“Get Lit” Livestream, 4:30 ET: The Book that Predicted Wokism? On Fyodor Dostoyevsky's “Demons.”
Brad and Matt take on Dostoyevsky's masterpiece about fanaticism and murder in prerevolutionary Russia
Today is a big day at Racket, for Brad Pearce and are starting our Get Lit dive into Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons, a book suppressed by the Soviets for much of the 20th century that’s never been more relevant to the West, especially after last week’s big victory by the DSA in the New York primary. Anyone puzzled by the iron humorlessness and defiant impracticality of characters like Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani, and Darializa Chevalier, to say nothing of the gushing welcome they’ve received by aging Boomers with glue-factory reservations on MSNOW, need only read this book.
Sometimes translated as The Devils or The Possessed, Demons to American readers will present as a predictive epic about wokism, told through a blistering satire of political activism that starts off as comedy and ends in the place no one described better than this author — hell. There’s more to say about this book, but first, here’s where you can find Brad and me this afternoon at 4:30 ET:
You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler.
Now for a brief cheat sheet on Demons, which is based on a real murder conspiracy but starts with an observation about family:
