A Week in Politics #2

This has been a bleak and unsettling week - not simply because of the events themselves, but because of how quickly tragedy, technology and geopolitics are being distorted to serve power and grievance. From the exploitation of a young woman’s unnecessary death in the United States to bad-faith claims of censorship and terrifying rhetoric about Greenland, the common thread is a growing contempt for restraint, truth, and international law.

For liberals, this is precisely the moment to insist on clarity, proportion, and principle.

The Renee Nicole Good Incident: Tragedy Turned Into a Culture War Weapon

The killing of Renee Nicole Good should have been treated first and foremost as what it is: a devastating act of violence against a woman, deserving of careful investigation with respect for her dignity and compassion for those who knew her. Instead, it has become yet another example of how quickly parts of American politics - and even our own media media - rush to judgement, scapegoating and ideological exploitation.

The speed with which commentators leapt to conclusions has been staggering. Before facts were established, narratives were constructed. Before evidence was weighed, blame was assigned. And rather than focusing on the perpetrator and the systemic conditions that allow violence to flourish, attention was redirected - aggressively - toward the victim herself.

This is textbook victim-blaming, and it is profoundly disturbing.

Figures such as JD Vance and Donald Trump did not merely speculate irresponsibly; they actively weaponised the tragedy. Vance’s claim that Renee Nicole Good was a victim of “left-wing ideology” is not just grotesque but morally obscene. His attempt to reframe the terrible event as as a morality tale in a culture war he is desperate to prosecute is, frankly, disgraceful.

Such sentiments were echoes by the New York Post, which claimed Good was a "warrior of the Left" (as if that either explains or excuses her killing) and - closer to home - by the Daily Mail, which (in a piece that was borderline homophobic) focused on Good and her wife and the "depth of couple's disdain for Trump". This is not analysis. It is propaganda.

What makes this especially pernicious is how it absolves actual responsibility. By turning Good into a symbol rather than a person, and by attributing her death to vague ideological forces, Vance and others shift attention away from violence, misogyny, radicalisation and the social conditions that enable them. It is politically easier to blame “the Left” than to confront the failures of gun laws, policing, social media ecosystems or male violence.

Trump’s interventions follow a familiar pattern. He thrives on outrage, simplification and spectacle. His comments and those amplified by sympathetic media outlets reinforce a narrative in which women’s autonomy, political liberalism and social change are framed as inherently dangerous - not because evidence supports this (or because he actually believes it) but because fear mobilises voters.

What is perhaps most alarming is how readily sections of the media have played along. Headlines  are framed to provoke rather than inform. Anonymous “sources” are elevated over verified facts. Complex human lives reduced to ideologically convenient morality stories. This is not journalism serving the public interest.

Stepping back, the Renee Nicole Good case tells us something deeply troubling about the state of the United States, a country in which grief is instantly politicised and where empathy is subordinated to point-scoring. Most disturbing, it is where powerful men feel entitled to define a murdered woman’s life, and death, in service of their narrative.

We should be able to disagree fiercely about politics without turning victims into ammunition. We can debate social change without erasing personal responsibility for violence. And we must insist that justice begins with facts, not ideology. In such situations most leaders would express sympathy towards victims' families and promise a thorough investigation, not by-pass the need for such an investigation by offering their own clearly biased, non-objective and ideology-driven conclusions.

The real danger here is not only to truth, but to the fabric of democratic society. When every tragedy becomes a battlefield, when nuance is treated as weakness, and when empathy is dismissed as “wokeness”, something essential is lost. A society that cannot mourn honestly cannot govern wisely.

X, Grok, and the Dishonest Cry of “Censorship”

A lot of noise has been generated this week surrounding claims that the government is planning to “shut down” X. These claims are not merely exaggerated — they are fundamentally dishonest.

What is actually at issue is not X itself, but Grok, the AI system integrated into the platform, and whether it complies with existing UK law - specifically the Online Safety Act. That distinction matters, and it has been deliberately blurred by those eager to cry censorship.

