NOVEMBER 2024

THE
GREAT

BOOK
BURNING By
Ta-Nehisi
Coates

THE
AMATEUR

ARTAND
SLEUTH
THE
MISSING
MASTERPIECE

STEVE
BANNON’S

BLUEPRINT
FOR WAR

{ 1 of 3
}

Bewitched!
Covers

W I C K E D S TA R S Cynthia Erivo AND Ariana Grande

ON LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND CASTING THEIR SPELL

By CHRIS MURPHY Ph ot og r a ph s b y NORMAN JEAN ROY

 NOVEMBER 2024

THE
GREAT

BOOK
BURNING By
Ta-Nehisi
Coates

THE
AMATEUR

ARTAND
SLEUTH
THE
MISSING
MASTERPIECE

STEVE
BANNON’S

BLUEPRINT
FOR WAR

{ 1 of 3
}

Bewitched!
Covers

W I C K E D S TA R S Cynthia Erivo AND Ariana Grande

ON LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND CASTING THEIR SPELL

By CHRIS MURPHY Ph ot og r a ph s b y NORMAN JEAN ROY

 NOVEMBER 2024

THE
GREAT

BOOK
BURNING By
Ta-Nehisi
Coates

THE
AMATEUR

ARTAND
SLEUTH
THE
MISSING
MASTERPIECE

STEVE
BANNON’S

BLUEPRINT
FOR WAR

{ 1 of 3
}

Bewitched!
Covers

W I C K E D S TA R S Ariana Grande AND Cynthia Erivo

ON LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND CASTING THEIR SPELL

By CHRIS MURPHY Ph ot og r a ph s b y NORMAN JEAN ROY

 MISSION ON EARTH LAVA

Only available in selected Swatch Stores

Contents The November Issue / No. 763

42

Vanities Columns

32 / Trending Sensuous 38 / Anatomy of a Scene

T O P B Y DAV I D KO M A ; E A R R I N G S B Y C A R T I E R ; C U F F S B Y S WA R O V S K I . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
27
27 / Opening Act Mikey
looks inspired by
Tracey Emin.
Jesse Eisenberg on directing
Kieran Culkin. 40
The Kamala Bump
Madison is on the brink of 34 / Books Truth and 39 / Dining Armani/ From internet memes to the
megastardom. metaphor with Jenny Slate. Ristorante takes Madison debate stage, the Democratic
Avenue. nominee is stoking ratings—
30 / My Stuff The art of 36 / The Gallery A teensy and emotions—even
living, with Martha Stewart. take on a classic watch. more expertly than the
former reality star in chief.
By Brian Stelter
22 Editor’s Letter 24 Contributors 110 Proust Questionnaire

From left: Ariana Grande’s clothing and bow by Chanel Haute Couture; tights by Wolford; earrings
On the Covers by Swarovski. Cynthia Erivo’s dress and hat by Louis Vuitton; boots by Marc Jacobs; head wrap by
Heather Huey; earring (as septum ring) by Maria Tash; necklace by Bulgari High Jewelry; ring
by KerenWolf x Retrofete. Erivo’s clothing, hat, belt, and cuffs by Louis Vuitton; boots by Marc Jacobs;
hood by Paumé Los Angeles; earring (as septum ring) by Maria Tash. Grande’s dress and shoes
by Marc Jacobs; tights by Wolford; jewelry by Swarovski. Throughout: Makeup products by Clinique
(Erivo) and R.E.M. Beauty (Grande). Manicure products by Glam 2 the Max Nails! (Erivo). Hair by
Alyx Liu (Grande). Makeup by Michael Anthony (Grande) and Joanna Simkin (Erivo). Manicures
by Coralia Fuentes (Grande) and Rose Hackle (Erivo). Tailors, Hasmik Kourinian and Mari Margarian.
Set design by Viki Rutsch. Produced on location by Portfolio One. Styled by Patti Wilson. Photographed
exclusively for VF by Norman Jean Roy in LA. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

10 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY N O R M A N JEAN ROY NOVEMBER 2024

WHEN I MOVE YOU MOVE
JULIANNE MOORE
TYRESE HALIBURTON
Contents The November Issue / No. 763

42

Features

42 62 70 76
J A C K E T B Y T H O M B R O W N E C O U T U R E ; P E N D A N T ( A S E A R R I N G , L E F T E A R ) B Y L’ E N C H A N T E U R ; E A R R I N G S ( O T H E R S A N D A S
S E P T U M R I N G ) B Y M A R I A TA S H ; E A R C U F F ( R I G H T E A R ) B Y R AW F LO W J E W E L R Y. F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
Friends in High The Lost Cause La Belle Époque Empire State
Places When a school board erupted VF and Haim mark 10 years of Mind
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana over efforts to ban one of the of Nicolas Ghesquière’s Inside Steve Bannon’s
Grande soar as the witches celebrated writer’s books, he designs at Louis Vuitton alarming plans for igniting
of Wicked—and the magic decided to visit the front lines with a rare look into the disruption in America
continues off-screen. of the censorship debate. label’s top-secret archives. and beyond.
By Chris Murphy By Ta-Nehisi Coates By Keziah Weir By James Pogue
Photographs by Illustrations by Photographs by Illustration by
Norman Jean Roy Yannick Lowery Norman Jean Roy Edward Kinsella III

“A fight that began

82
In Plain Sight
90
The Vicious Circle
in the streets has now moved
to the library, a counterrevolution
How an amateur art sleuth In an ugly twist, the prison
cracked a decades-old system has become a
in defense of brutal
cold case to track down a recruitment center and policing has now transformed
missing masterpiece. training ground for would- itself into a war
By Adam Leith Gollner be fascists and members
Photographs by of an American reich.
over scholarship and art.”
Diana Markosian By Ali Winston —TA-NEHISI COATES [P. 62]

16 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY N O R M A N JEAN ROY NOVEMBER 2024

 ®

Editor in Chief Radhika Jones

Deputy Editor Daniel Kile Executive Digital Director Michael Hogan

Director of Editorial Operations Kelly Butler Executive Editor, Features & Development Claire Howorth
Executive Editor Matthew Lynch Executive Hollywood Editor Jeff Giles Editor, The Hive Michael Calderone
Director of Special Projects Sara Marks Global Head of Talent Alison Ward Frank Editor, Creative Development David Friend
Senior Hollywood Editor Hillary Busis Senior Vanities Editor Maggie Coughlan Senior Hive Editor Meena Ganesan
Senior Editor Keziah Weir Global Entertainment Director Caitlin Brody West Coast Director, Editorial Projects John Ross
Editorial Operations Manager Jaime Archer Associate Hive Editor Jon Skolnik Politics Correspondent Bess Levin
Senior Hollywood Correspondent Anthony Breznican Senior Awards Correspondent Rebecca Ford
Hollywood Correspondents David Canfield, Julie Miller Culture Correspondent Nate Freeman Chief Critic Richard Lawson
TV Correspondent Joy Press Staff Writers Dan Adler, Chris Murphy, Erin Vanderhoof, Savannah Walsh
Special Correspondents Nick Bilton, Bryan Burrough, Katherine Eban, Joe Hagan, Molly Jong-Fast, Maureen Orth, Mark Seal,
Gabriel Sherman, Brian Stelter Writers-at-Large Marie Brenner, James Reginato Associate Web Producers Kathleen Creedon, Fred Sahai
Assistant to the Editor in Chief Daniela Tijerina Editorial Assistants Arimeta Diop, Kayla Holliday Special Projects Manager Ari Bergen
Business Director Geoff Collins Senior Manager of Communications Dhara Parikh

Design & Photography

Senior Design Director Justin Patrick Long Visuals Director Cate Sturgess Art Director Emily Crawford
Senior Visuals Editors Natalie Gialluca, Lauren Margit Jones, Michael Kramer Senior Designer Khoa Tran
Visuals Editor, Photo Research Eric Miles Visuals Editor Allison Schaller
Associate Visuals Editor Madison Reid Designer Pamela Wei Wang

Fashion
Fashion Director Nicole Chapoteau
Accessories Director Daisy Shaw-Ellis Associate Menswear Director Miles Pope
Market Editor Kia D. Goosby Associate Fashion Editor Jessica Neises Assistant Fashion Editor Samantha Gasmer

Content Integrity
Senior Counsel Terence Keegan Production Director J Jamerson Research Director David Gendelman Copy Director Michael Casey
Associate Legal Affairs Editor Simon Brennan Production Managers Beth Meyers, Susan M. Rasco, Roberto Rodríguez
Research Managers Brendan Barr, Kelvin C. Bias, Audrey Fromson, Michael Sacks
Online Director of Copy & Research Rachel Freeman Copy Manager Michael Quiñones
Line Editors Lily Leach, Natasha O’Neill, Leah Tannehill Associate Editor S.P. Nix

Audience Development
Global Director of Audience Development Alyssa Karas Associate Director, Analytics Neelum Khan
Associate Director of Social Media Sarah Morse Associate Social Media Manager Burake Teshome

Video
Senior Director of Programming & Development Ella Ruffel Executive Producer Ruhiya Nuruddin
Director of Creative Development Claire Buss Director of Content Production Lane Williamson
Video Directors Adam Lance Garcia, Jameer Pond, Funmi Sunmonu Senior Manager of Creative Development Hannah Pak
Coordinating Producer Madison Coffey Associate Producer Emebeit Beyene

Vanity Fair Studios

Head of Film & TV Helen Estabrook VPs, Development & Production Sarah Amos, Jodi Hildebrand, Lajoie St. George, Andrew Whitney
Senior Director, Development & Production Lexy Altman Development & Production Managers Sarah Patzer, Samantha Smith
Senior Director, Acquisitions Sarah Lash Acquisitions Coordinator Rafael Peralta
Entertainment Associates Brigid Cromwell, Madison Hallman, Sydney Hemmendinger

Audio
Head of Global Audio Christopher Bannon Executive Producer Steven Valentino

Contributing Photographers
Annie Leibovitz
Jonathan Becker, Nick Riley Bentham, Norman Jean Roy, Collier Schorr, Mark Seliger

Contributing Editors
Kurt Andersen, Lili Anolik, Jorge Arévalo, Buzz Bissinger, Derek Blasberg, Christopher Bollen, Douglas Brinkley, Michael Callahan,
Adam Ciralsky, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sloane Crosley, Janine di Giovanni, Lisa Eisner, Alex French, Paul Goldberger,
Adam Leith Gollner, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Carol Blue Hitchens, A.M. Homes, Uzodinma Iweala, May Jeong, Sebastian Junger,
Sam Kashner, Jemima Khan, Tom Kludt, Hilary Knight, Wayne Lawson, Kiese Makeba Laymon,
Franklin Leonard, Monica Lewinsky, Eric Lutz, Shawn Martinbrough, Ryan McAmis, Bethany McLean, Katie Nicholl,
Maureen O’Connor, Jen Palmieri, Anna Peele, Evgenia Peretz, Maximillian Potter, Robert Risko, Lisa Robinson,
Mark Rozzo, Maureen Ryan, Nancy Jo Sales, Elissa Schappell, Jeff Sharlet, Michael Shnayerson, Chris Smith, Richard Stengel,
Karen Valby, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Saltzman Walker, Basil Walter, Jesmyn Ward, Ned Zeman

20 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
 -PROMOTIONS - Agenda - EVENTS-

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Editor’s Letter

On a flawless summer day in

Los Angeles, I watched two
witches work their magic.
They defied not only gravity but
also a rain machine, as you’ll
see in Norman Jean Roy’s
glorious photographs, styled by
the inimitable Patti Wilson.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande have taken
the backstory of Oz’s characters to heart, and
we cannot wait to see their chemistry on the
screen when Wicked (part one!) comes out in
November. Chris Murphy speaks to each star
solo and captures their dynamic together in his
profile of two women putting their stamp on a
theatrical property beloved for its interpretation
of Gregory Maguire’s excellent 1995 novel,
which itself recasts our notion of The Wizard of we are so proud to publish his dispatch from Chapin, South
Oz, one of the most famous American stories Carolina. This story is a chapter in Ta-Nehisi’s new book,
of all time. High bar, big shoes, but Erivo and The Message, about the power of narrative to shape not only
Grande are up to the task. identity but also reality, to imagine into being things that
In the summer of 2023, I spoke with Ta-Nehisi might not otherwise seem possible. What I’ll never forget,
Coates about a piece he wanted to write out of perhaps because the conversation happened when I was
South Carolina. He’d been following accounts spending time with my father in his final days, is that Ta-Nehisi
of censorship around the US amid the political called me after the hearing in a state of unexpected optimism.
backlash to the racial-justice protests of 2020 It wasn’t merely that he had witnessed people defending
and had encountered a high school teacher who his book and their right to teach and be taught it. It was the
was being forced to remove his book Between spirit of finding allies in the larger project of literature and
the World and Me from her syllabus. Ta-Nehisi the role it plays in human understanding.
wanted to go to the school board meeting,
hear what was said, report it out. After his trip he
emailed to say, “I’ve gone a little deeper than
I thought,” whereupon I made the rookie error
of telling him not to rush it, and now, a year later, radhika jones, Editor in Chief J O N E S : M A R K S E L I G E R . C O V E R S : N O R M A N J E A N R OY.

One cover was simply not

enough to capture the
magic and style of Cynthia
Erivo and Ariana Grande.
True fans, you can find all
three at newsstands.

22 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
 Contributors

Clockwise from top left:

Edward Kinsella III, Patti Wilson,
Chris Murphy, Brian Stelter,
James Pogue, Ali Winston.

Edward KINSELLA III Patti WILSON Chris MURPHY

C O U R T E S Y O F A L I W I N S T O N . P O G U E : C O U R T E S Y O F J A M E S P O G U E . S T E LT E R : C O U R T E S Y O F B R I A N S T E LT E R .
“EMPIRE STATE OF MIND,” P. 76 “FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES,” P. 42 “FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES,” P. 42
“It felt right to have a dark, gritty, and Stylist Wilson, who calls her time Murphy, a VF staff writer and cohost

K I N S E L L A : C A S S I DY PA R K E R S M I T H . W I L S O N : Q U I L L E M O N S . M U R P H Y : D E V B O W M A N . W I N S T O N :
pushed-back feeling,” says the working with Cynthia Erivo and of the Still Watching podcast, first
illustrator, who used dry-brushed ink Ariana Grande “nothing short of saw Wicked on Broadway for his 11th
and liquid charcoal for his portrait of magical,” likes to think of her work as birthday, in 2004. Twenty years
Steve Bannon. Kinsella’s mixed-media ever-evolving. “I am finding a lot later, he still regularly belts out the
work, created in his St. Louis studio, of inspiration right now in emerging musical’s soundtrack at karaoke
has been exhibited worldwide. designers and young people creating (and in the shower).
with no boundaries or limits,” she says.

Ali WINSTON James POGUE Brian STELTER

“THE VICIOUS CIRCLE,” P. 90 “EMPIRE STATE OF MIND,” P. 76 “THE KAMALA BUMP,” P. 40
“Contemporary journalism treats “Environmental issues are inextricably Stelter wanted to capture the frantic,
extremism as episodic—we switch off linked to complex questions about how final months of the presidential
after the sentence is passed and we order the world,” says Pogue, who campaign. “No one knows who will
the prison doors shut—but that’s the profiled Steve Bannon’s renewed efforts win the election, but everyone
environment where such ideologies at insurgency for this issue. Pogue knows that Kamala Harris gives the
are incubated and propagated,” says is working on a new book about global Democrats a fighting chance,”
Winston, who has been investigating power structures and rural California. says the VF special correspondent
neofascism’s global revival since 2017. and CNN chief media analyst.

24 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
VA N I T I E S VA N I TA S VA N I TAT U M

PAGE 28

After Anora,
MIKEY MADISON’s
dance card is going
to get awfully full
H A I R , C A N D I C E B I R N S ; M A K E U P , L I S A S T O R E Y ; M A N I C U R E , A L E X J A C H N O . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P O R T F O L I O O N E . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

PAGE 30 Dress and briefs by

Saint Laurent by
MARTHA Anthony Vaccarello;
shoes by Femme LA;
STEWART’S bra by Fleur du Mal;
FAVORITE THINGS suspender by Agent
Provocateur; stockings
PAGE 36 by Falke; ring by
Van Cleef & Arpels.
A TEENY TINY
CARTIER TANK

PAGE 38

BEHIND THE
SCENES WITH
JESSE EISENBERG

VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPHS BY N I C K RILEY BENTHAM NOVEMBER 2024 27

Vanities / Opening Act

Whole NEW WORLD That’s bound to change when Anora hits theaters October 18.
Madison, who’s 25, has been acting for years: She played Pamela
Adlon’s brash daughter Max on FX’s cult-favorite comedy Better
As a brassy sex worker in Sean Baker’s Things and met a brutal, fiery end in both Quentin Tarantino’s
new film, MIKEY MADISON leaves her comfort Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and 2022’s Scream. But Sean
Baker’s dizzying slice-of-life film introduces Madison as a
zone—backward and in heels, no less major film-anchoring talent. Ani’s tough exterior hides such
guileless sweetness that it’s impossible not to root for her.
In May, Anora won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival Madison met Baker after he saw her play a volatile Manson
largely thanks to Mikey Madison’s breakout performance family follower in Once Upon a Time…. Over coffee, he
as the title character: a sex worker, named Ani, who falls for pitched her a vague idea for his next movie and told her that
the son of a Russian oligarch. But Madison says her life hasn’t if she liked it, he’d write it for her. Madison had never been
been turned upside down just yet. “The biggest change is given a role without an audition before. She dove into the
just getting this puppy,” she says, nodding toward the transformation by learning Russian, perfecting a Brighton
five-month-old Chihuahua rescue curled up in her lap. She Beach accent, going to strip clubs, and devoting herself
adopted Jam in June, and since then she’s largely spent to never-ending dance-training sessions that often left her
her time taking him to puppy-training classes and helping bruised. She twisted her ankle more than once running around
him get along with her cat, Biscuit. in Ani’s sky-high heels and has a scar on her stomach from
a fight scene in which she got knocked into a
table. “I feel very different personally and
physically to her in every way, but I related to
her hopefulness a little bit,” she says. “It felt
like I was constantly exerting so much energy
to get to the places that she was in.”

BAKER LIKES FEATURING nonactors in his films

and encourages improvisation, so Madison
found herself performing side by side with real
exotic dancers. She filmed more than a dozen
lap dance scenes in which she’d chat up men
she had only just met. “I’m not the only one
who is naked,” she says. “I’d look to my right
and my left, and other women are topless, and
we’re all giving each other looks. I was so
comfortable. I could have walked around set
naked—and I am not like that in my real life.”
In real life, the Los Angeles native leads
with softness, which is often at odds with the
city’s vibe. “Someone will honk at me or give
me the finger, and maybe this is bad, but it
makes me cry sometimes,” she says. Her own
personality is nothing like the characters she’s
played, least of all Ani. Still, she couldn’t let
Ani go for a while. “I found myself wanting to
get the acrylic nails again,” Madison says.
“So, for a month or two after, I still had some
pretty long nails.” Now at the start of what’s
likely to be a vertiginous rise, Madison is
Dress by Miu Miu; reading scripts and looking for her next role.
F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

shoes by Femme LA; She’d love another experience as collaborative

bra by Fleur du Mal;
stockings by Falke; as the one with Baker but knows films like
jewelry by Harry Anora are rare. And maybe it’ll be a character
Winston. Throughout: that’s a little closer to home. “It is funny how
hair products by
Oribe; nail enamel by I got into this weird pocket of playing these
Chanel Le Vernis. antagonistic characters,” she says. “I’d love to
Styled by Ronnie Hart.
play a character that’s similar to me one day.”
—rebec ca ford

28 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
See it LIVE.
Remember it FOREVER.

The Original Broadway Blockbuster

WickedtheMusical.com
Vanities / My Stuff

5
Domesticity icon and CBD magnate
MARTHA STEWART elevates the everyday with
Parisian pajamas and her new puppy
 Style File  At Home
DAILY UNIFORM: Suzie THE UNEXPECTED: A
Kondi velour tracksuits. beautifully produced photo
GO-TO SHOE: I have of my resident stag deer in
Skechers shoes everywhere. Maine. BEDDING: The World
I have separate pairs of Martha on Amazon (10).

S T E WA R T : C E L E S T E S LO M A N / T R U N K A R C H I V E . D O G : C O U R T E S Y O F M A R T H A S T E WA R T. G R E E N J U I C E : G E T T Y I M A G E S . A L L O T H E R S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S .
TO PEN A FRIEND: Mrs. John
L. Strong stationery (9).
PETS: I have two chow
chows, Empress Qin and
Emperor Han, and three
French bulldogs, Crème
Brûlée, Bête Noire, and the
FOR BED: newest addition, my
puppy Luna Moona (6).

 The Menu
MORNING CUP: I start
every morning with my
homemade green juice,
WASH DAY RITUAL: I wash which is full of fresh
my hair with Oribe and vitamins and minerals
get a blow-dry three times a from my homegrown
week (4). Ice rinses are vegetables—cucumber,
extremely important after celery, mint, parsley,
conditioning. HAIRBRUSH: ginger—and half an orange
Yves Durif Vented (8). with the skin on (2).
PERFUME: Fracas De Robert POWER SNACK: A half cup
Piguet eau de parfum (5). of Kretschmer Wheat
WORKOUT ROUTINE: In Germ with skim milk.
New York, I do Pilates three HOME-COOKED SPECIALTY:
times a week with Janice I make the best scrambled
Friedman, my personal eggs from my own chickens.
trainer at Bedford Pilates & TO-GO ORDER: I never,
Fitness Studio, and I work ever, ever order takeout.
out with Shawn at Shawn’s
Personal Fitness in Katonah Yes, that’s really her dog and
twice a week. All at 6:30 a.m. her own gummy necklace!

30 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
HAUTE JOAILLERIE
Vanities / Trending

1 2 3 PAINT THE TOWN

1. Khaite cuff, $2,200.
(khaite.com) 2. Olivia
von Halle robe, $990.
(oliviavonhalle.com)
3. D.S. & Durga Tuberose
Myrrhder candle, $70.
(dsanddurga.com)
4. Charlotte Tilbury
Matte Revolution Lipstick
in Pillow Talk, $35.
(charlottetilbury.com/us)
5. Carine Gilson camisole,
$890. (carinegilson.com)
6. Agent Provocateur
bra, $140, and underwear,
$80. (agentprovocateur
.com) 7. Ludovic de
Saint Sernin top, $695.
4 (ludovicdesaintsernin.com)
8. Van Cleef & Arpels
watch, $27,900. (vancleef
arpels.com) 9. Pleasing
Closeness eau de parfum,
6 $75. (pleasing.com)
10. Tom Ford pajama
pants, $690. (tomford
7 fashion.com) 11. Francesca
8 Villa ring, $8,560.
(shopetcjewelry.com)
12. Gianvito Rossi shoes,
$1,150. (gianvitorossi.com)
13. Tracey Emin
Paintings, by Tracey Emin
with a conversation with
David Dawson and an
essay by Jennifer Higgie,
$100. (phaidon.com)
14. Dior gloves, $1,650.

A WOMAN 9
(Dior boutiques)
15. FoundRae bracelet,
$2,420. (foundrae.com)
16. Tory Burch skirt,
Known for her intensely visceral,
often autobiographical works,
10
British artist TRACEY EMIN gets
the Phaidon treatment in a new 11
study of her paintings and practice.
The monograph puts a career
without apology on display

EMIN: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND PUBLISHER. ALL OTHERS: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS.
13

15

16

You Kept It Coming (2019), by Tracey Emin, featured in

the monograph Tracey Emin Paintings (Phaidon).

32 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
 BASED ON THE STORY FROM

TO BE A GOD
ALL YOU NEED
IS A FOLLOWING

N E W DOCU SER IES

OCT 23
Vanities / Books

Six Pack Shoes On tells the story of a

Inspired detective stories, family one-inch-tall shell looking
drama, and more new novels to reunite with his family.
Her debut essay collection,
A CASE OF Little Weirds (2019), ripples
MATRICIDE with wonder for the natural
Blasé chief inspector
Gorski, of Saint-Louis, world and describes love
France, embarks on found and lost.
a bungled relationship
and tangles with
Since then, 42-year-old
a novelist whose mother is afraid Slate has married writer and
he’s going to kill her in this curator Ben Shattuck and
marvelously meta mystery from
Booker-nominated Graeme become a parent, experienc-
Macrae Burnet. (Biblioasis) es she began exploring
in her most recent special,
LOVE CAN’T Seasoned Professional.
FEED YOU
In Cherry Lou Sy’s “Everything is becoming
debut, a man and his richer and wider,” she says
children leave the
Philippines to join his over Zoom from her home
wife in Sunset Park, in Massachusetts. “I have so
Brooklyn; there, teenage Queenie much more ability across
finds herself caught between her
feuding parents and begins to the board not just as a
explore her own desire. (Dutton) performer but as a living,
emotional person.”
EUROTRASH In Lifeform, Slate is
Christian Kracht
released Faserland in busting from the stone.
1995; nearly 30 years Written in five phases,
later this sequel finds
its narrator on a road from single life through
trip with his infirm pregnancy and parenthood,
and barbiturate-popping mother
while attempting to right the
the collection blends
sins of his forefathers. (Liveright) Slate’s trademark magic
with incisive reflections on
EVERY ARC BENDS love, family, and legacy,
ITS RADIAN
A “poet/philosopher/
private eye” searches Word PLAY all coming together to create some of her
most soul-searching work yet. In “Phase 2:
Colombia for a True Love,” she reflects on her fears of
missing woman,
encountering police In an intimate essay collection, being forgotten when she leaves her love
corruption and crime syndicates
JENNY SLATE expresses the weird on an island. In “Phase 4: Baby,” a dark
in Sergio De La Pava’s roiling,
purple hole visits her in the afternoon. In
noirish, existential explosion of and the wonderful excerpts from a play called Schumacher,
a novel. (Simon & Schuster)
she tells the story of a young woman who
WOMEN’S HOTEL “HAVE YOU ANY experience with patients goes to an “iced-cream social,” conspires
From Daniel M. who suddenly understood something,” to give two naysayers truth serum, and
Lavery, a finely
writes Jenny Slate in her new essay collec- then a tree bursts into the room and washes
S L AT E : YA S A R A G U N AWA R D E N A . B O O K S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R S .

wrought and funny

group portrait of the tion, Lifeform (Little, Brown), “and them clean in special pods.
inhabitants of a
waning Barbizon- then even though they had other things “When I use metaphor,” she tells me,
esque hotel in 1960s New York: to do, they could not stop fixating on that “it’s almost like I’m putting my entire
A bartender, a biographer, a
party girl, and others juggle jobs
new understanding?” experience on the back of a magical bird
and relationships. (HarperVia) “You can be asleep in a stone for so long, and saying, ‘Take it from here.’ I don’t have
and so much can happen without your to worry about it anymore. I can let the
DON’T BE A consent, and so much can happen because mystery be. If I dress it up with enough
STRANGER
you are awake in the stone but afraid to mysterious fuel and feathers, it’ll just take
A divorced mother,
nearly 53, falls under even make a peep,” she continues. “But once off and I can remember that I’m me and
the erotic thrall of a you are out, once you get busted out, you not have to deal with the specifics of my
charismatic roving
musician—a “comet” can work freely and make up for lost time.” experience anymore. I can be with a greater
about which she begins to orbit. Slate has a flair for the fantastical and is sense of mystery and unknown, and that
With deft, sleek prose, Susan Minot
captures the all-consuming nature deeply attuned to the ecosystems of rela- makes me feel really alive.”
of obsession. (Knopf) —Keziah Weir tionships: Her 2022 film Marcel the Shell With —michael c olbert

34 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
LEAKS
HAPPEN.
ODOR
SHOULDN’T.
New FreshSense™ system
locks in odor and wetness from
bladder leaks—giving you up to
100% fresh protection.
Vanities / The Gallery

Time Is RIPE
Renowned for more than a century as a
stylish stalwart, Cartier’s Tank watch is sizing
down. Originally released in 1917, the
Tank embodies Louis Cartier’s pursuit of clean,
geometric, and simple forms in his jewelry
and watches. This version of the timepiece—
which has been frequently reimagined Photograph by
over the years—calls to mind various vintage HUGO YU
iterations. And, like all canonic designs,
it strikes a balance between telling the time
and capturing it. —Daisy Shaw-Ellis

S E T D E S I G N , N O E M I B O N A Z Z I . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

Cartier mini Tank Louis Cartier

watch in 18-karat yellow gold, $7,000.
(Cartier boutiques nationwide)

36 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
Vanities / Anatomy of a Scene

Tough LOVE
JESSE EISENBERG goes
deep on his wry, resonant
screenplay
JESSE EISENBERG WAS futzing about
on the computer one day when an ad
popped up for a Holocaust tour that
stated—in parentheses—“with lunch.”
“It just was such an evocative phrase
and summed up so much of what’s
strange about modern life—the way

S T I L L S A N D S C R I P T : S E A R C H L I G H T P I C T U R E S . A N N O TAT I O N S : C O U R T E S Y O F J E S S E E I S E N B E R G .
we want to experience reality and we
want to experience difficulty but similar it felt to being on any other movie
always from a safe place,” he says. shoot, because the concerns of a
That pop-up ad inspired him to write movie shoot are so overwhelming.”
A Real Pain, a funny and heartfelt In the film, the cousins dance
story about two cousins (David, played around an awkward tension created
by Eisenberg, and Benji, Succession’s by their contrasting personalities—
Kieran Culkin) who travel from New David, uptight and sensitive, Benji,
York to their beloved grandmother’s charming and unpredictable. They
birthplace of Poland on a group tour. reflect on their grandmother’s
Like his characters, Eisenberg—who harrowing experiences but at the
also directed the film, which premiered same time grapple with their own more
at Sundance and will open in theaters recent complicated history. It’s this
November 1—was on his own eerie heavy dynamic between two longtime
sojourn, even filming scenes outside the friends that Eisenberg says will feel
home from which his Jewish ancestors familiar to many: “Even when you try
were taken by the Nazis. “Our trailers to remember good times, you realize
In A Real Pain, writer and director
were parked literally adjacent to the Jesse Eisenberg (right) and Kieran Culkin it was also fraught with a little bit
cemetery where my family was shot and star as cousins on a trip to Poland. of poison.” —rebec ca ford

