Ayatollah Khomeini was a fundamentalist cleric who inspired the 1979 Islamic Revolution to overthrow a millennia-old history of Iranian monarchy. He was also, legend has it, an athletic young man who became the leapfrog champion of his village of Khomein …
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska nightmare
In 1982, Bruce Springsteen was at the height of his powers. Seven years earlier, his third album, Born to Run, had brought him global fame. “Springsteen is everything that has been claimed for him,” declared Rolling Stone. Critic Dave Marsh …
Denmark is a Right-wing paradise
The Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier probes the darkest depths of modern society, often with a deranged, comical touch. When I moved to Denmark a year and a half ago, it was reassuring for me that Lars was there, lurking …
Selfies have made you ugly
Modern man, wrote the social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1956, “has been transformed into a commodity”. Scroll through social media, and you will see this transformation is absolute. On one side, we are asked to rate glamorous, increasingly similar-looking people …
My Personal Journey Over Last Year / Hugo Talks
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America’s conservatives would never elect a Hindu
Here in America, the most surprising storyline in the Conservative Party’s latest psychodrama is the fact that Rishi Sunak has emerged from it. It is impossible to imagine someone like him being chosen to lead the Republican Party, America’s closest …
The revenge of the technocrats
John Gray was the prophet of the postliberal age, describing global capitalism as a false utopia as early as 1998. In his most recent writing, he has returned to geopolitics, and has described the populist moment, the pandemic, and the …
Ireland’s Troubles will not return
The political climate in Northern Ireland has always been reflected in its graffiti. In nationalist and unionist areas, slogans and murals commemorating aspects of the Troubles are still common, though the paramilitary emphasis has declined in recent decades. Years ago, …
Violence rules my A&E ward
I’ve seen everything on my A&E ward: from staff, police officers and members of the public being punched to full-on brawls breaking out. Even visibly pregnant staff are not immune to aggression. And that’s just in a fortnight: people don’t …
Can Sunak end the new class war?
Will Rishi Sunak hang the paedos and fund the NHS? This is, after all, the most common British political stance. Every constituency nationwide skews this way: Right on social issues, Left on the economy.
But I’ve not seen anything in …
The Tories should embrace chaos
Politicians act with good intentions. But they rarely seem to grasp that intentions are not the same as outcomes. The social and economic worlds are both complex and change rapidly. This places inherent limits on our ability to understand them. …
How Big Pharma monetised depression
We are, if you believe the headlines, living in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis, exacerbated by the stress and isolation of the pandemic. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the end of …
Stop talking about American ‘fascism’
In the Forties, Dorothy Thompson posed the question “Who Goes Nazi?” Our version today, endlessly asked, is “Who Goes Fascist?” The unfortunate answer seems to be: everybody. Over the past few months, I’ve seen the “fascism” tag applied without a …
Robot Rishi / Hugo Talks
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Is Rishi too rich to be PM?
When Rishi Sunak, Britain’s richest MP, moves into No. 10, it will be a week since the UK’s biggest food bank announced it is running out of supplies. This contrast between wealth and poverty has not been so vivid for …