dystopia

And so the verdict is out. United States President Donald Trump’s name has been cleared of ignominious association with the late disgraced financier and child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. This is according to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former partner, who in 2022 was sentenced to 20 years behind bars on sex trafficking charges.

Earlier this year, US Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly informed the president that his name appeared in the so-called “Epstein files”, the content of which Trump had said on the campaign trail he would be quite keen on releasing.

Once in office, however, he spontaneously decided that the Epstein case was old news, going so far as to reprimand those in his own MAGA base who were “stupid” and “foolish” enough to continue insisting that the files be declassified.

Now, the US Justice Department has released transcripts of a July interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump, and Maxwell, who had nothing but praise for the president’s moral solidity:

“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

There was no limit, it seemed, to Maxwell’s admiration for the president. “Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me… I like him, and I’ve always liked him,” she declared.

Never mind Maxwell’s reputation as a serial liar who was charged with two counts of perjury for lying under oath – charges that were dropped following her conviction on other counts. Surely the obsequious tribute to Trump’s allegedly upstanding nature has nothing to do with the fact that Maxwell is presently seeking a presidential pardon from the same man.

At any rate, the shining appraisal should at least help un-bunch the panties of many Trump supporters who have been dissatisfied with his handling of the Epstein matter. Far-right influencer and self-categorised “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer, for example – whom Trump has praised as “terrific” and “very special” – welcomed Maxwell’s testimony as proof that the president “has always been an honourable person”.

Expressing her hope that “these transcripts will quell a lot of the nasty, salacious lies and rumors that were spread by bad actors online”, Loomer appeared confident that harmony would soon be restored among MAGA adherents.

To be sure, there’s nothing more uplifting than the members of a movement founded on hatred and discord getting along with each other.

For his part, Trump has now announced that he “couldn’t care less” about the US Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files to Congress.

Speaking to reporters, the president nonetheless maintained that the “whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax” – a result of the Democratic Party’s inability to cope with Trump’s spectacular success at the helm of America: “So we had the greatest six months, seven months in the history of the presidency, and the Democrats don’t know what to do, so they keep bringing up that stuff.”

As with most calculations emanating from the president’s brain, the proclamation of the “greatest” time period bears no correlation with reality. Indeed, pretty much everything that has transpired over the past six or seven months has been decidedly less than “great” – not that Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden presided over anything particularly inspiring.

On the domestic scene, Americans continue to be plagued by rising costs of living that for many folks make existence itself unsustainable. Basic rights like healthcare, education, nutrition, and housing have long been converted into for-profit industries, and gun violence constitutes a veritable national pastime.

Under Trump’s guidance, US law enforcement agencies have gone about abducting and disappearing undocumented workers, international scholars, and US citizens alike. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, has also been militarised with the deployment of National Guard troops to supposedly “fight crime” in the mostly safe parts of the city.

On the international front, meanwhile, the past six or seven months have not only seen Trump bomb Iran in egregious violation of international law but also persist in sustaining Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars.

Just days ago, the United Nations officially declared famine in Gaza – a logical result of the US-backed Israeli policy of enforced starvation.

And all of this against a backdrop of planetary self-combustion that is only being sped up by the Trump administration’s prioritisation of climate change denial.

Considering the rather apocalyptic panorama, Trump’s de facto character certificate from Maxwell is at best entirely irrelevant – a political soap opera in which one convicted criminal kisses the rear end of another convicted criminal who happens to be president of the United States.

Maxwell’s testimony is simply icing on the dystopian cake. And as the world goes up in flames, the character certificate at least sums up where the US is currently at – however many “greatest” months into 2025.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

It has been a year since the Southport attack, which triggered furious racist riots in the streets of the United Kingdom. Unruly crowds, galvanised by false claims that the perpetrator was Muslim, went on a rampage, attacking mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and individuals they perceived as Muslim.

As the riots were raging, I was finishing my novel, The Second Coming. The book is set in a dystopian future in which a Christian militia inspired by English nationalism seizes London, bans Islam, and exiles Muslims to refugee camps in Birmingham. The events unfolding in the streets as I was writing the final chapters made me realise that today, we are much closer to the dystopian world in my novel than I had imagined.

The scenes and images that helped me shape this fictional world were inspired by the England I lived in during my youth, when racist violence was rampant. Gangs of white youth would hunt us down, especially after the pubs closed, in wave after wave of what they called “Paki bashing”.

Knife attacks and fire bombings were not uncommon, nor were the demands by far-right groups, such as the National Front and the British National Party, for the repatriation of Black (ie, non-white) “immigrants”.