38 VA N I T Y FA I R NOVEMBER 2024
 Vanities / Dining

Chic, PLEASE D’Angelo says he likes to wander the

city, studying its environs and inhabi-
tants for inspiration, essentially
Armani/Ristorante presents a new way to savor creating a local narrative for a restau-
the timeless appeal of a legendary name rant. He compares the new location
not to the Fifth Avenue restaurant that
preceded it, he says, but to Tokyo,
FOR GIORGIO ARMANI, style goes fondue (and adorned with the Giorgio which has a similar fine dining philos-
beyond fashion. It is but one expression, Armani logo in fine saffron powder), ophy. “The architecture of the dish,”
and food is another. Just two decades that offers a refined twist on a Mila- says D’Angelo, is where you find the
after debuting his fashion label in nese classic. New York’s own exclusive Armani essence—“clean, pure, good
Milan in 1975, Armani opened his first dish is a ravioli with Neapolitan short at the moment.”
restaurant in Paris, the entrée to an ribs ragù. “Respect for the ingredients “While our culinary preparations
epicurean empire that now serves is a big part,” says D’Angelo, who was may be elaborate and artfully
carefully considered Italian cuisine born in Campania, through a transla- presented…my dishes always celebrate
in such glittering cities as Dubai, tor. “It’s authentic, it’s pure—that’s the the inherent beauty of their ingredi-
Milan, and Tokyo. This fall Armani/ thing that’s very Armani…you won’t ents,” says Armani, who, at 90,
Ristorante will open its doors on Mad- ever not recognize an ingredient that’s is as dedicated as ever to his vision
ison Avenue between East 65th and on your plate.” of elegance. —kayla holliday
66th streets, where it will continue to
prove, as the fashion designer once
said, “the only limit is good taste.”
Steps away from Central Park, the
restaurant’s contemporary space
channels the decadence of a bygone
era. A Champagne bar greets guests at
the entrance, giving way to marble-
effect flooring and mirrors on the walls.
Just as Armani sees no virtue in
creating impractical clothing, each
restaurant seeks to adapt its cuisine to
the locale. Executive chef Antonio
D’Angelo previously worked as Armani’s
personal chef before becoming the
corporate executive chef of the Armani
restaurants in 2020. He hopes to
capture the essence of the stately Upper
East Side neighborhood through
seasonal offerings that will distinguish
the restaurant from Armani’s former
Fifth Avenue location, a swanky Mid-
town spot that opened in 2009 above
the Armani store. Its relocation and
restyling at Madison Avenue will
epitomize sophistication while staying
true to the simplicity that is the hall-
mark of the Armani name. Among the
eight signature dishes that feature
on select global Armani menus, you’ll
find Pappa al Pomodoro, a ripe tomato
and bread soup inspired by the tradi-
tional Tuscan comfort food with
humble beginnings, elevated by the
addition of buffalo mozzarella for a
meal that’s unpretentious and familiar.
There will also be a savory Parmigiano
Reggiano risotto, served with a saffron

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY J AYA N I C E LY
Vanities / Going Coconuts

The Kamala BUMP that coincided with the Democratic

ticket revamp was its first “sustained
period” of positive subscriber growth
Donald Trump notoriously gave media outlets a boost in three years. CNN (where I now work
with audiences and traffic. Now Kamala Harris is doing it— as chief media analyst) garnered more
than 6 million viewers for Harris
but better By Brian Stelter and Tim Walz’s first joint interview.
“We came into 2024,” MSNBC
contributor Errin Haines said, “with
an unprecedented election that also
state senate’s majority whip, and so, felt very status quo—until it suddenly

T
given Michigan’s swing-state status, wasn’t.” Haines, editor at large for
she is a regular on cable news assessing The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom
the state of play. She said that thou- covering gender, politics, and policy,
sands of new Michigander volunteers, pointed out that the electorate was
and even some pop-up homemade “ahead of the establishment” for the
merch stands, were tangible signs of first half of the year. In poll after poll,
the summertime spike. But even more focus group after focus group, voters
notable to McMorrow was what she signaled that Biden was too old to
called “the renewed energy in our serve a second term. That’s why, in
more dedicated organizers.” the minds of so many, the Democrats
“They were always going to do the needed to recast their lead actor.
work, but it started to feel like an “We go through this all the time,” a
TOWARD THE END of her presidential obligation, one that was getting harder veteran Hollywood producer groused
stump speeches, Vice President and harder no matter how much we to me a few days after Biden’s disas-
Kamala Harris likes to ask her audience believed,” she said. “Now it’s an trous debate performance made his
a question: “Do we believe in the opportunity and a joy every single day.” exit inevitable. Showrunners and
promise of America?” Joy. It is one of the most intoxicating financiers hate the recasting process,
In Philadelphia and Houston, in Mil- three-letter words in the English but “we do it because it works,” the
waukee and Atlanta, adoring crowds language. The Harris campaign of joy producer pointed out. Actors come
of Democrats always answer yes. The connected with people who had all but and actors go for the good of the show.
call-and-response is a joyful affirma- given up on Biden. During the final George Clooney, who wrote a
tion of the Harris-Walz campaign: that weeks of summer, the “Kamala bump” devastating and influential Times
the American dream is still alive, if not was suddenly apparent everywhere: in essay arguing for Biden to step down
well, and a more perfect union is pos- polls, grassroots donations, television weeks after hosting a fundraiser for
sible—together we can preserve and ratings, news subscriptions. Harris’s the candidate, alluded to this reality
protect a multiracial liberal democracy 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, once Harris was Biden’s obvious
in a world full of autocratic threats. climbed back onto the New York Times’ successor. “All of the machinations
But that crowd-pleasing line was not bestseller list and stayed there week that got us there,” to a candidate swap,
a new addition when Harris became after week. Billboard reported that “none of that’s going to be remem-
the 2024 Democratic presidential “Harris-connected pop songs” like bered, and it shouldn’t be,” Clooney
nominee in the most unusual of ways. Chappell Roan’s “Femininomenon” said. “What should be remembered is
Long before President Joe Biden and Beyoncé’s “Freedom” experi- the selfless act of someone who.… It’s
dropped out of the race and endorsed enced streaming spikes. Politico very hard to let go of power. You know
his VP, Harris had been posing the referred to the bump in a piece that we’ve seen it all around the world,
question to rallygoers in Manassas, predicted a spike in women running and for someone to say, I think there’s
Virginia; in Phoenix; in Jacksonville, for elective office. Trump confidant a better way forward, he gets all the
Florida. Without knowing it, she had Kellyanne Conway even acknowl- credit, and that’s really the truth.”
been rehearsing for this fall’s general edged it, backhandedly, when she said What Biden and Harris jointly taught
election campaign for years. “the Kamala bump was a direct cause in the summer of 2024 was the art of the
Then came the Summer of Kamala. from the Biden slump.” heal—the opposite of Trump’s lessons
It “marked the moment Democrats Campaign stories were instantly hot in haggling and hate-mongering. Since
stopped playing defense and went on again. Social media influencers were 2017, Trump’s first year in office, Harris
offense, figured out how to put Donald eager to catch up and cash in. So were has been saying that Americans “have
Trump’s campaign on its heels, and old-line media companies: The Wash- so much more in common than what
never looked back,” Mallory McMorrow ington Post, in desperate need of a separates us.” Recently she has added
told me. McMorrow is the Michigan boost, said the July and August stretch that the nation is “ready to move

40 VA N I T Y FA I R
 From young influencers flooding social
media to the millions who watched Kamala
Harris and Tim Walz’s first joint interview,
everyone is feeling the “Kamala bump.“
What Biden and Harris jointly taught
in the summer of 2024 was the
forward,” expressing a hope shared by
Democrats and a great number of
ART OF THE HEAL—the opposite of
others that the Trump presidency was Trump’s lessons in HAGGLING AND HATE.
an aberration. A fluke. A blip. If Harris
is right about America, historians will
someday struggle to make sense of the debates and TikToks, to Swifties facts—they are primed to reject the
GOP’s decision to renominate Trump organizing for Kamala, to analyzing results again if Harris wins.
in 2024. If Harris is right, Trump will every statement the vice president George Lakoff, the acclaimed linguist
be forgotten, and possibly serving a makes regarding Israel and Gaza.” and author of books like Don’t Think of
prison sentence, while the neighbors Hundreds of thousands of Taylor Swift an Elephant!, analyzed a set of Harris
who bickered over political lawn signs fans flocked to vote.gov as soon as speeches and said the overriding sense
will belatedly make amends. That’s the pop star endorsed Harris. of joy—so thoroughly ridiculed by Trump
what the call-and-responses in Harris’s But Hot Kamala Summer was never types—was the source of her power.
speeches and her appeals to common- going to last forever. While Harris is, “The key to effective communication is
ality are really about. in so many ways, a “first”—and for not just to present facts and figures, but
For young people, Harris is another tens of millions of Americans, seeing to connect with people on an emotional
chance for hope and change. “It’s really a woman of color lead a major-party level,” he wrote. “Emotion shapes our
not an exaggeration to say the vibes ticket is inspiring—firsts also engender thoughts and decisions more than logic.”
have completely changed,” Teen Vogue fierce backlash. Most people do believe Harris seems to know that. During
editor in chief Versha Sharma told me in the promise of America that Harris her September debate, she radiated
in early September. Sharma said asks about, but a radicalized minority joy, smiling through Trump’s attacks.
G E T T Y I MAG E S .

interest from readers of her outlet in do not. The voters who trust Trump’s The promise of America, she said,
campaign news “surged” after the lies, who suspect everything is a hinges on the election: “It’s up to the
switch, “from memes borne out of conspiracy, who think feelings are American people to stop him.” 

NOVEMBER 2024 41
 CYNTHIA
ERIVO
AND ARIANA
GRANDE
ARE EPICALLY
TALENTED—
AND UTTERLY
DIFFERENT—
STARS, BUT
THEIR OFF-
SCREEN BOND
GIVES WICKED
ITS BEATING
HEART. THEY
OPEN UP ABOUT
DEFYING
GRAVITY—AND
EXPECTATIONS

42 VA N I T Y FA I R BY CHRIS MURPHY
P H OT O G R A P H S BY NOR MA N J EAN ROY ST Y L E D BY PAT T I W I L S ON
 “I’d offer you a seat
outside, but I’m scared that
the coyote is Cynthia both have, and that’s why they’re
going to be a power couple.”

going to come,” Power couple really only scratches

the surface.
In the original Oz story, the witches
are polar opposites. Wicked posits that

Ariana Grande they’re more alike than they appear—

much like Grande and Erivo, who crack

says sweetly.
up when the latter arrives and they dis-
cover they’re dressed in similar outfits.
Grande has on a pink Khaite sweater,
jeans from Agolde, and Tabis from Maison Margiela. Erivo is
wearing Marni jeans, a blue J.Crew oversized cardigan over a
“Literally an hour ago he just walked right over and jumped Lunya top, and Bottega green sandals. Both have glasses on as
over the fence. I was like, Excuse me?” Coyotes can mercilessly well. “We do this every time,” Grande says.
attack small dogs, and Grande has two, Toulouse and Myron. “I But Grande and Erivo move through the world quite differ-
take Toulouse out to pee, and I’m holding him while he’s pissing ently. The former is bubbly and bright, with a theater kid’s flair
in the air,” she tells me, then addresses the coyote, wherever it for the dramatic and confessional; the latter is kind but more
may roam: “Eat me first!” guarded. The dynamic isn’t far from the one their Wicked alter

TA I LO R S , H A S M I K KO U R I N I A N , M A R I M A R G A R I A N ; S E T D E S I G N , V I K I R U T S C H . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P O R T F O L I O O N E . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
We’re standing outside “the tree house,” which is what egos share: Grande’s the girlish and gabby Glinda, while Erivo’s

H A I R , A LY X L I U ( G R A N D E ) ; M A K E U P , M I C H A E L A N T H O N Y ( G R A N D E ) , J O A N N A S I M K I N ( E R I V O ) ; M A N I C U R E S , C O R A L I A F U E N T E S ( G R A N D E ) , R O S E H A C K L E ( E R I V O ) ;
Grande calls her bungalow tucked away in the Hollywood Hills. the more internal and reserved Elphaba. Even their nails seem
Soon we’re joined by Cynthia Erivo, who stars with her in one of in character: Erivo’s are long and green, while Grande sports an
the fall’s most anticipated films, Wicked. When she arrives, Tou- almondy pink manicure with French tips.
louse and Myron bound toward her as though they’re greeting Like the witches they play, they approached the Wicked audi-
an old friend. Inside, Grande starts to make us all tea, but Erivo tion with radically different mindsets. “I didn’t even believe I
politely declines, holding up a thermos and taking a sip of her would be seen,” Erivo says. “I was like, I don’t think this is going
green elixir. “I made my own little matcha,” she says. to happen, but I love the idea of watching this musical.” Until
A Broadway show based on the novel of the same name by she booked an audition, she tried to shut out any and all intel
Gregory Maguire, Wicked is a musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz about the process. “I kept telling my team, ‘Do not give me any
that imagines Elphaba and Glinda as frenemies before Dorothy information. I don’t want to know,’ ” she says. “ ‘I don’t want
dropped out of the sky. It premiered in October 2003 and daz- to know who’s gone in. I don’t want to know what people are
zled audiences thanks to a stunning score by Stephen Schwartz being asked to do. I don’t want to know anything about it.’ ” And
and indelible performances by Idina Menzel and Kristin Che- when she finally got in the room? “She embodied this version
noweth. After two decades in development hell, director Jon M. of Elphaba that I had never seen,” Chu tells me.
Chu has delivered a film adaptation that’s Grande had been pursuing the role of Glinda since she turned
so confident in its zaniness, so assured 20 in 2013. “She auditioned many times,” says Chu, recalling
WHICH WITCH? in its world-building, and so defiantly how the singer would regularly show up 30 minutes early and
Cynthia Erivo and big-budget that it sweeps you away like circle around in her car until it was time. “I sort of didn’t want
Ariana Grande,
photographed in Los a house in a tornado. The performanc- to believe that she could do this. It seems almost too easy to say,
Angeles on July 31. es are captivating across the board, but ‘Oh, Ariana Grande.’ ” But time and again, Grande proved her
the story rests on Elphaba’s and Glinda’s worth. “Every time she came in, she was the most interesting
Previous spread:
Erivo’s clothing by shoulders. Fortunately they’re portrayed person,” Chu says. “You just couldn’t take your eyes away.”
Schiaparelli Haute by Erivo, who’s got an Emmy, a Tony, and Ultimately, Grande was arguably too involved in the process.
Couture; mask by
Lynn Paik; earring
a Grammy, and Grande, a pop sensation “I knew so many of the people that were going in, and everyone
by Paumé Los with two Grammys and nine Billboard was texting me,” she says. “I was trying my very best to be 100
Angeles (right ear) Hot 100 number one hits. percent transparent with everyone. Like, ‘This is my tea. This
and Maria Tash
(all others); nose “I’ve always said that Wicked was the is what I’m singing. I’m going in on the 13th. I love you. Text me
ring by Messika love story between two girls,” says Che- after.’ ” She even helped a few people who were less familiar with
High Jewelry.
Grande’s dress by noweth. “The three things that I love the material prepare for their auditions by singing with them.
Schiaparelli Haute about it are what I look for in all kinds of Erivo shakes her head in disbelief: “Ari, that’s crazy.”
Couture; earring by
Khaite; ear cuff art that I do, which is love, forgiveness, “I know,” Grande says. “I had no boundaries back then.”
by Panconesi. and friendship. That’s what Ariana and Erivo sighs: “I’m so glad we know each other now.”

44 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Grande lights a Diptyque candle, and we gather around excited she was to see the movie. “I didn’t know that she was
her kitchen table to talk Broadway and RuPaul’s Drag Race All going to say what she said until she said it,” Erivo says. “It meant
Stars, among other things. Both women launched their careers a lot to me. It was like the Queen Mother knighting you.” Later
onstage—Grande as a teen in the musical 13 and Erivo earning Angelina Jolie fangirled over her too—“she was so effusive and
acclaim as Celie in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple—show- lovely”—and Erivo surprised herself by letting her proverbial
ing off multi-octave vocal ranges that they’ve worked hard not hair down. “Usually I run off and go home. I don’t really get to
to squander. Protecting the ability to option up to a mix-belted enjoy the night that much,” she says. “But I stayed out and just
high G in “I’m Here” (Erivo) or nail the “God Is a Woman” outro had a really good time.”
(Grande) means avoiding loud places, late nights, and related Then it was back to work. Erivo flew to Los Angeles for a show
vices. “We’re the most boring people in the world,” Erivo says. at the Hollywood Bowl, then returned to New York for a single
“We’re not party animals.” A Little Night Music rehearsal. Just typing it out gives me jet lag.
Even when the pair showed up at the Met Gala in May, they Even when she’s stretched thin, Erivo knows how to treat
were there to work: Grande had been secretly tapped to per- herself. “She flies so much, but she makes sure that she has the
form a seven-song set overseen by Baz Luhrmann, and she comforts of home,” says her longtime friend Colman Domin-
asked Erivo to join her for the finale. “That probably was my go, who’s flown with her. “She pulled out two blankets. She
favorite Met Gala that I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a few,” pulled out a humidifier. She pulled out her own kettle for her

“I’VE ALWAYS SAID THAT WICKED WAS THE

LOVE STORY BETWEEN TWO GIRLS,” SAYS
KRISTIN CHENOWETH. “ARIANA AND CYNTHIA
ARE GOING TO BE A POWER COUPLE.”

Erivo says. “I felt really comfortable knowing that we could piping hot water. I was like, What? Apparently I haven’t been
go and do what we’re really good at.” traveling well.” Erivo doesn’t drink alcohol. She loves a good
“It was really fun,” Grande adds. “Those types of events— cold plunge, has a wellness room in her LA home, and carries
they used to make me really nervous. Crippling anxiety. I used a ziplock bag of gummy vitamins everywhere, though after
to be, like, debilitated.” an abnormal blood test, she learned that you can, in fact, take
Surely attending a social function and walking a red carpet is too much vitamin D.
easier than performing for hundreds, if not thousands, of people? Erivo’s also an avid runner who once completed a half-
“That is not scary at all,” Grande says. “That’s so beautiful marathon before performing a two-show day on Broadway in
and lovely and thrilling.” The Color Purple. “I run every morning,” she says. “I find that
Erivo agrees: “That’s like home.” the best way to wake up my body is to be really physical.” Grande
confirms this, playfully mimicking Erivo’s British accent: “She’ll
be like, ‘I did a small one this morning. Only 11 miles.’ ”
“It’s a lifestyle,” Domingo says of Erivo’s devotion to well-
PRIDE being. “She’s like, ‘I take care of my voice. I take care of my
AND JOY body. And I take care of my soul.’ ” She takes care of others too.
“When I got to London for rehearsals, she gave me Grether’s
Erivo has 15 minutes to get from Hudson Yards to Lincoln Pastilles for the first time,” her Wicked costar Bowen Yang tells
Center. Scratch that: The applause from her headlining set at me, referring to the Swiss throat-soothing candies that singers
Stonewall Day 2024 goes so long that it’s actually not over until swear by. “I was like, ‘What are these?’ Now they’re in every
8:16 p.m. Now she has 14 minutes to get to David Geffen Hall, room of my house. I suck on them every day.”
where she’s performing in a concert version of Steven Sond- Those small indulgences also helped Erivo endure long
heim’s A Little Night Music. sessions in the makeup chair, where Wicked’s team painted
It’s the Friday of Pride weekend in New York City, about two her Elphaba’s signature shade. “Two hours and 45 minutes
weeks after our afternoon in Grande’s tree house. Since then, to three hours if it was just head, neck, hands,” she says. “If
Erivo’s schedule has been, as she puts it, “insane.” She recent- it was the whole body, that was, like, four hours.” She also sat
ly handed out the Tony Award for best musical alongside the through multiple “green tests” before production landed on
original Elphie herself, Menzel, who told Erivo onstage how the ideal tint. “Some greens really didn’t work,” she says. “We

NOVEMBER 2024 45
Bodysuit, earrings had alien-esque ones that were just too
(pearl), and ring far.” The best hue for Elphaba wound up
by Dior Haute
Couture; headband having highlighter-yellow undertones.
by Deepa Gurnani; “On brown, it reads like skin.”
earrings (others
and as septum ring) Then, of course, came lipstick, col-
by Maria Tash. ored contacts, and four different wigs.
To make certain the hair looked flaw-
less on camera, Erivo shaved her head
before production so they could paint her scalp too. She laughs
remembering what she looked like before she put her wig on:
“Green-scalp Cynthia. Like a little bald-headed green lady.”
She did it for the sake of the production, but honestly, Erivo
was into the look: “I would love to do that again,” she says.

GRANDE HAS TO wrap today’s music video shoot at 4 a.m. or

else. We’re at a secret outdoor location in LA, where the shoot is
set to begin at midnight. But Grande’s been at it since the early
afternoon, rehearsing in full hair and makeup, and working with
her stylist, Mimi Cuttrell, to find the perfect costume. When I
arrive around 11:30 p.m., she bounds out of her trailer to greet
me. “It’s trippy,” she says of the set, then twirls in the pink satin
floor-length dress that she and Cuttrell settled on.
From her adolescence on Broadway to her days as a Nickel-
odeon star to her debut as a solo artist at the age of 18, Grande
has clung to who she is. After seven studio albums, all those
hits—including the synth-pop Robyn-esque breakup bop “We
Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)”—and several world tours,
she’s one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. As of this writing,
she has nearly 100 million more followers on Instagram than
Taylor Swift.
We walk to set, and Grande fills me in on the shoot: the cam-
era angles, the significance of the setting, and how it all fits with
the other “short films” she plans to shoot for Eternal Sunshine,
the concept album in which she processes her divorce from
Dalton Gomez. Her involvement behind the scenes is worlds
away from her experience on Wicked, where she had the luxury
of simply being an actor. “We weren’t really watching dailies,”
Grande said earlier of making the film. “We never watched play-
back. It’s very unlike me as well, ’cause when I’m doing a music
video, I will watch everything.”
In between takes on her video shoot, Grande regularly dashes
over to director Christian Breslauer to review the footage. “We
have to make it cuttable—make it look like one shot, basically,”
she tells me. “So I have to land in the exact same spot, and the
camera has to land on the exact same spot—and we have two
where it’s perfect. We’re going to try for one more, just in case.”
Soon she’s skipping back to set. On her way, I hear her trill on a
high-soprano note in the distance.

GRANDE’S CALLING CARD, her ace in the hole, her unassailable TikTok comment: “I intentionally change my vocal placement
asset, is her voice. There’s a reason she was asked to sing “(You (high/low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing,”
Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at Aretha Franklin’s she wrote. “I’ve always done this BYE.”
funeral. So it’s ironic—absurd, really—that not long ago she was Grande admits that the flak has been tricky to navigate:
criticized for the way she speaks. As Wicked promotion kicked “There is a part of the world that isn’t familiar with what it takes
into gear, fans noticed her talking in a higher, lighter sopra- to transform your voice, whether it’s singing or taking on a
no than her naturally more earthy alto. Last summer a clip of different dialect for a role or doing a character voice for some-
Grande on Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed went viral when people thing.” There’s also a double standard that punishes women
accused Grande of slipping into a different register after she who go the extra mile for roles. (See also: Gaga, Lady.) “When
started to laugh. Grande finally addressed the accusations in a it’s a male actor that does it, it’s acclaimed,” Grande says. “There

46 VA N I T Y FA I R
are definitely jokes that are made as well, but it’s always after with which she enunciates these days, popping her p’s and artic-
being led with praise: ‘Oh, wow, he was so lost in the role.’ And ulating her t’s like a 1940s star with a mid-Atlantic accent. This
that’s just a part of the job, really.” I can’t help but think of Aus- could be an overcorrection after years of being told she mumbles
tin Butler’s Oscar-nominated performance in Elvis. “Tale as when she sings. Or maybe she’s still Glinda-ing. Either way, she’s
old as time being a woman in this industry,” she says. “You are happy with the results.
treated differently, and you are under a microscope in a way “It’s something that I’m just really proud of,” Grande says
that some people aren’t.” of her voice. “Part of why I did want to engage [on TikTok] is
For the record, throughout our interviews, conversations, because I am really proud of my hard work and of the fact that I
and voice notes—she loves to send a voice note—Grande uses did give 100 percent of myself, including my physicality, to this
all registers of her voice. If anything stands out, it’s the crispness role. I am proud of that, so I wanted to protect it.”

NOVEMBER 2024 47
48 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Dress by Patou; shoes
by Amina Muaddi;
tiara by Paumé Los
Angeles; tights by
Calzedonia; earrings
by Swarovski;
rings by Brandon
Hurtado Sandler.

NOVEMBER 2024 49
50 VA N I T Y FA I R
ERIVO GREW UP in a largely single-parent Grande’s dress by
household in London with her sister, Loewe; boots by
Marc Jacobs; crown
Stephanie, and mother, Edith, who was by KerenWolf.
a health visitor. (For the non-British, Erivo’s dress by Jean
Paul Gaultier by
that’s someone who supports families Nicolas Di Felice;
during pregnancy and in the first few boots by Marc
Jacobs; choker (as
years after childbirth.) Growing up, headpiece) and
Erivo gravitated toward music, dance, earrings (hoop) by
Panconesi; necklace
and art, then studied music psychology (as facepiece) by
at the University of East London. At the Swarovski; earrings
time, she didn’t realize it was possible (and as septum ring)
by Maria Tash;
for her to major in drama. “I just picked rings by Raw
the closest thing I could think of to what Flow Jewelry.
was creative,” she says. During that time,
she moonlit as a singer at London venues
like the Pigalle Club, the Arts Club, and Troy Bar. She ditched
school and enrolled in a young actor’s program, where a
teacher urged her to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Arts. “She said that I couldn’t do the course if I didn’t apply,”
Erivo recalls. Of course, she got in.
Now Erivo is RADA’s vice president and, in her increasingly
vanishing spare time, teaches master classes. Her specialty is
the voice. “That’s the thing that I want to go back and study at
drama school—the way in which we use our voices and what we
leave behind if we don’t use the voice that we’re given,” she says.
When she’s daydreaming, Erivo thinks about pursuing another
degree in the subject: “I have an honorary doctorate at Boston
Conservatory, but I would like to do it properly.”
That honorary doctorate sits on a crowded shelf. With The
Color Purple, Erivo went from virtual unknown in the US to lead-
ing lady and Tony winner in short order. Erivo says she “lived
like a monk” to play the vocally demanding role. The first time
she got sick and had to miss a performance, she cried.
She launched her film career with supporting roles in the
heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale,
getting a master class in screen acting from Viola Davis, Dan-
iel Kaluuya, and Steve McQueen. She’s grateful she had those
experiences before playing Harriet Tubman in the eponymous
2019 film: Going straight from The Color Purple to Harriet
“would’ve been almost impossible,” she says. “I don’t think I
would’ve had all of the tools that I needed.” Erivo was drawn
to Harriet for both its historical import and its nuanced depic-
tion of an icon. “People don’t realize that she was so young
when she was doing this,” she says. (Tubman was 27 when she
escaped slavery.) “She had to throw herself in the face of dan-
ger consistently. And she was in love. She wanted to have kids
but couldn’t. There was such a heartbreaking story that wasn’t
just about how many lives she saved.” Erivo earned two Oscar
nominations for Harriet—one for best actress, the other for
cowriting the original song “Stand Up.”
As Erivo closes in on an EGOT, she has also, counterintuitively,
embraced fallibility. During an A Little Night Music performance
this summer, she fumbled part of the show’s challenging eleven
o’clock number, “The Miller’s Son”—getting so mixed up she
had to ask conductor Jonathan Tunick to stop his orchestra and
restart the song. Many people would have been embarrassed,
but Erivo thought the moment was glorious. “It’s something
that we don’t give ourselves the space to do, and we don’t realize
that it is really refreshing for an audience to see,” she says. “You

NOVEMBER 2024 51
52 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Dress by
Louis Vuitton; shoes
-
by Pı feri; mask by
Lynn Paik; gloves
by Paumé Los
Angeles; earrings by
Louis Vuitton Fine
Jewelry (bottom)
and Maria Tash
(others and as septum
ring); necklace by
L’Enchanteur.

NOVEMBER 2024 53
remind them that they’re in safe hands and if anything’s going her phone. “They are like, ‘Camera’s up,’ and she goes, ‘Bag.’ ”
wrong, I’m going to press the Pause button and we’re going to Grande mimes putting the phone into a pretend purse, then
start again. They go, ‘This person is in control of the situation effortlessly hits the famous “aaaahhAhhAhhAAAHHH” riff
and they’re going to take care of me and themselves.’ ” at the end of the song, which Wicked fans refer to as Elphaba’s
battle cry.
Grande says she is not a multitasker. “In the beginning, I
literally had a separate phone,” she says. “The only numbers
WITCH were Cynthia and Jon. I was like, ‘Hi, family? I will speak to you
CRAFT on Sunday.’ ” Despite her claims, Grande was running a beauty
and fragrance empire throughout the making of Wicked. “In the
When filming began on Wicked, Erivo and Grande vowed to take break, she’s business lady,” Erivo says. But when Grande was
care of each other and not to allow the stress of production to get concentrating on the shoot, she couldn’t focus on anything else.
in the way of their new friendship. The roles, after all, had a bit “For me, for my bandwidth, I need to have healthy boundaries
of a reputation: Menzel and Chenoweth were rumored to have sometimes because I sponge up everything,” she says. “I can
a backstage rivalry, and the whispers only ramped up when both offer myself to this better if something doesn’t come in that’s
were nominated for the same Tony. Though the pair have made like a strange curveball in my head.”
friendly appearances together since, it took them two decades
to really address their alleged feud. As for the new Glinda and HAVING LIVED MOST of her life in the spotlight, Grande is used to
Elphaba? “We communicated like the fucking champions of the unpredictable twists of fame. “The back-and-forth through-
communication of the world,” Grande says. “I’m so grateful for out the course of my career has been really hard to navigate
it because we kind of looked at this and we said, ‘Oh, that’s not mentally,” she says. “I was this approachable, funny redhead
an option. That’s not going to happen to us.’ ” on Nickelodeon and everyone liked me. And then I had one too
Erivo confirms this: “We needed real connection, and we many hit records, and everyone decided that I was an evil diva.
needed to lead this with love—even in the moments that are And then other terrible things happened, and all of a sudden I
supposed to be fraught with tension within the piece.” was this hero and this victim.”
Wicked has an abundance of magic and whimsy, but there That’s a condensed career time line, but it’s on the money.
were plenty of hard days on set. Both actors say the most difficult Grande starred in Nickelodeon’s sitcoms Victorious and Sam
day was the Ozdust Ballroom sequence, where Glinda gives & Cat, and hit the music scene as a fresh-faced, golden-voiced
Elphaba a “hideodeous” black hat that makes her the laughing- revelation with hits like “Problem,” “Break Free,” and “Bang
stock of Shiz University. Onstage, the moment is played mostly Bang.” “It was like everyone was rooting for me,” she says.
for laughs. The film dives deeper into Elphaba’s humiliation, Though there was the cost of doing business—Grande’s hair was
and Erivo’s performance is heart-wrenching. “It’s just not a fun so damaged by hair dye and bleach that she almost always wore
thing—if you are doing it as truthfully as possible—to have to do it in a high pony—she was adored by both critics and audiences.
over and over again,” she says. “By the time we had gotten to Then, yes, there was backlash, weirdness, and tragedy. In
the last time, I was like…” 2015, when she was 22, Grande was caught on a surveillance
Grande chimes in. “Marc and I”—that’s producer Marc camera licking a doughnut and saying she hated America and
Platt—“demanded you leave.” Americans. There was also a bizarre rumor that Grande insisted
“Yeah, I had a big old breakdown,” Erivo says and notes that on being carried everywhere. In 2017, all the foolishness was put
her bond with her costar helped them navigate tough moments. in perspective when a suicide bomber attacked the Manchester
“There are days when she’s gonna need space, and there are stop of her Dangerous Woman world tour, killing 22 concertgoers.
days when I’m gonna need space. But because we love each The next year, her ex-boyfriend and collaborator, rapper Mac
other very dearly, it’s okay.” Miller, died of an accidental overdose at 26.
“I think we’ve done a really beautiful job of…oh my God, sor- You might expect Grande to be guarded now, but she’s
ry,” Grande says, warding off tears. “We both really took the time exceedingly forthcoming. Even a cursory listen to confessional
to get to know the other person and where we’ve been. What our tracks like 2018’s “Thank U, Next” or the entirety of Eternal Sun-
little wounds are. What our little things are.” shine makes this clear. What’s more surprising than her openness
How did Grande and Erivo juggle the demands of everyday is Grande’s sense of humor. “She talks and thinks like a comedi-
life during shooting? Erivo, a queen of compartmentalization, an,” Yang says. Earlier this year they starred together in a Moulin
says she managed just fine. “I think you take it in chunks,” she Rouge–inspired SNL sketch that went viral. “Ari knows that point
says—memorizing lines, doing vocal rehearsals, catching up on of entry in any conversation to zing it in for a laugh. That is some-
non-Wicked responsibilities. “I’m really kind of good at doing thing that you thought went away with, I don’t know, the cast of
emails,” she says. “Usually I save it up until I’m like sat in one the Golden Girls. That Floridian streak lives in Ari.”
place and I can just—” While we’re looking at bloopers from Wicked on Grande’s
Grande interrupts. “This girl—I’m sorry, if you don’t mind, computer at the tree house, I excuse myself to use the restroom
I’m gonna be Cynthia. Here we go.” She gets up and starts imi- and leave my phone on the table. Weeks later, when I’m going
tating Erivo as she was moments before shooting “Defying over the audio recording, I’ll hear her watching her own bloop-
Gravity,” Elphaba’s barn-burning act one finale. “Green, hat, ers—and whispering to Cynthia, “Oh my God, I’m funny.” When
harness, flying in a second,” Grande says, painting the picture. she’s right, she’s right. And Grande gets her best comedy show-
She then begins furiously fake texting, French tips clacking on case yet in Wicked, nailing both zingers and pratfalls.

