Latest news with #UnHerd
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Neil Postman's ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death' at 40: Truer than ever
Ryan Zickgraf is a columnist for UnHerd, from which this op-ed was adapted. It's now almost a reflex: An election is held, and someone pushes the big, red Death of Democracy panic button. When Donald Trump won in 2016, liberals saw a gold-plated Adolf Hitler in a red baseball cap. Then Joe Biden took over and conservatives warned of Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot reborn, an America where your kids would be forced to go to gay camp and pray to RuPaul before lunch. (They're panicking again with Zohran Mamdani in New York's mayoral race.) Now, we have Trump redux. The hysterias flip, but the impulse stays the same: to imagine top-down tyranny as a looming catastrophe. Neil Postman would know better. Forty years ago, the cultural critic wrote 'Amusing Ourselves to Death,' a pessimistic yet prescient polemic worth revisiting in the age of algorithm-driven political hysteria. Postman, who died in 2003, predicted that America wasn't trending toward existence under the boot of totalitarianism, as in George Orwell's '1984,' but drifting through the languorous haze of a feel-good dystopia that instead resembled Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World.' Postman was right. Democracy was not in danger of being overthrown, but overentertained. He saw 'that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.' Postman was, in fact, observing his own obsolescence. In the near future, books and literacy, serious social criticism, maybe even democracy itself, would become afterthoughts in a world mediated through screens, because those mediums turned everything into triviality. If he were alive in 2025, Postman would not be surprised to see that our version of Huxley's addictive Soma drug comes in the virtual variety: TikTok's infinite scroll, cryptocurrency speculation and content streams designed to blur time and lull us into a flow state. Every flick of the thumb offers a micro-hit of novelty, outrage or reward. Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the masses, but we killed God and began worshiping the murder weapon instead. Trump is perfect for this Postmanian moment. He's a one-person digital diversion who doesn't even try to conceal anything — he haphazardly posts to social media war threats and private conversations with world leaders while friends and enemies alike hang on his every word, however nonsensical or contradictory. Although he has authoritarian tendencies, he's ironically too wrapped up in his own media representations to be an effective dictator. If he were to transform into one, many people might be unaware — not because of a censorship clampdown but because they'd be too distracted by other push notifications. To be fair, there's plenty of dissent in the streets, but it's the paper-thin kind that's designed to be shareable online. These protests don't hint at emerging mass movements; they mask the lack of them. The great majority of Jan. 6 protesters weren't trying to stage a coup: Once they breached the U.S. Capitol, they opted to take selfies, not power. Last month, millions took to the streets in 'No Kings' marches that seemed designed to wrest attention from President Attention and little else. Meanwhile, there's a more profound crisis that nobody's marching about: the collapse of faith in anything — not in leaders, not in institutions and barely any faith in friends, family or community. It's the self-flattering effect of our me-first libertarian ideals and the user-centric technology that surrounds us. In America, there are no kings but no subjects, either. We are each kings unto ourselves. To Postman, this transformation had everything to do with media theory. In the 1960s, theorist Marshall McLuhan famously declared, 'The medium is the message,' arguing that the dominant form of media of each era alters human perception and social organization. Postman agreed, but with a twist: He thought a better formulation would be 'the medium is the metaphor.' In other words, each dominant medium supplies the underlying metaphors by which a society understands reality. As such, the printing press changed how people thought and democratized knowledge. A print-first culture, the argument goes, created the apex of human civilization, producing citizens capable of participating in rational-critical debate — because the medium itself encourages habits of logic, nuance and focus. Television, by contrast, is a visual medium governed by the logic of spectacle and attention for its own sake. It prioritizes immediacy, novelty and emotional impact. It flattens complexity into sensation. In Postman's view, once television became the dominant cultural form, it didn't just reshape entertainment, it reshaped everything. Politics, religion, education, journalism — all began to conform to the imperatives of show business. A sermon became indistinguishable from a TV commercial. A newscast adopted the rhythms of a sitcom. A presidential debate turned into a pageant of postures and sound bites. The result was a shift in epistemology: A society once anchored in reasoned argument had become entirely unserious and stuck in an all-consuming present tense. Four decades on, Postman's cultural diagnosis feels not just accurate but almost restrained. Where television reduced discourse to