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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

His description of pro-wrestling as being “in the business of bullshit” feels destined for wider citation.

David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It will be interesting if John Cena’s unequivocal defence of his “love” for Vince McMahon & minimisation of accusations against him as just “not [being] perfect” is sustainable with his generally positive image & reception. People seem unclear how to react to it. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/oc...

theguardian.com

‘It’s OK to love somebody when they’re not perfect’: how John Cena conquered Hollywood – and why he refuses to abandon Vince McMahon

By embracing the role of amiable lunk, the wrestler turned actor has become an unlikely, and very modern, leading man. But does his relationship with the WWE, and its controversial former owner, risk ...

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

New WWE Survivor Series promo package seems strange.

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NHATional Scissoring Day ✂️ @nhathanielh.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

JUSTIFIED “FUCK ICE” CHANTS: LIVE FROM HOFFMAN ESTATES #AEWAllOut

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Fun (?) fact, Logan Paul is not the first WWE Superstar to visit The Pentagon.

screenshot of U.S. Department of War website showing “The Rock” visiting the Pentagon on November 15, 2023

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Or, as I wrote elsewhere: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

He was also responsible for producing and presenting the television show Reslo (Wrestling), which aired weekly from 1982 to 1995 on the Welsh-language broadcaster Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C). Notably, Reslo was the only British wrestling show to feature women wrestlers, whose inclusion was otherwise banned on TV outside of Wales – a point actually highlighted by Michael Cole during the Clash at the Castle broadcast. After ITV cancelled World of Sport in 1985, Reslo became the sole British pro-wrestling show on terrestrial television, underscoring its unique popularity in Wales.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Recent BBC archive footage from 1965 on the ‘controversy’ around women’s pro-wrestling. Fun fact; while Women’s wrestling was kept off TV in England as ITV refused to show it 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, in Wales, ‘Reslo’ on S4C 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 regularly showcased women’s wrestling until the show ended in 1995 youtu.be/twgelvu6xVE?...

youtu.be

1965: Is Women's Wrestling Wrong? | Tonight | BBC Archive

YouTube video by BBC Archive

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

If you like art *by* George W. Bush, how about Mark Lombardi’s art *about* him: “George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca. 1979–90 (5th version)”, 1999. Graphite on paper.

Mark Lombardi print: George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca. 1979–90 (5th version), 1999. Graphite on paper, 38.88 x 122.56 cm. Courtesy of Donald Lombardi and Pierogi Gallery.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

For truly classic, how about an IWW cartoon from 1919?

IWW cartoon image from 1919 showing a capitalist sat outside his factory sadly saying “they can’t run the factory without me.” And a happy worker responding “what did you simp ever run?! You always hired somebody for that purpose.”

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

And there are some great quotes you could use as well: www.cia.gov/readingroom/...

“… used as a conduit for CIA money, Ms. Steinem is quoted as saying of the CIA agents, “with whom she collaborated,” as Kaiser put it:: “I found them liberal and farsighted and open to an exchange of ideas.” “The CIA,” she declared, “was the only one with enough guts and foresight to see that youth and student affairs were important.” A few days later, the New York Times carried a similar story quoting Ms. Steinem as saying of her CIA connection: “Far from being shocked by this involvement, I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were farsighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to festivals.”

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Perfect timing for the WWE to have Stefanie McMahon remind everyone of how closer her family are to Trump, even beyond her mother’s role. www.cagesideseats.com/wwe/471184/s...

Stephanie McMahon opens up about her parents’ longtime ties to Donald Trump

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

… but this has effectively shut off the pressure valves that ultimately allow democracy to function. By constraining previously legitimate lines of peaceful disruption and visible opposition, and leaving an ineffective electoral offer the only available route to effect change… that’s a bad recipe.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

… This screams of a political class that recognises future conditions - climate impact, increased inequality, genocidal wars - are going to generate widespread public anger that can only be addressed with significant changes they’re unwilling to make. So the tools to counter opposition put in place…

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Governments have passed multiple pieces of legislation designed to hinder, criminalise and punish peaceful protest & direct action - the misuse of proscription is another element of this - w. routes to exert political pressure increasing constrained to an electoral process offering little option ...

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A reminder with the Clayton by-election that masked heroes have won election before under their ‘gimmick’ names.

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

It certainly shows allegations about racism in the Tories are real but somewhat more importantly, it double-underlines a horrible reality: *British politics* is not real, in the same sense that American wrestling - while people do actually have to work for it and do get hurt in it - is not real.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

TKO lost approx. $30 million running the UFC fight on the White House lawn. www.cagesideseats.com/post/kZfbmmr...