54 VA N I T Y FA I R
 I ask where she gets her sense of humor. “My dad has amaz- SquarePants the Broadway Musical, had a wife and child. (Slater
ing taste in comedy, movies, and stuff,” she says, then shouts was also said to have separated from his wife earlier and was
out some of her favorite comic actors in musical theater: Che- officially divorced in September.) “It definitely doesn’t get any
noweth, Sherie Rene Scott, Sara Ramírez, Sutton Foster. But easier, seeing some of the negativity that was birthed by disrep-
humor also serves a deeper purpose. Grande says it’s been “a utable tabloids,” Grande says. “Of course, I went through a lot
coping mechanism for a long time, I suppose.” of life changes during the filming of this movie. A lot of people

THEY BOTH FIND PERFORMING LESS

UNNERVING THAN RED CARPETS. “THAT IS NOT
SCARY AT ALL,” GRANDE SAYS.
“THAT’S SO LOVELY AND THRILLING.”
ERIVO AGREES: “THAT’S LIKE HOME.”

She has fond memories of starring on Victorious with one of that were working on it did. We were away for two years. So, of
her best friends, Liz Gillies. But that experience has been cast in course, I understand why it was a field day for the tabloids to
shadow since this year’s docuseries Quiet on Set, which alleges sort of create something that paid their bills.”
that ex-Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider presided over tox- Grande is aware of the public’s perception of her new rela-
ic work environments where at least one child star, Drake Bell, tionship. Look no further than Eternal Sunshine, where she
was sexually abused by an adult he worked with. After Quiet on sings from the perspective of someone falling in love against
Set premiered, Schneider issued a mea culpa on YouTube—“I her better judgment and defying the haters. In the spoken-word
definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” he said— bridge of one of the tracks, she flat-out asks, “Why do you care
but then sued several companies and individuals involved with so much whose dick I ride?” The popular narrative, Grande says,
the docuseries for defamation. doesn’t accurately reflect her and Slater’s original story. “The
Grande was shocked even by the sexual innuendo that was most disappointing part was to see so many people believe the
found in the old scripts. “You don’t remember some of it, and worst version of it,” she says. “That was definitely a tough ride.”
then it’s thrown into this compilation in this thing, and you’re Particularly because Slater has been depicted as somebody
like, ‘Wait, that happened? I can’t believe that!’ ” After a moment who stepped out on his wife and baby to date a pop star. “There
she adds this: “The most important thing we can do is focus couldn’t be a less accurate depiction of a human being than
on making the working environment safer for all performers the one that the tabloids spread about him,” says Grande. She
and artists—even musicians. If you’re going to sign to a major disputes specific allegations but tells me she “will never go
label and your life’s going to change the way that mine did, there into certain details.” Instead, she emphasizes her partner’s
should be therapy in the contract. You should have support on strength of character. “No one on this earth tries harder or
the mental side because it’s not normal. Nothing can really pre- spreads themselves thinner to be there for the people that he
pare you for what comes with this amount of visibility.” loves and cares about. There is no one on this earth with a
better heart, and that is something that no bullshit tabloid can
rewrite in real life.”
“Honestly, it’s taken me a lot of hard work to be able to last
FLOATING this long and to heal certain parts of my relationship to fame and
ON AIR to what I do because of these tabloids that have been trying to
destroy me since I was 19 years old,” she continues. “But you
Grande’s relationship status has been a matter of public interest know what? I’m 31 years old and I’m not a perfect person, but
for over a decade, from her high-profile relationship with rapper I am definitely deeply good, and I’m proud of who I’m becom-
Big Sean to Miller to her brief engagement to SNL alum Pete ing. I will never let disreputable evil tabloids ruin my life or my
Davidson. The scrutiny re-intensified in the summer of 2023, perception of what is real and good.”
when Grande was reported to be dating her Wicked costar Ethan
Slater. Grande had separated from her husband months before MOMENTS INTO HER Stonewall set, it’s clear that Erivo is
the rumors circulated, but tabloids feasted on the fact that Slat- most comfortable and powerful when she’s center stage. She
er, a Tony nominee for playing the title character in SpongeBob opens with a groovy R&B-forward cover of Whitney Houston’s

NOVEMBER 2024 55
56 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Clothing by
Christian Siriano;
earrings by Messika
High Jewelry.

NOVEMBER 2024 57
Clothing and boots
by Thom Browne
Couture; pendant
(as earring) by
L’Enchanteur;
earrings (others
and as septum ring)
by Maria Tash;
ear cuff by Raw
Flow Jewelry.

58 VA N I T Y FA I R
NOVEMBER 2024 59
Dress by Valentino; “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” which this project was really inspiring. Because she has such a clear
gloves by Valentino features a telling word change: “I need a vision about what she wants to do and how to do it.” She credits
Garavani; earrings
by Swarovski. girl who’ll take a chance / on a love that Grande with “giving her permission” to make the music that
Throughout: makeup burns hot enough to last.” Erivo then she wants to make.
products by Clinique
(Erivo) and R.E.M. delivers a no-skip, Pride-perfect set of “I had worked with so many people who had their own
Beauty (Grande); covers. “I wanted artists that were either agenda and their own ideas as to what I should be doing,” Erivo
manicure products
by Glam 2 the queer or had been known to be allies,” she says, then turns to Grande. “I think, from you, I’ve learned to be
Max Nails! (Erivo). says later. “I started with Whitney—and a little easier on people. I expect a lot from people. And I don’t
we know the story—and then went to Syl- really mince my words with anyone. You get straight shooter
vester, a queer icon. Prince is definitely, from me, immediately. Like, ‘What are we doing?’ Is that not
definitely a cool ally, who just is like, ‘If you got it, you got it.’ ” a phrase I kept saying? ‘What are we doing?’ ”
Erivo refers to herself with the inclusive term “queer.” When
I ask if there’s a special person in her life, she warmly but firmly
declines to answer. “I’m very tight-lipped with my relationships,
’cause I don’t think that my relationship is for anyone else but for
me,” she says. “I spend so much of my life sharing everything—
whether it’s my work or my soul or my life in speeches. I think
I give enough of myself that I’m allowed to keep something for
me.” She pauses. “And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind
at some point. But, I think it’s okay. It’s enough for people to
know that I’m a queer person who could have relationships with
men or women or neither.”
Getting to this place as one of a handful of Black queer
A-listers in Hollywood took years for Erivo. “I feel really grate-
ful for getting to see the full picture of who I am and who I want
to be,” she says. “I feel comfortable in myself. There’s an ease
that I’ve experienced these last couple of years where I just feel
very, very much like me.” Erivo is aware of the symbolic power
she holds as a Black queer woman in Hollywood and takes it
seriously: “I know that there are young people who are seeking
out women in entertainment who are proudly queer and just
thriving and living and enjoying their lives.”

WICKED HAS BEEN an enormous undertaking, but the film com-

ing out this month only tells half of Elphaba and Glinda’s story.
There’s a second movie—and promotion cycle—coming next
year at the same time. (Thankfully, they shot both back-to-back.)
How are its stars feeling about that?
“I keep having to remind myself, Wait a minute, we have
another movie to do next,” says Erivo.
“I remember it every day,” quips Grande.
In the meantime, there’s a lot to look forward to. After a dis-
appointing experience with her first album, Erivo is recording
new music. “The last time I made an album, we were in the
pandemic, so we were basically doing it over Zoom,” she says.
“I was trying to put something together that had to come from
me—and I was with the wrong people.”
Meeting Grande helped her move in a more fruitful direction.
“This time, I have the right team because this one was sent into
my life,” says Erivo, smiling at Grande. She tells me her costar
introduced her to her new A&R person, Wendy Goldstein, and is
even helping with production on some of the songs. The album,
Erivo says, will be “voice-focused” and resemble “a bed of
sound,” flush with harmonies and vocal layering.
“Make my bed!” Grande shouts.
Making music again puts Erivo in a vulnerable place. “I
don’t know why this makes me emotional,” she says, “but
as someone who’s found it really hard to navigate the music
industry, just watching her manage it at the same time as doing

60 VA N I T Y FA I R
 “It’s just that you don’t self-abandon for the sake of oth- That growth, Grande says, also came courtesy of Glinda.
ers’ comfort,” Grande says. “That is a big thing that I learned “There’s a part of it that has to do with playing a character that
from you. Not to get emotional, sorry. But that same thing is is so sure of herself—even sometimes in a delusional way,” she
what I needed.” Her voice breaks. “I needed to be able to be says. “It’s interesting, because when you slip back into not doing
a straight shooter and be honest about my feelings. And then that, your body’s like, ‘Wait a minute. I liked that feeling. I loved
here comes this walking example of truth and strength and believing in myself.’ ”
loving empowerment.” Wicked changed Erivo as well, in a more intangible way.
“I don’t even know if you realize how much you’ve grown, how “Someone said to me that I was going to start falling in love with
much you’ve become yourself,” Erivo tells Grande. “It’s been real- what I looked like as Elphaba, more than I would with myself,”
ly beautiful to watch every time you’ve taken a stand for yourself.” she says. But the opposite occurred. “I started to appreciate my
To me, she adds, “A year ago, she wouldn’t have done that.” own face even more,” Erivo says. “I like what I see.” 

NOVEMBER 2024 61
62 VA N I T Y FA I R
 When a school board in South Carolina erupted over efforts to ban
his book Between the World and Me, TA-NEHISI COATES went to
listen in on the fight. Here, an excerpt from The Message

Illustrations by
YANNICK LOWERY

NOVEMBER 2024 63
The only book learning we ever got was when we stole it. Master bought some slaves from Cincinnati, that had worked in white folks’ houses.
They had stole a little learning and when they came to our place, they passed on to us what they knew. We wasn’t allowed no paper and pencil.
I learned all my ABCs without it. I knows how to read and ain’t never been in a school room in my life. There was one woman by the name of
Aunt Sylvia. She was so smart she foreknowed things before they took place.
—Mark Oliver

protesters blocks from the Capitol, or the deployment

T
of secret police in Portland, or the literal cracking of
heads in Buffalo? While violence was never forsworn,
by the end of summer white supremacists had learned
a lesson: The war might be raging in the streets, but
it could never be defeated there, because what they
were ultimately fighting was the word.
Around the same time George Floyd was killed,
Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for her lead
essay in the 1619 Project, which argued for America’s
origins not in the Declaration of Independence but in
enslavement. Nikole is my homegirl, and like me, she
believes that journalism, history, and literature have
a place of honor in our fight to make a better world. I
had the great fortune of watching her build the 1619
Project, of being on the receiving end of texts with high-
lighted pages from history books, of hearing her speak
on the thrilling experience of telling our story, some
400 years after we arrived here, in all the grandeur it
deserved. Seeing the seriousness of effort, her passion
for it, the platform she commanded, and the response

P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : B O O K S : V S T O C K L LC . I N S E T P H O T O : L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S / C O R B I S / V C G . B O T H G E T T Y I M A G E S .
THE SUMMER OF 2020 now feels like distant history, it garnered, I knew a backlash was certain to come. But
and it is easy to be cynical about that moment given I can’t say I understood how profound this backlash
the backlash that has followed that season of protests would be—that a “1776 Project” would be initiated by
over the parade of Americans murdered by the forces the president, that the 2020 protests would be dubbed
we pay to protect us. But I remember an even more by some on the right as the “1619 riots,” thus explicitly,
distant era, when the names of those killed died with if in bad faith, connecting the writing and the street,
the people who carried them. Those 2020 protests and that the White House would issue Executive Order
succeeded in implanting some skepticism in people 13950, targeting any education or training that included
who were raised on the idea of Officer Friendly. I think the notion that America was “fundamentally racist,”
that is what the white supremacists feared most—the the idea that any race bore “responsibility for actions
spreading realization that the cops were not knights committed in the past,” or any other “divisive concept”
and the creeping sense among Americans that there that should provoke “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any
was something rotten not just in law enforcement other form of psychological distress on account of his
but maybe also in the law itself. That fear explains or her race.” It’s true that the order was revoked after
the violence of the response to the protests, but even its author lost the next election, but by that time it had
that violence redounded to the benefit of the protest- spawned a suite of state-level variants—laws, policies,
ers because it confirmed their critique. What was the directives, and resolutions—all erected to excise “divi-
Previous spread:
justifiably noble interest that required tear-gassing sive concepts” from any training or education. The flag In the summer of
of parental rights was raised. In Tennessee and Geor- 1920, in Duluth,
Minnesota, a
From The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Copyright © 2024 gia, teachers were fired. School boards in Virginia were white mob
by BCP Literary, Inc. Published by One World, an imprint of besieged. And in North Carolina, Nikole’s tenure at the lynched Elias
Clayton, Elmer
Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. state’s flagship university—where she herself was an Jackson, and
All rights reserved. alum—was denied. Isaac McGhie.

64 VA N I T Y FA I R
 I guess it’s worth pointing out the obvious—that HE TRUTH IS that even as I know and teach
the very governors and politicians who loudly exalt
the values of free speech are among the most aggres-
sive prosecutors of “divisive concepts.” And I guess it
should be noted that what these politicians—and even
some writers—dubbed “critical race theory” bore little
resemblance to that theory’s actual study and practice.
So I will note it. But the simple fact is that these people
T the power of writing, I still find myself in
disbelief when I see that power at work in
the real world. Maybe it is the nature of
books. Film, music, the theater—all can
be experienced amidst the whooping, clapping, and
cheering of the crowd. But books work when no one
else is looking, mind-melding author and audience,
were liars, and to take them seriously, to press a case forging an imagined world that only the reader can see.
of hypocrisy or misreading, is to be distracted again. Their power is so intimate, so insidious, that even its
“The goal,” as their most prominent activist helpfully authors don’t always comprehend it. I see politicians
explained, “is to have the public read something crazy in Colorado, in Tennessee, in South Carolina moving
in the newspaper and think ‘critical race theory.’ ” It against my own work, tossing books I’ve authored
worked. Today, some four years after the signing of out of libraries, banning them from classes, and I feel
13950, nearly half the country’s schoolchildren have snatched out of the present and brought into another
been protected, by the state, from “critical race theo- age, one of pitchforks and book-burning bonfires. My
ry” and other “divisive concepts.” first instinct is to laugh, but then I remember that Amer-
It may seem strange that a fight that began in the ican history is filled with men and women as lethal as
streets has now moved to the library, that a coun- they were ridiculous. And when I force myself to take
terrevolution in defense of brutal policing has now a serious look, I see something familiar: an attempt
transformed itself into a war over scholarship and art. by adults to break the young minds entrusted to them
But in the months after George Floyd’s murder, books and remake them in a more orderly and pliable form.
by Black authors on race and racism shot to the top of What these adults are ultimately seeking is not
best-seller and most-borrowed lists. Black bookstores simply the reinstatement of their preferred dates and
saw their sales skyrocket. The cause for this spike was, interpretations but the preservation of a whole manner
in the main, people who had been exposed to the of learning, austere and authoritarian, that privileges
image of George Floyd being murdered who sudden- the indoctrination of national dogmas over the ques-
ly began to suspect that they had not been taught the tioning of them. The danger we present, as writers,
entire truth about justice, history, policing, racism, and is not that we will simply convince their children of a
any number of other related subjects. The spike only different dogma but that we will convince them that
lasted that summer—but it was enough to leave the they have the power to form their own.

THE TRUTH IS THAT

even as I know and teach the power of writing,
I STILL FIND MYSELF IN DISBELIEF
when I see that power at work
IN THE REAL WORLD.

executors of 13950 shook. And they were right to be. I know this directly. I imagine my books to be my
History is not inert but contains within it a story that children, each with its own profile and way of walking
implicates the present. And framed a certain way, a sto- through the world. My eldest, The Beautiful Struggle, is
ry can be told that justifies the present political order. A the honorable, hardworking son. He has that union job
political order is not just premised on who can vote but my father once aspired to, four kids, and a wife he met
on what they can vote for, which is to say on what unreal- in high school. My second son, Between the World and
ized possibilities can be imagined. Our possibilities are Me, is the “gifted” one, or rather the one whose gifts
defined by our history, our culture, and our myths. That are most easily translated to the rest of the world. He
the country’s major magazines, newspapers, publishing plays in the NBA, enjoys the finer things, and talks more
houses, and social media were suddenly lending space than he should. I see We Were Eight Years in Power as the
to stories that questioned the agreed-upon narrative insecure one, born in the shadow of my “gifted” son and
meant that it was possible that Americans, as a whole, who has never quite gotten over it. He has problems. We
might begin to question them too. And a new narra- don’t talk about him much. All these children suspect
tive—and a new set of possibilities—might then be born. that my daughter, my baby girl, The Water Dancer, is my

NOVEMBER 2024 65
favorite. Perhaps. She certainly is the one that is most
like me—if a little better, more confident, and more
self-assured. I see my books this way because it helps
me remember that though they are made by me, they
are not ultimately mine. They leave home, travel, have
their own relationships, and leave their own impres-
sions. I’ve learned it’s best to, as much as possible, stay
out of the way and let them live their own lives.
My loyalty to that lesson is dispositional—I am
often struck by secondhand embarrassment watching
writers defend themselves against every bad review.
But it’s also strategic: My work is to set the table, craft
the argument, render the world as I imagine it, and
then leave. Some people will like it, others won’t, and
nothing can change that. I am at my worst out there
defending my children and at my best out of the public
eye, enjoying the pleasure of making more of them.
But in the months after George Floyd, it became
clear that this was a privilege. Out in the real world,
teachers, parents, students, and librarians saw in this
man’s murder an America they had not previously
known. And with this new knowledge of the world,
there came an urge to understand. When these peo-
ple spoke out, they found their livelihoods imperiled.
They did not have the luxury of declining to defend
themselves. I think a lot about this one note I received
from Woodland Park, Colorado. The school board was
trying to ban Between the World and Me. A resident
wrote urging me to reach out to one of the teachers
who was fighting it. “He believes in you and your mes-
sage (as do I),” the resident wrote. “And he has been
suffering for it.” Suffering. It felt inhuman to let that
pass. So I sent along a note of support. I even went on
TV to call out the school board. But after that I retreat-
ed into my own private space of bookmaking.
And then I read about Mary Wood. The outlines of
the case were not much different from others I’d heard
about: She was a teacher in South Carolina who had
been forced to drop Between the World and Me from her
lesson plan because it made some of her students, in
their words, “feel uncomfortable” and “ashamed to
be Caucasian.” Moreover, they were sure that the very
subject of the book—“systemic racism”—was “illegal.”
These complaints bore an incredible resemblance to
the language of 13950, which prohibited “divisive con-
cepts” that provoked in students “discomfort, guilt,
anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on
account of his or her race or sex.” And it was not just
the students’ complaints that resembled the executive
order—the South Carolina 2022 budget contained a themselves. The strategy banks on the limited amount
prohibition lifted, nearly word for word, from 13950. of time possessed by most readers and listeners and
Homes and
The connection between the legislation and 13950 aims to communicate via shorthand that is just as often businesses smoke
was obvious. Still, for the first time I began to think sleight of hand. It’s not surprising that everyday people after the Tulsa
about the vocabulary being employed—discomfort, grappling with laundry, PTA meetings, and bills do race massacre,
June 1921.
shame, anguish—and how it read like a caricature not always see the device and the deception. But the Protesters hold
of the vocabulary of safety that had become popular difference is clear—Mary’s protesting students were pictures of
George Floyd
on campuses around the country. I suspect this was not looking to attach a warning to Between the World at a Juneteenth
intentional. Oppressive power is preserved in the and Me about its disturbing imagery or themes but rally in Brooklyn,
2020. Indigenous
smoke and fog, and sometimes it is smuggled in the to have the book, by force of law, removed from the warrior Medicine
unexamined shadows of the language of the oppressed state’s school altogether. Owl, circa 1920.

66 VA N I T Y FA I R
MEDICINE OWL: GRAPHICAARTIS. TULSA: OKLAHOMA
M I R R O R : M A R C M AT E O S . F L A G : 2 W I N D S PA . G E O R G E
F LOY D P R O T E S T : A N G E L A W E I S S /A F P. WA R R I O R

I SEE POLITICIANS IN
H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y. A L L G E T T Y I M A G E S .

Colorado, in Tennessee, in South Carolina moving against

my own work, tossing books I’ve authored out of libraries,
banning them from classes, and I feel snatched out of the
present and brought into another age,
ONE OF PITCHFORKS AND
BOOK-BURNING BONFIRES.
NOVEMBER 2024 67
 I had expected to come into a
DEN OF HECTORING FANATICS.
And instead I’d found that there were
ALLIES FIGHTING BACK.

Literature is anguish. Even small children know me that she was not just from someplace but of that
this. I was no older than five, crying in the back seat someplace. I have an accent just like that, remark-
of my parents’ orange Volkswagen while they argued able as a facial scar. And there was something else
up front. When they turned to comfort me, they were just as remarkable. Mary didn’t teach civics or current
shocked to learn that I was crying not about their argu- events. She taught writing. Advanced Placement lan-
ment but about the grasshopper who starved in winter guage and composition, to be precise. For the exam,
while the ant feasted. The wolf devours Grandma. students would have to write an argumentative essay
The gingham dog and the calico cat devour each oth- themselves, and to help them learn how, she’d called
er. I was not born into a religious home, but I knew upon Between the World and Me, my loud and boister-
that my peers had been raised on stories of God cast- ous second son. Perhaps I am straining the metaphor,
ing Adam and Eve from paradise for biting an apple, but I really did feel like one of my children had gone
that he had destroyed all life save that contained in the and gotten someone else into trouble.
ark on a whim, that he had condemned me and every “What will you do next year?” I asked Mary toward
other nonbeliever to eternal suffering. I suspect these the end of our phone call.
believers would say that the anguish, this discomfort “I’m going to finish the lesson I started,” she said.
radiating out of their own gospel, is not incidental but “I’m going to teach Between the World and Me.”
is at the heart of its transformative power. For my part, I sat on the phone, silent, for eight seconds. Writ-
the anguish of the story of the grasshopper and the ing is all process to me, not finished work. It begins in
ant was in the moral of the story: that laziness and the kind of anguish South Carolina sought to forbid,
foolishness made one worthy of starvation. This kind sometimes originating in something I’ve read, but
of retribution left me empty, and even then I felt I more often in the world itself—in peoples and systems
wanted no part of a world that called starvation just. whose declared aims run contrary to their actions. And
That was my personal revelation—and one that appar- through reading, through reporting, I begin to com-
ently ran contrary to the story’s intended message. prehend a truth. That moment of comprehension is
But in my anguish, in my disagreement with the core ecstatic. Writing and rewriting is the attempt to com-
of the text, I found my truth. And that, I suspect, is municate not just a truth but the ecstasy of a truth.
the real problem. Whatever the attempt to ape the It is not enough for me to convince the reader of my
B U R N E D PA P E R : H A P P Y F O T O S . WA D E H A M P T O N I I I C O N F E D E R AT E S TAT U E : E P I C S . B O T H G E T T Y I M A G E S .

language of college students, it is neither anguish nor argument; I want them to feel that same private joy
discomfort that these people were trying to prohibit. that I feel. When I go out in the world, it’s gratifying
It was enlightenment. to hear that people have shared part of that joy, but
I tracked down Mary’s number. We spoke for about Mary didn’t just enjoy reading the book. The book had
a half an hour. She talked about the whole ordeal— brought her into the fight.
the paranoia incited by anonymous complaints; the I finally broke the silence. I told Mary that I had
school board meetings where she was pilloried; the been thinking of coming down there, but I feared
threats to her job. She spoke of the conservative tilt of making a tense situation worse. Still she urged me to
the area where she taught, Chapin, South Carolina—a come. There was a school board meeting in a week,
lakeside town to the northwest of the state capital of which she and some of her supporters would attend.
Columbia. She spoke of her own enlightenment, of I agreed to join them.
going off to college and reading postcolonial literature By the next week I was with Mary, eating salad and
until she felt the puzzle pieces of the world locking drinking iced green tea at a restaurant near Chapin.
into place. She talked of George Floyd’s murder and She was the portrait of a familiar Southern arche-
how she’d formed a book group with her department type—blond, kind, outgoing, homegrown, daughter
in that watershed summer. That was how she found of the local football coach and a kindergarten teach-
Between the World and Me. We were the same age. er. Her claim to Chapin was strong—stronger even
We both had children who drove us crazy. We both than some of the parents who despised her. The town
practiced yoga for sanity. And she needed it now, had seen an influx of families looking to live some-
more than ever. All this she said in an accent that told where conservative and traditional. Mary wasn’t

68 VA N I T Y FA I R
A statue of that. She was fighting for her job in the very school
Confederate
cavalry leader where she had earned her own high school diploma.
and enslaver How much this fact would help was unclear. Chapin
Wade Hampton
on the grounds
High School was overseen by Lexington-Richland
of the South School District Five. The district has long leaned
Carolina conservative. During the Trump years, it toppled.
State House.
School board meetings had become an open mic for
reactionaries, conspiracy theorists, and attention
seekers. The visible radicalization began with the
district’s response to COVID—local residents began
queuing up at meetings to denounce quarantining
as tyranny. I’ve watched videos of these events, and
they feel formless—a rage in search of a cause. The
rage went from masking and vaccination to DEI and
pronouns. Something called “emotional learning”
would catch an occasional stray. But mostly, the
great enemy of Chapin was critical race theory. It was
said that District Five had become a staging ground
for “educational warfare” on CRT, a doctrine that
was held responsible for “anxiety, depression, and
self-hatred,” that raised suicide rates, and that made
students “ashamed to be white.” I was told that there
was an occasional air of menace at the meetings, as
when one speaker warned the board, “We are watch-
ing,” or another claimed that the country was under
the sway of practitioners of “pagan ways” and expo-
nents of “child sacrifice” and the “drinking of blood.”
And it was quite normal for such sentiments to be
applauded by spectators.
That District Five school board meetings had
become contentious was reflected in the security
that greeted me at the door. I had to empty my pock-
ets, permit my bag to be searched, and pass through
a metal detector. On the other side I saw two beefy
men dressed in army green with visible bulletproof
vests. This struck me as a bad omen. But the guards
greeted me politely, and when Mary and I turned the
corner into the hallway leading to the meeting room,
we were met by a woman named Brandi, a middle
school science teacher. She stood in front of a table
handing out flyers against censorship, and when she
saw us, she smiled warmly.
Inside the meeting room, people milled around and
chatted. There were tables at the front of the room,
assembled in a U shape, with microphones and name-
plates for the various officers of the district. We walked
over to the side of the room opposite from the tables,
where Mary’s mother, Kathryn, waited for us. I shook
her hand and her eyes grew big and she smiled. She
pointed us to our seats, which she’d reserved, and in
mine I found a copy of Between the World and Me.
“Would you sign, please?” Kathryn asked, still
smiling.
I signed, sat down, and scanned the crowd. What
I noticed was that half the people in the room were
wearing blue T-shirts. Mary explained that blue was
the school color, and Brandi had organized a group
of sympathizers on Facebook, asking them to wear
blue to show their support for Mary. An older woman
named Bobbie sat next to C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 8

NOVEMBER 2024 69
La Belle

70 VA N I T Y FA I R
 To mark artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière’s
first decade at Louis Vuitton, VF explores the
house archive, with a little help from the Haim sisters
By K E Z IAH WEI R

Époque
Photographs by N O R MAN J E AN ROY
Styled by DEBO R AH AF S HANI
O
Los Angeles—have been following Ghesquière’s trajectory since
they were teens in the Valley, rifling through magazines and
tearing out Balenciaga ads; they released their first album a lit-
tle more than a month before Ghesquière joined Vuitton. On
a four-way video call, the sisters beam-
DAYS ARE GONE ing in from their respective sun-soaked
Previous spread: LA homes, Este calls Ghesquière “an
Rock trio Danielle, oracle.” Danielle describes his aesthetic
Este, and Alana
Haim in Louis Vuitton as “lived-in, but structured and cool.”
looks from spring- When I mention that the descriptor isn’t
summer 2015, cruise
2016, and spring- a bad fit for Haim’s folky, exuberantly
summer 2020. danceable sound, she continues, “We’ve
always just been such fans—with cloth-
ing, with music—of taking so much inspiration from the past
but hopefully making something that looks new again.”
While preparing for their long-awaited One More Haim Tour
for their album Women in Music Pt. III and in the market for an
outfit—“normally on our tours we would just wear what was in
our suitcases, but with this one we really wanted a uniform,”
Alana says—they fell in love with a pair of black leather pants
ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Paris, in an undisclosed location, sits a from Vuitton’s fall-winter 2022 women’s collection, buttery and
building that puts the most opulent closet to shame. Inside, it buckled with a high-waist silhouette. “There’s nothing short of
houses some 50,000 Louis Vuitton archival items, plus another high kicks happening onstage,” says Este. “And I think the big
200,000 pieces of documents and ephemera. There are question was, can we do these high kicks in these leather pants?
hand-beaded gowns; the lace angel wings worn by models in And the answer is yes.”
Virgil Abloh’s posthumous fall-winter 2022 show; sunglasses “We actually found out later that we are the only ones that

P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P O R T F O L I O O N E . P R O D U C T S : C O U R T E S Y O F LO U I S V U I T T O N . T R U N K : © LO U I S V U I T T O N M A L L E T I E R . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
labeled like insect specimens; stacks of stilettos and sneakers; have the pants,” Alana says. After the runway sample, Louis
19th-century luggage designed and produced by the brand’s Vuitton produced only three pairs to the sisters’ measurements.
eponymous founder, bearing the soft patina of travel and time. They topped them with black bralettes (also by Vuitton) and
Not many people enter the storage facility, and those who do performed, they say, more than 60 shows in them, from Las
often suit up like surgeons. Much of the vast collection comprises Vegas to London—where they were joined by their good pal Tay-
organic materials—wood, leather goods, textiles, ivory, graphic lor Swift, plunderer of past lives and layer of Easter eggs, for a
arts—so the sensitive archives are kept a cool 18 to 20 degrees mash-up of their song “Gasoline” with her “Love Story.” She,
Celsius, with 55 percent humidity. Aurélie Samuel, Vuitton’s art, too, donned the leather pants. “We have the three, and there’s
culture, and patrimony director, says that the archives serve, one in existence that she wore,” Alana says. The sisters still own