entertainment, social media reduces it to performance and dopamine loops. The metaphor of our age is no longer the flickering image but the scroll — and the scroll, unlike the TV show, never ends. Each social media platform brings with it a new grammar of cognition. The written word still defines X, but in a way that favors brevity and snark. TikTok rewards emotion and mimicry. Instagram curates identity through visual branding. YouTube teaches us to talk quickly and passionately, and AI interfaces such as ChatGPT threaten to flatten language into plausible-sounding filler that imitates thought without demanding it. In Postman's time, one could still imagine a crisis of democracy rooted in shared spectacles — a Walter Cronkite broadcast, a presidential debate, a televised trial. Today, there is no common stage. The media environment is hyper-personalized and designed to flatter every user with the illusion of centrality. This is what Postman warned about when he lamented the loss of 'the epistemology' of the 'typographic mind' — a culture where ideas could be built, revised, tested and transmitted in a coherent, cumulative way. What we have now is a hallucinated collective monologue, where everyone talks and no one listens. But maybe not forever. Unlike in Postman's time, there are signs that a counterrevolution is brewing. Curiously, it is Gen Z — the first generation raised entirely under the internet's Eye of Sauron — that now appears most divided over it. Among them, two distinct tribes are forming. The first are the true children of the algorithm: grown-up iPad kids whose earliest memories involve the 'black mirror' of screens and who now, as young adults, continue to live mediated lives. Their social life is dominated by apps, with their identities shaped by filters, likes and short-form video confessionals. They date less, drink less, drive less and often prefer the cocoon of home to the messy intimacy of in-person relationships. They are also, not coincidentally, the loneliest cohort in modern American history. Their daily lives are saturated with stimuli but starved of substance. Unlike their millennial predecessors, whose optimism was eventually battered into nihilism, many of these young people seem to have skipped straight to resignation. And yet, within the same generational cohort, a surprising rebellion is emerging. A second group of Gen Z, equally fluent in the mechanics of digital life, is choosing to abstain from it — deleting social media, abandoning optimization and seeking instead the solidity of old things. They knit. They golf. They go to church. They lift heavy weights and read heavy books. They abandoned dating apps and swapped TikTok for running or pickleball clubs. Part of it feels like aesthetic irony or a nostalgic affectation, yes, but there are hints of a scattered and half-formed countercultural movement. In New York, members of a high school Luddite Club are now in college and are attracting converts to tech-free living. On TikTok, paradoxically, videos under the #Deinfluencing tag go viral by encouraging people to stop buying things. Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and other faiths strong on ritual are seeing quiet revivals, especially among young men. The average age of the liturgy-heavy church I attend is mid-to-late 20s, and a group of friendly Gen Zers in my neighborhood successfully persuaded me to join an old-style, in-person social club. Some of these tech refugees cite a yearning for moral clarity or traditional values; others cite a desire for structure, beauty and meaning, all of which are notably absent online. Even the secular version of this backlash appears in odd places: in the preference for physical media, the resurgence of film cameras, the rise of 'quiet luxury' over hyper-branding, and the revival of slow, analog hobbies once left for dead. Call it post-irony or post-digital asceticism, but the impulse is the same. This rebellion, fractured and flickering, is one of the few encouraging signs in a culture otherwise largely anesthetized by its tools. Unlike the millennial generation — which largely absorbed technology as destiny, first in its techno-utopian promises, later in its gigified disappointments — these Gen Z refuseniks are not trying to reform the system. They're walking away from it. That's why the 'No Kings' rallies often look like the world's largest retiree convention. This new group's politics, to the extent that it has any, are not oriented toward revolution or regulation, but toward restraint, retreat and restoration. They want silence. They want limits. And if there is any hope of clawing back a shared reality from the hall of mirrors that is the modern internet, it might lie with them. We can only hope. Post Opinions wants to know: How do you feel about your relationship to screens? If you changed your habits, how did you do it?
Sky News AU
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
‘Greta might like attention': New flotilla to set sail for Gaza
UnHerd newsroom editor James Billot discusses Greta Thunberg's plans to board another 'Freedom Flotilla to Gaza' one month after the activist's failed stunt. The ship will be setting sail from Italy on July 13, however, it is not clear whether Greta will be joining on the second voyage. 'I could be wrong here, but I'm starting to think Greta Thunberg might like attention,' Mr Billot told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power.