Attending school sometimes meant running through a gauntlet of racist kids. In the playground, sometimes they swarmed around, chanting racist songs.

As a student, I lost count of the number of times I was physically attacked, at school, in the street, or in pubs and other places. When I lived in East London, I was with the local youth of Brick Lane, where hand-to-hand fighting took place to stop hordes of racist attackers. These assaults were not an isolated phenomenon. Similar scenes took place across the country, with the National Front and British National Party organising hundreds of marches, emboldening white supremacist gangs.

Around this time, some of my peers and I were arrested and charged with “conspiracy to make explosives” for filling up milk bottles with petrol as a way of defending our communities against racist violence; our case came to be known as the Bradford 12. These struggles, whether in Brick Lane or Bradford, were part of a broader fight against systemic racism and far-right ideologies that sought to terrorise and divide us.

The overt, street-level violence of those years was terrifying, but it came from the margins of society. The ruling political class, though complicit, avoided openly aligning with these groups. A case in point is Margaret Thatcher, who in 1978, as the leader of the Conservative Party, gave an infamous interview in which she said, “People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.” It was a subtle nod of approval for racist mobs, but as prime minister, Thatcher still kept far-right groups at an arm’s length.

Today, that distance has disappeared. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other prominent members of Labour regularly echo far-right rhetoric, promising to “crack down” on those seeking sanctuary here. His Conservative predecessor, Rishi Sunak, and his ministers were not different. His Home Minister Suella Braverman falsely claimed grooming gangs had a “predominance” of “British Pakistani males, who hold cultural values totally at odds with British values”.

While the old crude white racism has not disappeared, a more vicious form – Islamophobia – has been fanned over the past few decades. It feels like the old “Paki” bashing gangs have been replaced by a new crusading wave that equates Islam with terrorism; sexual abuse with Pakistanis; asylum seekers with parasitic hordes about to overrun the country.

This is the soil in which the Reform Party has taken root and flourished, in which ever cruder forms of racism are made respectable and electable. When both Labour and the Tories have become havens for a complex web of political corruption, Reform’s simple anti-migrant and Islamophobic tropes are projected as an honest alternative. This has propelled the far-right party to the top of polls, with 30 percent of voters supporting it, compared with 22 percent for Labour and 17 for the Conservatives.

In this environment, it was rather unsurprising that for the anniversary of the riots, the Economist magazine decided to run a poll focusing on race rather than on issues of economic decline, social deprivation and the never-ending austerity to which the working people of this country have been subjected. The survey showed that nearly 50 percent of the population think that multiculturalism is not good for the country, while 73 percent thought more “race riots” will happen soon.

The nurturing of violent racism at home has run parallel with England’s long history of enacting it abroad. The new face of racism is fed on old imperial tropes of savages that need to be tamed and defeated by civilised colonial rule. These racist ideologies, which welded the empire together, have come back home to roost.

They are playing out in the racist violence on the streets and in the state’s repression of Palestine supporters. They are also playing out in the UK’s unwavering political and military support for Israel, even as it bombs hospitals and schools in Gaza and starves children. Empire taught Britain to use racism to dehumanise entire peoples, to justify colonialism, to plunder, to spread war and famine. Genocide is in Britain’s DNA, which explains its present-day collusion with genocidal Israel.

Against this backdrop of racist, imperial violence, people of all colours and religions and none have mobilised. While they may not have stopped the genocide, they have laid bare the hypocritical barefaced lies of the British political elite. Only this sort of solidarity and challenge to racism can stop the dystopic world of my book becoming a reality.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

“Dystopian” TV may seem ubiquitous, but not all dystopias look the same. We asked the creatives behind several series — totalitarian, postapocalyptic or both — to explain how they bring the term to life.

‘The Boys’: Normalized dystopia

A scene from the Vought on Ice performance in “The Boys” Season 4.

(Jasper Savage / Prime Video)

“Dystopia, by definition, suggests an imagined society in which suffering and injustice are normalized. The people in that society are meant to believe their leaders and heroes are always right and working in their interest no matter how evil their values are or how horrifying their behavior,” says Mark Steel, the production designer for the comedy-drama about controlling capitalist overlords (and the outsiders who want to bring them down).

“One of the principal rules for the look of ‘The Boys’ world was to stay close to the recognizable visual language of American media and culture today,” Steel says.

The show uses everything from patriotic rallies to kids’ puppet shows to an ice-skating performance branded with the name of the omnipresent corporation Vought International to parallel real life.