H A I M : H A I R , T E D DY C H A R L E S ; M A K E U P , LO F TJ E T ; M A N I C U R E , E M I K U D O ; TA I LO R , S I M O N E K U R L A N D ; S E T D E S I G N , V I K I R U T S C H .
for the designers—currently Nicolas Ghesquière and Pharrell their pairs. The fourth is back in the Vuitton archive.
Williams—as “a daily source of inspiration.”
There is perhaps no designer more entranced by the boggy ALL MAJOR FASHION houses catalog their pasts, amassing a
quagmire of time than Ghesquière, who has, over his decade- repository of brand codes and bygone collections. But for Vuit-
plus tenure at the helm of womenswear, produced an oeuvre ton, historically a trunk maker that only expanded into fashion in
that constantly doubles back on itself to emerge anew, plumbing 1997, the archive is of particular relevance—it is a fashion brand
not only his own past creative efforts but the depths of Vuitton’s that emerged from the beautiful rubble of its history.
history to work and rework concepts of self-presentation. At a In the mid 1830s it took the teenage Louis Vuitton two years
moment when many major fashion houses have been under- and nearly 300 miles on foot to travel from his childhood home
going changes to their creative direction—Gucci, Valentino, in Anchay, France, to Paris; there he apprenticed with a master
Chanel, Chloé, Alexander McQueen, and Givenchy, to name box maker, began working for the empress, and in 1854 creat-
just a few—Ghesquière’s lengthy term is all the more significant. ed the company that would bear his name for many years to
He arrived at Vuitton labeled a futurist, “but, you know, the come. The brand’s rise coincided with that of the 20th-century
future is now for me,” he told Ingrid Sischy in a 2014 interview travel boom. “People wanted to discover the world to learn
for this magazine, his first after he was announced for the role. from the other, from the outside country, from the foreigners,”
Six years later, when I spoke to him for a mid-pandemic profile, the archivist Samuel says. “So they began to think about great
he told me that he had become increasingly interested in his- expeditions.” Vuitton created luggage to accompany these
tory—no surprise, maybe, when at Vuitton he’s so steeped in it. travels, but the family were self-mythologizers and collectors
“My inspiration has been extended,” he said, “because I’m okay too. Louis’s son Georges created the iconic linked LV mono-
to explore past, present, and future.” gram, and his son, Gaston-Louis, gravitated toward antique
trunks and objets related to travel.
ESTE, DANIELLE, AND Alana Haim—the trio of 30-something Many fashion houses began to seriously consider the preser-
sisters who are the rock band Haim, known for their intimate, vation of their archives in the 1980s, when the rise of fast fashion
ebullient love songs and music videos often directed by Paul and industrialized techniques created a looming fear of loss.
Thomas Anderson in which they stride through the streets of “It was at this moment that everybody has discovered that the

72 VA N I T Y FA I R
 know-how, the savoir faire, is important to preserve because it
has begun to disappear,” Samuel says. With Gaston-Louis, the
Vuitton archive had a significant head start. And already, the
past had long served as inspiration. In the 1900s Louis Vuit-
ton began to produce flaconniers, small cases with structured
compartments designed to hold perfume bottles—in the 1920s
the house released its first scents. “The first idea was to pack
perfume,” says Samuel, “and then we made perfume.”
In this year’s fall-winter collection, marking 10 years designing
for the brand, Ghesquière unleashed a whirlwind of the time-
warped and revisited, not only riffing on motifs from his own
past collections but actually printing images of historic trunks—
including a 1924 automobile trunk used by Citroën—onto silk
and cotton to create sculptural trompe l’oeil dresses, and on the
modern silhouettes of new handbags. In his very first Vuitton col-
lection, Ghesquière shrunk archival trunks, including a custom
one made for the 19th-century banker and philanthropist Albert
Kahn, into adorably tiny boxy purses: the iconic Petite Malle that
remains one of Vuitton’s best-known bags.
Besides its recognizable shape, the classic Petite Malle is dis-
tinguished by three stylized X’s that appear on its corner, Kahn’s
personalization for his own trunks. Here, the snake again eats
its tail, because back in 1912, Kahn embarked on an impossible
venture of his own: He wished to document the entire world—
“a kind of photographic inventory of the surface of the globe,
occupied and organized by man, such as it presents itself at the
beginning of the 20th century”—in the utopian hope that knowl-
edge would promote a better understanding between cultures.
He dubbed the 19-year project Les Archives de la Planète.
Dipping into his deep coffers, Kahn deployed nearly 15 pho-
tographers, making use of the Lumière brothers’ new techniques
in color imagery to produce a mind-bending 72,000 auto-
chromes, a process requiring beakers of chemicals and fragile
glass plates—prime cargo for Vuitton’s packing prowess. The
project came to an end in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street crash,
but thanks in part to the protective casings of Vuitton luggage,
the fruits of his labor live on in Le Musée Départemental Albert-
Kahn and its online archive: A rug maker works a loom in
Algiers, soldiers await warfare at Le Hamel, a woman splits a
betel leaf in Hanoi, horse-drawn carriages pause outside the
New York Public Library.
There is a wistfulness to any project that seeks to fight the
losing battle against time: objects stripped of context, images
THE WAYBACK MACHINE
Ghesquière’s trunk dress from fall-winter 2024; the Petite Malle, of vanished moments. (Vuitton is only too aware of the precarity
an instant It bag introduced in 2014 and inspired by Albert Kahn’s trunks; of holding onto the past; their master perfumer, Jacques Caval-
Kahn’s 1929 photography trunk, one of LV’s early custom projects. lier-Belletrud, has described a 1950s fire that destroyed records
of those first perfume formulations—scent memories going up
in smoke.) As Jacques Derrida wrote, there would be no desire to
archive without life’s “radical finitude,” the inevitability of loss.
“Never forget that what becomes timeless was once truly
new,” Ghesquière wrote Sischy 10 years ago. Or, as Samuel puts
it, “When Louis Vuitton created the first trunk—or the mono-
gram, for Georges—it was contemporary, and today it’s heritage.
Today’s creation is tomorrow’s heritage.”
There is a tender democratization that occurs, too, when a
simple Pyrex beaker is treated with as much care as a trio of Yayoi
Kusama polka-dot bikini bottoms, or the brittle pages of a ledger,
begun in 1910, marking Kahn’s purchases: a few small trunks, a
holdall bag, two flaconniers, and several cashmere throws and
scarves. They have all, for now, been saved from oblivion. 

NOVEMBER 2024 73
74 VA N I T Y FA I R
 TIME AFTER TIME
Danielle wears
spring-summer 2017,
Este wears spring-
summer 2019,
and Alana wears
pre-fall 2016.

NOVEMBER 2024 75
76 VA N I T Y FA I R
Can Steve Bannon
and his army of
malcontents
succeed at upsetting
the American-led
global order?

By HERE ARE TIMES when Washington still feels like

JAMES
POGUE
Illustration by
EDWARD
T what it used to be—a sleepy little Southern city.
Generations of some of the most powerful peo-
ple on earth have spent their days in DC griping
that the city is a backwater. But Washington’s
modest position in our constellation of great cities was always
KINSELLA III
part of its charm, well-suited to our sprawling continental
republic. American power has no center, or rather, it has centers
all over—New York for finance, Houston for energy, the low-
slung hubs of Menlo Park and Atherton, California, for tech,
all the way back to the elite schools of New England, where
our scribes and aristocrats are trained to manage the subsys-
tems that keep the American project functioning. America, as
many of the most powerful people in the world now fret, may
suddenly feel like the Roman Empire entering its age of chaos
and decline. But America has never had a Rome.
The DC area has grown immensely in population, wealth,
and importance since the end of the Cold War. Its new sta-
tus as the capital of a free-spending and unchallenged global
hegemon made the region into one of the world’s richest metro

NOVEMBER 2024 77
areas. Washington now even boasts an infrastructure befitting it feels like they’re going to snap.” But this wasn’t just a vibe. It
its position as the administrative center of an empire, as the was a response to a very real chance that a shock could come to
casual phrasing among policy elites now often puts it—one the whole world order. “I think people don’t fully appreciate that
that depends as much on flows of money and information as the institutions literally couldn’t function,” Ben Rhodes, who
it does on raw military force. A cluster of cables and data cen- had been President Barack Obama’s most important adviser
ters in northern Virginia now funnel a huge majority of global on foreign policy, told me later. He said the world is “two thirds
internet traffic through unassuming exurbs like Tyson’s Corner, of the way to a new world war.” But a shock could come even
where communications can be conveniently monitored by the without that. “The G20, IMF, World Bank, NATO—it’s not that
experts at the National Security Administration. But this past the US is the biggest stakeholder,” he went on. “They’re literally
July, Washington felt barely prepared to host an event like the appendages of the United States and our interests and our sys-
75th-anniversary summit of NATO. tem. When we act as a disruptor of our own empire, the system
The city was in the grip of two kinds of heat. The first was a gets thrown completely out of whack.”
dome of breezeless humidity and 100-degree days that made
even a short walk torturous. The second was the heat that
would soon burst forth to make that month into what may be
remembered as the most dramatic and consequential in our HIS IS WHAT populism, coming from left or right,
contemporary political history. But the news of one president
being nearly assassinated and another perhaps withdrawing
from the race were just the most visible tremors of a geologic
shift that was unsettling a system upheld by “the most success-
T really means. It’s when voters get to weigh in on
subjects that politicians and policy experts like to
keep outside the realm of public debate.
This may sound like simple democracy, but in
ful alliance in history,” as NATO’s trim Norwegian secretary practice it’s not how democracies within the core of the Amer-
general described it. ican system, from France to Japan to our own, actually work.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO’s The politicians, business titans, and heads of think tanks who
leaders stood in almost perfect unison, saying the American-led set policies for these democracies tend to fear, with some fair-
apparatus that had given Washington its new wealth and impor- ness, that if voters get too much of a say on matters of statecraft,
tance was facing an existential risk. It was “the great battle for they’ll throw whole societies into chaos.
freedom,” President Joe Biden said. “A battle between democ- The first great disruption of this era came in 2016, the year
racy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a of the Brexit vote, when UK prime minister David Cameron
rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” The theme called a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European
of this year’s meeting was unity, in standing up to a challenge to Union, confident that the side representing integration, a global
America’s ability to set the rules governing security and stability and interconnected future, progress itself, would easily win.
around the world. But just a short, sweaty walk from the summit, He was hoping to settle an internal conflict in his Conservative
a surreal “DC split screen,” as one Politico reporter described Party between technocratic liberals like himself and a wing of
it, was unfolding at the Capital Hilton—where insurgents and traditionalist dons and nationalist backbenchers. Instead, he
critics of this system were speaking at the National Conserva- lost and stepped down.
tism Conference (NatCon). The foreign policy buzzword was Brexit brought stature to an ex-trader named Nigel Farage,
multipolarity—a dry-sounding term, but one that hints at an who until then had been the gadfly leader of the fringe UK Inde-
epochal shift away from a world where America and its allies pendence Party, serving in a mostly symbolic role as a member
are able to control practically all financial, military, and techno- of the European Parliament he wanted to abolish. “When I came
logical structures. Policymakers in Washington were looking here 17 years ago…you all laughed at me,” he told a jeering crowd
to China and talking in terms approaching panic about how of fellow EU parliamentarians after the vote. “You’re not laugh-
unprepared America was for a new era of great-power conflict. ing now, are you?”
Ukrainian troops would soon be outnumbered five to one on Farage is close friends with Stephen K. Bannon—the single
parts of the Donbas front. As the leaders and delegations of person who has done the most to throw these big systemic ques-
32 member nations began arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, tions into the maelstrom of Western public debate. When I got
dread was growing that half of America’s electorate was lining to the NATO summit, Bannon had just headed off to serve a
up behind an America-first movement that had embraced this four-month federal prison sentence for contempt of Congress.
multipolar vision as one that would benefit regular Americans at But Bannon has turned his immensely influential War Room
home, even if it saw us lose our overwhelming power abroad. War show—which has continued to broadcast after his incarcera-
was already raging at the periphery of the empire. But the more tion, with guest hosts—into a cross between a daily troop muster
pressing fear was that America might soon have a government and a policy training school, which he uses to tutor millions of
run by people who wanted to unmake it from within. “Unity, “peasants,” as he likes to phrase his target demographic, on how
resolve, purpose, all that good stuff,” one highly placed European this global power structure actually functions. He has made it
delegate said to me in a private aside. “That’s what the show’s both a mission and a business to illuminate the “link between
for. But obviously there is this gigantic question mark hanging capital markets and geopolitics,” as one show focus has it, and
over the whole thing about what’s going to happen in November.” the workings of what he calls the “dollar empire.” Farage has said
The night before the summit began, I had a drink at the Old that without Bannon, whose Breitbart London was loudly sup-
Ebbitt Grill, in view of the White House, with a friend who works portive of the effort, “I’m not sure we would have had a Brexit.”
for a defense contractor. “This feels crazy,” she said, meaning The Brexit vote was often portrayed in international media
the frenzied mood suffusing the town. “Everyone is so keyed up, as the product of a single-minded backlash to an era of rapid

78 VA N I T Y FA I R
immigration, which radically changed the ethnic makeup of Bannon employee put it to me, than to any one philosophy. But as
cities across Britain and made London the world’s most diverse he followed a path into the American elite—from a working-class
capital. Though true, this was only part of the picture. For many kid who grew his hair long and lived in a tent while attending
voters, and for Vote Leave campaigners like the Bentley-driving Virginia Tech to founding his own Beverly Hills investment
son of a baron Jacob Rees-Mogg, who presents more like a char- firm—Bannon kept up his mystical studies and developed an
acter out of a Thackeray novel than as a modern politician, outlook that shared much with a small-t traditionalist backlash
resistance to mass immigration is only one facet of a world- against the financialized and tech-dominated world that was
view that runs in almost direct contravention to the one that has emerging. He saw the “aristocrats” around him as a deadened
spurred the development of the American-led unipolar world. people, hopelessly disconnected from the blood and sweat and
The best outsider’s portrait of Bannon is a book by the deep sense of shared, spiritual purpose that had made Amer-
ethnographer Benjamin Teitelbaum, called War for Eternity: ica into a great nation. When he arrived at Goldman Sachs to
Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers. Teitel- work in mergers and acquisitions, he discovered he was the only
baum spent years interviewing Bannon and his like-minded member of his cohort of hires who’d come from a blue-collar
allies and associates, from the late Brazilian “far-right guru” background or had served in the military. “The aristos don’t
Olavo de Carvalho, as The New York Times described him, to fight!” he told Teitelbaum. “They strictly don’t.”
Aleksandr Dugin, the philosopher who was, in the years before Bannon developed relationships with Traditionalist-minded
Russia launched its shadow takeover of Crimea and parts of critics of the global system all over the world, from former
Eastern Ukraine, one of Russia’s most prominent public intel- Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
lectuals, in posh hotel rooms and under-the-radar gatherings. Some of them, like the openly Traditionalist philosopher
He got unparalleled access to Bannon, and he was able to do so Dugin, have been deeply antagonistic to America. Bannon and
in part because he came to him not as a political reporter but Dugin are hardly allies, even if Dugin welcomes the idea that a
as a scholar interested in an obscure school of thought known nationalist America might rise up alongside the “Solar” Russia
as Traditionalism. he dreams of, borrowing an idea from Evola. But they share an

Bannon’s WAR ROOM show is a cross between A DAILY TROOP MUSTER and
A POLICY TRAINING SCHOOL, which he uses to TUTOR MILLIONS OF “PEASANTS,”
as he likes to phrase his target demographic.

Capital-T Traditionalism is a mystical philosophy developed intuitive sense of “the tradition,” as Bannon said when the two
by a Frenchman named René Guénon, who converted to Islam met in 2018. More importantly, Bannon and populists through-
and died in Cairo in 1951. His syncretic view held that modern out the West came to welcome the vision, now Russia’s guiding
ideologies like liberalism and communism had perverted the nat- policy, of a multipolar world order that will rise in place of the
ural, sacred, timeless true order of human life. Many inheritors American-led order, which Bannon had come to believe was
adapted and expanded Guénon’s philosophy, most notably the ravaging Americans.
Italian Julius Evola, for whom the natural order of things meant “America isn’t an idea,” he told Dugin. “It is a country, it is
men ruled over women, and whites and Aryans were above Black, a people, with roots, spirit, destiny,” he said. “And what you’re
Jewish, and Arab people. Evola used his theories to elaborate a talking about, the liberalism and the globalism…real American
meta-narrative of why nations and empires rise and fall—a small people are the victims of that. We’re talking about the backbone
addition to a library of esoteric historiography that now makes of American society, the people who give the country its spirit—
for popular fodder in conservative circles. “Traditionalists aspire they’re not modernists. They’re not the ones blowing trillions of
to be everything modernity is not,” Teitelbaum wrote. “To com- dollars trying to impose democracy on places that don’t want it.
mune with what they believe are timeless, transcendent truths They’re not the ones trying to create a world without borders.
and lifestyles rather than to pursue ‘progress.’ ” They’re getting screwed in all this by an elite that doesn’t care
Bannon first encountered Traditionalism in his 20s, when he about them and that isn’t them.”
secretly practiced meditation and frequented mystical book- In August 2019, Bannon released an interview with Farage
stores while serving on the Navy destroyer USS Paul F. Foster. in which he spoke to a mystery that hangs over much of the
Teitelbaum does not try to pin Bannon as a devotee, although upheaval in the world order today—why it’s the right and not
some people on today’s far right certainly are. The word that the traditional critics on the left who suddenly present the
best describes Bannon, in quite a few senses, is restless. He’s a biggest threat to the global world order. “The reason is the
compulsive reader, with an ideology that owes more to his own immigration—they’re not prepared to take it on,” he said about
experience, and sense of loyalty to “legacy Americans,” as one left populist figures like Bernie Sanders and then UK Labour

NOVEMBER 2024 79
leader Jeremy Corbyn. “We’re prepared to take it on. It’s a global that chose to rely on America. That comment sent shock waves
revolt. It’s a zeitgeist.” To Bannon, and for pretty much everyone around the world. “We are making real progress,” Stoltenberg
involved in his diffuse movement, resisting the empire is bound later told the press, and throughout the summit he proudly cited
up in a project of preserving the spiritual character of a nation. the fact that now 23 of the 32 NATO member countries have met
And there was another thing he later talked to me about at great the minimum. Europe is bracing for war, and for a future in which
length that the left shies away from—in part because, in his view, America can no longer be trusted to guarantee its security.
it would mean throwing into question all hopes and dreams of The war in Ukraine has made painfully clear to the West that
building a stronger social safety net or slowing climate change. money alone doesn’t translate to the kind of raw power it takes
This was the global dollar system. Worldwide use of the dollar to win a full-scale war between modern armies. As our economy
to settle international transactions and of American bonds as a became more and more financialized and our manufacturing
trusted means for the world’s central banks to store their currency moved to China, Western leaders began to wake up to a broader
reserves allows the American government to spend far beyond crisis of production—which in America has become apparent
its revenues, secure in the knowledge that financial markets from the fact that China has 230 times the military shipbuilding
will act as a credit card with an almost infinite limit. This has capacity of the United States to the fact that the few US factories
allowed America to spend $31 trillion more than it has taken in producing 155-mm artillery shells proved incapable of meeting
since the end of the Cold War, because America’s military dom- Ukraine’s needs. Some policy experts here argue that we need
inance and stable government serve as guarantees. This system, to spend far more—6 percent of GDP, even—to rapidly rebuild
Bannon warned in a series of pamphlets titled “The End of the our defense, guarantee our security to allies from South Korea
Dollar Empire” (electronically published in collaboration with to Eastern Europe, and prepare for a possible two-front war with
his show’s main sponsor, the precious-metals broker Birch Gold), Russia and China. The problem is that we really have no way to
was falling apart—“not quickly, but inevitably.” If the world actu- afford that kind of spending unless we restructure how we pay
ally does abandon the dollar, America’s days as the world’s great for benefits like Medicare and Social Security—or add further
military power will come to an abrupt end. to our spiraling debt. Europe faces similar impossible decisions.

Long ago, Vance told me that the first political book

he ever read was THE DEATH OF THE WEST, by Pat Buchanan, and
that the book STILL SHAPES HIS THINKING.

ATO SUMMITS ARE carefully staged public spec- After I’d checked in, I got a text asking if I’d like to visit the small

N tacles. Most of the details of military aid and

long-term strategic plans had been negotiated
via back channels long before the delegations
and heads of state arrived in July. Security was
Alexandria house that JD Vance calls home when he’s in Wash-
ington. When I got there he was drinking whiskey with a small
circle of friends and aides as he relaxed on the couch in sweats and
socks with yellow ducks on them. The meeting was off the record,
tight to the point of absurdity. Hordes of reporters from all over but I am a journalist (one who has written about Vance) and so
the world had come to cover it, but almost everyone spent their I could not help but whisper a prayer that Trump would happen
time cut off from the real proceedings, taping spots and waiting to call and I’d be there to witness Vance being asked to join the
around in a massive hall set up as a media center. ticket—a moment that, win or lose, would mark one of the most
Before the official start of the conference, outgoing NATO significant choices of a running mate in American history. “From
secretary general Jens Stoltenberg gave a press conference with a systemic perspective there are really only two things in politics
Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, who has become a that really mean something,” Jeremy Carl, who served as deputy
hero and an unlikely celebrity as she’s set her little Baltic nation assistant secretary of the interior in the Trump administration,
to prepare itself for war. “Estonia leads by example,” Stoltenberg told me later. “Elon [Musk] buying Twitter,” he said, meaning
said, as one of only a handful of NATO members to devote more that the right now had an unfiltered channel, “and for someone
than 3 percent of its gross domestic product to military spending. to emerge who could make the MAGA into something bigger
The alliance’s agreed minimum target for defense spending is 2 than the man Trump himself.” This is what a potential Vance pick
percent of GDP, compared to 3 percent for the US, which has an would really represent.
economy almost as large as all of Europe’s. Until recently very Long ago, Vance told me that the first political book he ever
few members actually met the 2 percent target—leading former read was The Death of the West, by Pat Buchanan, and that the
president Donald Trump to repeatedly question why America book still shapes his thinking. I bought and read it after he told
spends so much to guarantee Europe’s security, and to threat- me this, and I was surprised to find that it presaged almost per-
en to let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to countries fectly the populist upswelling at the time Vance had just entered

80 VA N I T Y FA I R
the primary for his Ohio US Senate seat. It raised alarms about mood’ going around,” they’d said. Ukrainian leaders were now
declining Western birth rates and globalization and argued supposedly looking to hold negotiations in Saudi Arabia.
that immigration was sapping America’s character and social It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. When Biden gave his
cohesion. Western elites, Buchanan wrote in the introduction, 2022 speech announcing the war in Ukraine as an epochal fight to
“do not seem to care if the end of the West comes by depopu- save our world order, he had bragged that America had leveraged
lation, by a surrender of nationhood, or by drowning in waves its power over world commerce in “a new kind of economic state-
of Third World immigration.” craft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might.”
Buchanan was dismissed as a “paleocon” when he ran for He promised to “reduce the ruble to rubble,” and that Russia
president in 1992 and 1996. But when Bannon took over as would see an economic catastrophe. But Russia’s economy has
Trump’s campaign chief in 2016, he made Trump’s closing been growing faster than that of any country still in the Ameri-
argument a very Buchananite message. The campaign’s final can system. The sanctions ended up having the unintentionally
TV ad, released three days before the election, was laughed off seismic effect of showing that a major power could be kicked
by many observers as a bizarre two minutes. “The establish- out of the dollar-based financial system without facing calamity.
ment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election,” Trump This was possible, in theory, because the US Treasury and the
said. The ad introduced an idea that’s now almost a cliché on Federal Reserve have for the last few decades played a unique
the online right, which has shaped the worldview of younger role in the geopolitical power structure. It’s very complicated for
conservatives like Vance: “You aren’t a citizen of a nation,” the a Japanese automaker selling cars in Mexico to go on the market
line goes. “You’re an imperial subject.” and trade yen for pesos. So 58 percent of foreign transactions are
settled in dollars, even when the trade has nothing to do with the
United States. During the early post–World War II era, dollars
were backed by gold, but that system fell apart in 1971, when
HE NEX T DAY I attended a so-called Defense France sent a ship to New York and demanded that the US hand

T Industry Forum, where the heads of some of the

world’s biggest arms contractors sat on panels
sharing their opinion that the West needed to
quickly and drastically increase its purchases of
over the physical gold representing its holdings. It turned out
that America’s gold vaults at Fort Knox were actually too small,
so President Richard Nixon arranged a deal with Saudi Arabia
under which the kingdom agreed to exchange its oil solely in
war materials. Perhaps this was naive, but I had expected to hear dollars—which didn’t exactly mean that the value of the dollar
people at least pay lip service to the idea that leaders might try was pegged to oil, but it did establish a guarantee that foreign
to step back from a spiraling geostrategic competition that has creditors and central banks would be able to exchange dollars for
us “just on the brink of World War III,” as a former counterter- the commodity that powered the entire world economy. Dollars
rorism official in the second George W. Bush administration had became America’s greatest “export.” This kept the value of our
said to me, “and I’m not trying to be alarmist.” currency high and allowed the US government to debt-finance
There was something slightly surreal about hearing all this itself by selling Treasury bonds on international markets. But
talk of uncompromising bloody resolve coming from the highest there was a cost: The strength of the dollar made goods and
leaders of NATO: They overwhelmingly tend to be on the older commodities produced in America’s “real” economy expensive
side of middle age, svelte and nerdy-looking, with airs more and hurt its competition in the emerging global marketplace.
of modernist architects or math professors than managers of This is the system that obsesses Bannon. But it’s hardly just
war. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, was set right-wingers who talk about it. “It benefits financial indus-
to retire as secretary general soon after the summit. I watched try elites,” the center-left economist Yakov Feygin wrote in
as Biden extolled his service at an evening gala as he fastened an influential paper in 2020, “who reap the rewards of inter-
the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Stoltenberg’s tall, thin mediating capital inflows into US markets, while the cost of
shoulders. His replacement as the face of the alliance was to non-tradable services like tuition, healthcare, and real estate
be the liberal former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, cast rises for everyone else.” Outside the US, governments of poorer
in much the same mold. “He definitely fits the role,” I heard countries often suppress local wages and run trade surpluses
Francis Farrell, a reporter for the Kyiv Independent, say before it so they can stockpile dollars. All these trade imbalances feed
became official that Rutte had the job. “A tall, spectacled North- returns, yet again, to global capital holders. “Across all coun-
ern European who’s just very clean and on point.” tries,” Feygin wrote, “elites win.”
At the press security checkpoint, I ran into Keith Gessen, the The dollar system created a perverse dual incentive for the
Russian American writer, cofounder of the literary journal n+1, American military that sustains the system. It lets us finance
and the younger brother of M. Gessen, one of the world’s most huge expenditures on hypercomplex weapons and allows us to
influential critics of the Putin regime. I asked Keith what he was toss off hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s and
making of a gathering where the world’s most powerful people Israel’s wars. “What about the weapons?” I would soon hear a
had agreed that “Russia remains the most serious, immediate, kaffiyeh-wearing pro-Palestine delegate shout from the floor of
and long-term threat,” as Kallas, the Estonian PM, had put it the Democratic National Convention during Kamala Harris’s
to me. “I’m…not sure what I think,” he said. He told me he’d acceptance speech. There’s a growing realization in the US, across
been down at the NATO Public Forum, a sideshow put on in the entire political spectrum, that this system of geopolitical con-
collaboration with think tanks like the Atlantic Council—which trol now operates to some degree on autopilot. But it also allowed
was, despite the name, entirely closed to the public. He’d talked for wasteful spending and a hollowing out of the industrial base
with some Ukrainians who expressed the grim view that few needed to produce simple war matériel like the artillery shells
leaders were willing to admit to in public: “There’s a ‘ceasefire and air-defense munitions that the C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 0

NOVEMBER 2024 81
IN

AMATEUR ART SLEUTH

CLIFFORD
SCHORER III
HAS HELPED FIND
LOST WORKS BY DÜRER,
REMBRANDT, AND RUBENS.

PLAIN

NOW HE’S EMBARKED

ON HIS GREATEST
DISCOVERY YET, CRACKING
A 43-YEAR-OLD COLD CASE

By A DA M L E I T H G O L L N E R

SIGHT
Photograph by D I A NA M A R KO S I A N

82 VA N I T Y FA I R
 21ST-CENTURY SHERLOCK
Self-taught art detective Clifford
Schorer III—who divides his time
between London, Boston, Vermont,
and Mashpee, Massachusetts—
at his modernist home in
Provincetown, Massachusetts.

