The light that failed: Why liberalism is in crisis
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Ideas
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The temptations of Christopher Hitchens
Why the crusading journalist failed to assume the mantle of George Orwell.
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How The Matrix made us
In their 1999 film, the Wachowskis glimpsed the future of our digital lives. More remarkably, they shaped them.
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What Dostoevsky knew about evil
The great Russian writer was no saint. But 200 years after his birth, his work shows how we might…
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Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob: an epic that sinks under the weight of facts
The Nobel winner’s novel about a religious cult in 18th-century eastern Europe suffers from an addiction to digression and…
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How our lives depend on dirty work
We rely on some people doing unethical labour – fighting wars, killing animals, patrolling borders – and to absolve…
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What can Adam Phillips teach us?
The writer and therapist brings curiosity and delight to psychoanalysis – and, crucially, doubt.
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How fear makes us human
The late David Graeber’s history of early human societies presents civilisation as a descent from anarchy into servility. But…
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India reveres its democracy, but the room for dissent is shrinking
Democracy is a strategic asset for India, but Narendra Modi's hyper-nationalism is reconfiguring the nation's politics.
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Peter Thiel: Big Tech’s dark prophet
How the billionaire entrepreneur and libertarian grasped the fundamental truth of capitalism.
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The rise and fall of digital Corbynism
The British left has the internet tools to generate a lasting movement – if only it knew how to use…
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Ludwig Wittgenstein: a mind on fire
A century after its publication, the philosopher’s Tractatus remains as radical as ever.
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The spirit of the age: Why the tech billionaires want to leave humanity behind
Jeff Bezos and his contemporaries are using their fortunes to achieve god-like ambitions for the future.
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How work makes us human
Collective benefit is what gives labour meaning, but the pandemic has exposed deep inequalities in the ways we make a…
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The internet was built for connection – how did it go so wrong?
The World Wide Web celebrates its 30th birthday this year. Its users are less empowered than ever.
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The pandemic has revealed both the enduring wisdom and utopian delusions of Thomas Hobbes
The perpetual cycle of lockdowns has shown the reality of the Hobbesian state, where authority is backed by coercion, and…
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The contradictions of Edward Said
Why the intellectually restless author of Orientalism was an icon to the left, and an irritant to everyone else.…
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The battle for the soul of conservatism
Edmund Fawcett’s book traces the evolution of an often-contested ideology.
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How the weather shapes history
Throughout the ages, climate change has had profound – and sometimes devastating – consequences for human civilisation.
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Why culture wars are an elite device
Plutocratic populists reduce economic conflicts to questions of belonging.
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The rise of the right-wing globalists
The World Economic Forum showed how the right is seizing the levers of the international order.
By The light that failed: Why liberalism is in crisis
John Gray and Ross Douthat debate the decline of the West.
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Can Europe tame pandemonium?
Covid-19 brought the EU together — the crisis in Ukraine may now tear it apart.
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