Good morning,
Have you watched the new season of Black Mirror yet? The creepiest dystopias are set in the near future, because they are more urgent. They're also based on minor extrapolations of existing technology or trends, which makes them plausible.
So here's one for you which takes place less than a month from now: 9 May 2025.
Imagine, if you can, a vast parade of Russian tanks and nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles rolling through Red Square in Moscow to the grotesque um-pa-pa of martial music and the roars of brainwashed crowds.
Imagine also three great dictators standing over them side-by-side and beaming with ear-to-ear grins, as they celebrate having carved up the globe in a Kremlin-palace backroom, amid golden bowls of caviar and crystal flagons of vodka: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump.
Ukraine and the Baltic States for Putin. Taiwan for Xi. Greenland and Canada for Trump and the rest of the world left over to be eaten later.
And imagine, finally, the sycophantic throng of lilliputian autocrats, scurrying around, doffing their caps, and bending over forwards and backwards in the court of the new world order: Robert Fico, Viktor Orbán, Aleksander Lukashenko, Aleksandar Vučić, Nicolás Maduro, and Benjamin Netanyahu.
You don't need to imagine that hard. They've all been invited by Putin for his 'Victory Day' parade next month.
Putin, Xi, and Trump have all made those territorial claims.
Moscow and Beijing have already used tanks, gulags, and propaganda to crush peaceful dissent and free thinking.
Trump loves military parades (he is planning one in Washington for his birthday). He loves it when less powerful leaders "kiss his ass" (as he boasted last week on tariff talks) and he's also brainwashing his Maga cult, with help from X and Fox News.
Meanwhile, Putin really does have golden toilets in his Sochi mansion. I bet there's one in Mar-a-Lago too.
The imperialist dystopia will be called The Peace Deal and if the Nobel Committee doesn't recognise it, then it will be disbanded in favour of a new award scheme, a bit like Putin's Intervision - the Eurasian song contest that he revived after Eurovision kicked him out.
The history books will be rewritten to say how the triumvirate saved the world from the satanism of woke democracy.
- Andrew Rettman, foreign affairs editor
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