Terrorism chic

Tom Wolfe, the celebrated author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, famously skewered New York’s cultural elite in his 1970 essay “Radical Chic.” He brilliantly satirized a high-society dinner party where wealthy Manhattanites, dressed in their finest, toasted their own virtue while feigning solidarity with the Black Panthers. The posturing that Wolfe’s original critique targeted has since devolved into something far more chilling: a modern cynical flirtation with violence and extremism, best described as terrorism chic. Mind you, our cultural elite don’t do the actual terrorism. They leave the dirty work to their more fervent devotees,...