The Monthly Review — January 2026
All of New Outlook's topics, stories, and opinions you missed this past month.
For readers who crave short, snappy reads—whether you’re pressed for time, commuting, or just looking for a quick gateway into bigger ideas.
The Monthly Review is a curated preview of the topics, stories, and opinions I explore on New Outlook—from bite-sized insights to deep dives. Let’s jump in!
➊ THE COLOR REVOLUTION PLAYBOOK
★★★★★
New Outlook Recommends
How to Overthrow a Government: The Color Revolution Playbook
Published: January 22, 2025
A brilliant explainer on the concept of Color Revolutions, and the six-step playbook frequently exercised by the U.S. to carry out regime change operations, often disguised as grassroots democratic movements.
➋ SAME PLAYBOOK, DIFFERENT SPORT
New social media companies claiming to be a “free-speech platform” is an updated version of new politicians on the block claiming to only accept funds from small-donors.
They know how to say exactly what you want to hear. And they get away with it, every-time.
➌ ON NEWSSTANDS: VANITY FAIR DELIVERS PARTISAN SLOP
As much as I’m not a fan of some of Sasha Stone’s recent Trump-obsessed coverage these days, she hit many of the points that was on my mind about Vanity Fair’s photo coverage of Trump’s administration.
This is what audience capture looks like. This is what corporate media and institutional bias looks like. This is what the culture has boiled down to — “slop,” as the kids like to call it. And the people gladly eat it up, believing they’ve accomplished something of note.
Were a conservative photographer assigned to cover a Democratic administration, and these were the style of photos that hit the newsstands, he’d be buried with hateful threats from readers and blacklisted by the entire industry. But alas, we know who runs many of these platforms, so that’s a far cry from reality.
They say “history is written by the victors.” Well, it seems that photographic flattery is exclusively reserved only for those who wield institutional power — i.e. the institutional Left.
➍ STEWART FINDS HIS SENSES UNDER A REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION
I’ve been very outspoken about how feckless Jon Stewart has become since his return from hiatus after first leaving The Daily Show in 2015, just before the first Trump presidential term.
Admittedly, this is the best segment of his I’ve seen in the new iteration of his show:
➎ THE TWO SIDES OF THE IMPERIAL MACHINE
The empire needs its skillful orators and apologists like Obama, but it also needs its iron-fisted overt tyrants like Trump. It needs good cop presidents to manufacture global consensus and expand US soft power, and it also needs bad cop presidents to inflict the hard power abuses the good cops can’t get away with. Both are essential components to the operation of the imperial machine.
— CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
➏ HEALING FROM WOKE IDEOLOGY
An ideology that has deeply taken root like a parasite, for decades, within the American psyche, and has proliferated throughout every major American institution does not get wiped out in one presidential administration, with the single stroke of a pen. If you believe that to be the case, you are delusional.
The damage has already been done. There is no moving on without building anew from the ground up, across institutions. That takes decades… if that’s even a reality at this stage.
Hate to break it to you.
➐ “WOKE IS DEAD!”
For all those who continue to make pronouncements that “Woke is dead” and we need not speak to the irreparable damage it has done to society, here lies the parasitical remnants of Woke, controlling individuals within many of society’s power centers.
Brainwashed Doctor Exposed as Fraud on Live TV With a Simple Question — “Can men get pregnant?”
➑ WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS
“I wish that the public was more skeptical and the journalists were more adversarial.”
— LAURA POITRAS, Filmmaker and Director of Citizenfour and Cover-Up.
➒ VOTE FOR THE BEST LIAR
I’m convinced that a political campaign is an audition for how effectively you’re able to lie and deceive the people to buying into your narrative.
If you’re an adept liar, you’ll do well as president of the United States, when you’re required to tell bold faced lies to the public about domestic and international actions the administration is taking.
➓ ONE PROPAGANDA AFTER ANOTHER
An excerpt from the review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film One Battle After Another in The Guardian:
"Bob is part of a heavily armed activist cell that attacks migrant holding prisons on the Mexican border..."Perhaps, this narrative — of revolutionary activists on the Left thwarting the operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — is particularly why this lackluster film, from one of Hollywood’s best filmmakers, was so revered by many on the Left, while people like myself couldn’t help but see the film as a total disappointment.
All of that said, perhaps the film represented a decree of sorts, a playbook for how activists ought to confront the actions of ICE agents in their neighborhoods and cities. I’m convinced that this, among other things, is why the film has been endlessly celebrated as a “masterpiece,” and “the greatest film of the decade.”
Perhaps the film’s central motif is why we are continuing to bare witness to this eerily disturbing phenomenon: emboldened activists willingly putting their lives at risk, and in some cases, dying, in an attempt to interfere, inconvenience, or thwart the operations of, evidently, poorly trained and trigger-happy ICE agents.
That’s a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this edition of The Monthly Review. If something resonated, drop a like, leave a comment, and let’s discuss further. Share this with a friend. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and supporting this project. Until next month!