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chakrabortty.bsky.social @chakrabortty.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This is brilliant, by the way.

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Peter Allen @peterallen.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

To quote Mark Blyth, the climate crisis is ‘a giant non-linear outcome generator with wicked convexities. In plain English, there is no mean, there is no average, there is no return to normal. It’s one way traffic into the unknown’. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown | Mark Blyth

As the IPCC report makes clear, there are now only unknown and unfamiliar alternative futures that we can choose from, says political economist Mark Blyth

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Somehow it’s so appropriate that at the end of this bizarre experience you might notice where it says “Glenn Jacobs Treasurer” and yes that is Kane from WWE

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Sadly, he would face the fate of Skull Reaper A-Ji, and have to unmask. For shame.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

On Count Binface being elected *as Count Binface*: In Japan, at least 3 pro-wrestlers have been elected having run as masked gimmicks: Great Sasuke, Super Delfin & Skull Reaper A-Ji. The first two wore masks in the legislature. Skull Reaper had to unmask. In Mexico, Tinieblas ran for Mayor but lost.

Top left: Great Sasuke, elected to Iwate Predectural Assembly in 2003.
Bottom Left: Super Delfin, elected to Izumi City Council in 2012.
Top Right: Skull Reaper A-Ji, elected to Õita City Council in 2013.
Bottom Right: Tinieblas, ran for Mayor in 2021 for Redes Sociales Progresistas. Won 0.81% of the vote.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Absolutely key that Count Binface does not break Kayfabe. Stay in gimmick, brother. Don’t let the media work you into a shoot.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Cheers! Really appreciate it.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

The centrist impulse to arm the Freikorps to defeat the dreaded Left only to be shocked when the guns are then inevitably turned against them.

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CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, PhD @doctorcarrie.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Wait...wait wait wait... Does RFK Jr. not know about kayfabe, or is he in kayfabe? youtube.com/shorts/OCuM-...

youtube.com

LMAO: RFK Jr thinks WWE wrestling is real??

YouTube video by Brian Tyler Cohen

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I wrote about how Ventura’s insurgent campaign directly inspired Trump before. Now deep-diving Ventura, his books, shows & politics, I would adjust the article now. The key difference is Trump’s performance is phoney. Venture is authentically Ventura (2/2) journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

journals.sagepub.com

The role of cultural production in celebrity politics: Comparing the campaigns of Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura (1999) and Donald Trump (2016) - David S Moon, 2020

This article draws out the significant similarities between the political insurgencies of Jesse Ventura in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2016, charting their own pre...

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I’m writing about Jesse Ventura currently and IMO his is a truly authentic populist performance. Read his books, follow his career & the persona he enacts in political arenas is at once the one he developed as a pro-wrestler, action star, shock-jock, *and* his authentic self barely dialled-up. (1/2)

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

This is a point I made in my recent piece for @renewaljournal.bsky.social - when it comes to the current cast of characters who dominate politics, anyone who hasn’t been listening to QAA, True Anon, Chapo, etc is playing serious catch-up. Constant shock @ known stuff. renewal.org.uk/articles/in-...

From social media’s margins, left-wing ‘shitposters’1 have long replied to jour-
nalists’ encomia to Mandelson with the infamous photographs of him alongside
Epstein. Listeners to podcasts such as True Anon, Chapo Trap House, and The
QAA Podcast (formally, QAnon Anonymous) were familiar with Epstein’s British
elite connections. As outlined below, enough evidence to warrant an investiga-
tion into both Mandelson’s and Mountbatten-Windsor’s private dealings with
Epstein while in public office had been evident since 2023 at the latest. From
this vantage point, the professed shock of broadsheet columnists and elected
politicians felt less like surprise and more like gaslighting.
Many in the media treated any mention of Epstein’s association with British
power as conspiracy theory. Such narrowing of reasoned public discourse was
made easier because these concerns were largely voiced by people already
dismissed as ‘unserious’: ‘dirtbag’ podcasters, unapologetic left-wingers such
as Zarah Sultana, and the aforementioned social media shitposters. The whole
episode ultimately revealed a cognitive failure amongst the class of people paid
to understands and explain politics: an inability, or unwillingness, to recognise
the role of elite networks in politics and situate events within them. In short, a
deficit of healthy concern about political conspiracies.
Anxiety about conspiracism is understandable. From anti-vaccine activism to
the seepage of ‘great replacement’ rhetoric into mainstream politics, the harms
associated with disinformation have been turbocharged by the Internet age. For
most of the democratic left, the reflex is instinctive: defend reason, pluralism,
and a healthy public sphere against the paranoid style in politics. Yet in the
rush to repudiate fantasy and defeat hatred, serious analysis of real conspiracy
has too often been dismissed. The result, as the Epstein affair illustrates, is an
incomplete grasp of politics as it actually operates, and a vacuum readi