NOVEMBER 2024 83
O
solved crime.
N THE EVENING OF APRIL 7, 2021, THE
AMATEUR ART DETECTIVE CLIFFORD SCHORER III WAS
SEATED ON A COUCH IN HIS GLASS HOUSE. IN SILENCE,
HE OPENED A MANILA ENVELOPE
that had been sent to him by a respected
Massachusetts attorney. The packet
contained evidence related to an un-

Schorer’s midcentury-modern home,

designed in 1956 by Bauhaus found-
er Walter Gropius, sits atop a majestic
dune at the western edge of Province-
it had wound up in a yard sale for $30.
Vienna’s Der Standard deemed this “no
less than a find of the century.” Schorer
seemed to concur, telling The New York
Times: “I’ll never have an experience
like that again.” But when it comes to
unearthing overlooked and underpriced
art trophies, he keeps repeating that expe-
he’s followed have led to veritable trea-
sures: the previously unrecorded van
Haarlem he spotted in New Jersey that
now hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago;
a Cézanne he snagged from a Campbell’s
Soup heiress and helped place in Ireland’s
National Gallery; and three possibilities
he scooped up on the cheap that were sub-
town. Its floor-to-ceiling windows offer rience; his identifications and retrievals, sequently reattributed to the Milanese
270-degree views of the seascape below. he says, are the equivalent of being struck maestro Daniele Crespi. He also owns
After dark, with the lights on, the glass by a “kind of electricity” multiple times. four works from Rembrandt’s studio, he
house glows like a television screen. “In Cliff ’s case, lightning strikes a lot,” claims, including “two that I believe are
Since Schorer and his spouse, Kris, nev- explains Jim Welu, director emeritus of the by the master himself.”
er close the front blinds, passersby can Worcester Art Museum (WAM). “It’s just Schorer, who does not hold a university
actually see into the home, as if watching not a fluke in his life; it’s part of his DNA.” degree in art history, is largely self-taught
a show about a sleuth who tracks down Over the past decade or so, Schorer has and makes many of his finds in his spare
missing artworks. stumbled across two van Dycks and “relo- time. He also employs runners to scour
Had you peered through the panes on cated” five Turners. He’s been restoring auctions around the world in search of
that spring night, you might have spied an altarpiece fragment attributed to El hidden gems. “All day and night,” he
Schorer, in front of the fireplace, on his Greco that, he suspects, was rescued from says, “we send pictures back and forth
Danish modern sofa, leafing through by WhatsApp, going, ‘Do we think this is
photocopied pages, seeking clues as he this?’ ” The Sunday Times Magazine (UK)
often does. “Your interesting package has describes him as being “well known in the
now found its way to my hand,” he would art world for his ‘eye.’ ” Schorer formulates
write the lawyer who had mailed the it slightly differently: “I’m known in the art
envelope. In fact, he had told that attor- world for rediscovering lost things.”
ney some weeks earlier: “You know what
I do all day long. I look for paintings.” ESPITE HAVING LEFT high school at
Schorer already had a reputation for
finding lost masterpieces worth millions,
but this dossier contained the makings of
D age 15, Schorer, 58, is an exception-
ally knowledgeable if mercurial and
at times elusive man. He is lanky, with
his biggest case yet. The documents relat- piercing dark eyes, short-cropped hair,
ed to a 1978 home invasion in Worcester, and a trim white beard. “I’m no one, with
Massachusetts, during which nine highly no particular education,” he stated in an
valuable paintings were taken, including oral history project for the Smithsonian’s
works by several Old Masters. The sto- Archives of American Art. “I come to it
len art, Schorer calculated, would now be a burning church during the Spanish Civil with an open pair of eyeballs.”
worth roughly $34 million. Like the 1990 War. He regularly identifies or reidentifies The types of paintings Schorer seeks
hit at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner works by significant Old Masters listed as are known as “sleepers.” A sleeper is
Museum—in which 13 pieces, estimated “by an unidentified artist.” His specialty the name that the picture trade bestows
at $500 million, had been swiped—the is the forgotten Rembrandt or Rubens upon a work being sold below its true
Worcester mystery ranked among Amer- that has somehow slipped between the value because it is mistakenly thought
ica’s most confounding art heists. For cracks and ended up, in his words, “sleep- to be fake, specious, a probable copy,
decades, there’d been no cracks in the ing in plain sight.” or the work of an inconsequential art-
case. But then again, Clifford Schorer III His hunches don’t always prove cor- ist. A sleeper hunter is an individual
had never looked into it. rect: He’s been suckered by at least a few like Schorer, who stalks such errors or
Schorer has quite a track record. In 2019 forgeries or phonies. “Sometimes you fol- misattributions in listings at auctions.
he uncovered an original Albrecht Dürer, low threads that turn into an unraveling Whenever he acquires sleepers, he
today valued at eight figures; remarkably, sweater,” he admits. But many filaments joins forces with experts to reassess and

84 VA N I T Y FA I R
 properly catalog the paintings. Then he lectures, and meetings in Europe once The theft had personal implications.
and his team often unload them at a profit or twice a month. A favorite pastime, he Several of the works had been bound
to blue-chip institutions, using the pro- says, is going to symposia that end just for the permanent collection of WAM,
ceeds to procure more beauties. short of “fisticuffs between scholars where Schorer had previously served as
Schorer’s success at rousing sleepers about attribution.” board president and where a number of
enabled him to put together the invest- A collector and art lover, Schorer is canvases he owns are currently on view.
ment group that purchased the venerable above all a dedicated investigator. He Yet despite his ties to the museum, no
London gallery Agnews in 2014. He then compares the way his mind works to one had ever given him a clear descrip-
acquired a 290-acre forest in Vermont. those wall-mounted corkboards in classic tion of the artworks taken in 1978—until
Recently he became the owner of a crime shows, the kind with thumbtacked the file arrived.
Gatsby-style mansion on an approxi- photos of suspects and murder scenes The package was mailed by Warner
mately four-acre private island in the and corroborating evidence, all linked Fletcher, a Worcester law firm director,
Long Island Sound where J.P. Morgan’s together by pieces of string. Instead chairman of the $50 million Stoddard
great-grandson has resided. Schorer is of a Sherlock Holmes–style magnify- Charitable Trust, and secretary-treasur-
renovating the place to sell. ing glass, he uses precision binocular er of the $59 million Fletcher Foundation,
I first met him in New York City after headband magnifiers, large benchtop organizations that have long supported
a Christie’s auction, where he’d just won microscopes, reverse-image searches in WAM. The plundered artworks had
a Turner for more than $1 million. His online databases, and high-tech tactics,
intent was for Agnews to offer it over the such as MA-XRF spectroscopy or den-
coming years at a higher price to the Euro- drochronology, that apply laboratory
pean market. What moves him, however, analytics to decode a painting’s makeup
isn’t lucrative deals. He isn’t an art dealer and approximate age. As cutting-edge as
at all. Instead, he contends that his goals his forensics may be, however, Schorer—
are threefold: to resurrect forsaken or upon receiving that envelope in April

UNEARTHED GEMS
Schorer located this
lost Dürer, circa
1503 (opposite),
as well as a stolen
early-17th century
Avercamp, which
was reproduced on
a throw pillow.
D Ü R E R : L E O N N E A L / G E T T Y I M A G E S . AV E R C A M P : P U B L I C D O M A I N . P I L LO W : P I X E L S . C O M .

neglected artworks; to repatriate pieces 2021—found himself getting pulled into belonged to Helen Estabrook Stoddard
spoliated by the Nazis; and to die in a strangely old-fashioned cold case. and Robert Stoddard, Fletcher’s aunt
possession of a single perfect painting, and her husband, both now deceased,
ideally an unobtainable Leonardo. This HE DOSSIER CONSISTED of whatever who’d intended to bequeath some of
last aspiration could require selling every-
thing else he owns, but, as he once said,
“I don’t mind living in a cardboard box.”
T scant information was available
about the nine paintings that had
vanished in 1978: 43-year-old police
them to WAM. Fletcher wasn’t hold-
ing his breath for Schorer to solve the
largest private art theft in the city’s his-
When asked where he normally lives, reports, original bills of sale, insur- tory. He just thought the unassuming
he replies, a tad testily, “I don’t really ance documents, invoices, and—most sleuth might find a new way into the
‘normally live’ anywhere.” He divides importantly to Schorer—photocopied long-moribund search. “Maybe in your
his time between Provincetown and reproductions of the actual trove: two Pis- wanderings,” Fletcher suggested to him,
homes in Boston, London, and Mash- sarros, two Renoirs, a Boudin, a Turner, “if ever you come across any of these,
pee, Massachusetts. He attends art fairs, and some intriguing old Dutch paintings. you might be helpful.”

NOVEMBER 2024 85
CLIP ART composition was a much bigger deal. Win- blank pages, as though you’re entering a
Robert and Helen Estabrook Stoddard in ter Sports, as it was known, appeared to be story that hasn’t yet been written.
the Worcester, Massachusetts, newspaper he
had owned, featured in a 2000 story a masterpiece. A signed 1944 attestation Some time after midnight on June
on an exhibition celebrating their collection. included in Fletcher’s package qualified 22, 1978, according to the police report,
it as “one of the best works by this rare a vehicle containing an undetermined
master.” It was nearly four centuries old number of nondescript thieves cruised
Scoping the inventory in the enve- and in a pristine state of preservation. through the upscale neighborhood of For-
lope, Schorer gravitated to one painting The Avercamp looked “extre-e-e-eme- est Grove. They turned onto Monmouth
in particular, a 17th-century icescape by ly desirable,” Schorer emailed Fletcher. A Road. The last home on the dead-end
Hendrick Avercamp. Among the tow- winter scene of that type, he estimated, street was a stately blue-and-white fairy-
ering figures of Holland’s Golden Age, would today cost up to “$10 million if you tale mansion belonging to the art patrons
Avercamp (1585–1634) is famous for his can buy one but you can’t.” Per Sotheby’s, Helen and Robert Stoddard. Their 36-acre

W O R C E S T E R T E L E G R A M - G A Z E T T E . R E M B R A N DT : C O U R T E S Y O F W E S C H L E R ’ S . P I S S A R R O : P U B L I C D O M A I N .
depictions of outdoor wintertime activi- the last two comparable Avercamps had property occupied one of the city’s choic-
ties: Netherlanders skating and otherwise sold at auction for $7.75 and $8.6 million est private lots. The gabled 10-bedroom
going about their business on frozen each. Schorer considered Winter Sports a home, dominated by dark wood and soar-
canals and waterways. In his densely peo- “sui generis rarity.” He would only be able ing ceilings, was done in high-end Arts
pled, somewhat freaky panoramas, figures to establish a precise value after verifying and Crafts style. The walls were adorned
enjoying what the Dutch call “ice fever” its condition firsthand. He informed an with works by Eugène Delacroix, Georgia
can be seen getting frisky in nippy haylofts, astonished Fletcher, “I believe I can run O’Keeffe, and Marc Chagall.
relieving themselves in subzero outhous- it to ground in around 15 more minutes In the midsummer darkness, the
es, hanging from dead-season gallows. during the business day.” robbers made their way toward the Stod-
Avercamp made only 100 or so of The trail it left behind, he felt, would dards’ immense backyard. Ignoring the
his icy paintings. The artist, likely deaf likely lead to the remaining Worcester lavish gardens and the helipad, they
and nonverbal, was known as “the mute paintings. But first he needed to establish sought a way in through the rear sunporch.
of Kampen.” He remains, in the view what, exactly, had happened on the night Helen Stoddard, known locally as “the
of Wim Pijbes and Earl A. Powell III, of the theft. grand dame of Worcester,” had attended
respectively the emeritus directors of the Sorbonne, where she’d developed a
the Rijksmuseum and Washington, DC’s ORCESTER, THE second-biggest lifelong love of fine art, especially French
National Gallery of Art, “the acknowl-
edged master of the winter scene.”
Schorer had owned one of Avercamp’s
W urban center in the commonwealth
of Massachusetts, is a postindustri-
al city an hour west of Boston. As you drive
Impressionism. At her urging, the couple
had started collecting tableaux. The first
piece they acquired was a small Renoir
minor watercolors, which he’d auc- into town, you are greeted by a Welcome landscape; Helen couldn’t imagine living
tioned off 10 weeks prior. But the stolen sign in the shape of an open book with without it. An ardent Francophile, she’d

86 VA N I T Y FA I R
helped establish WAM’s member coun-
cil and would continue volunteering on
SCHORER HAS EXPRESSED THE DESIRE TO DIE IN
museum committees into her 90s.
Robert Stoddard ran a lucrative metal
POSSESSION OF A SINGLE PERFECT PAINTING,
manufacturing business and was majority
owner of the Worcester Telegram (later to
IDEALLY AN UNOBTAINABLE LEONARDO—EVEN
become the Telegram & Gazette, which
the New York Times company eventual-
IF IT MEANS SELLING EVERYTHING ELSE.
ly bought for $295 million). An amateur “I DON’T MIND LIVING IN A
helicopter pilot, he enjoyed vintage auto-
mobiles and could be seen driving around CARDBOARD BOX.”
town in his Bentley sporting a porkpie hat.
In 1958, he cofounded the right-wing John
Birch Society, the extremist group that
footprints and pillow feathers marked the authorities had never even come up
would help give rise to the modern con-
the getaway route through the backyard. with a suspect. Insinuations that Robert
servative movement. If you tried to sit to
“Bumblers Pull Off a Perfect Crime” Stoddard had orchestrated it for the insur-
his right at a table, he’d warn you that you
read the headline in the Telegram. ance payout were summarily dismissed.
might fall off the edge of the world. Ret-
Worcester’s police department called His wealth was such that the amount he
rograde politically, he was a big-spending
it an “amateurish job” done by “petty stood to receive from Liberty Mutual (on
philanthropist—and a prime target for a
thieves.” But for small-timers, they’d whose board of directors he served) was
burglary. He also happened to be a noto-
either gotten fantastically lucky or they’d described as “a drop in the bucket.”
riously deep sleeper.
known precisely which paintings were the Perhaps the most arresting detail
On the night of the break-in, according
most valuable. The Stoddards’ collection was that pillowcases played a part in the
to news reports, only Robert was home.
had been appraised for insurance purpos- caper. Because a pillowcase was precise-
His wife was in the hospital undergoing
es 11 months prior; all the priciest pieces ly what would end up leading Schorer to
jaw surgery. He finished his usual pre-
were the very ones that had been taken. the Avercamp.
sleep milk and cookies and got into bed
“It was as if,” officers noted, the “thieves
by 11:45 p.m.
had been given a list of paintings to steal.” HE MANILA ENVELOPE beside him,
Not long after, the thieves tried to force
their way in by prying apart a jalousie
window with a screwdriver. When that
didn’t work, they broke the glass pane on
Even so, the ensuing investigation
went nowhere. The sergeant assigned to
the case would later acknowledge that
T Schorer picked up his MacBook Pro
and started searching Hendrick
Avercamp images online, on the off
chance he might find a digital footprint
the back breezeway door. The key to the
of the Stoddards’ winterscape. At first
deadbolt was sitting in the lock. Turning
nothing relevant popped up. But as he
it, the crooks walked right in.
scanned the Google search results, he had
They helped themselves to snacks in
a thought: If I knew I had a hot painting,
the refrigerator and booze from the liquor
previously attributed to Avercamp, to
cabinet. Since they’d come without prop-
whom would I attribute it if I wanted to
er carrying cases for the artworks, they
push it through the market and get away
slashed open pillows from the sofa, strew-
with it? In other words, what would a
ing fluff all over the floor. They stuffed
fence do? The move, to any art detective,
paintings into pillowcases, police sur-
mised, and packed smaller ivory objets
and jewel boxes into antique fire buck-
ets. They also rifled through Stoddard’s
bedroom without disturbing his slumber.
They placed a fire poker nearby, appar-
ently in case he awoke and needed to be
subdued. But he dozed through it all, even
as the thieves ransacked the place.
Upon waking at 6 a.m., Stoddard MASTERS’ WORKS
From top: a possible
found his glasses on the floor. His wallet Rembrandt, circa
was missing from the bedside bureau, 1629, that Schorer
“found”; the
as were two of his watches. The couple’s FBI reclaimed
beloved Pissarro port scene, which had the Stoddards’
hung above their mantelpiece, was gone. 1902 Pissarro in
a 1998 raid.
So was Helen’s prized Renoir, the light of
her life. Another seven paintings, includ-
ing the Avercamp and the Turner, were
now empty spots on the wall. A trail of

NOVEMBER 2024 87
was obvious: try to sell it as something Schorer knew Steigrad well enough discoveries.” When not rooting around
close to, but not exactly, the real thing. to call him. As the telephone rang, he for sleepers, Fish is the CEO of a South
Schorer retried the image search using wondered if the Avercamp was still in American cargo shipping company that
the name of the painter’s best-known Steigrad’s possession or if his gallery transports hazardous substances and
disciple, his nephew Barent Avercamp. had already sold it. When Steigrad picked dangerous materials, “particularly explo-
Within a few moments, a thumbnail up, Schorer got right to the point: Larry, sives and radioactive goods.”
appeared that matched the photocopied why are you fucking trafficking in stolen Throughout our call, Fish was adamant
reproduction in his file. “Bingo!” he paintings from my museum? Steigrad that he had not known the Avercamp was
exclaimed, zooming in. As he’d suspect- was emphatic that he’d never bought radioactive at the time he’d purchased it.
ed, the painting had been falsely ascribed or sold the painting; he’d simply pho- “When you buy thousands of things, every
to an Avercamp follower. Barent’s works tographed it when it had been on sale now and then one of them ends up being
were inferior to his uncle’s and worth in 1995. “Where?” Schorer demanded. stolen,” he offered breezily. “Believe me,
substantially less—but also easier to ped- At the European Fine Art Foundation if I knew or if I thought it were”—stolen,
dle without drawing attention. Schorer Fair (TEFAF), Steigrad replied, a highly he meant—“I would run the other way.”
clicked on the thumbnail, which brought reputable art market held annually in (Searching Fish’s name online brought
him to a website called Pixels.com. Maastricht, the Netherlands. up reports of a theft of 18th-century art-
“That’s insane,” he muttered to him- Every painting sold at TEFAF under- works from a Peruvian church. Eight of the
self, eyeing the screen. Reproductions of goes a rigorous vetting process overseen stolen paintings were allegedly consigned
the pilfered Avercamp were being sold by experts, conservators, and academic by Fish to an Iowa auction house, where-
as decorative throw pillows. For $18.40, specialists. Because this painting had upon they were seized by the FBI. At the
anyone could buy a pillowcase with the been submitted as a Barent Avercamp, time, Fish denied knowing that the works
Stoddards’ long-lost icescape printed it did not receive the same scrutiny that were stolen. No charges were laid. Asked
on it. The machine-washable coverlets a Hendrick Avercamp would have. And to comment, Fish noted that the sellers
weren’t the only products that featured from what Schorer could tell by the hi-res had given him a receipt: “You must always
the painting. The company’s print- scan, the artist’s monogram-like signa- be careful who you are dealing with and
on-demand technology meant you could ture, which superimposed the initial H get a signed receipt. Anyone who know-
get the Avercamp on a yoga mat, a coffee over an A, appeared to have been forged: ingly buys a stolen painting is an idiot.”)
mug, a bath towel, or an iPhone case. Someone seemed to have etched the ini- During our conversation, Fish had
The original was last seen in 1978, tial B over the H. initially told me he couldn’t recall where
before digital photography existed. So Either way, it was the same painting he’d found the Avercamp, though he
how, Schorer wondered, had Pixels.com that decades earlier had been purloined did speak openly about having profited
gotten access to an image that could be from the Stoddards. Unfortunately, Stei- from it via the gallery that brought it to
reproduced on products? There was only grad informed Schorer, the gallery that TEFAF. “I sold it for pretty good money:
one answer: Someone must have scanned had represented the Avercamp at TEFAF $100,000,” he claimed. “I remember
it recently. was now defunct, and the owner had died. the painting—but I don’t remember who
Schorer looked closer at the onscreen But through art-world connections, Schor- I bought it from.… I wish I could be more
pillowcase. The underlying rendering, er says he implored one of the gallery’s helpful, you know. It’d be great to help.”
he noticed, belonged to a collection former partners to divulge the name of the The more we talked, the less fuzzy his
called Bridgeman Images, a digital fine individual who’d sold them the Avercamp. memories became. Upon first encounter-
art archive. For $39, Schorer was able His name was Sheldon Fish. ing the painting, he remembered, he could
to license a full-resolution version of tell it was valuable. “I knew I was onto a
that parent file. Opening it, he checked HAT I DO is I look to find lost mas- score,” Fish said. “But he didn’t sell it to
the metadata and spotted the initials
L.S.F.A.L.—which he recognized as refer-
ring to Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts Ltd.,
W terpieces,” explained Fish when
I reached him in Lima, Peru—a
proclamation not unlike those I had heard
me as an Avercamp, obviously.” Who was
the “he” who’d sold it? Fish couldn’t recall.
To prepare for our interview, Fish
a New York Old Masters dealer. from Schorer. “I’ve made a lot of major added, he’d asked his brother about the
painting. The two of them often went
treasure hunting together, and his broth-
er thought they’d found it at Brimfield
POLICE SURMISED THAT THE THIEVES STUFFED Antique Flea Markets, a half hour or so
drive from Worcester. “You go from
PAINTINGS INTO PILLOWCASES one booth to the other looking for the
mistakes,” Fish explained. “Different
AND PACKED JEWEL BOXES INTO ANTIQUE FIRE experts are running around all over the
place, like lunatics, trying to find a lost
BUCKETS. THEY PLACED A FIRE POKER NEAR whatever it is.” By the end of our con-
versation, he’d concluded that he likely
STODDARD’S BED IN CASE HE AWOKE AND HAD TO found it at Brimfield: “I’m fairly certain
I got it from there.” He told me he didn’t
BE SUBDUED. have a receipt.

88 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Still, Schorer now had a piece of the
puzzle: Brimfield. Digging deeper into
the events at the Stoddards’ home and the
ensuing investigation, the sleuth noticed
a curious connection. The only quasi-lead
from the police investigation was a call
Stoddard had received not long after the
burglary, during which a voice with an
indeterminate foreign accent claimed
to know where the paintings were. And
though the cops never identified the
caller, they were able to track the call to
a phone booth next to the interstate, 10
minutes from Brimfield.

NE OF THE sellers booths at Brimfield

O during that time, Schorer learned,

had been operated by a local antique
dealer named Robert Cornell and his
wife, Jennifer B. Abella-Cornell. Twenty
years after the 1978 Worcester heist, the
two had become suspects when the Pis-
sarro from above the Stoddards’ mantel
turned up at an auction house in Ohio.
(Both Cornell and Abella-Cornell were
questioned by the FBI; Robert Cornell
denied all involvement, and no charges
were ever filed.)
The artist’s great-grandson Joachim
Pissarro noticed the auction listing and,
realizing where the painting had come
from, personally alerted Helen Stod-
dard. (Her husband had passed away in
1984.) She informed authorities, and the
FBI moved swiftly to seize the artwork
before it could go under the gavel. It had acquitted on appeal. But the fallout from RAIDER OF THE LOST
been expected to fetch up to $2 million. the trials and several tax audits eventually Schorer with a statue of a Song dynasty deity
in his Provincetown house. The property
(It might now be worth four or five times forced him to shutter his gallery. overlooks the bay where the Mayflower made
that amount.) When the Stoddards’ Pissarro sur- its first new-world landing.
At the time of the raid, the FBI began faced, Cornell denied having had
investigating how the Pissarro had ended anything to do with it—or the original bur-
up in Ohio. But they never managed to glary. “I’ve never seen that painting,” he When the couple split up, Abella-
reconstruct the painting’s trajectory. Cor- declared in the Worcester Telegram. “I can Cornell allegedly took $30,000 in gems
nell and Abella-Cornell, by then divorced, say that and be lying through my teeth. and rare coins from Cornell. He called
had contradicted each other’s statements But the bottom line is that painting has the police, who promptly found most of
to authorities to such an extent that the never been in this house.” the stolen goods in her possession. Four
FBI described attempts to establish the Abella-Cornell claimed she’d found rare coins worth $10,000, however, were
truth as being “like beating a dead horse.” the painting in Cornell’s closet, wrapped missing. She was forced to reimburse
The couple had lived 22 miles from in paper. She also insisted that earlier it Cornell that amount and serve two years
Brimfield in a 30-room Victorian mansion had been mounted on a wall in Ame- probation. (Media reports at the time
called Amesmith. Cornell ran a gallery smith. The couple’s acrimonious breakup stated that she pleaded guilty to avoid
from their home, where works by Picasso was compounded by Abella-Cornell’s a trial and permanent record of convic-
and Chagall were on offer. A specialist in involvement in a reported love triangle. tion.) Without means to pay Cornell off,
coins, particularly in detecting counter- As she informed investigators, she and she told the FBI, she turned to the owner
feits, he fell on hard times in the early Cornell were working the antiques circuit of the wine bar. He acknowledged, in the
1980s after he was convicted of receiving when, at a Cleveland coin show, she got Telegram, that he then raised the funds to
stolen property. He complained that law romantically involved with the owner of lend her. She said she brought him the
enforcement was trying to depict him as a nearby wine bar. (Abella-Cornell did Pissarro as collateral. Cornell disputed
“the biggest fence in Western Massachu- not respond to requests for comment; this, contending that she was attempt-
setts.” Initially found guilty, he was later Cornell died in 2013.) ing to frame C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 6

PHOTOGRAPH BY D I A N A MARKOSIAN NOVEMBER 2024 89

 THE VICIOUS

Clockwise from top left:

Demonstrators in
Charlottesville; the
Terre Haute, Indiana,
federal prison complex
where Atomwaffen
Division founder Brandon
Russell was incarcerated;
the right-wing Patriot
Front in DC in 2021;
Sarah Clendaniel, who
was romantically linked
to Russell; a Special
Confinement Unit cell
in the Terre Haute
penitentiary; Russell
posts his prison tattoo
of AWD’s logo; members
of the Base, a violent
white supremacist group,
pose; Jacob Kaderli,
attorney Radford
Bunker, and Michael
Helterbrand in 2020.

90 VA N I T Y FA I R
CIRCLE
YOUNG NEOFASCISTS ARE AT AN INFLECTION
POINT, AS SOME DO TIME FOR INCREASINGLY
SERIOUS CRIMES, FROM MURDER TO DOMESTIC
TERRORISM. WORSE, PRISONS NOW FUNCTION
AS FINISHING SCHOOLS FOR THE WOULD-BE
PROGENITORS OF AN AMERICAN REICH
BY ALI WINSTON

NOVEMBER 2024 91
 which Russell founded with his friend threw him into the cold reality of Amer-

B
Devon Arthurs in 2015, was still embry- ican carceral institutions for the first time.
onic in mid-2017, with a handful of cells Following Russell’s conviction and
around the United States. At the time, against the backdrop of a resurgent white
the neofascist youth revival known col- supremacist movement in America that
loquially as the alt-right was ascendant, rode the coattails of Donald Trump’s 2016
spewing hatred freely online and clash- presidential victory, Atomwaffen grew
ing with anti-fascist counterprotesters into one of the extreme right’s most noto-
at rallies across the country. The arrest rious organizations. It posted provocative
and imprisonment of the Atomwaffen propaganda videos, flyered campuses,
Division’s founders did not kneecap the and published a set of obscure neo-Nazi
group’s rise. To the contrary, it helped texts that are now central to a particular-
fuel its growth. ly violent segment of the global extreme
Russell had rented an apartment in right. The group’s flecktarn-camouflaged
Tampa, where he lived with three other fatigues and skull-mask balaclavas have
AWD members: Arthurs, Andrew One- become staples of extreme right-wing
schuk, and Jeremy Himmelman—the imagery. Atomwaffen’s core text, Siege,
latter two young fascists who’d moved which promotes murder, infrastructure
south from Massachusetts into an apart- destruction, and dispersed guerrilla
were
B R AN D O N R U S S E L L’ S L E T T E R S
ment filled with firearms, fascist flags, tactics meant to destabilize society, has
detailed: first a how-to diagram for build-
and memorabilia, such as a framed pho- helped define the concept of accelera-
ing a functional explosive device. Then
tograph of Timothy McVeigh. In their tionism that is now common currency in
instructions for dropping propaganda
spare time the young men would hike, go the extreme right.
leaflets by air. In another, an ominous
on Airsoft shooting missions, and push After the deadly events in Charlottes-
warning: “As soon as I get out, I will go
recruitment. Russell had the group’s ville, Virginia, Southern California cadre
right back to fight for my White Race and
insignia inked on his right shoulder. member Samuel Woodward murdered
my America!”
On May 19, 2017, Arthurs murdered Blaze Bernstein, a gay Jewish student, in
He was already incarcerated when
Himmelman and Oneschuk with an what authorities called a hate crime (he
he wrote those letters from the Pinellas
assault rifle in a fit of rage. When police was convicted after a three-month trial in
County Jail in Clearwater, Florida, hoping
searched the apartment, they discovered July). Nicholas Giampa, a teenage affili-
they would land in the hands of a fellow
the arsenal, reams of propaganda, and ate of Atomwaffen, killed his girlfriend’s
neo-Nazi. His 2018 conviction for pos-

P R E V I O U S S P R E A D , C H A R LO T T E S V I L L E : A L B I N LO H R - J O N E S / S I PA U S A /A P. P R I S O N : M I C H A E L C O N R OY/A P. PAT R I O T F R O N T : W I N M C N A M E E / G E T T Y.
a cooler full of highly unstable home- mother and stepfather after they forbade
session of explosive materials had done
made explosives belonging to Russell. him from dating their daughter because
nothing to dissuade his neo-acceleration-

C L E N DA N I E L : D E PA R T M E N T O F J U S T I C E . C E L L : U P I . R U S S E L L : T W I T T E R . K A D E R L I : H YO S U B S H I N / AT L A N TA J O U R N A L - C O N S T I T U T I O N /A P.
Arthurs was arrested immediately; Rus- he’d mowed a giant swastika into the
ist dreams: He wanted the social order to
sell was arrested two days later. Local lawn of their subdivision in Virginia.
collapse, giving way to ethnic cleansing
law enforcement had allowed Russell Yet Russell’s probation conditions
and the eventual rise of a National Social-
to leave the scene of Arthurs’s massacre didn’t restrict his internet usage or abil-
ist order. But the letters were intercepted
despite the presence of homemade explo- ity to associate with extremists. Even
and turned over to the Federal Bureau of
sives. (In 2023, Arthurs pleaded guilty to when photographs of Russell’s posts in
Investigation. Prosecutors cited Russell’s
two counts of murder and three counts the company of AWD comrades and
jailhouse correspondence as the basis for
of kidnapping and was sentenced to 45 extremist remarks on a now defunct
a heavier sentence than the five years he
years in state prison.) Twitter account were sent to his federal
ultimately received.
When Russell was first charged with probation officer by concerned extrem-
“Russell is not someone whose arrest
explosives offenses in 2017, a federal ism researchers, law enforcement did
and incarceration has caused him to
judge released him on bond, claiming not revoke his supervised release. “He
reflect on his conduct or feel remorse. His
there was no “clear and convincing evi- could’ve restarted the Atomwaffen
conduct in this case posed a grave dan-
dence” that he posed a danger to the Division and not been in violation of his
ger to human life, and he has shown that
public. Russell was in possession of rifles, agreement,” says Pete Simi, a sociology
he will continue to be dangerous once
ammunition, homemade body armor, professor at Chapman University who has
released from incarceration,” the feds
binoculars, and a skull mask when he studied far-right extremism for decades.
wrote in a January 2018 motion. And over
was arrested. During his interrogation, “People always complain about prison
the course of Russell’s five-year imprison-
Arthurs had told police that Russell being the worst thing that could happen
ment, he continued to radicalize.
wanted to attack a nuclear plant south to their lives. But honestly, I met some of
The Atomwaffen Division (from the
of Miami, prompting a judge to revoke my best friends in prison, had some great
German word for atomic weapons),
Russell’s bail before his trial. times and great laughs, and was shown a
Russell had been an intelligent but ton of love and support from those who
This article was reported in partnership immature kid—one elementary school cared about me on the outside,” Russell
with Type Investigations with support classmate described him to Rolling Stone wrote in an October 2021 post with a
from the nonpartisan nonprofit Fund for as a “radioactive boy scout”—who grew sketch and photograph of himself at the
Constitutional Government. up in ease and affluence, but the arrest federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana,

92 VA N I T Y FA I R
featuring his head framed by a Black Sun balaclava-and-tracksuit aesthetic of Bal- says Simi. “From that to the more radi-
with the caption “The Most Dangerous kan genocidaire militias and the Irish cal manifestations of that ideology, the
Man in America.” Republican Army, The Turner Diaries, neofascist aspects and the violence, it’s
America’s young neofascists like Rus- the half skull mask, McVeigh—to build not that far of a bridge to cross.”
sell are at an inflection point: Many of the its own virulent, seductive world. Now the architects of this subculture
movement’s figureheads are heading On the spectrum of the American far are heading to prison for their first, sec-
into their second or third stints in prison right, the further out you go, there’s less ond, or third stints in custody for violent
for increasingly serious crimes. Other wanting a “friendlier Nazi Germany” offenses. And alongside them, there are
prominent right-wing extremists con- and more mass exterminations, Charles hundreds of January 6 participants on
victed and sentenced in the past decade Manson–style helter-skelter, and forging their way to or in the Bureau of Prisons
or so are either nearing the end of their a Fourth Reich. Violence is paramount. system: As of August 2024, the Justice
prison terms or have been released back Subversion is key. And the young men Department has charged more than 1,400
into society. Like countless extremists who drive the propagation of neofascist people with criminal offenses stemming
before them, from developing-nation sub/counterculture are wholly commit- from the insurrection and more than 900
independence heroes to the Maoist ted to the cause. While women occupy defendants have pleaded guilty.
student guerrillas of 1960s Europe to an essential place, the world of the mod- The sentencing patterns to date of the
jihadis, prison is now functioning as a ern-day brownshirts is almost exclusively Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders
finishing school for the would-be pro- male. To them, the January 6 invasion of convicted of seditious conspiracy do not
genitors of an American reich. the Capitol was mild: They’ve assault- inspire confidence: All have been sent
Locking up extremists for their crimes ed ideological opponents at rallies and to medium-security facilities, includ-
is necessary, but by no stretch of the plotted to murder anti-fascist families, ing federal prisons like Cumberland,
imagination does it solve the underlying disable the power grid, and shoot up a Manchester, Coleman, and Talladega.
problems. Following his conviction for gun-rights rally. They hew to a time-hon- The “Patriot Wing”—the name alleged
the failed 1923 coup d’etat known as the ored tradition of “leaderless resistance,” insurrectionists in the Washington, DC,
Beer Hall Putsch, Adolph Hitler honed and they’ve succeeded in emulating it to jail gave to their housing unit—is known
his myth while imprisoned for high a degree, with copycat massacres in Pitts- to have fostered solidarity among January
treason, authoring Mein Kampf, vastly burgh, El Paso, Buffalo, and elsewhere, by 6 defendants. So the role of correctional
expanding his notoriety and continuing perpetrators lionized as “saints.” These systems in tracking and responsibly hous-
his ascent to power. overtly accelerationist attacks like the ing extreme-right inmates is crucial.
The stories of Brandon Russell; Robert Buffalo massacre are aimed at “soft” Yet there currently is no deradical-
Rundo, a former gang member turned targets, not heads of state, and seek to ization or intervention curriculum for
Nazi street fighter from Queens, New destabilize the social order by ramping federal prisoners with domestic terrorism
York; and Jacob Kaderli, a fascist from up political and racial tensions. convictions, either inside prisons or upon
suburban Georgia, all exemplify how According to a February 2023 Gov- their release back into society. By con-
the realities of prison further radicalize ernment Accountability Office report, trast, Germany’s state governments and
America’s extreme right wing. the FBI tallied 9,049 cases related to its domestic intelligence agency spend

THE SENTENCING PATTERNS OF THE OATH KEEPERS AND

PROUD BOY LEADERS CONVICTED OF SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY
DO NOT INSPIRE CONFIDENCE.