No one is proposing to ban X. No one is outlawing political speech. The government is asking that Grok operates within the same legal framework that applies to other AI systems and platforms.

And here is the crucial difference: Grok is currently allowing the creation and dissemination of deepfake images (including sexually explicit and non-consensual material) in ways that other major AI platforms explicitly restrict. Most mainstream AI systems have guardrails preventing the generation of realistic images of real people without consent. Grok has been far more permissive.

That is not a free-speech issue. It is a safety issue.

Deepfakes are not abstract. They disproportionately harm women, enable harassment, and undermine trust in reality itself. Requiring safeguards is not censorship; it is regulation, the same principle applied to broadcasting standards, financial services, or food safety. 

The claim that enforcing the law constitutes authoritarianism is intellectually bankrupt. Laws apply whether you like the platform owner or not. The same people who demand “law and order” and "safety for women" suddenly change their mind when such concerns are applied to a social media platform owned by a tech billionaire. 

This is bad-faith politics, and it deserves to be called out. When British MPs irresponsibly amplify the false claims and conveniently ignore the real issues in order to perpetuate their false narratives around censorship, they are not defending free speech at all. They are actively undermining informed democratic debate. By misrepresenting lawful regulation as authoritarian overreach, they erode public trust and distract from the genuine harms caused by unregulated AI systems, reducing a serious safeguarding discussion to a performative culture war in the process. That is not principled opposition; it is cynical opportunism, and it leaves the public less protected and less informed as a result.

Greenland and the Return of Imperial Thinking

Donald Trump’s escalating rhetoric around Greenland should alarm anyone who believes the post-war international order still matters.

This is not merely eccentric bluster. It reflects a worldview in which sovereignty is optional, international law is inconvenient, and smaller nations are objects rather than actors. Trump has explicitly stated that international law does not apply to him. His comments on Greenland follow directly from that belief.

The suggestion that Greenland requires “international intervention” rests on a deeply dishonest premise. Even if there were heightened Russian or Chinese interest in the Arctic, the idea that this somehow justifies unilateral US involvement is absurd. Greenland is linked to Denmark, a NATO member. NATO already exists precisely to deal with collective security threats.

If NATO cannot manage Arctic security without US territorial ambition, then NATO itself is in existential trouble. If it cannot contain aggression from one member towards a fellow member, then it is in even more trouble. 

Invoking the United Nations as a fig leaf for intervention is equally cynical. The UN is not a vending machine for legitimising power grabs. Its authority depends on consent, law, and multilateralism — all things Trump openly disdains.

The implications are significant and far-reaching. If powerful states begin openly questioning territorial integrity again, the entire post-1945 settlement unravels. Borders become negotiable. Sovereignty becomes conditional. And international law becomes optional - for some.

For Europe, this should be a wake-up call. If the United States under Trump no longer sees itself as bound by the rules it once championed, then allies must reassess assumptions long taken for granted. NATO cannot function as a protection racket, nor can the UN survive as a stage for bad-faith theatrics. Power must be limited by law. Security must be collective. And smaller nations must never be treated as bargaining chips.

How did US politics sink so far that naked imperial fantasies are now posted like campaign slogans, and no-one in power even pretends to be embarrassed anymore? 

Paul de Quenoy, writing in The Daily Telegraph, has argued that "Greenland belongs to the United States", claiming that "Denmark cannot defend the territory. It is too strategically important for the US to leave it vulnerable to potential Chinese control". This attitude is profoundly dangerous. It treats sovereignty as a matter of convenience rather than law and revives a Bismarckian logic of spheres of influence that the post-war international order was explicitly designed to bury.

Denmark’s ability to defend Greenland is not a unilateral American judgement to make, nor does strategic importance confer ownership. If “importance” becomes the test for legitimacy, then no border anywhere is secure. That such arguments now appear, largely unchallenged, in a once-respected newspaper matters enormously: it signals how far imperial thinking has been normalised and how quickly international law is being downgraded to an optional extra, with consequences far more destructive than many appear to imagine.