Thank God for Bluesky

A little love letter to the people who would not compromise with Nazis.

Photo by yujeong Huh on Unsplash

2025 was the year I came face to face with my assumptions. The first and most painful of these reckonings was that I really did believe most people had a moral floor. I thought there was a set of widely-held standards about the basic principles of ethical and political life.

If you had told me a couple years ago that respectable journalists - people I admired, or simply thought of as normal functioning human beings with a spine and a circulatory system and living fucking brain - would willingly remain on a website owned by a Nazi, a website designed intentionally to spread Nazi ideas, I would have confidently told you that you were wrong. You were too pessimistic about human behaviour. You were a cynic.

Well it turns out that I was the one who was wrong. I do not think that I am well known for my optimism about human affairs, but it turned out that things were worse than even I had realised. I have therefore hated this year very much indeed. I would like to say that it is cursed, but of course that in itself would be a statement of baseless optimism which carries within it implicit belief that things will therefore improve next year - a proposition I cannot demonstrate and no longer believe to be the case.

But this is not the season for despair and vengeful irritation. It is the season for recognising what you have. And on that note I would like to say a few nice words about Bluesky, the little well-meaning, tiresomely earnest social media site we call home. A refuge for weary travellers.

My introduction to Blue Sky was not good. It began with a pile on, because that apparently is how my life plays out. I posted one message - can’t remember what it was, fairly innocuous - and some bloke notified the user base that I should be rejected for being unacceptably right-wing.

Yes, I know. The idea that I am too right-wing is not sensible. No sane person working within the normal confines of traditional political thought would entertain it. But as you know, the internet does not overrepresent sane people. It is a home for intellectually itinerant madcap cunts.

It was a grim initial contact. A stream of invective. By this stage, I’d dealt with a great many pile-ons, so I knew what to do. Close the app, ignore it, wait a few days, then block or mute everyone who took part. But before I had the chance to do so, I spotted one of those messages which, infuriatingly, stays with you. It was an image of Darth Vader with the following words emblazoned on it: ‘The day you die will be a good day.’

Occasionally you do come across messages like this and think: dude what happened to you. How did you end up in a place where this is a message you send to strangers on the internet?

That first encounter with Bluesky foreshadowed much of what took place this year. In the end, Bluesky did not replace X. The reasons for that are primarily to do with the moral failings of those who remain on X, but at least some of the blame must lie with the implacable disposition of a noisy minority of the Bluesky user base. They wanted it to remain free of anyone who did not fit into their narrow moral universe. And presumably many people like me - centre left, centre, centre-right - came, saw that, and thought: fuck this for a game of soldiers.

I would love to say that my blocking spree made Bluesky a wonderful place to be, but it didn’t really. The site has a tendency towards moral horror, with far too little silliness and far too few gags. It is earnest to the point of intolerability. It is extremely susceptible to the old Guardian problem of telling you why that thing you like is problematic. Many people on the left simply are utterly joyless and get whatever negligent energy they do possess from killing the joy in others. You can find plenty of this kind of behaviour on Bluesky. I was complaining about this to a progressive friend at a party recently and she nodded wisely. “Bluesky is a cop,” she said.

And yet for all its flaws, Bluesky offers something which is becoming vanishingly rare in the modern world: a vision of life without the algorithm. What I see is what I have chosen to see. We own our own destiny on Bluesky. And when we fail, we fail as users, not because of the rules handed down by owners.

My stream is currently suboptimal. I want to see more material that is not about politics and more material that is not deadly serious. I need to follow more people who make me laugh and more people with specialist subjects - the sciences, history, cinema, comics, anything really as long as it isn’t about Trump or Musk.

But this is my failing. I am the author of my own misfortune. On any other site, the content I am seeing would be the result of an algorithm. It would take whatever triggered the most engagement and push it in front of me. This is what happens on Instagram. It’s what used to happen on X until it was replaced by an algorithm which favoured far-right content. On most of these sites, there is a way of returning to a chronological feed, but it is difficult and usually temporary. On Bluesky, the content I am seeing is not being handed to me by an algorithm. There is no algorithm. I am simply seeing what the people I follow are posting, in order.

I am therefore responsible for the fact that it is not providing a broad enough range of experience. Or perhaps other users are for not writing enough of that content, or for not sharing it enough. Either way, it’s on us. We are building our own experience from the bottom up, by our choices. Our behaviour is not the result of decisions that have been taken from on high, in rooms we were not invited to.

In reality though, this is not why I am on Bluesky. I am not on Bluesky because I desperately wanted something different. I am on Bluesky because I refuse to finance fascism. I refuse to participate in it. And I am grateful to Bluesky because it allowed me to surround myself with people who hold to the same principles.

I’m not going to make the argument for why X is a far-right social media site. Musk does the Nazi salute. He meets and promotes far-right parties. He speaks at Tommy Robinson protests. Anyone who chooses not to recognise this does so for their own reasons. They either lie to themselves in order to justify their behaviour, or they are honest with themselves about their lack of moral standards, or they are too fucking stupid to see what is in front of their face. But it is definitely one of the three.

