This article was originally published by Unherd on 1st July 2021 It was a moment South Africans thought would never come. On Tuesday the Constitutional Court sentenced former president Jacob Zuma to 15 months in prison, after he refused to testify at an inquiry into corruption during his time in office. When that inquiry reaches … Continue reading The Fall of Zuma Threatens More Chaos for South Africa

We live in an era where catastrophe looms large in the political imagination. On the one side, we find hellacious visions of climate crisis and ecological collapse; on the other, grim warnings of social disintegration through plummeting birth rates, mass immigration and crime. Popular culture’s vivid post-apocalyptic worlds, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Margaret … Continue reading Disaster Junkies

Who should we call the first “Instagram billionaire”? It’s a mark of the new Gilded Age we’ve entered that both women vying for that title belong to the same family, the illustrious Kardashian-Jenner clan. In 2019, it looked like Kylie Jenner had passed the ten-figure mark, only for Forbes to revise its estimates, declaring that Jenner had … Continue reading How the Celebs Rule Us

This essay was originally published by Tablet Magazine on 21st April 2021. In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, the tone of politics has become much quieter, and not just in the United States. It’s amazing how much room this man’s personality took up in the public conversation. But we should remember that what silenced … Continue reading The Charismatic Politics of Social Media