My first thought after reading the form to express interest in volunteering at Pakistan’s annual Women’s March was: how many women in Pakistan know what “non-binary” and “cis woman” mean? In a country with a literacy rate of less than …
Western society is built on stigma
The backlash against The Whale seems to have taken Darren Aronofsky, its director, by surprise. The film concerns a gay online English instructor named Charlie who is dying from congestive heart failure, an ailment hardly unrelated to his weight of …
Is Liz Truss really the next Barry Goldwater?
When I last interviewed Liz Truss — in early 2022, when she was just Foreign Secretary — I spotted a copy of Rick Perlstein’s The Invisible Bridge on her shelf. The book explores the links between the post-war administrations of …
How the Online Right gave up on reality
The millennial generation is beginning to show its age. This overeducated and underemployed generation, raised on social media, once sought solace from its diminished life opportunities behind video game controllers, computer screens, and smartphones. Even for those with good prospects, …
Modern socialism has no class
It is a strange time to be a socialist. When I was young, in the 2000s, socialism was about overthrowing capitalism or at least making it more fair for the workers condemned to toil within its structures. Socialism was unfashionable. …
The madness behind the battle for Bakhmut
“The objective for today is to come back alive.” Yevgeny is a young commando from the “Mad Pack”, a special forces unit that has been fighting in Bakhmut since November. His words are familiar — lacquered with that mix of …
Does Ryan Reynolds understand football?
Even by the standards of modern football, and even though he has co-owned the club for two and a half years now, there remained something deeply incongruous about seeing Ryan Reynolds applauding Wrexham off after their FA Cup fourth-round tie …
The vengeful ex-girlfriends of TikTok
The girl in the TikTok video is wearing joggers, a lime green bra, and — for some reason — a pink ski mask. Her hair is blonde and stringy. She climbs atop the kitchen counter, attempting a yoga arm balance …
We need to ask the West Lancashire Question
West Lancashire has always been defined by its relationship with other places. The rural constituency, which elects a new MP this week, covers the geographical area west of Wigan, north of St Helens, east of Southport, north-east of Liverpool and …
Bret Easton Ellis: ‘My generation wanted to be offended’
Earlier this week, Bret Easton Ellis visited The UnHerd Club to celebrate the publication of The Shards, his first novel in 13 years. Below is an edited transcript of his conversation with Jacob Furedi.
Jacob Furedi: Bret, you’ve spoken …
Britain’s food wars
In the 18th century, when William Hogarth wished to highlight Britain’s political and cultural superiority to pre-revolutionary France in immediately appreciable terms, he did so through the medium of food, distinguishing between the Roast Beef of Olde England, and the …
The French love to hate Brexit
Now that Boris Johnson is back to what he does best — writing and being usefully jovial in countries where he can’t run for PM — the Franco-British relationship is back on an even keel. Mutual respect has been restored …
Japanese pacifism is dead
Japan is on manoeuvres. The country for so long tethered — or protected, according to your point of view — by the “pacifist” constitution imposed upon it by the occupying Americans after the Second World War may be about to …
Steroids won’t cure toxic masculinity
A spectre is haunting the gyms of the West. If the bodies on display there look better than they did in the Nineties or Noughties, the reasons go far beyond our expanded knowledge about training and nutrition. It’s thanks to …
Welcome to human centipede culture
Is it really the end times, when anthropomorphic chocolate gets less “sexy”? American TV host Tucker Carlson’s campaign against the supposedly woke redesign of the M&M “spokescandies” would suggest it is: “M&Ms will not be satisfied until every last character …