Forbes
23-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Physician-Assisted Suicide Is A Bigger Problem Than We Realize
"We may seem a long way from legalizing physician-assisted suicide in the United States," writes ... More health policy expert Sally Pipes. "But it wasn't very long ago that such a thing seemed unthinkable in Canada, too." Dovie Eisner was born with a rare genetic condition called nemaline myopathy. He requires a wheelchair and has a host of other health problems. Last year at one point, he stopped breathing, passed out on the street, and was taken to the emergency room. 'I was alive—thanks to the determination of law enforcers and local medical personnel to keep me that way,' Eisner wrote recently in UnHerd. But, he warns, a law being considered in his home state of New York 'threatens to undo this presumption in favour of lifesaving' that motivated first responders to keep him alive. The bill, called the Medical Aid in Dying Act, would allow mentally competent adults with six months or less to live 'to obtain a prescription that would put them to sleep and peacefully end their lives.' New York is not alone. Seventeen states—including Florida, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania—are considering so-called 'death with dignity' laws. Eleven states and the District of Columbia already have them on the books. Advocates say these laws spare the terminally ill from unnecessary suffering. But a closer look at Europe and Canada—where physician-assisted suicide has been legal and common for years—paints a darker picture. Far from providing peace to terminal patients, these laws are often used by government-run healthcare systems to nudge sick patients toward ending their lives. The United States may not have a completely socialized system of medicine yet. But the government covers nearly half of all healthcare expenditures in this country. Over the past 40 years, its share of the nation's health bill has been growing, slowly but surely. At some point, it may have a financial incentive in hastening people toward their demise. Around 8,700 Americans have died by assisted suicide since 1997, when Oregon became the first state to legalize the practice. That's around 300 people annually. For comparison, some 3 million Americans die every year. In other countries, assisted suicide is a much more common cause of death. In the Netherlands—the first country to legalize the process, in 2002—more than 5% of annual deaths are due to medically-assisted suicide. In Canada, more than 15,000 people died by physician-assisted suicide in 2023—4.7% of total deaths. Canada only legalized physician-assisted suicide in 2016. Until last year, the rate of assisted suicide north of the border rose around 31% annually. The majority of Canadians choosing 'medical assistance in dying' are between 65 and 80. But the number of Canadians aged 18 to 45 opting to end their lives by MAiD has been increasing each year. There were just 34 in 2017—but 139 in 2021. Those numbers are likely to grow as Canada continues to expand the pools of people eligible for physician-assisted suicide. The government has already expanded the law to include those who are not terminally ill but living in circumstances they themselves deem 'intolerable.' Now, the United Kingdom is considering similar legislation. Last week, the House of Commons greenlit a bill that would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales to take their own lives with a physician's help. The legislation is moving on to the House of Lords. Proponents of these policies may characterize them as compassionate. But it's impossible to ignore the Canadian government's financial interest in having one less person who needs government-funded health care. The Canadian government certainly acts on that interest in other ways—most notably by denying access to cutting-edge prescription drugs. Just 45% of new drugs launched worldwide between 2012 and 2021 were available in Canada as of October 2022. Eighty-five percent were available in the United States. The Canadian government's calculus could apply on this side of the border. The federal government already pays for Medicare coverage for 68 million people. That number will grow as the population ages. And Medicare has shown that it will restrict access to some forms of care, through its Coverage with Evidence Development framework. Some 22 devices, services, and therapies are subject to these restrictions, as of 2023. Medicare defends those restrictions by saying it needs more evidence of clinical benefit. But some of those restrictions have been in place for a decade or more. A skeptic might reasonably wonder whether Medicare is holding back because of unspoken concerns about cost. There's no doubt that medical assistance in dying will be effective—if the goal is to save the government money caring for the elderly. We may seem a long way from legalizing physician-assisted suicide in the United States. But it wasn't very long ago that such a thing seemed unthinkable in Canada, too. Let's hope lawmakers stateside change course before it's too late.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Steve Bannon prods Trump to cut off Elon Musk: 'He crossed the Rubicon'
WASHINGTON — It took a little longer than he may have liked, but Steve Bannon eventually triumphed over Elon Musk. In a mid-January interview, the former chief strategist to Donald Trump pledged to get Musk, who he called an "evil guy," booted from the then-incoming president's inner circle within days. Five months later, Musk is out. And a feud between Trump and the world's richest man is under way. Bannon has stoked the tension, which began when Musk, a former special government employee who led Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, called on senators to reject Trump's tax cut bill. The two have traded barbs ever since, with Musk suggesting that Trump be impeached and Trump lamenting to reporters on June 5 that he did not know if he and his former pal would be able to repair their relationship. In print, radio and podcast interviews, Bannon has piled on Musk. He called on Trump to end the SpaceX founder and Tesla co-founder's government contracts. He's also prodded Trump to investigate alleged drug use by the South African-born businessman, as well as his immigration status. "He crossed the Rubicon. It's one thing to make comments about spending on the bill. There's another thing about what he did," Bannon said on NPR's "Morning Edition" program. "You can't come out and say kill the president's most important legislative occurrence of this first term." Musk's claim that Trump