WE ARE ALMOST a decade into the neo- domestic terrorism in 2021, up from 5,557 millions of euros annually on anti-ex-
fascist revival, and there are no signs in 2020, 4,092 such cases in 2019, and tremism education and deradicalization
of its momentum abating. Once-fringe 3,714 in 2018. In 2017, the year of Unite efforts. The Federal Bureau of Prisons did
concepts like the Great Replacement are the Right, there were 1,890 domestic-ter- not return requests for comment.
now echoed in Congress, and January 6 rorism-related cases, on par with the “Replacement theory is being dis-
demonstrated the potential of street-fight- preceding four years, during which time cussed not only on national TV, it’s
ing extremists to serve as instruments of the FBI was largely focused on Muslim also being discussed at bars, pool halls,
erstwhile dictators. The far right—and this jihadis. (A spokesperson for the Depart- and dinner tables,” says Brian Levin, a
is a youth-led movement—has succeeded ment of Justice declined to comment for criminologist and professor emeritus at
in the creation of an organic neofascist this story.) “White supremacist ideas, California State University–San Bernardi-
sub/counterculture. It has adopted ele- symbols, and groups are widely circulat- no. “We’re not only failing to equip people
ments of older National Socialist ing, including in the White House during to critically understand the roots of previ-
culture and updated it—Black Suns, the the last administration and Congress,” ous societal divisions from yesteryear that

NOVEMBER 2024 93
impact us today; we’re failing to address two such facilities in the country (the “For these alt-right guys,” Stepanian
how these prejudices are amplified.” other is in Marion, Illinois). In their early says, “it is going to be like a finishing school
“The danger is not only from these years, the CMUs were overwhelmingly for them, if they can make it through.”
ideologues forming their own militant filled with Muslim inmates sentenced on According to a source with knowledge,
organizations bent on violence,” he adds, terrorism-related charges. Occasionally at Terre Haute Russell became acquainted
“but their influential role in a more broad prison officials would assign inmates from with Walter Bond, a Salt Lake City vegan
cultural context with those who aren’t a hard-left tendency as what a former convicted of burning down businesses
quite Nazis.” inmate described as a “balancer” to vary in Colorado and Utah that sold animal
Along with societal factors, each the unit’s ethnic and racial composition, products. Bond, who claimed the arsons
extremist’s background determines how along with hard-core neo-Nazi terrorists under the alias ALF Lone Wolf, was sent to

CONFINING INMATES BASED ON SUPPOSED IDEOLOGY

LUMPS THOSE WITH LESSER OFFENSES IN WITH GENUINE ZEALOTS—
MEANING THOSE WITH WEAKER BELIEFS CAN COME OUT RADICALIZED.

receptive they’ll be to counterprogram- like Richard Scutari of the Order; Mat- the Terre Haute unit in 2018 after serving
ming, according to a foundational 1993 thew Hale, who schemed to assassinate a a three-year stint in Marion. He showed
study by Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt, federal judge; and Dennis Mahon, part of no remorse at his 2011 sentencing hear-
which groups far-right-wing adherents the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery ing and signed his prison communiqués
into three archetypes. There are thrill crew that had ties to McVeigh. “Walter Bond, ALF-POW,” indicating
offenders, by and large young men who The CMU’s inmate population, which he viewed himself as a prisoner of war.
might fall into the category of “edge- increased by 140 percent from 2007 to Bond’s ideological commitment was
lords,” who act on peer validation, with 2022, faces heavy restrictions, including emblazoned on his body in the form of
the least degree of ideological indoctri- monitoring of all correspondence and crossed wrenches (the insignia of 1980s
nation. Then there are defensive reactive a restrictive visitation policy. Letters, punk band Earth Crisis, which was closely
offenders, who form their worldview from emails, and phone calls to and from associated with the Earth First! move-
conflict with other racial groups or a loss of prisoners are documented in weekly ment and the Animal Liberation Front)
status; the personal nature of their animus intelligence reports, some of which have and “vegan” tattoos on his neck.
can be countered with lived experiences. sporadically trickled out into public view. Bond’s influence on Russell was imme-
Mission-driven offenders, which include Analysts in the Bureau of Prisons’ coun- diately apparent on his release in August
some true sociopaths, are by far the hard- terterrorism unit in Martinsburg, West 2021. The Atomwaffen founder adopted
est people to reach. “Their composition Virginia, scrutinize the communications the alias Raccoon online, littered his
changes over time,” says Levin. “Hard- and compile weekly intelligence sum- Twitter feed with animal rights–themed
core racist skinhead offenders, Klansmen, maries. (The BOP denied Freedom of posts, and posted a photograph of himself
Atomwaffen Division.” Information Act requests for documents at a Florida bar wearing an ALF T-shirt.
After his conviction in 2018, Russell about correspondence between CMU Bond also drifted to the right, sending
was sent to a low-security penitentiary inmates and the outside world during Third Reich–era vegan propaganda to
in Atlanta. Within six months he par- Russell’s term, citing inmate privacy.) his pen pals and earning a disavowal from
ticipated in a propaganda video with Andy Stepanian, an animal rights former supporters for his “eco-fascist
his comrades on the outside where he activist imprisoned for a controversial trajectory.” After leaving prison, Bond
reaffirmed his commitment to millena- conviction involving a lab targeted by met with Ryan Hatfield, an Atomwaffen
rian neofascism and threatened three saboteurs, served almost six months at comrade of Russell’s from Denver, before
former members suspected of betraying the Marion CMU in the late 2000s. Point- being reincarcerated last year for nine
Atomwaffen. After the video’s release and ing to specialized “terrorism” units in months over a probation violation.
subsequent media coverage, the Bureau France and the UK where inmates have During Russell’s incarceration, the
of Prisons relocated Russell to a secretive come out more radicalized and gone on Atomwaffen Division moved from the
isolation unit in Terre Haute reserved for to commit attacks, Stepanian claims that fringes of the far right to the mainstream.
extremist prisoners in a mothballed sec- CMUs have a similar impact. “Prisons are Copycat groups sprung up throughout
tion of that facility’s death row. a petri dish for this kind of stuff,” he says. North America, Europe, and Australia,
Created quietly in 2006 by the Bush Confining inmates based on ideology, even after a multistate FBI operation in
administration to house “dangerous ter- Stepanian observes, lumps people with February 2020 rolled up the remainder
rorists” during the post-9/11 era, Terre lesser offenses and weaker beliefs in with of AWD’s leadership. “When we were
Haute’s Communications Management genuine zealots, and often “they came doing the Base and Atomwaffen, acceler-
Unit, known as Gitmo North, is one of out with a more radicalized ideology.” ationists were kind of ‘cringe,’ ” says one

94 VA N I T Y FA I R
veteran FBI agent. “Two years after that, crimes, soliciting the murder of federal oldest of three brothers in Dacula, Geor-
90 percent of all white nationalists online officials, and conspiring to provide mate- gia, a leafy exurb 37 miles northeast of
were accelerationists, which was scary.” rial support to terrorists. Atlanta and part of Georgia’s “innovation
Upon returning to the civilian world, Russell’s term in the CMU was notable crescent.” Kaderli has the ropy muscula-
Russell dove right back into his extreme- for another reason: Sarah Clendaniel, a ture and coiled energy of a rock climber,
right milieu. Instead of Odin, his old Maryland woman with white nationalist medium height with long black hair. He’s
handle, Russell changed his aliases up, leanings serving state time for armed now a ward of the state and a convicted
shuffling between Raccoon, Homun- robbery, struck up a correspondence with domestic extremist, currently in a Georgia
culus, and Ouroboros to conceal his him. The two began a romantic relation- prison for his part in a plot to murder an
identity. He published his prison writing ship, which continued when they were anti-fascist family. Kaderli and his cocon-
on a website run by AWD’s remnants, released. Court documents show Rus- spirators were members of a neo-Nazi
along with post-release essays inspired sell and Clendaniel recruited potential guerrilla organization called the Base.
by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Russell coconspirators via extremist Telegram Rinaldo Nazzaro, an ex–FBI analyst
was also prolific on Telegram, circulat- channels, leading to their arrest last and intelligence and defense contractor,
ing maps of energy and rail infrastructure February for conspiring to destroy pow- founded the Base in 2018 while organizing
and sharing the personal information of er substations around Baltimore and sow under the aliases Roman Wolf and Nor-
government employees. chaos with rolling blackouts. In addition man Spear. It grew quickly into a clone
Meanwhile he became active in the to the Baltimore plot, Russell was trying of the Atomwaffen Division, recruiting
Terrorgram Collective, a loose-knit to recruit people for “IRL activism” in young men through fascist corners of
international network that creates and Florida (a euphemism that can include the internet and grouping recruits into
disseminates noxious neo-Nazi media sabotage and property destruction) geographic cells. The Georgia cell, to
with the dual purpose of “black-pilling” and frequently promoted news about a which Kaderli belonged under the alias
young people and inspiring lone-wolf decade-high wave of nationwide power Pestilence, was among the most active:
attacks. The organization’s four major grid attacks in late 2022 that preoccupied They would organize shooting practices
publications are dense, slickly pro- law enforcement. on a rural property, with Kaderli providing
duced neofascist tracts geared toward Russell’s trial is set for mid-Novem- some of the firepower in the form of shot-
radicalizing youth with Atomwaffen, ber. His attorneys have kicked up dust guns and semiautomatic rifles.
Green Anarchist, anti-police, and Great by enlisting the American Civil Liber- Through the Base’s online recruit-
Replacement ideology, blended with ties Union to disclose what they claim is ment channels, Kaderli befriended
unvarnished Hitler worship. evidence of warrantless surveillance by James, a burly backwoods youth who
Rather than simple manifestos, Terror- American intelligence agencies that led read voraciously and taught himself
gram publications included bomb-making to Russell’s arrest. Great Britain formal- Russian. In an interview with me last
instructions and tactical advice on how ly banned the accelerationist group last summer, James recounted his introduc-
to disrupt power lines and poison water spring, which provided greater authority tion to fascism. Much of his radicalization
distribution systems. The Terrorgram for surveillance for the UK and its allies. took place online, though he also had
publications also feature lurid references Clendaniel pleaded guilty to her charges family who introduced him to fascism
to neo-Nazi mass murderers like McVeigh earlier this year and may testify against and white nationalism. Kaderli invit-
and Norwegian killer Anders Breivik; one her former paramour. ed James into the Base, and the two

AT ONE BASE GATHERING, THEY SACRIFICED A RAM,

DROPPED LSD, AND MADE PAGAN OATHS. IN THE MORNING,
THOSE WHO COULD STILL STAND TOOK FIRING PRACTICE.

page includes a photo of every one of Brei- Russell faces a lengthy sentence and bonded over their love of firearms
vik’s 77 victims. The “saints” and their could be returned to the CMU at Terre and shooting in the Georgia woods.
“high scores” fit squarely within the white Haute or Marion if not the “supermax” As the Base grew in size and noto-
nationalist tradition back to Louis Beam’s federal penitentiary in Florence, Colora- riety, Kaderli, James, and the Georgia
Essays of a Klansman, which established a do, alongside America’s highest-profile cell organized training sessions at an
points system for “Aryan Warriorhood” terrorism convicts. increasing rate with comrades from
based on criminal acts (including murder) across the South and East Coast. An
in furtherance of the movement. In early JACOB KADERLI, LIKE Russell, was a son October 2019 gathering was the larg-
September, federal prosecutors charged of suburbia who grew up online. The child est of the sort: They sacrificed a ram,
Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison with of a confectionary executive and a stay- dropped LSD, and made pagan oaths. In
a 15-count indictment for soliciting hate at-home mother, the 24-year-old was the the morning, C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 5

NOVEMBER 2024 95
 After all, he’d been informed that the gal- blaze, one monk asked the other, who’d
In Plain Sight
lery’s records were in her garage. Months snatched it off the wall at the last second:
later, she agreed to search the archives. If “Why did you take that?” The brothers
she could unearth the sales receipts, they dismissed the idea of it being an honest-
would likely identify the Avercamp buyer. to-God Rembrandt as laughable, so they
Schorer was patient. He knew time finally ended up consigning it to an auction
was often on the side of the tenacious house. (The monks had appraisers weigh
sleuth. Moreover, he had another case he in, only to be told the work couldn’t pos-
was running down about another Dutch sibly have been by the master.)
painter. This one was named Rembrandt After his winning bid, Schorer brought a
Harmenszoon van Rijn. high-end 3D reproduction of the painting
to the monastery as a donation. The sur-
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 8 9 him. For a IN THE FALL of 2021, Schorer acquired one viving monks there were still in a state of
variety of reasons, including the fact that of the deepest sleepers he’d ever seen: a semi-shock over the fact that they’d unwit-
their dueling accounts lacked hard proof, circa 1629 portrait of an elderly gin-nosed tingly owned such a pricey work.
the FBI dropped the case. In November man, seemingly by Rembrandt. It had Schorer told them he’d found an eye-
1998, a month after the Pissarro was been put up for auction in Maryland as lash in the impasto and was testing to see
seized, Helen Stoddard passed away. an “imitation in the manner of.” The esti- if its DNA matched Rembrandt’s. (He was
The work—depicting a coastal harbor in mated sale price: $1,000–$1,500. After a not, however, aware of any genetic data-
Dieppe, France—was returned to WAM bidding war, Schorer won it for a healthy bases he could check it against.) Either
shortly thereafter. $288,000. If real, that would be a fraction way, probing into it seemed to matter
According to reporter Frank Magiera, of its value. (Rembrandts rarely come to more to him than solving the problem.
who covered the heist for the Telegram market, but a pair of plausibly authentic Working with Old Masters gets philosoph-
and spoke with all the parties, Abella- portraits sold for $14.2 million in 2023, and ical at times; attaining a clear resolution
Cornell’s account sounded more credible 18 months earlier, the Dutch government, isn’t always possible. In art, some ques-
than Cornell’s. “He struck me as being a in association with the Rembrandt Asso- tions can’t be answered—as Schorer says,
very surly, suspicious person,” Magiera ciation and the Rijksmuseum, had paid using a musical metaphor, they simply
recalled, “a shady antique dealer.” Even a whopping $198 million for a bona fide “hang out there in the ether as a chord
so, he added: “We don’t have any real self-portrait.) unresolved.” He doesn’t tend to dwell
smoking gun that ties Cornell to this, Art authentication efforts move slowly; on such perplexities; he just moves on to
other than Abella-Cornell.” Without broadly accepted conclusions can remain the next case. “Investigating the unseen
any strong evidence, the entire Pissarro evasive. And so, while more time is needed in the twilight hour is how I enjoy spend-
affair seemed to dissolve into a haze—not to determine whether Schorer had found ing my life,” he explains. After dinner at
unlike the snowy backgrounds of Aver- an actual Rembrandt, he and whoever he the monastery, he confided to me that he
camp’s finest midwinter scenes. outbid weren’t alone in considering it gen- had come to a realization: His pursuit, in
Schorer had underestimated his initial uine. Volker Manuth, the lead author of the effect, was a never-ending quest for some
assessment of the Stoddards’ Avercamp: artist’s 2019 catalogue raisonné, wouldn’t kind of religious illumination that he knew
that it would take only 15 minutes to run offer a categorical answer but, as he told might never come.
to ground. He chalked this up to what me, “It is very likely that it has been paint-
he called his arrogance. But he didn’t ed by Rembrandt.” THE HUNT FOR the lost Avercamp con-
stop seeking its whereabouts; its online That same conclusion was reached tinued into Masters Week and Master
reappearance had opened further lines by Manuth’s esteemed predecessor, Drawings New York in January 2023—
of inquiry. Abraham Bredius, whose landmark 1935 auctions and gallery shows featuring
To begin with, Schorer tracked down survey of Rembrandt’s complete paint- old works. (More on the Avercamp saga
Abella-Cornell. He claimed that she pro- ings included the portrait as Study of a shortly.) At that point, Schorer unveiled his
vided him with two addresses where the Man With a Swollen Nose. Regardless, Rembrandt at an invitation-only cocktail
other remaining stolen paintings might Schorer’s putative Rembrandt hadn’t reception on the Upper East Side. Ele-
have conceivably been stashed. He told been heard of since World War II. And gant guests streamed in, some wearing
me he’d hired a private investigator to poke yet, unlike many paintings looted by the oversized scarves, others with glitter-
around. He also endeavored to establish Nazis, this one, with proper papers in ing cuff links. Mayfair accents could be
who had purchased the Avercamp at the tow, had been smuggled to the US from heard over voices speaking German or
1995 art fair. Europe as the war broke out. The portrait Dutch. Schorer, sporting a royal blue suit
A breakthrough came when he tracked was then sold, legally, to the chairman of with matching sneakers, winkingly and
down the descendants of the now Velcro Companies. In short: Its prove- self-deprecatingly introduced himself to
deceased gallery owner from TEFAF. “I nance appeared spotless. new arrivals as a research assistant.
come in peace,” he wrote. Even so, he The painting fell into dormancy after For the occasion, he’d hung his
added that “the FBI has shown a willing- being donated to a Benedictine monastery recently acquired 1629 portrait next to a
ness to take a heavy hand in this case.” in California. In the intervening decades, self-portrait made around the same time
The gallerist’s daughter did not answer his it nearly went up in flames in two separate by Rembrandt’s dashing friend and com-
initial queries, but Schorer was persistent. forest fires. When rescued from the first petitor, Jan Lievens. (Their early works can

96 VA N I T Y FA I R
be almost impossible to tell apart.) The as singular as Schorer. During our first The paucity of paintings on display in
Lievens was on loan from Theodore Roo- phone call, when I had proposed writing their home is striking, suggesting that the
sevelt’s descendants. Schorer had been at a about his art-hound accomplishments, he art is secondary to the pursuit. But there
wedding in their home when he recognized responded: “I’d like to be the furniture, if I is another consideration: The walls, after
Lievens’s face on the wall. “I found it in the may.” I laughed, not quite understanding. all, are primarily glass panes. The house
foyer,” he told me. “I went around asking, Then, over the course of our meetings, itself is the artwork, Schorer insists. Gro-
‘Who is the proprietor?’ The last time it was I came to realize what he meant: a pro- pius and his Architects Collaborative
mentioned was decades ago. I don’t think tagonist in the background, more or partners had conceived of the dwelling
it has ever been on public view.” less unnoticed. as a “gesamtkunstwerk”: a total work
At the reception, a professorial man in a The fact is, however, he is hard not to of art. Everything from the doorknobs
bow tie took in the display, rapt. “I’m hav- notice. In person, Schorer’s six-foot-one and cabinets to the retractable wooden
ing a moment,” he gasped. “This Lievens frame is offset by a slight hunch, creating panels that conceal the TV and hi-fi were
hasn’t been seen in over a century, and the impression of someone prepared to custom designed. Frank Sinatra is said
Cliff found it at someone’s house.” He was pounce at any moment. A polymath, he to have performed on the living room’s
Lloyd DeWitt, a coauthor of Jan Lievens: balances his erudition with a sardonic, Steinway at the housewarming party six
A Dutch Master Rediscovered and at the arcane sense of humor. (When I told him decades earlier.
time chief curator at Virginia’s Chrysler I found a particular art historian’s style to Schorer’s paintings, he and Kris
Museum of Art. be purple, he corrected me: “Lavender is explain, are mainly kept off-site—in
The Lievens, DeWitt added, was his prose; it is dancing off the poppies.”) storage or on loan to museums. There
“very, very shocking to see.… This one Largely unaccustomed to publicity, are, however, a number of sculptures
wasn’t even cataloged. Or known.” By Schorer seemed reluctant when I initially of ancient gods scattered about. A large
placing the supposed Rembrandt por- suggested I follow one of his ongoing Song dynasty statue of a deity. A troupe
trait next to one by Lievens, Schorer was cases—specifically the Worcester heist, of Egyptian figurines, including an Isis
trying to accomplish two things: first, to with its alluring Avercamp. Schorer was and a Horus. A 17th-century sculpture
show an undisputed work compared to a also firmly reticent, at first, about sharing of Poseidon conquering the waves: a gift
disputed one from the same moment in personal information. Given his keenly from FDR to Churchill. Schorer mentions
time; second, to show how his ability to developed sense of sight, he struck me nonchalantly that he’d acquired it in 2020
unearth sleepers can play a deeper role as both wanting—and wanting not—to be when he helped auction off the contents
in scholarship. There was also a degree of seen, to be the kind of furniture that’s on of the Waldorf Astoria.
showmanship to the scene; he was doing display in a glass house. It was only after We make our way into the dining room,
it, he said, “to throw meat to the wolves.” I pointed out that Arthur Conan Doyle’s where I meet the couple’s two purebred
Inquisitive visitors admired Schorer’s tales tend to start on Baker Street—the rottweilers, Tyson and Nikki, whom
find. Whether by Rembrandt or not, it gumshoe Holmes sitting in front of the they call their kids. Kris recommends not
depicted a wizened man with a bulbous crackling hearth, lost in thought and puff- attempting to pet them. As we sit togeth-
nose, wispy facial hair, and downcast ing on his pipe—that he finally agreed to er, I say I’m hoping to understand how an
eyes, his sad, thin lips parted in mid- have me over to the Gropius house. autodidact such as Schorer has come to
sigh. He appeared to be homeless or a operate in such rarified spheres. The dogs
beggar—“a tramp,” someone suggested. I ARRIVE ON a misty September Monday in glower in my direction. But Kris encourag-
The brushstrokes were loose and casual, Provincetown. A hurricane has just blown es Schorer to speak candidly: “Open your
in Rembrandt’s signature experimental by, leaving charcoal-hued rain clouds in its feelings, for the love of God, Cliff.”
style, but the artist still captured the sitter’s wake. Schorer’s glass home rises above the
essence, his burden of worries, his frailty. bay where the Mayflower first stopped in SCHORER HAD A difficult childhood. His
Not long after the vernissage, a vet- the New World. A verdigris plaque at his parents—neither particularly interested in
ting committee designated the portrait front gate commemorates the “Pilgrims’ art—separated when he was a boy. Their
as “attributed to Rembrandt” as opposed Landing” historical site. divorce litigation lasted years. Often in the
to simply “by Rembrandt.” This meant He and Kris bring me into their living care of grandparents, Schorer became pre-
that not everyone was convinced about room, where Schorer likes to do investi- cociously independent, spending much of
its veracity. (Schorer clarifies that their gative work. Birch logs lie in the marble his time alone in Boston. “I was on my own
decision is not permanent and can be fireplace, strictly for decor; their 60-ton as of 11,” he explains.
revisited in the future; the committee may geothermal system regulates the interior His father, Clifford Schorer Jr., an
have been erring on the side of caution.) temperature year-round. Kris recalls the entrepreneur and professor at Colum-
When Schorer sought to poll delegates to moment when Schorer first opened up bia Business School, corroborates this
find out who the detractors were, some about the Avercamp discovery: “He came account. “Cliff very early on decided to
present allegedly cautioned him that to me and said, ‘I found this painting on take care of himself,” he tells me. “He
he was being “strident and obnoxious.” a pillowcase.’ I was like, Okay, now he’s didn’t want the conventional kind of par-
According to one witness, an attendee started finding them in his mind.” enting or to be part of the family nest.” His
piped up in Schorer’s defense: He’s just “It was already in the rearview mirror father recalls that the teenage Cliff would
enthusiastic, he’s not strident. 14 seconds later,” Schorer adds. “I wanted disappear for days on trips to Manhattan.
Whatever his attitude may have been, to find out where the other missing paint- Once, when asked where he’d been, he
it’s hard to encapsulate an individual ings had gone.” claimed to have spent time hanging with

NOVEMBER 2024 97
 Frankweiler. In it, two young siblings run likes listening to podcasts at 2.5x speed
In Plain Sight
away from home and hide in the Metro- (4x speed if the speaker has a British
Andy Warhol. His father didn’t believe politan Museum of Art. The book treats accent and talks slowly). Kris laments
him. But then Warhol himself called the art as something to escape into, whether Schorer’s proclivity for watching films
house a few days later. “The guy is dinner from loneliness, boredom, or an unhappy at double speed. “Why waste two hours
and a show,” Cliff Jr. says of his son. family life. As a child, Schorer loved the on a movie,” asks Schorer, “if you can do
After Schorer dropped out of high Met—and the American Museum of Nat- it in one?”
school, he started coding. Some of the ural History, which kindled an obsession When the two of them first met, Kris
software he wrote made him $27,000. with paleontology. thought Schorer was a spy. After their sec-
When he was 17, he founded Bottom Line This obsession reached its zenith in ond date, at the Cheesecake Factory, they
Exchange Company, which purchased 2008, when Schorer spent $942,797 for the walked to Schorer’s town house in down-
items, mainly computing equipment and nearly complete skeleton of a 23-foot-long town Boston. At the time, it contained
office furniture, that other companies triceratops from North Dakota’s Badlands. 120 large-scale Old Masters paintings.
needed to move. A New York Times op-ed denounced the “It was so creepy,” Kris now recalls. “It
To make ends meet, he drove a taxi. fact that a 65-million-year-old dinosaur was like entering the Louvre. There were
Branching out, he bought a soon-to-be- specimen had somehow ended up in pri- four floors of paintings. Everything was
bankrupt database company that was vate hands. He eventually found a home ancient.” The religious iconography
selling its whole operation for the price for it, in a combination gift and sale, at on display featured a preponderance
of its only real equity: two Xerox photo- the Boston Museum of Science, stipulat- of murders and martyrdoms. “Crosses
copiers worth $6,000. When Schorer ing that it be listed as having come from everywhere—nuns, you know?” Kris says,
inspected the facility, he noticed an old an “anonymous donor” and that it be with a shudder. “There wasn’t an inch
25,000-square-foot UNIVAC computer. named Triceratops Cliff, after his grand- without a painting.”
While the owner didn’t think it was worth father, Clifford Schorer Sr. “The name is Schorer still has many of those monu-
much, Schorer, a hardware geek, knew the same, unfortunately, so people know mental canvases stored in warehouses. “I
it contained 24-karat-gold parts. The who it is,” said Schorer, again wanting to don’t think I owned anything made after
company also had 170 employees who have it both ways: seen and unseen. 1900,” he adds, chuckling. “I wouldn’t
had to be laid off; Schorer, though only At times, the dizzying extent of his let anyone clean” the town house. The
a teenager, did so. He then hired a team exploits can seem to defy credulity. bathroom had original 1851 fixtures.
to disassemble the UNIVAC and strip out Even so, all the curators and insiders I Velvet draperies covered the windows to
the gold. “We ended up getting $67,000 have consulted for this story vouch for keep sunlight out. The lighting scheme
or $70,000 from the gold,” he recounts. “I Schorer. Some mention a propensity for favored gas-burning sconces and candles.
was well on my way at that point.” exaggeration or for conflating speculation The overall effect was “Welcome to old
When the computer manufacturing with irrefutable fact. But Schorer merely lady land,” he beams, clearly proud of the
bubble burst in the late ’80s and early seems to have figured out how the art busi- anachronistic world he’d built.
’90s, Schorer found himself snapping up ness works. Frederick Ilchman, the Art of “We shouldn’t live in the 17th century
failing companies—and their real estate. Europe chair at Boston’s Museum of Fine all the time,” says Kris.
He went on acquisition sprees, hoarding Arts, tells me that the institution, courtesy Schorer disagrees. But the conversation
assets. At one point, by his estimate, the of Schorer, acquired three major Europe- reminds him of a line he’d written: “In the
warehouse facilities for what he called an modernist paintings from Agnews in era of electric light, only the extravagant
his “crazy catastrophe of storage” took 2023. Ilchman characterized Schorer as a will burn tallow candles.” It is derived
up a million square feet of space. He also brilliant, if eccentric, risk-taker, adding, from the narrative section of a symphony
invested in construction ventures and fast- “To be a good connoisseur, you have to be about Thomas Edison’s life that Schorer
food franchises, funneling his profits into eccentric and take a risk.” cocomposed for the Boston Pops Orches-
a bottomless passion for art. Part of his fascination with sleepers— tra that premiered in 1997. When we settle
Schorer started becoming a serious col- which are, after all, bargain-priced in at the glass house, he proceeds to play
lector in his early 20s, focusing initially on items—seems to stem from a constitu- us the 21-minute recording. A passage
Chinese porcelain. He amassed and sold tional frugality. Kris emphasizes how about grief, he notes, is autobiographical.
hundreds of pieces at auction. After a trip Schorer’s sole overarching interest is “I could not let my personal pain distract
to Paris, he began getting into Baroque art, which means he doesn’t care much me,” recites the symphonic Edison. “For
paintings, which he researched in Har- for everything else: clothing, food, even above all time is my enemy.” These verses
vard’s libraries. (Auction houses, before comfort. Despite his self-evident wealth, reflect how Schorer has transformed the
the internet, mailed listings of offerings Schorer, during my Provincetown visit, tallow of his own childhood into extrava-
there.) In time, one sleeper led to anoth- suggests we meet for dinner at 4:30 p.m. gant achievements.
er, even as his entrepreneurial projects to catch the early bird special. After the “Cliff cannot rest,” Kris says, over swells
snowballed. But all of them, on some level, waitress informs us that the restaurant of music as Edison proclaims his worka-
connected back to his childhood. has stopped offering off-hours discounts, holic desire to continue exploring right
he vows never to return. Then, when we until his funeral. “I think he always keeps
SCHORER’S INTEREST IN art began at pile into his Prius, the stereo starts playing working so hard because he’s afraid he
age six, with a children’s book called a podcast at such a rapid rate that I can will be poor one day—like when he was
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. scarcely make out the words. He says he young.” (“What psychology,” counters

