A pernicious thesis is making the rounds in conservative circles. Built from a blend of evolutionary psychology and cultural analysis, it’s a Theory of Everything, identifying the singular cause for all of liberal society’s “woke” rot.
The culprit? Women.
The likely election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor reflects a profound shift in generational politics. As the era of boomer domination finally draws to a close, a new cohort is bringing fresh energy to an already polarised landscape on both right and left – with potentially devastating results.
Diminishing economic prospects for younger workers have played a key role in undermining faith in free-market capitalism, making the case for socialism seem viable again. Cast largely in traditional Marxist terms, many on the reinvigorated left see the ‘cost of living’ focus as a promising strategy for progressives otherwise out of step on cultural issues.
The spectacle that unfolded in Beijing recently was unlike any other military parade the world has seen. China, to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, staged its most elaborate display of military might, showcasing hypersonic missiles, advanced drones, cyberwarfare divisions, and an arsenal that left no doubt about its ambitions to be seen as a global military superpower.
Beginning in 2001, the Austrian anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori spent six years living in the western Amazon. He first arrived as a backpacker, returned to do a master’s thesis on ayahuasca songs, and eventually did a PhD on the music of eight Indigenous peoples in the region. Along the way, he married a woman of the local Shipibo tribe and settled down.
“I did not have a lot of money,” he told me, “so I had to make my living there.” He became a teacher. He built a house. He and his wife had children. That rare experience of joining the community, he said, forced him to realise that many of the assumptions he had picked up as an anthropologist were wrong.
Like most outsiders, Brabec de Mori arrived in Peru thinking that ayahuasca had been used in the western Amazon for thousands of years. This is the standard narrative; look up resources on ayahuasca, and you’re bound to run into it. “Ayahuasca has been used in the Peruvian Amazon for millennia, long before the Spanish came to Peru, before the Incan empire was formed, before history,” states the website of the Ayahuasca Foundation, an organisation founded by a US citizen that offers ayahuasca retreats.
Established in 1920 by Russian Bolsheviks, its founders would be shocked to see International Women’s Day ensconced in American culture.
Question: What do International Women’s Day and Vladimir Putin have in common?
Answer: Both were promoted by the KGB.