is mentioned in undisclosed classified files related to the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Musk's affirmative response to a social media post pushing for Trump to be replaced by Vice President JD Vance were too far, Bannon said on NPR, a public broadcasting organization the White House is trying to defund. "It has crossed the line," Bannon said of Musk. "There's no going back." Bannon said in a June 6 podcast he does not consider Musk's ouster a personal victory. "I don't ever look at things like that at all. Right now, it's a national security issue," Bannon said on the UnHerd with Freddie Sayers podcast. He went on to accuse Musk of abusing his position inside the government to try gain access to government secrets to boost his business. DOGE did not deliver on the $1 trillion in savings Musk promised, he said of the government spending-slashing effort. "Where's the money? What was DOGE really doing?" Bannon asked. "We want to make sure DOGE and Elon Musk didn't take any of the data sets for his personal use for his artificial intelligence, which is driving all of his businesses." Bannon's own distaste for Musk dates back to a dispute over temporary visas for highly skilled immigrant laborers. Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump initially tapped to co-lead DOGE, pushed for an expansion of the program as way to attract global talent, irritating immigration hawks in the conservative movement. "We're not going to be some anarcho-libertarian (state) run by Big Tech oligarchs — that's not going to happen," Bannon said on his War Room podcast in December. Bannon told Politico in a June 5 interview that, after the split with Trump, the MAGA movement is now done with Musk. 'I think MAGA is now seeing exactly what he was," Bannon said. 'I'm just saying, 'Hey, told you — knew this was gonna happen, folks. Not a hard one.'' (This article has been updated to correct an error.) This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bannon prods Trump to cut off Musk: 'He crossed the Rubicon'
France 24
18-06-2025
- Business
- France 24
Paul Marshall: Britain's anti-woke media baron
The 65-year-old added to his impressive stable last autumn when he purchased The Spectator magazine, viewed as the bible of Britain's Conservative Party, for £100 million ($135 million). He already co-owned brash current affairs television channel GB News, a sort of British Fox News, and is the owner of respected centre-right-leaning news and opinion website UnHerd. Marshall -- who himself has been on a journey from supporting centrist politics to more right-wing causes in recent years -- got into media after making a fortune in finance. He is worth more than £850 million ($1.1 billion), according to this year's edition of the Sunday Times rich list. During a recent lecture at Oxford University, Marshall said he became a press baron "in an almost unplanned way". "I was a frustrated consumer," he said, denouncing what he called a "biased mainstream media" where "truth was sacrificed and trust was lost". During his media journey, he says he has "discovered a set of illiberal practices and a dominating mindset which I believe need to be challenged." 'Generating influence' Born in Ealing, London, in August 1959, the public-school-educated Marshall studied history at Oxford before enrolling at the prestigious French business school INSEAD. He made his wealth as a successful hedge fund manager, co-founding Marshall Wace. Along the way, he was a donor and member of the Liberal Democrats, a pro-European, social democratic party that usually finishes third in UK general elections. But Marshall left the Lib Dems in 2015 and donated to the Leave campaign in the referendum on European Union membership the following year. He told the Financial Times in 2017: "Most people in Britain do not want to become part of a very large country called Europe. They want to be part of a country called Britain." "He's different from Murdoch, who used his media empire to make money," Matt Walsh, head of the journalism school at Cardiff University, told AFP. "Marshall was rich before acquiring his media," Walsh added, noting his outlets are currently loss-making. "It's about generating influence, presenting his view of the world." Marshall "was a right-wing Lib Dem but gradually shifted further to the right", he said. Marshall donated once to the Conservative Party and founded UnHerd in July 2017, a website "for people who dare to think for themselves". In 2021, the financier shook up Britain's TV news ecosystem when he helped found GB News, the country's first new news channel since Murdoch's Sky News launched in 1989. The channel, whose logo adopts the colours of the British flag, is proudly anti-woke, and its presenters regularly rail against immigration and net zero climate policies. GB News has on several occasions fallen foul of Britain's broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which says its use of politicians as interviewers breaches impartiality rules. But the provocative channel is growing in popularity. TV rating agency Barb found that in November 2024 GB News overtook Sky News for monthly live viewings for the first time. 'Under-represented views' According to Barb, GB News enjoyed an average of more than 3.1 million monthly viewings in the year to April. Its accounts published in February show that despite doubling turnover to more than £15.7 million, GB News made a pre-tax loss of £33.4 million for the year ending May 31, 2024. "He is keen about the promotion of what he sees as underrepresented ideas and viewpoints," a source close to Marshall told AFP. The mogul largely shuns publicity, as his communications team reminded AFP, declining a request for an interview. Marshall is a committed Christian who was knighted in 2016 for services to education and philanthropy. He launched ARK School in 2002, which has helped nearly 30,000 students from modest backgrounds. Marshall has also donated more than £80 million to the London School of Economics. His wife is French and their son Winston played the banjo in Mumford & Sons before leaving the folk-rock band after reportedly falling out with bandmates over his conservative views. In 2022, Marshall co-founded the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, an international conference of conservative lawmakers and right-wing influencers. To the Hope Not Hate organisation, Marshall is far right. Last year, it uncovered an anonymous account on X in which he had liked tweets calling for the mass deportation of immigrants. A spokesman for Marshall said then the tweets did not "represent his opinions". © 2025 AFP
