Once an idea has been pipiked, can it ever be serious again? This, in some sense, is the trouble with all the monstrous clowns that have reshaped modern politics in recent years: Trump in the United States, Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. And then there is Putin casting himself as a global truth-teller about the crimes of Western colonialism and an upholder of the anti-imperialist, anti-fascist traditions—Putin as Pipik. These figures spread pipikism everywhere they go. And it doesn’t just farcicalize what they say; it farcicalizes what many of us are
...more