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Anyone feeling sympathy for how Keir Starmer was treated by newspapers should recall: 🔴 as DPP he rejected bringing charges on phone hacking; 🔴 he was therefore found ‘culpable’ for phone hacking; 🔴 he then called to end prosecutions for criminality early; 🔴 & he refused to bring back Leveson Pt.2.

Four news headlines. Top Left: “No charges in News of the World phone-hacking probe”. Top Right: “John Yates and Keir Starmer ‘Culpable’ for phone Hacking, say MPs. Bottom Left: “Time to wind up phone hacking probe, says top prosecutor. Bottom Right: “Keir Starmer confirms he has no plans to revive second stage of Leveson inquiry.”

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Part of this is of course that the voices of those who warned these things were ones that could be safely ignored bsky.app/profile/daim...

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

This rather speaks to this analysis of the value of political paranoia. Sometimes they are out to get you! Sometimes world affairs are run by a small group of people!

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I have a provocatively titled piece in the latest issue of @renewaljournal.bsky.social, in which I propose that among the lessons of the “Epstein files” revelations is the value of a properly directly, healthy paranoia suited to an age of opaque networks, dark money, and unaccountable elites. (1/2)

Title: In defence of paranoia: rethinking
politics after the Epstein Files

Abstract: Th is article argues that a refl exive dismissal of ‘conspiracy’ has left political analysis blind to the routine operations of elite collusion, a failure exposed in stark terms by the Epstein case. It calls for a disciplined, evidence-led ‘paranoia’ capable of tracking power across the opaque ‘parapolitical’ networks that structure contemporary politics.

Just as politics itself has a ‘Too Difficult’ box32 – long-term problems such as
climate change or media regulation that are quietly shelved because they are
complex, unpopular, or resistant to accessible solutions – so too, it seems, does
political studies. Structural questions about the influence of security services,
corporate lobbyists and/or organised crime on democratic outcomes are almost
entirely nudged to the margins, bracketed as conspiratorial and excluded from
peer-reviewed publication. Instead, answers are sought where data is more
accessible and ostensibly transparent – elections, legislatures, policy pro-
grammes – and approached in turn from a perspective buuilt upon broadly
pluralistic assumptions. This matters, because despite their relatively small
readerships, the outputs academia produce provides a key evidential basis that
structures wider political discourses.
When political scholarship declines to grapple with these darker dimensions
and subsequently fails those seeking reliable, authoritative sources, it cedes
fertile ground that can, in turn, be exploited by more malicious or misguided
actors. Movements like QAnon weave genuine historical conspiracies – such as
MK-ULTRA, Operation CHAOS, or Project Paperclip – into their narratives of
mass deception. In doing so they blur truth and fabrication to increase the per-
suasiveness of their fantastical claims.33 In short, when scholarship fails to offer
rigorous analyses that take account of the darker workings of power, demagogues
and opportunists readily fill the void.

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Thanks. Email me! Very happy to share a copy. 👍

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Part of the genesis was the notable difference in reaction of mainstream political commentators vs. dismissed left voices - ‘shitposters’, ‘dirtbags’, etc. - who had been shouting into the void for years. Also the fact the UK gov. almost toppled & political studies seemed totally unprepared (2/2)

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

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Laura Jedeed @laurajedeed.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The UFC is doing a very clever thing: they have given each fighter an honor guard that includes a medal of honor recipient, which means every service member must salute as the fighter walks past

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

… If Trump hoped cage fighters at The White House would see some athleticism and “winning” rub off on him - as his own body, polling, and ability to win his war of aggression fail - is another question. And if it was meant to communicate US power *outward* … yeesh (2/2). bsky.app/profile/daim...

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David S. Moon @daimoon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Judged against Trump & UFC’s own goals, the White House event looks like a huge success. Trump pulled off a spectacular hyperbolic celebration of the MAGA aesthetic, framed by U.S. state symbolism and military power - upsetting all the people they’d want… (1/2) www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

theguardian.com

Trump’s White House UFC fights marred by ugly Michelle Obama smear

Justin Gaethje stunned Ilia Topuria in the main event as a night of military pageantry, political theater and cage fighting veered into conspiracy-laden culture-war rhetoric

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