Compact
Articles about Compact
How the Omni-Cause Swallowed Amnesty International
In July, Amnesty International UK published a report called “A Growing Threat: The Anti-Rights Movement in the UK.” Written by Chiara Capraro, Amnesty’s gender justice director, the document prompted complaints from the organizations it had labelled “anti-rights,” among them feminist, lesbian, and gay groups (including the Lesbian Project, which I co-founded with Kathleen Stock) as well as a number of other bona fide human rights organizations. The report’s principal charge was “transphobia.”
The Great Feminization Comes to Cornell
New York Governor Kathy Hochul emphasized her gender when asked on October 3 about her appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a possible rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University in 2024. Hochul is the first woman to serve as New York’s governor. Letitia James, the woman she appointed as special prosecutor, is the state’s first female attorney general. Seeing these two women take on the Cornell case has a special symbolism, Hochul explained. “I’ve heard from a lot of people,” she said.
There Is No ‘Nordic Model’
Nordic cultural capital is at an all-time high. But the “Nordic” export is more of a vibe than a specific flavor profile or iconography.
How ‘Woke 1’ Radicalized the GOP
On May 30, 2020, five days after the death of George Floyd, the head of a prominent DC-area think tank issued a stentorian condemnation of the killing and the bigotry she said had enabled it. Echoing The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which sought to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery…at the very center of our national narrative,” Kay C. James described racism as a “fatal wound” that had permanently bloodied the American project.
The Bleak Truth Behind France’s Riots
Hegel said that a tragic situation is one in which both sides are right. The violence that has recently broken out at French high schools comfortably fits this definition. On the one hand, a movement supported by leftists—notably Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party, La France insoumise (Unbowed France) or LFI—is protesting against inadequate resources and the dire state of many lycées (high schools).
How Anti-Corruption Politics Destroyed Brazil
Brazil’s upcoming election pits President Lula da Silva, eighty, against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, forty-five. If he wins, Lula will serve a record fourth (non-consecutive) term.
We Must Become Gods
When I was a kid, there were long periods when we didn’t have television. Bored senseless, I read all the books on my shelf.
The Jury Trial Is Under Attack
After a Massachusetts judge announced a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy case on September 4, it didn’t take long for the media to turn its focus from the trial to the jurors. We learned that the jury was hung by a single holdout juror who wanted to convict Clancy. We also soon discovered that the jury deliberations had been heated.
What Democratic Socialists Want
The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World By Mike Beggs, Ben Burgis, and Bhaskar Sunkara Verso, 432 pages, $29.95The surprising electoral success of avowedly socialist candidates in big-city mayoral campaigns and some congressional races has raised the profile of the Democratic Socialists of America, forcing people to ponder what the term “democratic socialism” actually means.
The Man Reviving Left Antisemitism
LFI: Anatomie d’une perversion Edited by Pierre-André Taguieff David Reinharc, 424 pages, $26We live in an age of inversions. With class inversion, college-educated professionals have moved inexorably leftwards, while once left-leaning blue-collar workers have veered to the right. A few years ago, there was also talk of a demographic inversion, as affluent populations that used to be drawn to the suburbs moved back to cities. However, few inversions have been as striking as the shifting political valences of antisemitism.
Why I Call It ‘Assisted Suicide’
One sunny day in June, I opened up my university email, which I only do occasionally now that I am retired, to see an email marked “confidential” in my inbox.
The Grand New Films About Charles de Gaulle
The future world statesman, in full military uniform, leaps athletically on to the table. Then he reaches up into the ceiling lamp of his hotel room and pulls out a concealed microphone. It has been placed there by his American allies, or perhaps by the perfidious British. Or possibly by both at once. There are a lot of wires. If there is one brief scene which encapsulates the two vast new films about Charles de Gaulle, I think this is it. They recount the astonishing melodrama of the rebirth of France after humiliation and defeat.
How ‘Boys Love’ Conquered Asia
In the last week of July, two incidents involving disruptive Chinese fans of a genre of Asian media triggered something close to a crisis in international relations. Security personnel had forcibly removed a Chinese woman from an event in Bangkok. Patrons of this type of event, known as a “fan
The Truth About Indian Americans
On September 13, Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad Commissioner, wrote on X, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” referring to a photograph that showed a few dozen Indian American students celebrating the University of Texas’s football win over Ohio State. This resulted in a massive online debate, pitting Indian Americans and their defenders against the group’s critics.
How Effective Altruism Took Over the World
The resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who warns that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” has prompted a new wave of attention to existential risk from AI, while drawing scrutiny to what the people working at frontier AI companies really believe about the technology they are developing. Many of those who continue to work at Anthropic and OpenAI share Coxon’s fears.
The Death of the Professional-Managerial Class
In the wake of Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024, one heard often that Democrats needed to focus on class rather than identity. But what exactly does it mean to focus on class?
How Britain Defeated ‘Assisted Dying’
Every developed country faces a deeply uncomfortable problem: People are getting older. This means a fiscal crisis sometime in the coming decades, because it results in more dependents on the welfare state and fewer taxpayers. Equally, it means a cultural crisis, because the habits of mutual dependence and reverence for age are being eaten away by the culture of Now. Simply put, we don’t know what to do with the dependent and unproductive people in our midst.
Don’t Blame Phones for Teen Sadness
Young people are unhappy, and many observers think they know what is to blame: technology. The most influential argument in this direction comes from the psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In his 2024 book The Anxious Generation, Haidt argued that giving young people smartphones in the early 2010s “rewired” childhood, which led to large upticks in anxiety, depression, and related ailments.
Germany’s China Shock Will Push Voters Right
The German political establishment’s so-called firewall against the far right is crumbling. This month, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) secured 44 percent of the vote in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt.
Behind MAGA’s Anti-Colonial Turn
Not long after he arrived in Ireland over the weekend, President Donald Trump declared that it would be “fantastic” and a “cool thing” if the island were to be politically unified, offering an unexpected boost to the Irish republican cause. This came just a few weeks after the administration announced it was “reviewing” its position on the British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, long claimed by Argentina.