Former president Donald Trump has again raised the spectre of a schism in the Republican Party. Last Thursday, he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he wouldn’t commit to backing the party’s nominee. This will strike many observers as …
Are effective altruists more horny?
Age six, I once ruined Pass the Parcel at a schoolfriend’s birthday party, because I was distracted by a headline on a layer of discarded newspaper. MIND BOMBED BY THE MOONIES. I remember being intensely annoyed when it was taken …
Will Erdoğan survive Turkey’s earthquake?
It took barely two days for Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria to turn political. On Wednesday, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, warned of the danger of giving credence to “provocateurs”. He was referring to opposition figures who have …
The rise of Ireland’s anti-migrant protests
Ireland has an immigration problem. Almost a year after refugees started to arrive from Ukraine, leaving state capacity buckled and local communities unnerved, two very different expressions of civic disorder have emerged. In one, migrants are housed in cubicle dorms …
God has no gender
“Our parent, who art in heaven.” It has rather lost something, don’t you think? Father has gravitas. It speaks of intimacy, protection, nurture. Parent, on the other hand, is one of those cold, anonymous, bureaucratic words that the school uses …
We are already at war with Russia
Now and then, even the most seasoned politician happens to slip up and accidently speak the truth. This is what occurred during a recent debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, when the German Foreign Minister Annalena …
What authors hide about sensitivity readers
Although created with good intentions, the practice of sensitivity reading has a way of tipping over into absurdity — the most recent example being Anthony Horowitz’s new book, which features a Native American character. It was dinged for two instances …
Hunter Biden and the curse of the failson
The moment the Republicans have been waiting for has finally arrived: today, House Oversight Committee hearings will start their investigation into the shady business dealings of Hunter Biden. Though Republican leaders insist that their efforts will ultimately be focused on …
The hijacking of Pakistani feminism
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 …