In the exhibit from our latest issue, Michael Oswell illustrates culture’s devolution into slop:

Trump officials have used Charlie Kirk’s murder as an excuse for doubling down on their own brand of McCarthyism. What is behind this grisly, carnivalesque display of self-entitlement and grievance?

This year might have been dreadful—but The Baffler published some pretty good work, if we do say so ourselves. Here are some highlights:

From the Archives: A.S. Hamrah on Thomas Kinkade, his branded merchandise, and the American Dream on the installment plan.

“With enough conspiratorial flair, just about anyone can be a fire-breathing radical.”

Before the ADA, 80% of deaf students went to specialized residential schools. Afterwards, many got mainstreamed into public schools and given access to accommodations and ASL interpretation. But this could be socially—and linguistically—isolating.

“I was seven or eight when I last felt the Christmas cheer, when my grandmother came to visit, by train, from this very town. She had brought along some presents. Santa had nothing on Grandma. That asshole never gave me anything in person.”

As Michael Oswell’s exhibit from our most recent issue demonstrates, the AI slurry we’re being force-fed was derived from the advertising nonsense that came before it.

“‘The Christmas Cottage’ is a meta-movie like ‘Synecdoche, New York’—its alternate title could be ‘Being Thomas Kinkade’—but it’s a meta-movie for God-fearing grandparents.”

“On Christmas Eve she announced that she was about to give birth, but that her guardian angel had told her she must do this completely alone to increase her suffering. She was locked in a little house; the whole convent prayed.”

It’s Christmas Eve. Join us as we revisit A. S. Hamrah’s heartwarming classic essay on the financial crisis and the direct-to-DVD Thomas Kinkade biopic, “The Christmas Cottage.”

In the months since Charlie Kirk’s assasination, the pro-Trump right has accelerated its scorched earth war on the left. @hannahgais.bsky.social writes on the dangerous ambiguities of NSPM-7 and recent executive orders.

In our most recent issue, @quailty.bsky.social considers contemporary deaf art and writing—particularly Rachel Kolb’s “Articulate” and Sara Nović’s “True Biz”—which navigates the many contradictions of deaf life in America.

A year of The Baffler makes the perfect last-minute gift. Share The Baffler with your friend or relation—now for 20% off, when you use promo code YB25H2.

From podcasters to passport bros, from eco-saboteurs to bodybuilders, we turned our discerning eye on a broad spectrum of human endeavor in 2025. Check out a round-up of some of our favorite work.

On orality, education, and the d/Deaf binary:

“When Oscar Wilde wrote that ‘a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it,’ he didn’t know that someday an American painter would find a way to make sentimentalists pay for it in monthly installments.”

Cochlear implants are divisive within deaf culture. For the protagonist of Sara Nović’s “True Biz,” they are both curse and catalyst. But Rachel Kolb’s memoir maintains a more ambivalent relationship to what the technology can offer.

In their tidy new hermitage, Harmony and Rapture seek to build a small, gentle life. But nature hasn’t forgotten them, and they must either unseal the poison and pollute the natural order or consent to sharing their apartment with the rats.

A subscription to The Baffler is the gift that keeps on giving.

“For civil society advocates, the broad strokes that NSPM-7 uses to describe its targets and its obvious disconnect from any clear-eyed analysis of political violence contribute to the threat it poses”

’Tis the season to pour yourself a glass of spiked nog and revisit A.S. Hamrah’s 2010 essay on Thomas Kinkade, “The Painter of Light,” and his saccharine direct-to-DVD biopic, “The Christmas Cottage.”

From labor organizing to eco-saboteurs to professional wrestlers—here’s a helpful (but by no means comprehensive) compendium of some of the sharpest criticism, reporting, and fiction we published over the course of this extremely stupid year.

Under NSPM-7, “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” are all now cause for suspicion—and possible prosecution. Yet the memo has received vanishingly little press coverage.

Despite what you may hear, antifa supersoldiers are not running Portland. (Unfortunately.) For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about Trump's war on the left, NSPM-7, and his administration's new attempts to mobilize the ressentiment of its supporters. thebaffler.com/latest/phant...