I had a conversation recently with someone who was still on X. They were well educated, self-confident, pleasant to look at, with a welcoming smile. Out of their mouth came a stream of far-right talking points, presented as provocations. They would never accept that they have been radicalised, or that their frame for the world is now provided by the far-right. But that is what has happened.

The thing which has truly upset me this year is not the actions of people like Musk or Trump. We already knew that there are terrible people in the world. It’s how much compliance there is from people who should damn well know better. Marie Le Conte wrote brilliantly about this recently - the mortifying spectacle of perfectly likeable people obediently accepting racism and extremism because it would be inconvenient for them to do otherwise.

Somewhere in that process, you understand how all the worst events in human history took place. When I visited Auschwitz many years ago, someone in our group said that this is what happens when extremism flourishes. Our tour guide replied: “This place is not explained by extremism. It is explained by conformity.”

That has stayed in my mind this year: as I have watched people turn a blind eye when they see a colleague subjected to racist abuse, people who chose to accept division and hatred rather than challenge it, who say they are ‘just asking questions’ but only ever ask one type of question. As I watch officials in a centre-left government choose to actively promote a website run by a man who encourages racial violence on the streets of the country they govern and whose security they are responsible for.

I have never in my life seen so much cowardice. I have never seen so many people silence the parts of themselves which demand courage.

This is the great pleasure of Bluesky. The true pleasure of it. When I look around, I see people who often took a big professional risk because they would not comply. In many cases, they had profiles they had built up for years. They let it go. They did this because they refused to extinguish their moral character.

They’re all sorts. Actors, journalists, novelists, think tank types, MPs, ministers, artists. In many cases they’re not people I would have had much faith in. Turned out I was wrong about that too. When the moment came, they did the right thing. They saw the ancient darkness, recognised it for what it was, and turned their back on it.

Now, when I go on Bluesky, I don’t really see accounts or users. I see people I am terribly proud to stand alongside.

This era will end. The wheel will turn. Things will improve. And when they do, the people who refused to stand up for liberal democracy will adjust, herd like, to the normal parameters of political behaviour, as if they never moved in the first place. But I will always feel a sense of solidarity and fellow-feeling with those who stood firm when the moment came.

Odds and sods

This is the second week of the Black Friday sale, in which I give a very generous 50% off of a paid subscription. Pay now and get nothing, ever. Shit, give it as a gift for Christmas. Get that special person in your life the gift of fuck all. Imagine the look on their face when they open their non-existent wrapping paper and find that you have given them the gift of a paid subscription to an online newsletter which they could have anyway read for free, in which an angry bald man basically just calls you a cunt the whole time. What could better reflect the spirit of Christmas?

As ever, this newsletter is available as a podcast - just click the play button at the top or go find it on Spotify.

My column in the the i paper this week was on Putin’s threat against Europe and specifically the manner in which he uses psychological vulnerabilities to secure what he has failed to gain by force. We churned out two Origin Story episodes this week, telling the complete story of the New Left - the messy constellation of ideas and movements that came out of the discrediting of Soviet communism 70 years ago. In reality, it is the origin story of the modern left, tracking how progressive politics morphed from being entirely about economics to include racial and gender justice as well.

We unveiled our new Origin Story merch this week: a unique collection of T-shorts, mugs and tote bags. And when I say unique, I’m genuinely not sure that there is anywhere else you can get a ‘Marx is a Messy Bitch’ T-shirt. Check these out.

Most of the designs are Patreon exclusive and you guys can access them here.

We also launched our special Christmas offer this week, with 25% off our top tier Hardback membership programme. That gets you a mug, a T-shirt or tote, and an Origin Story book with a personalised message from Dorian and I. Plus the warm glow of knowing that you’re supporting the pod. Hit this link to visit the patron shop and pick the Christmas deal - then make sure you select ‘annual membership’ at the checkout in order to get the discount. If you order by December 12th, you’ll get the stuff in time for Christmas.

I did my last bulletin from the UK for the year on ABC’s Late Night Live this week - it’s a special extended edition in which we look over the godforsaken year we just had. It’s such an imaginative, thoughtful, gentle, witty programme.

I’m doing a cross-promotion with Backstory, the indie bookshop run by former Economist journalist Tom Rowley. They’ve launched a new Read The World book subscription. Subscribers will receive a book about a different country each month, always non-fiction, but a range of politics, history, economics and memoir.

The subscription will cover issues like conflict, border disputes and climate change but also what everyday lives are like in the country, the politics of family, relationships and the workplace. Choose from three, six or 12 months and the recipient gets the books delivered to their door anywhere in the UK. Striking 13 readers get 10% off before Christmas with the code STRIKING13.

I’ve basically spent the week listening to Brenton Wood, particularly the Oogum Boogum album. It’s really very difficult indeed to maintain any kind of bad mood when this is what you’re into. It’s pure bliss.

Right, that’s your lot, see you next week. Fuck off etc.