“I think absurdity is most effective and funniest when it is set against normalcy,” Steel says. “We were able to build the Vought on Ice show in a real professional arena at real scale with skaters, costumes and music. The genius of the piece was how far we could facilitate the performance before all hell breaks loose.”

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Manicured dystopia

A scene from “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

(Steve Wilkie / Disney)

“The Handmaid’s Tale’s” Season 6 co-showrunner Yahlin Chang says the word “dystopia” usually connotes overgrown trees and disaster zones. In her show, the slave slate known as Gilead is a veneer of perfection that’s fooling no one, “like a cake with a razor blade in it,” she says.

“Our dystopia has always been very beautiful to look at … because it was meant to sort of clean up the horrible modern world from before where women weren’t having babies and where the environment had collapsed,” she says.

The homes of the elite commanders and their families are pristine and conservative. Everyone else’s surroundings are worn and muddied. But the last two seasons have introduced a new concept: color. Bradley Whitford’s Cmdr. Lawrence, the brainiac who masterminded Gilead, has designed New Bethlehem, a supposed safe haven for anyone who escaped his country’s oppression to return and live out a Mayberry-like existence. So production designer Elisabeth Williams and her team went all in on white picket fences and manicured lawns.

“It’s meant to be the kinder, gentler version of Gilead and it has a deliberately beautiful, pristine sheen on the surface,” says co-showrunner Eric Tuchman. “It feels artificial and sterile, with a kind of a theme-park vibe to it. It doesn’t feel quite real.”

‘The Last of Us’: Dystopian or postapocalyptic?

A scene from “The Last of Us” Season 2.

(Liane Hentscher / HBO)

“The Last of Us” is set after an outbreak has wiped out much of human existence. Because of this, Season 2 production designer Don Macaulay says his show also has to try to define “postapocalyptic,” another term that, he says, “can, visually, be a million different things.” The creators referenced the video game his show is based on, as well as real-world places that saw mass destruction, like the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

“There is a certain amount of violence associated with it and destruction associated with it,” Macaulay says of this world. “But, for the most part, it’s really nature taking over again and what that looks like in various environments. … There’s places in our story that haven’t been touched by humans in decades.”

This consideration of the time scale of dystopia and apocalypse led to conversations about when the world in the show “ended” — and if that matched the events in the game. Bella Ramsey’s lead Ellie is a music aficionado. But how far back does that record collection go?

“People who get really into the minutiae may point out that there are a couple of instances … where we bent those rules a little bit,” Macaulay says. The show premiered 10 years after the game launched, “so there are things in the game that became fairly iconic that wouldn’t have been around in our timeline.”

‘Paradise’: A childlike vision

Actors Aliyah Mastin, left, Sterling K. Brown and Percy Daggs IV at the entrance to the bunker in “Paradise.”

(Brian Roedel / Disney)

More “Brave New World” than “1984,” “Paradise” is largely set after an environmental disaster, focusing on a group of survivors who live in an underground bunker that looks like the Grove shopping mall.

Production designer Kevin Bird says some of the first conversations he had with creator Dan Fogelman and others involved designing a “completely different experience from a show about a bunker that’s postapocalyptic and living in a rusty tower. We wanted the feeling of the town to be that idyllic, too-perfect way [that is] really just a way of distracting” characters from what’s really happening.

Here, he explains, essentials like food, clothing and housing are provided for everyone — “Just don’t stray too far from the path.”

Bird was aided by an early episode in which it’s made clear that billionaire Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) built the bunker as an ode to her deceased son; it’s what a child would create if instructed to make a perfect town.

“What was motivating her was to protect the rest of her family as long as possible,” Bird says.

‘Silo’: An aging dystopia

Avi Nash in “Silo.”

(Apple TV+)

The “Silo” bunker may be the future “Paradise’s” Samantha is attempting to avoid. In this show, production designer Nicole Northridge says, “The people have lived here for 350 years [and] they’re under no illusion that it’s a perfect world.” They just don’t know how to escape and, because it’s supposed to be set after a postapocalyptic event, they don’t know what’s waiting for them if they do.

The silo in “Silo” was designed in Season 1 by then-production designer Gavin Bocquet. Northridge says it was meant to have an “Eastern European socialist look, which is very functional, very austere.” Since this story starts centuries after the original inhabitants enter the bunker, she says, “Everything within the silo is essentially, when we come to it, reused, recycled and quite a bespoke make.”

But Season 2 introduces another silo, this one with graffiti and wall carvings. It also had flooded caverns. Northridge and her team had to research how concrete ages while submerged; the effects team built a giant chlorinated water tank. (The crew would sometimes go swimming in it after they wrapped for the day.)