“The garden is doing its job, providing a beautiful backdrop that ennobles everyone who enters: the birds that fly in from the top down, the humans in the middle with their feet on the dirt and their minds in the air, and the vermin crawling on the ground.”

Mob nostalgia is a big industry for Chicago, where Al Capone and Mooney Giancana operated their empire of lucrative assasination and labor influence. The reality under the tommy guns and fedoras is still very much a family affair.

According to right-wing speechifiers, antifa supersoldiers are trying to destroy America and everything you hold dear. Sometimes, they do it while dressed as Cookie Monster. @hannahgais.bsky.social writes on NSPM-7 and the Trump administration’s war on the left.

Did you know The Baffler offers gift subscriptions? Share our magazine with your most intelligent friend this holiday season—for 20% off, with promo code YB25H2.

“True power elites—the national politicians, the financiers of capitalism, and the ivory-tower intelligentsia—sanctioned the Outfit’s rise: kingpins were incredibly useful for disciplining the radical potential of organized labor.”

The country is seething and the world outside is a violent one. New fiction from Ari Braverman wonders about the moral cost of keeping such forces at bay while maintaining a gentle soul.

Watching “Plainclothes,” you might get the idea that cruising crackdowns verging on entrapment are a thing of the past. But that’s not true—as Eric Dean Wilson points out, the sting operation is alive and well.

There is something suffering in the garden, and it might have every right to be there.

Mobster adulation reveals an American appetite for a kind of old world moralism, where a hustler could get rich and aid would be doled out to those who deserved it.

From the Archives: James Pogue decries the degradation of longform nonfiction writing, which all too often gets commissioned, written, and edited as “intellectual property” ripe for adaptation.

Avoid the hassle and expense of rush shipping. Get your loved one a gift subscription to The Baffler instead.

“The androgynous Child is the color of milk and corn and roses. His fat bare feet rest upon a starry cloud. His little hands reach into the air in a gesture that encompasses the universe.”

“We are now in the mature stage of a book-to-film boom that is quietly transforming how Americans read and tell stories—and not for the better.”

Your loved one is worth more than a trifle or a trinket, so this holiday season get them something they’ll really appreciate—a year of The Baffler. Purchase a gift subscription for just $40.

Growing up in Chicago where the mob once held sway, Caleb Brennan heard legends of clandestine murders. Returning to the stories of Mooney Giancana and Big Tuna Accardo, he explains why the mafia is more than a memory: it is a political reality.

From Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks” to William Friedkin’s “Cruising” to Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats,” there’s no shortage of movies about cruising. Eric Dean Wilson writes on this year’s “Plainclothes,” which misses the mark.

In new fiction by Ari Braverman, a young couple moves into a garden apartment, only to discover they are not alone: a colony of rats live there, too. The lovers seek a humane solution. Perhaps the Divine Child can help.

“The illusion of a hustler’s meritocracy made the American Dream seem attainable, even to those without blue blood.”

It’s easy to see why Ms. Rachel’s YouTube videos blew up during the early days of the pandemic. They offered reprieve to parents cooped up with kids all day, and allegedly had educational benefits.

Fans of Wong Kar-wai’s oeuvre might find “Blossoms Shanghai,” with all its shimmering materialism and capitalist ambitions, to be shocking or disappointing. But these are the forces that built and shaped modern China—and the director knows his subject.

Still seeking the perfect gift for that impossible-to-buy-for person in your life? We know just the thing. Get ’em a year of The Baffler for 20% off when you use promo code YB25H2.

From the Archives: James Pogue writes on when journalism becomes little more than IP for the streaming giants.

“Respectability is the enemy of progressive queer politics because it rarely seeks justice for behavior perceived as criminal.”

Poetry from Baffler no. 81: “Glass Octopus” by Matthew Zapruder

The Chicago Outfit once controlled everything from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Coast through intimidation, bribery, and murder. These days, writes Caleb Brennan, the mob is both nowhere and everywhere.