98 VA N I T Y FA I R
Schorer, who points out that working on a retrieval efforts soon became mired in than what they bought it for. But they
project-by-project basis, as he does, neces- international art-law technicalities. would likely face difficulties if they ever
sarily differs from having steady income.) First, there were the owners of the tried to sell it.
painting. Rather than acknowledge receipt When the insurance company agreed
S E V E R A L M O N T H S L AT E R , Schorer’s of Schorer’s letters, he said, the family to cooperate with the museum in order to
patience was rewarded. He received an ignored them and lawyered up. Then, as get the painting returned, it seemed like a
email from the daughter of the TEFAF his messages continued to go unanswered, resolution might be close. Unfortunately,
gallerist. Attached was the bill of sale for he approached Dutch authorities, trusting according to Schorer and Brand, the
the Avercamp. Armed with this new lead, that the police could seize it. To no avail. various sides then started haggling over
he determined that in 1995, the painting He wanted to involve Interpol, Scotland taxes and other fees. Throughout the next
had gone to a prominent Dutch family that Yard, the FBI’s art squad—but, he says, year, as Schorer and Brand conveyed the
had made its fortune in footwear. They’d none could help. fitful progress of the negotiations, I had
purchased it legally, as a work by Barent Growing antsy, he went public with to remind myself that a sleeper hunter,
Avercamp. Schorer soon found their home the story. As reported in Artnet News and by definition, seeks value. Art is about
on Google Earth—“a big mansion”—and Boston magazine, Schorer threatened to beauty—but it’s also a big-money game.
started sending letters demanding the initiate legal proceedings against the fam- And businesspeople don’t get rich by
painting’s return to WAM in exchange ily if the painting was not returned within compromising; they do so by chiseling.
for the amount they had originally paid 40 days. That tactic didn’t work either, Developments slowed to a trickle while
at the long-ago art fair. (The owners have but the media attention did bring another Schorer spoke of pushing “a very angry
requested anonymity.) Avercampian individual out of the wood- accelerator pedal.” Seasons passed; I often
At first, Schorer thought he’d simply work: Arthur Brand, a Dutch art detective thought of the forlorn-looking scrounger
get the Avercamp back. After all, theft who hosts a TV show in the Netherlands in his liminal Rembrandt portrait.
is illegal; missing property ought to be about tracking down and recovering hot Then, suddenly, on Easter Sunday
returned. In the fine art market, however, artworks. Sometimes described in press 2024, I received a note saying that the two
what’s right isn’t always the same as what’s accounts as the “Indiana Jones of the art sides had come to terms. “A year after orig-
legal. Looted works don’t necessarily get world,” he’d made his name finding objects inally planned,” Schorer wrote. In the very
handed over to their prior or lawful own- like Oscar Wilde’s ring, Hitler’s horses, next line, without pausing, he revealed
er, as the Elgin Marbles attest. “It’s not and a missing Van Gogh. He told Schorer that he was onto a new chase. “I’ve been
fair that somebody gets to keep stolen he wanted to help get the Avercamp back. contacted,” he went on, about “a major
art—but that’s often how it works,” says Brand, having gleaned through news Rubens presumed lost in WWII.… I may
Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at reports that a Dutch family had purchased drop all and go to Switzerland to see if it
the City University of New York. Certain the painting, contacted Schorer and is real. Looks right.” He was moving on
kinds of theft were long ago legalized by offered to mediate. Because of his popu- to another adventure—but he was hope-
colonialist powers, allowing plundered lar television program, he’d likely be more ful that the Avercamp would, in the end,
objects and resources to enrich European persuasive than Schorer. “What I do is try return to Worcester.
nations. And while some countries and to get paintings back that are stolen, and Regarding the other missing Stoddard
jurisdictions are evolving, others are not. which might disappear forever,” Brand paintings, Schorer says there are further
Had the Avercamp been sold in America, tells me. He contrasts this with Schorer’s morsels left on the trail that might even-
odds are it would have already been confis- sleeper hunting, which, he points out, usu- tually lead him to that quarry. He has
cated by law enforcement. “There are huge ally does not involve criminal spoils. The started to sniff them out more doggedly.
differences between the way people in the Avercamp overlaps between their respec- At the same time, he’s still trying to get his
US and in Europe approach the recovery tive areas of expertise—as well as their two recently resurfaced tramp unanimously
of stolen art,” notes James Ratcliffe, gen- continents’ legal realities. recognized as a Rembrandt, having
eral counsel at the Art Loss Register, a Due to his status as a Dutch TV person- cowritten a book with Simon Worrall on
London organization specializing in such ality, Brand managed to communicate the subject, entitled The Lost Rembrandt.
transactions. “In the Netherlands, even with the family. They were concerned, He’s also begun spearheading an
a thief can get title to a stolen artwork if above all, with keeping their name out of immense art restitution case, involving a
they have it for long enough.” Conversely, the press. He advised them to do the moral Leonardo, several Dürers, and more than
American authorities have been aggres- thing and return the painting, on the con- 150 other foundational works of art in the
sively enforcing restitution claims, even for dition that they not lose money on it: “If Western corpus, on behalf of a Dutch Jew-
decades-old cases. Last year, for example, they offer you such a deal,” he counseled ish bank dismantled by the Nazi regime.
New York’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit them, “you should accept it.” Schorer’s efforts in the matter started
seized and repatriated an ancient Anato- With Brand having wrangled the fam- coming to fruition this summer, when
lian bronze bust that had been in WAM’s ily to the bargaining table, Schorer and he brought to market a Flemish Baroque
collection since 1966. WAM’s side offered to make them whole work that had belonged to the bank until
The museum’s experience with that without allowing them to profit from the its liquidation in 1940, only to be present-
bust would lead one to assume that the theft. This, despite the fact that the family, ed as a birthday gift, two years later, to
inverse would also hold true: that its own so Brand assures me, was well aware that Adolf Hitler. Schorer describes this latest
stolen goods would be returned swiftly. their Avercamp was a real-deal Hendrick challenge as “the first battle in the biggest
But Schorer’s and WAM’s legal team’s and therefore worth significantly more war of my life.” 

NOVEMBER 2024 99
 men who make up the infantry of the MAGA districts who don’t get it are gonna
Empire State of Mind
America-first movement. Trump may get attacked,” he said. “There’s going
well have liked the idea of choosing a to be a revolution in this country, one
middle-of-the-road pro-internationalist way or another.”
Republican. But, as Bannon had once told There was a pivotal moment at the
me, Trump is “a fucking moderate” com- summit, long into the parade of pronounce-
pared to the people who have made him ments and panels that had started to blur. At
into a symbol of systemic reckoning, and one point I stumbled upon Canadian prime
I had trouble imagining that they’d stand minister Justin Trudeau giving a press con-
for someone like North Dakota governor ference to a dozen bleary-eyed reporters.
Doug Burgum, who by all appearances But everyone was riveted and watching
would be confused by the idea that the when Biden made his joint appearance
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 8 1 armed forces extent of America’s financial and military with Zelenskyy. Biden, barely two weeks
of Ukraine so desperately need. And the power is sapping the vitality of the nation. out from his debate debacle, gave his short
weaponization of the dollar failed spec- I spoke to Bannon during the intra- intro speech. Then he turned and intro-
tacularly, because Russia still had lots of Republican battle over who would succeed duced Zelenskyy as “President Putin.”
farms and factories capable of producing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. I’d had a long and candid talk with a
real goods, so being cut off from Western Bannon argued that this, too, was a fight senior official from a European power who
markets didn’t lead to mass shortages. A about the dollar system and the world was so concerned about maintaining the
new danger emerged—that other powers order. “The whole civil war on Capitol carefully orchestrated presentation of the
would learn from the Russian example. Hill right now?” he said then. “That’s a summit that he at first wouldn’t even let
Keith and I joined a crowd of journalists real fight about money and power, about me quote him anonymously. But when
in a windowless room where Stoltenberg whether you can keep laying debt on the Trump picked Vance shortly after the end
and Zelenskyy were giving a quick talk. American people.” of the summit, he called me to suss out
Stoltenberg repeated a vague phrase I had never really thought of some- what the pick would mean and in return
that had become a buzzword at the sum- one like Florida congressman Matt he agreed to speak for this piece.
mit—that NATO was committed to an Gaetz, who comes off mostly as a MAGA “I’ll tell you from my perspective,” he
“irreversible” path for Ukraine to join the culture warrior, as an anti-imperialist said about the “President Putin” moment.
alliance, even if Russia was unlikely to renegade. But to Bannon it was all linked. “Power is a retinue.”
accept a peace deal without a commitment Even populist Democrats are “neoliber- “You’re the president of France, you
for Ukraine to stay out. We sat with Simon al neocons,” a phrase he loves to use to know, and you have this retinue, and
Shuster, a Time senior correspondent dismiss any politician who doesn’t show everybody who was important was there
who’d written a biography of Zelenskyy an interest in unknitting order. “To be with their retinues. And when he intro-
titled The Showman and who has reported serious you’ve got to be anti-imperial,” duced ‘President Putin,’ everyone gasped
uncomfortable facts about war fatigue and Bannon said dismissively of Chris Mur- and was looking at each other. It was like—
high-level corruption in Ukraine that many phy, the senator from Connecticut I was Now it’s all over.”
Western reporters have been reluctant to. then writing about, who actually shares He sketched a picture of a global power
“Are they going to shoot you when you walk many Traditionalist-sounding critiques structure that very much rests on a public
in?” Keith joked. After the question period, of how our connected world has left a faith that’s faltering. “The incredible thing
Keith asked Shuster what he’d seen that we void of meaning in people’s lives. Ban- about being at that summit,” he said, “is
might not have picked up on. “Zelenskyy non said, “He’s out there supporting a that on the inside you’re walking through
is very angry,” Shuster told us. “I wouldn’t $100 billion supplemental for Israel and these rooms where you see decades and
be surprised if they’d had a fight back there Ukraine that we absolutely can’t afford. decades of material about how they’ve
right before they came onstage.” I asked Empire is the core mode of power. Unless basically manufactured consent.”
him what an “irreversible” path to NATO you’re prepared to take on Wall Street People like Bannon didn’t invent resis-
membership actually meant. He shrugged. and the banks,” which for Bannon would tance to the American empire. “In the
“Nothing is irreversible,” he said. mean confronting the very basics of the beginning there was this huge skepticism,”
Keith, thinking of the American presi- financial system, “you’re never going to this European said, referring to 1949,
dent, who was supposed to be the face of actually do anything. It’s all talk.” when the NATO alliance began. “From
this whole event, gave a wry look. “Well,” “But people are waking up,” he’d told very early on they set up these things called
he said, “nothing but time.” me. “Once you talk about how the system NATO information centers that were basi-
is financed, they are fucking furious. A cally think tanks to explain and justify it.”
I HAD A card in my pocket, which I ended working-class audience can understand Organizations like the German Marshall
up being able to trade. I was pretty sure something’s not right with the system, Fund and the Atlantic Council have made it
that Vance would be Trump’s pick. My but they can’t put their finger on it.” Ban- all more sophisticated, occupying a quasi-
confidence had nothing to do with any- non, who calls his audience the “army of official role in defending the global order.
thing I’d learned from Vance himself—it the awakened,” has made it his mission Public perception is paramount, which is
came from years of increasing familiarity to spell it all out. “Populism is system why Biden’s gaffe produced such horror.
with the worldview of people like Bannon versus anti-system, that’s the whole “The actual point of NATO is not to
and of the young, weight-lifting-obsessed story. Republicans in all these super-red talk about values and the global order,”

100 VA N I T Y FA I R
the European said. “It’s about how to The second point echoed Bannon clearly been a strained few days. “In the
scimitar through Russian armies or do and Vance. “Empires actually benefit West we have to understand it’s not a giv-
operations through the skies of the Bal- working-class people back in the core.” en,” he’d said. “Security and stability.”
tic.” All that got hammered out in secret. He argued that the British Empire, for all Offstage, Conley gave a surprisingly
“Then every year at these conclaves they its faults—and Maitra was well aware of candid picture. “I think what we’ve done
do the political messaging.” these—had effected what Herman Mark a poor job of is,” she said, “we have lost the
Schwartz, the economist, called the American people in this conversation. Our
A THUNDERSTORM FINALLY broke the “transfer of real resources from the periph- bargain was that we said, ‘We got this’—
heat that had made setting foot outside ery” when defining what it truly means to the Washington elites and foreign policy
so miserable. The sky took on an apoca- be an empire. “You don’t get that benefit specialists. And for the last 20 years, it
lyptic shade of green as I looked out over for someone who’s living in Ohio. The only hasn’t felt like we’ve gotten it, right?”
the White House. For a while I was trapped people who are benefiting are the arms She was ready to face a crisis of faith.
at the bar at the Hotel Washington as the dealers, Boeing, Lockheed, and all that “We failed,” she said. “And so now we
storm finally erupted, and for a moment kind of stuff. That’s not a smart empire.” have to have a very new conversation with
the crazed bustle that had taken over DC Bannon sometimes jokes that he’s a the American people to describe what’s at
paused to let the rain pass. Leninist, which may sound strange com- stake, what it’s going to cost, and what hap-
When the weather settled I took a ing from someone who also says that pens if we are not successful.”
bike I’d borrowed from my hotel’s front Trump is barely right-wing enough to be Conley was acutely aware that regu-
desk and rode over to the Capital Hilton on board with the project he’s advancing. lar Americans were suddenly asking big
to meet a man named Sumantra Maitra, But everything is scrambled these days. questions about the system that shaped
who’d just spoken at NatCon, where Maitra brought up Lenin too, and his their world. And she wanted to convince
Vance had given the keynote, and peo- idea that “the fundamental clash is not them that Bannon’s project of unmaking
ple were spilling out to drink and party. between capital and labor,” as Maitra put the empire would have dire consequenc-
We went over to the bar at P.J. Clarke’s to it. “It’s between national capital and inter- es. “What we are experiencing,” she said
talk. Maitra, 38, was born in India, had national capital.” He joked that it would optimistically, “is the rebirth of the trans-
been raised in New Zealand and England, “ruin his career” if I ended up making him atlanticists. And we have Vladimir Putin
and now lives in Richmond, where he has out as a Marxist. But “fundamentally Marx and Xi Jinping to thank for that.” Civiliza-
taken on a role as the director of research was right,” he said, in seeing the forces of tional struggle is coming.
for the American Ideas Institute, which international capital and military power The bar of the Marriott attached to the
publishes American Conservative. The as inextricably linked. “And in the US, the convention center had somehow remained
magazine is avowedly anti-global, but national capital lost,” he said, as trade open to the public through all the extreme
Maitra seems set to eventually join deals like NAFTA and the broader world security measures, and that’s where I
the long line of émigrés—from Henry economic structure sapped the “real” pro- watched Biden’s final press conference
Kissinger to Zbigniew Brzezinski to Zal- ductive economy that populists of both of the summit. I streamed it on my laptop
may Khalilzad—who have had a senior right and left today want to restore. “So as I sat next to a middle-aged Black NCIS
role in managing the American empire. it’s an economic problem.” officer who sardonically asked the Russian
To me, he used his catchphrase, a On the last day of the summit, Shuster, bartender what he’d thought of the crowds
“dormant NATO,” to describe America’s who had to leave early, gave me his pass to that week. “I was taught that if you have
security focus shifting away from Europe get into the so-called Public Forum. The nothing nice to say,” the bartender replied,
as it recedes from the role as guarantor European official had been cutting when “say nothing.” A pair of journalist friends I
of world security. “We can have bilateral he talked about what was going on in this knew from covering the African operations
relations,” he said, and tell partners, “This wing of the convention center, saying that of the Wagner Group, the Russian merce-
is your responsibility now, because we’ve the nonofficial types “covered themselves nary outfit, joined me, and we ended up
got other things to do.” in shame” as they tried to message out a talking to a 25-year-old Ukrainian named
“I don’t really think the US is a smart vision of the global order that was com- Yana Rudenko, who’d been trapped in the
empire,” he said. Our systems of pow- pletely positive and in which any step back Kyiv suburb of Bucha when Russian troops
er have grown too haphazardly—it was from this vision—like a peace deal that captured it and had survived the massacre
more by accident that America came out of would cede ground in Ukraine—would of hundreds of civilians before the Russians
World War II in a position of unparalleled be a catastrophic blow. This had created were forced to withdraw. Now she was liv-
strength than by any careful design. Even a binary: Either you believed fully in the ing as a refugee in the Netherlands and was
those cables and data centers in Virginia goodness of the system or you were willing leading a crowdsourced effort to produce
ended up there because a few early web to see it blow up. homemade drones. She’d won some-
entrepreneurs happened to find the loca- I arranged to speak with Heather Con- thing called the NATO Youth Challenge,
tion near Defense Department research ley, the head of the German Marshall rewarding people who worked to support
centers convenient. “There are two things Fund, a highly polished foreign affairs the alliance’s mission. She got emotional
which you need for an empire,” Maitra expert whom I expected to offer a series describing her appreciation for the way that
said. “One, you need to have an imperial of boring talking points. She’d just finished America had, at least at first, unified and
officer class, which you guys don’t have. a conversation with the Dutch admiral Rob made a national effort to support Ukraine’s
It’s not like the British Empire. You don’t Bauer, marking the final “hot wash” of the effort. But she struggled with how Western
train people to be imperials.” summit—an upbeat analysis of what had leaders talked of Ukraine as a signal that

NOVEMBER 2024 101

 Irish, disproportionately Southern fam- the way against central banking,” he said
Empire State of Mind
ilies who treat military service as family to a loud cheer. He said that the so-called
it was time to prepare their own countries heritage—have been the ones who bled spoils system Jackson had introduced to
for war. “Today it was bittersweet when to build our empire and ended up with the federal civil service, allowing a presi-
they said, ‘We can learn from Ukraine,’ ” NAFTA, fentanyl, and a coastal establish- dent to freely hire allies and fire enemies,
she said. “Fuck off—you’re going to learn ment that sees them and their values as should come back, echoing what Trump
from Ukraine, but we’re dying for that backward and dangerous. Few high-level has made very clear he intends to do in
knowledge.” She apologized for swearing policymakers or elected officials I’ve spo- clearing house across the government.
and said again how much she appreciated ken to seem to understand how quickly Then Prince brought it back to the dol-
NATO’s support. But when you get down this kind of view has spread in America. lar. The military had become “so large
to it, the point of the anti-ship missiles and But it’s at least part of the reason that, and unaccountable,” he said, “because
fighter-bombers and drone swarms was with the exception of the Marine Corps, of fiat currency, where Congress can just
to wreck infrastructure and kill human every branch of the US military is now fac- appropriate an extra trillion dollars a year,
beings. “They’re using us to change the ing a recruitment shortage. Our military spending it on itself and on stupidity.… It’s
standards,” she said. But it’s Ukrainians is made up of a diverse set of volunteers like America on unlimited doughnuts.”
who are dying. “So in that sense I’m angry, and attracts true-believing fighters from Mark Granza, the editor in chief of
because they are exploiting us.” all kinds of ethnic backgrounds. But it’s IM-1776, told me that 250 or so people
struggling with a rapid drop in recruit- had showed up to the brewery where the
AFTER THE SUMMIT, I flew to Nashville for ment from its traditional base of young event was being held, on the periphery of
a very different sort of gathering to discuss white men. the massive Bitcoin conference that had
the future of the world order. This was a Finlay described going to a veterans brought 20,000 people to town and where
private event I’d been invited to by the meeting and seeing old men who stood Trump himself was soon to give a speech.
editors of IM-1776—a well-designed intel- up and talked about how they’d fought for Prince is a star in these circles, but I was
lectual quarterly giving voice to the most God and country. “And I remember getting still shocked by how many people I knew
nationalist currents of today’s American mad,” he said. “Because I know for a fact who’d shown up—Special Forces veter-
right. I first learned of the magazine when that nobody on the other side of their oath ans and backwoods preppers and a great
I heard a podcast interview with Samuel thinks in terms of countries, let alone God.” number of big names from Twitter, some
Finlay, an Oklahoman and Afghanistan vet “They know we believe in these of whom aren’t right-wing. The event was
who published a piece in one of its earli- things, and they’ll manipulate,” he said. organized in part by Nick Allen, who runs
est issues called “Kayfabe in Kiev.” The “Southerners are the janissaries of the Sovereign House, the downtown Man-
title borrowed a term from professional managerial class. And that is a fact. We hattan event space that is the semiofficial
wrestling used to describe the playacted love this thing like nobody else. And yet headquarters of the Dimes Square scene
dramas that promoters hype to sell tickets. this thing hates us.” of edgy and often right-wing writers and
Finlay suggested that American leaders The IM-1776 event in Nashville was a artists. Allen introduced me to Prince as I
were now using the same tactics to gin up party and talk with Erik Prince, the Mich- walked in. He was noticeably fit and unas-
support for a grand imperial project. He igan industrial scion and former Navy suming, of medium height and dressed
wrote that there was a “bloodlust running SEAL who founded the private military casually in jeans and a checked button-
like a current” through liberals, “clearly company Blackwater, and who during the down shirt with his sleeves rolled up to
stoked in them by the Managerial Class.” Iraq War became a figure symbolizing the the elbow. We chatted for a while about
In the interview, Finlay described a entire cozy alignment of militarism and how I’d just been arrested and deported
view that you hear commonly now on the corporate power that shaped the second from the Central African Republic under
right, and that clarifies the whole confus- Bush administration. But Prince has spent the belief that I was secretly working for
ing picture of how a belief of rootedness the last few years telling a very different an American military contractor (a differ-
and tradition fits with hatred of global story about Blackwater’s role in Iraq and ent one); then I left Prince to the hovering
capital, and in turn with resistance to the why he’d created the company: In this ver- cloud of fans that circled him the whole
military-industrial complex. The latter two sion, awash in fake dollars printed by the night. “Stay safe out there,” he told me.
of these views run contrary to everything Fed, its leaders captured by the totalizing “It’s a hard job you’ve got.”
the American right has stood for since ideology that the whole world should be After the event, which was otherwise
World War II. But now people like Finlay brought into the American system, the off the record, I smoked a cigarette with
have come around to the same “awaken- American military became too inefficient Granza, and he clarified that I could
ing” that Bannon is trying to foment: that and unserious to fight a real war. “Whether quote what had been said during the
this system works against the interests of it’s a military that can’t get it done in Iraq question-and-answer discussion Prince
the kinds of people who actually believed or Afghanistan,” he said that evening, “or had with an IM-1776 editor.
in and served our military. how we’ve allowed dudes in flip-flops to The discussion kept circling back to the
Today, Finlay said, “you’ve got this shut down the Suez Canal.…” He let the dollar. The IM-1776 editor noted that today
class of people who don’t think in terms thought sit for a minute. America spends more on the debt’s inter-
of countries.” You’ll often hear in con- And then Prince said that America est than on the military. Prince had said we
servative circles that America’s “warrior needs to look—as I once quoted Vance needed to take “whatever legal means nec-
class”—which on the right is often saying in this magazine—to Andrew Jack- essary” to drastically cut the federal budget.
believed to be from ethnically Scotch son, “who was a great president, and by “Do you think we’re at a point,” the editor

102 VA N I T Y FA I R
asked, if drastic measures weren’t taken, biggest economy in Europe. Britain’s new Trump’s talk, I encountered Ro Khanna,
that “things spin off the rails fiscally?” Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, the Democratic congressman who rep-
“We are definitely approaching Wei- came into power promising to bring the resents a district covering most of Silicon
mar levels of debt,” Prince said. “And UK’s military spending up to 2.5 percent Valley. Khanna has an ongoing love-hate
look, the dollar as the reserve currency of of its GDP, which in the long scheme of buddy act with Bannon, but he shares
the world is underpinned by the illusion of history is a vanishingly small portion of a critique that often cuts across old left-
US military hegemony. And when we fail a nation’s economy to spend on keeping right divisions. “Bannon has praised me
continuously, our friends see that and our itself safe. But to do this he will have to a bunch of times,” he’d told me once. “He
enemies really see that, so they’re prob- find money by raising taxes, threatening to says, ‘Watch out for this guy, Ro Khanna,
ing and testing. And the more we overuse drive London’s already-shrinking financial he’s taking our song lyrics.’ ”
sanctions, the more people move away.” center to Frankfurt or Paris, or by cutting “There was a naivete in the ’80s and
A shift from the dollar as a global reserve social services—and the entire basic social ’90s that Western liberalism would be the
currency would cause “wrenching shock contract of European society is built on a end of history and end of conflict. There
in America,” he continued. But it would at promise of health services and a safety net was this provincialism about Western lib-
least force America to bring its spending of the kind America has never had. eralism that it was the only path,” he told
back in line with the actual capacity of our Not long ago, Prince made headlines by me. “The policies of globalization have
production. This would mean wrecking suggesting that the West needs to colonize not worked.”
our Social Security system or our defense Africa again. At the Nashville event he cir- I left and went to the book reading for a
apparatus, or possibly both, but according cled back to this: Western governments, as writer named Joe Allen a few blocks from
to his view our spending is so disconnected he sees it, can barely manage to fund and the convention center. Allen’s book, Dark
from our material reality that it would still maintain their own systems at this point. To Aeon, colors our new tech-dominated soci-
be “entirely a good thing.” the people at this gathering, whom he spoke ety as an infernal machine that has robbed
He talked at last about the obvious to as savvy enough about the crisis he sees, us of, among other things, connection to
geopolitical issue at hand. “Look, Putin the opportunity lies in building outside the natural life.
invading Ukraine,” he said, “I’m not unraveling system. “It’s not the US govern- I was surprised to learn that he worked
condoning that.” But he echoed the ment sending people,” he said. “Eff that. for Bannon’s War Room podcast as the
view expressed often on the right—and It’s private cities’ initiatives, the disciplines show’s tech correspondent. We had a
even more often on the anti-imperialist that we take for granted here.” He suggest- beer and I asked him how much Bannon
left—in saying that as the NATO alliance ed a “privateer” model of irregular warfare shared his worldview. “Steve’s in prison
expands ever closer to Russia’s borders, it against Mexican cartels, and to punish Chi- right now,” he shrugged, “and I’m sure
might expect a backlash. “At this point,” na for exporting the precursor chemicals when he gets out, he’ll be very pissed
he said, “NATO is not really an alliance. used to make the fentanyl that kills almost about the things I’ve been saying, but
It’s a protectorate.” 70,000 Americans every year. “I think fire what else is new?”
He praised Trump—echoing credit that is an underutilized tool, and burning down Allen brought up transhumanism,
Stoltenberg has implicitly given the former all those facilities in China, we send a very the idea that liberalism, tech, and cap-
president as well, though few in the alliance good message,” he said. “If you send the US italism have come together in a sort of
like to admit what provoked the shift—for military, that’s going to escalate. But if you unholy trinity to distort natural human
pushing NATO members to increase their just put bounties, and actually pay them, reality in our new age. “The important
defense spending. But he still marveled at say, on cartel guys, it’s going to go away.” connection between the pro-populist and
the fact that America accepts so much of “You’ll see a lot of independent city- anti-transhumanist in Steve’s mind,” Allen
the responsibility for guaranteeing the states, smaller pockets of capitalism and said, “is that Steve is sticking up for the leg-
safety of countries like Germany. “It’s the good governance, and people enjoying acy Americans. And legacy Americans are
third-wealthiest country in the world,” he things more locally,” he said. There would very much creatures of tradition and, by
said, “and they’re completely unserious be pockets of sophisticated, peaceful, and large, creatures of traditional religion.”
about it. They couldn’t give two shits. I desirable society in a world that grew “Steve is extraordinarily hostile to the
don’t know why we taxpayers need to fund increasingly chaotic. “The US Navy pro- excesses of capitalism,” he said. “To use a
that effort anymore.” tecting the world’s shipping lanes,” he loaded term,” he continued, Bannon saw
Germany, where Chancellor Olaf said, “that’s not going to continue. The the entire complex of capital, empire, and
Scholz had only recently promised the future, sadly, is a lot less certain and a bit tech as “unholy.” This may sound vague,
country would launch a so-called Zeiten- more violent.” and it may sound illogical, but if there is one
wende, rearming itself after more than a thing to understand about the global pop-
half century in which it had shied away I STAYED IN Nashville through the end of ulist movement, it’s that to many people
from trying to act as a military power, has the Bitcoin conference. I watched Trump involved in it, this feeling arises implicitly,
seen its industrial sector badly hurt by address the VIPs in a packed hall, which without need for explanation. “We each
US sanctions on Russian gas exports and erupted when he promised to fire Securi- found our way to it,” Bannon told Dugin
has no plans to massively cut spending ties and Exchange Commission chair Gary during their 2018 meeting. “The tradition.”
on its welfare state. The country recently Gensler and promised to create a federal The night before I left Nashville, I went
announced that, facing budgetary reality, strategic reserve of Bitcoin. This spoke to to a bar alone to hear some country music.
it won’t even have money to help Ukraine’s a distrust of the dollar that is slowly creep- The house band closed with a cover of a
war effort. And Germany is, by far, the ing into the mainstream. Heading out of song that is now probably the single most

NOVEMBER 2024 103

 But this was just the obvious part. “The He talked about reading as a teenager
Empire State of Mind
more accurate version is that most of the about CIA-backed death squads in Latin
reliable crowd-pleaser in red-hued Ameri- system under which the world functions is America. “And now suddenly I’m in a par-
ca. Donald Trump Jr. uses it as his walk-on US-created, -managed, -perpetuated. So ty that is the vocal defender of the nobility
music at rallies. It was “Courtesy of the everything from the global financial system of the US intelligence apparatus,” he said.
Red White and Blue,” by Toby Keith, who to the network of security alliances” that “And it’s not just the geopolitical sense. It’s
died earlier this year from stomach cancer. we’d built around the world “were all built bankers too. We are now defending global
After 9/11, this song became the anthem to plug into American wealth.” capitalism and NATO and the entire enter-
for a slice of nationalist Americans who “The dollar is the world’s currency,” prise of neoliberalism.”
still wholeheartedly believed that the US he went on. “The US controls the glob- He gave an anecdote from when he was
military was a noble fighting force defend- al financial system, the US consistently reporting his book, titled After the Fall:
ing freedom and the American way of life. weaponizes sanctions to try to compel The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World
Now it’s a song conservatives often per- countries to do what we want.” He seemed We’ve Made. “I remember I was sitting
form at karaoke bars with a tone of irony bemused by the idea that a system like this with this guy who was in the Hong Kong
and wistfulness. was anything other than an empire. opposition—in a shopping mall—and I was
The money line comes in the second “People separate out our military foot- feeling very sympathetic to him. And I
verse: “Justice will be served and the bat- print from our financial footprint,” he remember realizing, Today in 2019, I have
tle will rage,” it starts. “This big dog will said. “But the reason that people have to more in common with this guy than with
bite when you rattle his cage.” The crowd trust that the dollar is a reliable curren- most of America.”
got ready, and the cowboy-hatted singer cy is because it’s literally backed by the “There’s something new about that,”
began to slow down so they would be hun- United States military, even though that’s he said. “When I was growing up, I
gry for the payoff. “And you’ll be sorry that not what we say the mission of the United would’ve just had massively more shared
you messed with the U S of A…” he sang, States military is.” reference points with my family in Texas.
waiting for the crowd to get to its feet and We ended up talking for three and a That’s something that is a challenge to
be ready to scream along. “’Cause we’ll half hours, about the tiring complexity people, to liberals, because I like the idea
put a boot in your ass”—everyone was yell- of this system and the incredibly difficult that we’re all the same, we’re all equal. I’m
ing along now—“it’s the American way.” problems he’d experienced in helping just as curious about and value as much
Two young guys in town from rural manage it. He’d helped negotiate the the humanity of some guy in Hong Kong
Georgia shouted along with this line so deal to normalize relations with Cuba, the as somebody in Texas. Isn’t that where
loudly and proudly that the band’s micro- Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris climate this is all supposed to evolve?”
phones picked their voices up from the accords. He shares, in fact, many criti- Global leaders, he said, need to reck-
stage. They hugged and pumped their cisms of this grand imperial system that on with a world that can never truly be
fists. One of them saw me observing them are being raised now on the populist right. flat, as the optimistic liberal phrasing
and gave me a wink and a sheepish shrug. “I guess where we differ,” he said, once envisioned it would be. “Otherwise
Nobody actually believes in this stuff any- “it’s this effort to evolve the system while we’re ultimately going to lose every-
more, he seemed to admit. But it was still keeping it roughly in place.” He’d just pub- thing—because then Bannon is going to
fun to get drunk on a Saturday night and lished a piece in Foreign Affairs arguing capture that pushback,” he said. “We need
pretend that kicking ass and dropping for a new global arrangement that would to have a national identity that ties this all
Hellfire missiles serves the cause of the acknowledge an emerging multipolar together,” he said. “And everyone agrees
American project. order while leaving in place America’s sys- that there is a problem here. We all see it.”
tem of alliances and the basic plumbing. The divide is between people who want
I FIRST REACHED out to Ben Rhodes, “I don’t believe in just pulling the plug.” to try to bring things down to a soft landing
Barack Obama’s most influential foreign We talked a lot about why he’d moved and people who want to blow it up. “The
policy adviser, by email while I was at the to LA with his wife and two kids, away challenge,” he said, is that “nobody has
NATO summit, hoping to talk without the from the DC world where people thought shown me you can blow it up absent a war
filter of press minders and handlers. We constantly about this stuff, and why he had and a mass disruptive event.”
both live in LA, so when I got home we no desire to go back. It had put him in an We paid for our coffee and I headed to
met for coffee in Venice. He wore a faded impossible bind. “I think the innovation my truck, but he lingered for a moment
black T-shirt and a Zabar’s baseball cap, of the Bannon and Vance project,” he at the Venice Beach outlet of Superba
and he seemed in some ways still exhaust- said, “is that it’s forced the left to become Food and Bread, where it’s always pos-
ed from his years in government. He was defenders of the very institutions they’re sible to see celebrities having brunch. Of
very quick to say that the American sys- supposed to be skeptical of, like the CIA, course no one recognized him. Ameri-
tem was indeed an “empire,” and he had like the broader intelligence communi- cans have long enjoyed the luxury of not
clearly thought a great deal about what ty, like NATO.” caring much about the people insulating
this meant. “The Social Democratic government us from war and chaos. No one asked for
“There’s two ways of looking at this,” in Germany or the Labour government his autograph or to share a selfie. And
he said. “I think the lazier way is that the in the UK,” he said, are now propping up no one would have guessed that just a
US has hundreds of military installations structures that “your own constituencies few years ago, his job had been to help
all over the world and has territories that are skeptical of. It’s an uncomfortable keep the whole thing from spinning out
most Americans don’t even know we have.” place to be.” of control. 

