How Britain ignored its ethnic conflict

Following the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, the aftermath, like those of other recent terrorist atrocities, was marked by what later revealed to be a coordinated British government policy of “controlled spontaneity”. Pre-planned vigils and inter-faith events were rolled out, …

The revolt of the Rust Belt

On paper, Donald Trump’s decision to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate made perfect sense. The Rust Belt kid turned Yale graduate is an ideal figure to both troll America’s elites and woo its working-class whites. It is the …

Freud is coming for your kids

According to an old joke, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are enjoying some pastries in a Viennese coffee shop. The younger analyst hesitantly asks the elder: “Tell me, Herr Professor Freud… vat lies between fear und sex?”. With furrowed brow, …

America has been hustled

“When you hustle you keep score real simple. The end of the game you count up your money. That’s how you find out who’s best. That’s the only way.” The lines come from The Hustler (1961) starring Paul Newman, George …

The rise of the posh roadman

Friday afternoon in Clapham Junction, and two well-to-do white boys are swaggering down Falcon Road to Al’s Place Cafe. “He’s got bars, no?” says one, talking about some musician or other. “Nah g, allow. Paigon. Nehgateeve XP.” Off they shuffle …

Joan Didion’s insufferable disciples

Joan Didion’s enduring popularity among today’s young readers is a somewhat mysterious phenomenon. So many visibly progressive, literary types seem to uncritically worship her. Really? I always think to myself, concerned that I’ve misheard them. Joan Didion, the National Review …

Is the Tradwife Queen a fraud?

The pioneer dream is deeply engraved in American culture and history. It’s simple but powerful: setting forth into the unknown, with just a few belongings and your immediate family, and creating a self-reliant, flourishing home in an unforgiving environment. As …

The man who defended Orientalism

“As a young man visiting a Sufi shrine in Algeria,” remarks the writer Robert Irwin parenthetically in an otherwise scholarly essay on medieval Arabic literature, “I once encountered a jinni in the form of a cat.” No further elaboration is …

Welcome to the Taxi Driver election

In Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), Robert De Niro is Travis Bickle (“You talkin’ to me?”), a disturbed cabbie who plans to shoot presidential candidate Charles Palantine before chance intervenes to steer him away from irrevocable catastrophe. The film serves …