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Sohrab Ahmari

@sohrabahmari.bsky.social

2.7K followers 100 following 420 posts

US Editor, UnHerd. Writing my next book, on the triumph for normal, for HarperCollins.

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Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 5d

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier.

@hananiarichard.bsky.social for @unherd.com unherd.com/2025/10/the-...

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 2d

And again, we can partly trace the rise of the cray-cray media to the massive failures of the "responsible" outlets: from Iraq to the migrant crisis to, especially, the events of 2020.

I've done that. But it loses explanatory power as time wears on. And it doesn't address the crisis now.

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 2d

The online Right’s crank-information ecosystem has no equivalent elsewhere on the political spectrum.

You might fiercely disagree with Jeff Goldberg or the Times or whatever, but they aren’t producing brain-melting poison.

The alarm has to be sounded.

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 2d

The populist Right is in power and still there is no stopping the online Right's slide into irrationality: 9/11 troof, NASA occult, Jooooooos behind everything.

What gives?

I explore in an essay for @postopinions.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Trump is in power. Somehow, the wackos aren’t satisfied.

Even a populist presidency can’t stop the online right’s slide into irrationality.

www.washingtonpost.com

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 2d

“People convinced that an amorphous they controls events are unlikely to take political responsibility for the shape of our common life — and far more likely to fall in thrall to demagogues and dictators.”

@sohrabahmari.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Trump is in power. Somehow, the wackos aren’t satisfied.

Even a populist presidency can’t stop the online right’s slide into irrationality.

www.washingtonpost.com

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Washington Post Opinions @postopinions.bsky.social · 3d

"Yesteryear’s partisanship and occasional salaciousness aren’t the same as today’s systematically conspiratorial worldviews," @sohrabahmari.bsky.social writes. https://wapo.st/3IRQPRS

Opinion | Somehow, right-wing fabulist crackpottery is worse than ever

Trump’s populism is in power, but that is far from satisfying the loonier conservative precincts.

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 5d

What distinguishes the Right’s influencers at the most basic level isn’t policy outside the aforementioned exceptions of immigration and vaccines — when was the last time you heard Candace Owens’s position on the size of government? —but a general conspiratorial outlook.

unherd.com/2025/10/the-...

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 5d

What distinguishes the Right’s influencers at the most basic level isn’t policy outside the aforementioned exceptions of immigration and vaccines — when was the last time you heard Candace Owens’s position on the size of government? —but a general conspiratorial outlook.

unherd.com/2025/10/the-...

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

"Americans who came of age in the post-9/11 era will recognize a replay of l’affaire Dixie Chicks."

Brilliant point from Dylan Partner on Bad Bunny vs. MAGA.

Read the whole thing!

unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 5d

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier.

@hananiarichard.bsky.social for @unherd.com unherd.com/2025/10/the-...

The post-Trump GOP will be even crazier

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

"The second Trump administration is seemingly going out of its way to alienate many of the young people, especially young men, who rallied to it in backlash to the censoriousness of the Left."

unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

For the past decade, the Left dourly policed US cultural life.

But MAGA is increasingly asserting cultural control in a way that recalls the post-9/11 GOP, giving the Left an opening to reclaim its sweet spot: that of the dissidents and underdogs.

Dylan Partner writes: unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

"The second Trump administration is seemingly going out of its way to alienate many of the young people, especially young men, who rallied to it in backlash to the censoriousness of the Left."

unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

Depends on if it took place in public spaces or not. If public (taxpayer-funded libraries and so on), no I wouldn't defend it. If private, I'd ignore it.

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

Still abominable, but seems to have been a liberal wine-mom fad, very much of its moment circa 2019.

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

For the past decade, the Left dourly policed US cultural life.

But MAGA is increasingly asserting cultural control in a way that recalls the post-9/11 GOP, giving the Left an opening to reclaim its sweet spot: that of the dissidents and underdogs.

Dylan Partner writes: unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

"Americans who came of age in the post-9/11 era will recognize a replay of l’affaire Dixie Chicks."

Brilliant point from Dylan Partner on Bad Bunny vs. MAGA.

Read the whole thing!

unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 8d

In 2020, The Atlantic retracted a story on corruption in elite college admissions, by writer Ruth Shalit, and brutally attacked her reputation.

Now the mag has settled with her for $1 million.

She tells her side of the story for the first time to UnHerd unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Ruth Shalit Barrett beat The Atlantic

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 6d

For the past decade, progressives dourly managed the culture while the Right were the rebels and underdogs.

Now MAGA is asserting cultural control; progressives, meanwhile, find themselves in their sweet spot: that of the underdog.

unherd.com/2025/10/maga...

MAGA’s ‘Bad Bunny’ fumble

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 8d

In 2020, The Atlantic retracted a story on corruption in elite college admissions, by writer Ruth Shalit, and brutally attacked her reputation.

Now the mag has settled with her for $1 million.

She tells her side of the story for the first time to UnHerd unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Ruth Shalit Barrett beat The Atlantic

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 10d

Sorry, but Pope Leo's blessing of the ice block was a perfectly orthodox gesture, inspired by the same social concern that animated his predecessors.

My @unherd.com column.

unherd.com/newsroom/why...

Why are Catholics melting down over the Pope blessing ice?

Barely six months into his reign, Pope Leo XIV is already facing backlash. The attacks are coming from mad trads and conservative Catholics who seem to measure their faith by the rage they can muster ...

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 10d

A British academic has had her book canceled for insisting on the bodily nature of sex---just as Simone de Beauvoir, her intellectual icon, did.

unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Simone de Beauvoir got me cancelled

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 10d

Susan Pickard was under contract to write a book on Simone de Beauvoir.

Then her publisher dropped the book because peer reviewers either ignored it or called it anti-trans.

Her real crime: insisting on bodily sex, foundational for Beauvoir.

unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Simone de Beauvoir got me cancelled

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 10d

File under: progressive cancel culture --- Leftists canceling their own --- is far from dead. unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Simone de Beauvoir got me cancelled

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 10d

File under: progressive cancel culture --- Leftists canceling their own --- is far from dead. unherd.com/2025/10/how-...

How Simone de Beauvoir got me cancelled

Reposted by Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari @sohrabahmari.bsky.social · 11d

Is today's explosion of crank Right-wing "news" a return to 19th-century form, when newspapers were intensely partisan and not bothered much by standards of fairness and factual probity?

It's tempting to think so. But NO. unherd.com/2025/10/save...

Save us from the crank Right