook, Twitter, and their algorithm-driven culture wars has accelerated societal conversation away from material inequality and toward the friction of identity politics.
In her first book, Ash Sarkar encourages us to look beneath this noise at the deeper fractures of class. She rightly argues that identity politics has a vital place in discourse. As someone who has lived a life of white privilege—my name never filtered out of an interview list, my face never drawing the gaze of the police—I recognize that improving equality for marginalized groups benefits us all. However, as Sarkar suggests, these gains are fragile if they occur within a system that is increasingly impoverishing the majority.
It is easy to scapegoat immigrants for the current tremors of late-stage capitalism. Understanding the macro-economic structures behind this “New Victorian Age”. A UK where an elite 1% holds 36% of the nation’s wealth while 50% of us hold less than 5% is a UK on a dangerous path to collapse, revolution, or both. Those who attempt it are reflexively labeled socialists or “literally a communist.” Sarkar deftly dismantles these straw-man arguments, exposing their intellectual vacancy.
Ultimately, the book is less a manifesto for the future and more a sharp-eyed deconstruction of the 2020s British media landscape. This focus is both its greatest strength and its primary weakness. It shows the weaknesses of the social media mess we’re in it but offers few ways out.
