HOW TO SURVIVE THE CULTURE WARS
Whether we like it or not, we are all combatants in a raging culture war. From following Covid guidelines and Brexit beliefs to the podcasts we listen to and jokes we find funny, the battle for influence over what we think and feel has become weaponised by an increasingly divided and polarised society.
Online, it can seem that everyone is either a snowflake or anti-vaxxer, with little heard from anyone whose views aren’t one extreme or the other. So how did we get here?
For the last couple of decades, Jon Ronson has been the foremost chronicler of the counterculture, tracking the voices that have shifted from the fringes to the driving seat. Extremists are steering political and popular debate, pulling the strings that have hamstrung us in so many ways.
Exhibit A: Donald Trump.
“Trump was a Rorschach test,” Jon Ronson says from New York, where he’s now based. “Half the country found themselves agreeing with him and the other half of the
