Ed West

Much of the fiercest opposition to the Trump regime has come from large corporations. The most recent example is Airbnb, whose Superbowl advert showed a group of people alongside a message saying: 'We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love or who you worship, we all belong'. It was a clear attack on the president's nationalist policies. We use Airbnb quite a bit, both as hosts and guests, and it is a fantastic business. On top of the extra cash it allows people to earn, it does bring some solid social benefits, perhaps the biggest of which is that, because of online reputations, it encourages people to behave in a very civil and considerate way. It also encourages trade, exchange and interaction with people from different parts of the world.

I didn't go on the women's march last weekend, and it's not the kind of thing I'd go to. However, Trump's previous form with regards the female sex is a reasonable cause for at least registering a protest. This is not to deny there are things I wish would be protested more, such as Rotherham, but I accept that's basically whataboutery and no reason to ignore Trump's behaviour. But you'd think, looking at an event like this, that there was a sort of culture war in which women were set in conflict with the patriarchy, represented by the three-times married president. Lots of women were marching for the right to have abortions, for instance, and this came as the new president reversed Obama's policy on funding overseas abortion (as all Republican presidents do).

Among the words and phrases I'd be quite happy to never hear of again in 2017 is 'Alt-Right', up there with 'remoaner' and 'liberal elite'. It's partly the extraordinary amount of media attention given to an absolutely tiny fringe of a fringe of a fringe; partly that it's one of those phrases that can mean whatever the user wants it to mean, from paleoconservatism with memes, to neo-Nazism; but also that there are plenty of American conservative intellectuals making logically coherent and often very original critiques of multiculturalism, race and democracy which an open-minded progressive might read - instead the media are interested in Richard Spencer because he holds rallies where his supporters make Nazi salutes.

A dead white man called Adolf Hitler has sold nearly 100,000 copies of his memoir, Mein Kampf, since a new edition was published last year in Germany. The book wasn't officially banned in the country, but the copyright was owned by the state of Bavaria which prevented new editions being made. I have to admit to never having read Mein Kampf, largely because I'm quite small-minded and if everyone says a book is terrible I can't be bothered to try it.  Hitler wasn't much of a thinker; even his many detractors would admit he was more of a doer. So what explains the renewed success of his book in Germany? Is this publishing sensation linked to the rise of a new Fascism in Europe? No.

Is democracy in danger? This is the belief of a Harvard lecturer called Yascha Mounk whose thesis was profiled in an interesting New York Times piece this week. Mounk began studying the subject after writing a memoir about growing up Jewish in Germany which 'became a broader investigation of how contemporary European nations were struggling to construct new, multicultural national identities'. As the article points out: He concluded that the effort was not going very well. A populist backlash was rising. But was that just a new kind of politics, or a symptom of something deeper? To answer that question, Mr. Mounk teamed up with Roberto Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Many people have remarked that the image of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage posing by the former's golden elevator doors epitomises the hypocrisy over populists attacking the 'elites'. Likewise the Guildhall dinner in which Theresa May told an audience dressed in dinner jackets about globalisation and its discontents. These are the 'anti-elitists' who now stand up for the people, they sneer. This is to confuse money with status. As any nouveau riche parvenu has learned, wealth and status are not the same thing, something which has been the subject of some of the most famous novels in the English language. Membership of the 'elite', and many will argue about the definition, is not just about income but a number of markers; chief among these is belief.

Dear Democrat voters, You are probably the most influential and powerful segment of the human race today. In terms of cultural reach, you are supreme; politically you are masters of the universe; you have the ability to shape our world for good or evil, and for most of the past century you and your forebears have done a pretty good job of it. I'm addressing this to Democrats in particular because in the US, as in Britain, liberalism is the prestige faith; the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in American academia is now five to one, and up to forty to one in some social sciences. Eight of the ten richest zip codes voted Obama in 2012; at Harvard College, 96 per cent of political donations go to the Democratic Party.