In late 2014, the journalist and sociologist Musa al-Gharbi fell victim to what would soon become known as cancel culture. A controversial article soon led to a Twitter spat, which then prompted a media outlet to draw attention to his …
Nature is coming for America
The American wilderness has been fighting back. Less than a fortnight ago, Hurricane Helene swept across the South, leaving death, wreckage, and shattered livelihoods in its wake. It’s about to be followed by Hurricane Milton, which meteorologists warn will be …
What Harris learned from Hillary
With less than a month to go until Election Day, if the White House were awarded on the basis of professional political competence, then Kamala Harris would be the next president already.
The shrewd strategic moves began early. As soon …
America is grooming Meloni
Two years ago, a neo-fascist gained power in Rome. That, at least, is the impression you’d have gained from the Western establishment’s paroxysm of hand-wringing at Giorgia Meloni’s elevation. From her erstwhile praise for Mussolini to her fierce Euroscepticism, Meloni …
How the Diddy Conspiracy duped America
First the facts, then the alternative facts. Sean Combs — aka Diddy, Puff Daddy, and P. Diddy — no longer resides in his $19 million Star Island Miami mansion, but at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where the 54-year-old …
How the Diddy Conspiracy duped America
First the facts, then the alternative facts. Sean Combs — aka Diddy, Puff Daddy, and P. Diddy — no longer resides in his $19 million Star Island Miami mansion, but at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where the 54-year-old …
Hurricane Helene is America’s Chernobyl moment
Hurricane Katrina looms large in American cultural consciousness. As one of the defining events during George W. Bush’s second term as president, the scale of the devastation that struck Louisiana — combined with the inadequacy of the relief effort — …
The revenge of the Conservative Hot Girl
There’s a new weapon in the culture wars and its assets are considerable. In America, Republicans have become obsessed with the “conservative hot girl”: an unreconstructed, curvaceous and unashamedly flirty young woman who counts as Right-coded simply in virtue of …
MrBeast’s faux philanthropy
Jimmy Donaldson dropped out of a community college near his home in North Carolina at the age of 18 to crack one of the mysteries of modern life: what makes a video become a viral sensation on social media? Together …
The genesis of the MAGA Bible
It has been more than two decades since I walked away from the evangelical Christian faith in which I was raised as a preacher’s son, but I still know blasphemy when I see it. In an ad for his God …
The toxic empathy of the VP debate
“Everybody’s got a plan,” Mike Tyson once said, “until they get punched in the face.” The American media’s plan for last night’s vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz was that the two running mates would, all …
Can Kamala charm swing voters?
Never have two American presidential candidates been so different from one another. The Black-Indian daughter of Left-wing academics versus the white son of a wealthy Ku Klux Klan sympathiser. The woman who spent her entire career in public service versus …
The absurd optimism of Megalopolis
I attended a very special, and very strange, preview screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis a few days ahead of its official release. Before the film ran, the screening audience was treated to what was surely meant to be a …
The Mississippi elites who broke democracy
The Mississippi GOP has near supermajorities in the statehouse and senate, controlling all eight statewide offices, both US Senate seats, and three of the state’s four Congressional seats. The last Democrat to carry the Magnolia State in a presidential race …
Why RFK Jr is so seductive
Amid fears of civil war breaking out following the November election, the interlocking spheres of American political journalism were treated to a frisson this past week. Olivia Nuzzi, a reporter for the staunchly Left-liberal New York magazine, admitted to having …