Against the Machine? Rage Against the Machine! Why? Ffs, let’s cut to the chase. Surely, in 2026, an editor worth their major publisher salt should read a line like, “Feminism, which began as a movement calling for the equal treatment of women, has become a device for filling the workforce with females while eroding the inconveniently un-Machine-like family unit”, and advise redaction. Then again, every paragraph should come with a trigger warning as tabloid style generalisations abound. Which isn’t surprising once you understand that Paul Kingsnorth’s answer to the West’s current malaise, is to appeal to Songs of Praise watching middle-class, middle-aged Christians. You know, the sort of people who are aware of their white privilege and prepared to lay down their Daily Mails in the fight against injustice. Er, God is love? Not quite. And what do you do with someone who professes to want to keep the culture wars cold and his Christianity cosy, but has a nasty habit of turning the heat up? Whose faith is of the proselytising, hateful kind. No surprise, then, that this book reeks of transphobia, homophobia and the kind of old-fashioned paternalistic sexism practiced by, say, a country priest in the 1920s. If the machine (unfettered capitalism, the internet, materialism, smart phones, identity politics etc etc) is something that this evil joker is against I may well have to embrace it just to make sure I’m on the right side of the barricades. Against the Machine? I’d rather (listen to) Rage Against the Machine; whose lyrics are way more relevant than anything in this travesty of a book.

Against the Machine – Paul Kingsnorth – publ. by Penguin

Steven Long