There are occasional moments, on social media, that become larger than themselves. It was the intense summer heatwave of 2018, and I had just opened Twitter during the lunch break of my summer job. For a moment, it seemed like there was a glitch – my entire feed was flooded with one video playing on a loop, shared, liked and signal-boosted by hundreds of thousands of people. It showed an exasperated 26-year-old journalist being interviewed about an anti-Trump protest on Good Morning Britain by Piers Morgan, shouting the words that would propel her to fame: “I’m literally a communist, you idiot!”.
In an instant, Ash Sarkar became the poster girl for the young, online, left-wing movement. The slogan became infamous – Novara Media, the left-wing website Sarkar helped to build and is a contributing editor of, sells “literally a communist” t-shirts, and to this day the clip intermittently does the rounds on social media. Though a momentary outburst, the encounter, which has become a metonym for the now 32-year-old journalist, also neatly encapsulates much of the subject matter of her debut book, Minority Rule: Adventures In The Culture War.
The short interaction lays bare Sarkar’s frustration at what she sees as the underhand tactics of media organisations (in particular, cynical made-for-social-media pundits), her eagerness to shut down attempts to discredit solidarity movements, and her staunch rejection of liberal identity politics – all of which get a pretty good showing in Minority Rule.
Sarkar begins the book by noting that, for most of us, across most metrics, “everything is getting worse”. Rent is skyrocketing, food costs more, millions of us are in problem debt despite being in full-time work, NHS wait lists are ballooning, while more of us are anxious and depressed than ever. So why, she asks, are we paralysed by inaction? Or, for the literal communists among us – why has Marx and Engels’ predicted revolution not come to pass?
Her answer, in a nutshell, is that we are distracted by the confected spectre of “minority rule”. Defined by Sarkar as “the paranoid fear that identity minorities and progressives are conniving to oppress majority populations”, those included amongst these amorphous bogeymen include a mishmash of “ethnic minorities, graduates, sexual and gender minorities, environmental activists and people who live in cities and regularly drink frothy coffees.”
She is also unafraid to name names
This is stoked, she argues, by much of the media and political establishment collaborating to blow trivial non-events and identity-driven conflicts – the so-called culture wars – wildly out of proportion, to provoke misdirected anger. This outrage bait, in particular anti-immigration and anti-transgender moral panics, creates false fractures in the working-class movement. And it is all in service of the super-wealthy, who profit from the problems they create. “If you can’t see the world clearly,” she writes, “you can’t change it”.
As you might imagine, wading knee-deep into the murky underbelly of some of the most fraught, controversial issues of our time is no mean feat. But much as in 2018, Sarkar pulls no punches, and it’s undoubtedly a book that will ruffle a fair few feathers. And not just in the enemy camp – Sarkar also takes sustained, unfiltered aim at the left and its “cult of victimhood”.
In certain left-wing circles, Sarkar writes, “to be able to claim a marginalised identity… gives you social capital”, and that this has both splintered the left and unwittingly created the political weapons being used against it by the right. Is there a risk that this critique gives ammunition to political opponents? It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, which she acknowledges. After all, the left is very seasoned at tearing itself apart. But it is refreshing to hear balanced, good-faith (and long overdue) critique of the left’s failures, some of which are endogenous.
She is also unafraid to name names, particularly in her curtain-raising chapter on the media. Commentator Douglas Murray, author Matt Goodwin, and comedian David Baddiel and “pretty much anybody who writes for The Spectator” all come under fire. The Westminster lobby of political journalists? She slams it as a “TMZ for unattractive people” (you laughed, come on). And she enters the belly of the beast, interviewing both Piers Morgan and Dominic Cummings (Morgan is tight-lipped but does acknowledge some level of complicity for his role in the outrage machine, Cummings is characteristically brash and offensive).
Most fascinating, though, is her take on how social media has transformed reporting habits. As jobs across media organisations have been gutted, beleaguered journalists chasing internet traffic targets have less time for original news and broadcasters commission with viral clips in mind – all of which leads to more opinion journalism (which is cheaper). She describes this world of outrage, reaction and debate as a “carnival hall of mirrors”, where “big issues look small, and trivial ones are grotesquely inflated.” This, though, would have been an ideal place for Sarkar to look inward: while Novara Media produces lots of quality journalism, it is not immune to these changes in media consumption. A cursory scroll through its capitalised Youtube headlines shows that it too is guilty of jabbing its audience into “impulsive states of emotional arousal”.
Minority Rule is less a theory of change for left, and more an exegesis of the playbook of the right, and Sarkar is the first to acknowledge that it is not necessarily a destination for solutions. But even the most robust political strategy achieves little without first understanding your opponents. This is the real talent of Sarkar, and why she is one of the most refreshing, salient voices on the left. For many progressives, the last decade has felt like something akin to a slow descent into madness, or falling victim to a collective, large-scale gaslighting campaign. With spectacular clarity and genuine wit, Sarkar puts her arm around their shoulders, offers a little tough love, and invites them to step out of the mist. If leftists feel they have been stumbling around in the darkness, Minority Rule flicks on the light.
Emma Loffhagen is a former Evening Standard journalist