104 VA N I T Y FA I R
 guns, learn first aid, learn tactics,” says a James says. “There were people that were
The Vicious Circle
former member of the Georgia cell who talking about it in the Base, little peeps of
left because of concerns about Nazzaro’s that for a few months.”
ties to Russia. “He was one of the group’s James left the Base in fall 2019, ghost-
main ideologues.” ing the group’s chat rooms before publicly
By fall 2019, according to Payne, Kaderli, denouncing Nazzaro. Deleting his social
Lane, and other Base members were tired media profiles and returning to the wood-
of shooting drills, hiking, and propaganda ed hills of pine, oak, hickory, and ash near
photo shoots. Kaderli got hold of a list of his hometown helped clear his mind. He
Georgia anti-fascists circulating online. soon found a new faith and community
Payne recalls Lane and Kaderli’s frustra- in Catholicism.
tion with their political opponents outing In an account written in early 2020, not
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 9 5 those who the identities of right-wingers and con- long after leaving the Base, James detailed
could still stand took firing practice. fronting them at rallies. “The attitude was, his estrangement. “If nothing else I’ve
In that mix was a six-foot-four biker who How many of our brothers is this going to learned that people will always be driven
went by the alias Pale Horse. The heavily happen to before they hurt one of us? Let’s by hunger and greed. And so as the group
tattooed ex-skinhead had grown close to go kill one of them,” Payne says. “It was the became more and more radical I was far-
Kaderli after they met outside the court- Hatfields and McCoys.” ther and farther detached,” he wrote. “I
house in Rome, Georgia. He’d gone on “They were putting together a list of went from a hateful teenager who wanted
multiple shooting trips with Kaderli, not- liberal journalists and TV anchors, and I to see society be destroyed, into a more
ing his firearms proficiency and familiarity remember one of them saying, ‘Well, it’s thoughtful man, and I have more respect
with tactical maneuvers. The notes were a good thing we’re doing this family first and understanding of society.”
quite literal: Pale Horse was a cover identity because it’ll be a good starter for us,’ ” As for his old comrade Kaderli, James
for Scott Payne, a veteran FBI undercover Payne says, recalling that one Base member believes that the lack of social connections
agent tasked with infiltrating the Base. spoke about his willingness to live on the or alternative worldviews outside of the far
Kaderli, Payne recalls, “was very street dressed as a homeless person, sur- right will continue to hold him back. “Just
self-assured and had a lot of piss and vin- veil a target for days, and shoot them with like people in the military who don’t know
egar.” Payne, a onetime SWAT instructor, a revolver, disappearing without a trace. what to do when they get out, it’s the same
was struck by Kaderli’s ability to shoot Payne inserted himself into the plot, with these guys. If they abandon that world-
rapidly and accurately with an AK-variant which targeted a Bartow County family. view, all their friends and acquaintances,
rifle and his familiarity with entry maneu- The plan, Payne says, was to kill them their identity will fade too. It’s frightening.”
vers like “slicing the pie” and “clearing a with firearms fitted to leave no casings With good behavior, Kaderli might be
threshold.” It was clear to Payne that Kad- and torch their house to erase all remain- released on parole by next year. He says
erli was the right hand of the leader—Luke ing evidence. “I have no problem killing a he is still firm in his beliefs but has not
Lane—and had the attributes of a leader in commie kid,” cell member Michael Hel- received any counseling about his extrem-
the making himself: charisma, ideological terbrand quipped to his coconspirators. ist convictions that drove him to the edge
conviction, and drive. Kaderli had already Payne gathered enough evidence on a hid- of committing multiple homicides.
been visited by agents from the Atlanta den recorder to prompt the FBI to swoop in “I’ve been in here four years in three dif-
field office and cautioned for posting a and arrest Lane, Kaderli, and Helterbrand ferent facilities, and you’re the first person
bomb-making manual online. in January 2020. All three pleaded guilty to to talk to me about anything ideological,”
There was another element to the a raft of charges, including state conspira- Kaderli said in a conversation in summer
young fascist’s beliefs: a fascination with cy and gang membership, in 2021. 2023. In each facility where Kaderli has
the occult and the Order of Nine Angles, “Obviously the internet is a crazy place served time, the prisoner-to-counselor
an amalgam of neo-Nazism, satanism, and and there are many keyboard warriors out ratio is a minimum of 150 to 1. “While I
paganism created in Britain in the 1970s. there, but the difference here is that these have remorse about what I’m in here for,
When Kaderli and the others sacrificed the three guys plotted to murder people for I still believe National Socialism is an
ram and made pagan oaths at one of the their beliefs,” said assistant district attor- incredibly potent, functional ideology.”
Base meetups, Payne recalls being chilled ney Emily Johnson at a November 2021 While his co-offenders have clicked up
to the bone by Kaderli’s oath—“like listen- sentencing hearing, where Kaderli was with prison gangs and been charged for
ing to a slasher film.” sentenced to six years in state prison. weapons and violence, Kaderli says he
Adopted by Atomwaffen following James did not get caught up in the mur- has kept his nose clean and not incurred
Russell’s incarceration, the Order of Nine der plot: His faith in the Base had begun any disciplinary violations.
Angles was also prevalent in the Sonnenk- to crumble amid persistent rumors that “Do we have a magic bullet that’d be
rieg Division, a now banned British group Nazzaro, the founder, was not what he suitable for the Jakes of this world? Of
that threatened Prince Harry. Kaderli, seemed; when The Guardian and the course not, but talking to a person and ask-
according to law enforcement sources BBC later revealed Nazzaro’s identity, ing them questions at a minimum, we’ve
and a former Base member, was in close his residence in St. Petersburg, and his got to do that,” says Pete Simi, the sociol-
contact with SKD members and produced ties to Russian security services, that pre- ogist who studies the far right. Some of the
their propaganda. “Jake was always driv- monition was confirmed. “I was and am current efforts at deradicalization, many
ing people to get out there, train, buy certain that Nazzaro is a Russian asset,” run by former extremists, are “smoke and

NOVEMBER 2024 105

 exposed him to a set of anti-corporate my father might’ve not killed himself if I
The Vicious Circle
beliefs that drew him toward National hadn’t gotten locked up.”
mirrors” because they are not evaluated Socialism’s cursory critique of capitalism. Exercising has helped Kaderli work
consistently. “We don’t know whether Through online neo-Nazi commu- through his loss, along with dipping into
they’re working or not,” Simi says. Some nities, Kaderli met a prolific neo-Nazi Beowulf and the spare offerings of pris-
programs that have been tried include one- known as LionAW, an Atomwaffen Divi- on libraries. He is aware of the far right’s
on-one counseling and violence diversion sion member who played a major role in growth in the four years since he was locked
curricula directed at street or prison gang radicalizing and recruiting other minors up and is enthused by the emergence of
members, but to date there is no widely to militant groups—and who has never mixed martial arts–centered fitness groups
accepted best practice for deradicalizing been identified. According to a former for fascist youths known as “active clubs.”
far-right extremists. Atomwaffen comrade, LionAW brought “I’m really big on physical fitness: The one
Giampa, the Virginia high schooler who job I ever held was at a rock climbing gym,
LIKE MANY EX TREME-RIGHT Zoomers, ended up killing his girlfriend’s mother and that’s one reason I can’t take so many
Kaderli was mostly radicalized online, and stepfather, into the group as an “ini- people in the movement seriously, because
specifically by way of YouTube videos, tiate,” or prospect. Giampa was found they can’t do 30 push-ups,” says Kaderli,
extensive political conversations on Dis- dead in Fairfax County Jail in mid-August. who is currently working through the Geor-
cord, and his immersion in an Iron March “We were actually trying to influence kids, gia Department of Corrections at an auto
successor platform called Fascist Forge, manipulate kids,” says the former mem- parts factory, and has applied to college.
where many members of the Base first met. ber, recalling how the group would dip into
The appeal of National Socialism, Kad- gaming platforms like Steam and Twitch ROBERT RUNDO IS a throwback to an old-
erli says, was that it offered a way out of to contact minors. “And it was successful. er form of American neo-Nazism: Think
the “defensive corner” he perceived white I remember that time period after Char- of the boots-and-braces skinheads of the
men were in during Trump’s presidency. lottesville when we had a huge influx of 1980s who brawled with anti-racists at
“I’m proud of my ancestry and heritage, recruits, many of them underage.” punk shows and featured as stock villains
and there was so much talk of ‘bash the Fascism has always targeted adoles- in 1990s indie films. The 34-year-old was
fash’ that I felt like I was being attacked cents and young men: The Hitler Youth neck-deep in gang life while growing up
for who I am.” produced decades of Nazi cadre. The in Flushing, Queens, in the late 2000s,
“I didn’t have any negative interactions British National Party and France’s Front serving state prison time for stabbing a
about race or politics in real life,” Kaderli National had youth wings that drew from rival gang member in 2009. That stint,
says of his adolescence in Dacula, where reactionary student groups and the racist along with a prior juvenile term, opened
he was one of thousands of students at punk scene. Today this recruiting occurs Rundo’s eyes to white-power ideology in
sprawling, diverse Mill Creek High School. in the online spaces that dominate teen- a classic example of the defensive reactive
Online, his teenage interest in libertari- agers’ social lives. variety of extremism.
anism and political arguments with other Even in prison, Kaderli is still connected In a letter to me, Rundo identified the
users resulted in a now familiar trajectory to the online miasma that began his jour- racial dynamics he encountered over 15
down the rabbit hole to Mein Kampf and ney to a concrete cell. While Kaderli has years ago during his juvenile sentence as a
other staples of Hitler hagiography that led abandoned the violent satanism of the foundational experience for his ideological
him to Fascist Forge, where he was one of Order of Nine Angles, he still views him- trajectory. “Out of the 300 youths, there
the most active participants. self as a staunch Nazi and is well-versed were only two whites, including myself, in
There was one experience in Kaderli’s enough in its history and beliefs that he the whole place. So I learned real quick how
background that backstops his belief in can converse fluently about obscure 1930s people like me were viewed,” he writes.
fitness, aggression, and might as essen- schisms between Hitler and the Nation- Fifteen years later, Rundo is a prominent
tial—all key components of National al Socialist German Workers’ Party’s far-right influencer, the head of an inter-
Socialism in his view: the 2012 Sandy anti-capitalist wing led by Otto Strasser. national network of street-fighting white
Hook massacre. Kaderli’s family moved While he has been in prison, there’s been nationalist active clubs—and a federal
to Dacula from Newtown, Connecticut, a major upheaval in Kaderli’s life: In Sep- inmate in Los Angeles, where he awaits sen-
while he was in elementary school. He and tember, his father died by suicide. tencing in December on conspiracy to riot
his brothers had attended the school that “We can’t grieve in here. It’s not like you charges for leading a neo-Nazi street gang
Adam Lanza shot up. can show a lot of soft emotions in prison,” he founded, the Rise Above Movement
“For me, the world had nothing worse in Kaderli says, adding that he’s not sure he’ll (RAM), in assaults on counterprotesters at
it up till then than the bugs or snakes I was ever lose the jailhouse habits of keeping several political rallies in 2017.
catching in the backyard. Sandy Hook start- his back to a wall or looking over his shoul- “Back in the 1990s, the prison gangs
ed my quest for knowledge. I didn’t wanna der before passing through a doorway. didn’t really operate much outside the
get shocked again when something like that Though he was able to watch a livestream prison, except to support the guys inside,”
happened,” he said. The elementary school of his father’s service and an aunt read his says Mike German, a former FBI agent and
massacre left him with the conviction that prepared remarks, his father’s death still Brennan Center fellow who infiltrated
only strength and force could prevent such feels abstract. Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance
tragedies from befalling his loved ones. A “I don’t know if I’ve accepted that it and other Southern California neo-Nazi
firm belief in Second Amendment rights happened yet,” he tells me. And then: gangs in the 1990s. According to German,
took him toward libertarianism, which “I try not to entertain the thought, but “The prison gangs have become more

106 VA N I T Y FA I R
political as the cops started letting them William Planer from Colorado’s Front was not perpetrated by Connor’s cell).
get away with clobbering anti-fascists.” Range Active Club, convicted of felony That killing and Connor’s doxxing by
Two separate indictments in Virginia assault at a 2016 Sacramento melee. anti-fascists upended his world. “I never
and California charged eight members, Driven from what he calls “street activ- wanted to get physical,” he recalled. But
including Rundo, with conspiracy to riot. ism,” Rundo’s role has evolved from that one day he woke up to find a flyer with his
Federal intervention came before RAM of gang leader to far-right propagandist. face, name, and photos of him in Atom-
could escalate: They’d been practicing Rundo is looking at approximately two waffen gear on the windshield of his car.
drive-by shooting in the deserts east of Los years in prison plus time served when he The flyer was plastered for a mile around
Angeles. After the FBI raided his apart- is sentenced later this year; he appears to his neighborhood as well as online.
ment, Rundo fled to Mexico before being have avoided charges for using a forged “I stayed in my car that night, chain-
apprehended in El Salvador. His ultimate American passport while on the lam. “This smoking with my gun in my lap. I expected
destination was Ukraine, from which he’d is my new role; this is where life has taken people to come to my house,” he said.
been twice thwarted because the Depart- me,” Rundo said in a March 2023 podcast, Things unraveled rapidly: His girlfriend
ment of Homeland Security added him to “and I’m content with my new role.” and their young daughter moved out. He
the United States No Fly List. lost his housing and his job. With no pros-
Rundo’s court saga has made him an WHAT FACTORS TAKE people out of such pects, Connor moved across the country to
international celebrity on the extreme right. violent circles? Sometimes, like with James, live with another Atomwaffen cell. Rather
After his case was dismissed on a techni- the threat of law enforcement and feeling than driving Connor out of the movement,
cality by a sympathetic federal judge in manipulated by erstwhile comrades leads his public unmasking had the opposite
spring 2019, Rundo was released and relo- to estrangement. Sometimes a partner effect. “Getting doxxed radicalized me
cated to Eastern Europe, where he lived a gives an ultimatum: me or the movement. further,” he said. “I didn’t have anyone
transient lifestyle while deepening his ties Connor, a former West Coast gutter else lending me a hand aside from those
to the Old World’s extreme right: Ukraine’s punk and anarchist, traveled the full guys, so I took them up.”
Azov movement, Italy’s CasaPound, and ideological horseshoe on his way from Across the country, Connor began
hooligan firms of soccer clubs like Serbia’s anarchism to National Socialism. He’d to realize how different he was from his
Partizan Belgrade. He was extradited in had a rough childhood, raised by a sin- comrades, some of whom he labeled “bro-
August 2023 from Romania after ducking gle mother and his grandparents. Social ken, directionless young men.” Some were
a US warrant and briefly rereleased in Feb- isolation at a series of industrial jobs, the deeply immersed in the Order of Nine
ruary, when the same judge dismissed his fractiousness of his punk house and the Angles, which he viewed as a macabre
charges for a second time on the grounds of music scene in his home city, and the joke. Others preferred shitposting to hold-
“selective prosecution,” only to be arrested simultaneous deaths of his grandfather ing a job. Another member of his cell was
once again in the company of fellow white and a close friend who overdosed sent descending further into violent ideation,
supremacists. The Ninth Circuit Court of him into serious depression. In response, purchasing illegal guns and scheming to
Appeals reinstated his charges last summer, Connor developed newfound interests in attack Atomwaffen’s enemies. (James and
reversing the lower court judge’s dismissal. prepping, survivalism, and firearms. Connor asked to use aliases as a matter of
In early September, Rundo agreed to plead A series of far-right podcasts and their self-protection.)
guilty to one charge. attendant online communities drew him He’d found steady pay in construction
Rundo set out to create a “3.0” white toward the Atomwaffen Division, whose work and a steady girlfriend outside of the
nationalist culture (1.0 being skinheads, style immediately captivated Connor. movement. “I’d thrown myself into this
2.0 being the alt-right) that mimicked “They were edgy metal dudes in flecktarn, setting blindly as a survival mechanism
punk rock’s anti-systemic ethos. “Every- and their videos really caught my eye,” he because it was all I had left—and I couldn’t
thing the left does, we should have a direct recalled in a 2020 conversation. The group’s stand it,” he told me. “It was like living a
counter for,” Rundo opined in January core text, Siege, “wasn’t far off from what double life, being in Atomwaffen was like
while promoting his broader political I believed when I was a radical anarchist flicking a switch.” Connor began drifting
project. He created yet another gang, this insofar as the general idea that civilization away, coming home from work late and
time larger than any of his prior efforts: the was coming to the point of collapse.” After avoiding his housemates. The promise
active-club movement of localized fight a conversation with Brandon Russell, Con- of a normal life with his girlfriend pulled
clubs now found in at least 33 states and nor was introduced to his local cell. Connor even further out of Atomwaffen.
across Western Europe. A 2023 Vice News The level of seriousness in Connor’s One day he walked out of the house for
report showed Rundo vetting recruits and cell varied: Some knew how to build their good, leaving his flag, his fatigues, and his
coordinating actions from his Eastern own firearms, while others were more into skull mask on his bed. The feds raided the
European exile. black metal or shitposting. But they were house less than a month later. That was
Unlike younger elements who were red- active: Local universities were hit with three years ago.
pilled online, Rundo’s milieu and Rundo Atomwaffen flyers. They went on urban It’s been three years and he’s stayed
himself arrived at racial “politics” in the exploring expeditions and filmed them- completely out. Now he identifies as a Ber-
confines of prison. Skinheads convicted of selves firing assault rifles and shotguns nie Sanders–style socialist and has a house,
hate crimes and an increasing number of while masked and in full camouflage. On a a wife, and two young kids. “If I could build
military personnel populate active clubs, national level, other far-right groups were all of that despite what I believed,” says
including Daniel Rowe of the Evergreen intimidated by Atomwaffen, particular- Connor, “then what good were my beliefs?
Active Club in the Pacific Northwest and ly after Blaze Bernstein’s murder (which How much did I really believe all that?” 

NOVEMBER 2024 107

 hour in, when, the undercard having been Mary taught an Advanced Placement
The Lost Cause
completed, the main event commenced. class, which is to say her audience was not
The board was giving the community its kids meandering off to college, as I had,
opportunity to speak. but students aiming for college credits
As the first woman approached the and a head start in that world. There was
microphone, I scanned the room, trying a sense in the room that avoiding “divisive
to ascertain the breadth of Mary’s sup- concepts” was not just wrong on moral
port. Only a few weeks earlier, parents grounds but that it represented a lower-
were queued up, at this same meeting, to ing of standards; that to ban a book was to
demand her firing. Now when I looked out, erect a kind of South Carolina exception
I saw that the blue T-shirts were populous for Advanced Placement—one that vali-
enough to indicate that her backers were dated the worst caricatures of Southern
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 6 9 me and we deep. And then the comments began. It whiteness often bandied by the kind of
struck up a conversation. She did not know was a blowout. Parent after parent lined Northerner who thinks, We should have
Mary and did not wear a blue T-shirt. But up to support Mary, most of them met by just let them secede. The room was embar-
she explained that after George Floyd’s whooping cheers. A 14-year-old girl stood rassed. I remember one man, Josh Gray, a
death, her church had created a reading up and quoted from Between the World and professor at the University of South Car-
group around race. (She’d become a huge Me, noting that in all her time in school she olina, standing up, his hair pulled back in
Colson Whitehead fan.) The head of that had never been assigned a book by a Black a ponytail, and bringing this self-inflicted
group read about Mary and urged all the author. Mary cried silently and whispered humiliation into view in a way that would
members to come out and show support. to me a running commentary about each never have occurred to me. “I can tell
This was the second time I’d heard of a speaker—their family, their occupation, you, as a redneck who’s worked all over
reading group in this town as the epicen- whether they had kids in the district. No the world and met people from all over the
ter of political disruption. From bell hooks one, not a single speaker, stood up to sup- world,” he said, “don’t make the percep-
on, books by Black authors helped Mary port the book’s banning. I was initially tion that [the students] have to compete
understand “why things are so fucked up.” surprised by this, but later I understood— against worse by actions like this that do
And it was these books that had brought school board meetings, and local politics, not reflect well on our community.”
Bobbie out to support Mary. are small affairs, easily dominated by an This may seem self-interested, a stance
I understand the impulse to dismiss the organized faction, and that night the fac- taken more to avoid a stigma than to break
import of the summer of 2020, to dismiss tion was Mary’s. an arrangement of power. It’s a legitimate
the “national conversations,” the raft of Sometimes I will be at a reception or question—especially in the age of social
TV specials and documentaries, even the an event or even out on the street, and a media and loud virtue signaling that fol-
protests themselves. Some of us see the brother will approach me to thank me for lowed 2020. But virtues should be signaled,
lack of policy change and wonder if the my work, and his build, how he moves, and the signalers should act to make their
movement itself was futile. But policy his language, his haircut will inform virtues manifest. It is the absence of the
change is an end point, not an origin. The me that he has just finished a bid. I see latter, not the presence of the former,
cradle of material change is in our imag- these brothers and I remember my time that is the problem. And I doubt that any-
ination and ideas. And whereas white teaching in a prison. I see these brothers one ever parts with power in the name of
supremacy, like any other status quo, can and I see that shadow version of myself charity. In this case, self-interest meant
default to the clichéd claims and excuses that my parents and teachers warned that here in the heart of Jim Crow, and
for the world as it is—bad cops are rotten would take shape if the notes in lipstick Redemption, ideas to the contrary could
apples, America is guardian of the free red continued, if my “conduct” did not not be driven from the public square. And
world—we have the burden of crafting improve. The line between me and them, that is progress. It just isn’t inevitable that
new language and stories that allow people between me and the shadow, feels thin. such progress continues.
to imagine that new policies are possible. I don’t think I have an intended read- The following afternoon, I met Mary for
And now, even here in Chapin, some peo- er—audience is not something I think barbecue. I was actually giddy from the
ple, not most (it is hardly ever most), had, about directly—but if I did, it would be night before. I had expected to come into
through the work of Black writers, begun those brothers, or rather that younger ver- a den of hectoring fanatics. And instead I’d
that work of imagining. sion of them trying to navigate the line. found that there were allies fighting back.
The board chair gaveled the meeting to There was not a single person like that in Allies. When I started writing, it felt essen-
order at 7 p.m. sharp. She noted the full the audience at that hearing, which was tial to think of white people as readers as
house and seemed to be girding herself for about what I expected. And I’d spoken to little as possible, to reduce them in my
what was coming. The board called for a enough audiences to understand that if mind to resist the temptation to translate. I
moment of silence for “a great tragedy,” you’re lucky, your writing moves beyond think that was correct. What has been sur-
the specifics of which the chair did not its imagined recipients. But I wasn’t prising—pleasantly so—is that there really
explain. There was a prayer and the pledge speaking here. I wasn’t even the subject. is no translation needed, that going deep-
of allegiance and a report from the super- What I seemed to be witnessing was less er actually reveals the human. Get to the
intendent on “academic freedom.” From about a book as it was about something universal through the specific, as the rule
that point, allusions to Mary’s case crept more localized—a kind of referendum on goes. Still, even as I have come to under-
into the board’s business until about an the school district’s identity. stand this, it feels abstract to me. What I

108 VA N I T Y FA I R
wanted was to be Mary for a moment, to artist Ed Dwight. But most of the sprawl- and sanctified by her country’s ideas, art,
understand how she came to believe that ing 22 acres of the State House proper are and methods of education.
it was worth risking her job over a book. a shrine to white supremacy. A collection That is the heart of it. It is not a mis-
Mary’s grandfather was a social work- of giant statues sits on raised platforms, take that Mary teaches writing at its most
er and World War II vet who was blinded so that men like Strom Thurmond, who advanced level and has found herself a
disarming mines. He came home a fero- pinned his entire political career on seg- target. Much of the current hoopla about
cious advocate for the disabled, but Black regation, loom like gods. Wade Hampton, book bans and censorship gets it wrong.
disabled veterans particularly. Although who enslaved generations and then fought This is not personal—it is political. It is not
Mary knew her grandfather, he didn’t talk in a bloody war to uphold that system, is about me or any other writer. It is about all
about his history as an activist. She found there. So is Ben Tillman, who once boasted of us—writers and readers, comrades, and
out from a book after his death. Her par- of lynching from the Senate floor. Tillman the work we do together. To think. To ques-
ents were more liberal than the norm—the knew of what he spoke. In 1876, Tillman tion. To imagine. I can’t say I always knew
type who in a red voting district still put pitched in to massacre Black people in it, but in my time teaching it soon became
out a Biden 2020 lawn sign. But what she Hamburg, and in 1895, he’d rallied white clear that becoming a good writer would
mostly had growing up was an ill-defined South Carolinians to write Black people not be enough. We needed more writers,
sense that the world, as it was convention- out of the state’s constitution. The move- and I had a responsibility to help them as
ally explained, didn’t make sense. She’d ment to erase Black people from politics a reader, to be an active audience for the
been bred to be a Southern lady, but it swept through the South and won the day stories they wanted to tell, or as a teacher,
didn’t really take. She had to be bribed into in legislatures, state houses, and courts. so that they could learn to tell them better,
etiquette class with Bojangles. In church, But if you just looked at the obvious organs to reach deeper into their own truth in the
Mary did not obsess over being saved so of the government, you’d miss the breadth same way that brought me euphoria, and
much as she wondered why there were no of the attack. reach into the hearts of readers and set
women in the pulpit. And then in college, them on fire, as Mary had been set on fire
books righted the frame: She read bell WE HAVE LIVED under a class of people who since college: by words on a page.
hooks’s Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, ruled American culture with a flaming As we walked the grounds of the State
Thinking Black. When she finished, she cross for so long that we have sometimes House, I thought about what it meant
called her mother and said, “This is why failed to recognize the political power of for a young student to visit these same
things are so fucked up.” It was exactly the culture. But they have not. And so the grounds. I thought about what it must
experience that the purveyors of 13950, the Redeemers of this age look out and see mean to walk amongst these Klansmen,
book banners, and those targeting CRT their kingdom besieged by trans Barbies, enslavers, and segregationists raised up
were seeking to prevent. Muslim mutants, daughters dating daugh- on their platforms to the status of titans.
We finished eating and took a drive ters, sons trick-or-treating as African I thought about what it means to go back
over to the state capital. South Carolina kings. The fear instilled by this rising cul- to the schools, where work rooted in these
was the first state to secede and also the ture is not for what it does today but what truths is slowly being pushed out, to the
state where both Reconstruction and it augurs for tomorrow—a different world libraries that are being bleached of dis-
Redemption reached their most spectac- in which the boundaries of humanity are comforting stories. And I thought how it
ular ends. All through that period, South not so easily drawn and enforced. In this all works not simply to misinform but to
Carolina had been a majority-Black state, context, the Mom for Liberty shrieking miseducate; not just to assure the right
and at the height of Reconstruction, before “Think of the children!” must be taken answers are memorized but that the wrong
its undoing in Redemption, the state was seriously. What she is saying is that her questions are never asked.
home to an emancipated working class right to the America she knows, her right The statues and pageantry can fool you.
and a multiracial democracy. It’s quite the to the biggest and greenest of lawns, to They look like symbols of wars long settled
story—but it’s not the one that the State the most hulking and sturdiest SUVs, to and on behalf of men long dead. But their
House tells. There is a beautiful sculpture an arsenal of infinite AR-15s, rests on a Redemption is not about honoring a past.
there wrought by the astronaut turned hierarchy, on an order, helpfully explained It’s about killing a future. Q

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NOVEMBER 2024 109

Proust Questionnaire

JOHN LITHGOW
The six-time Emmy winner, who can
currently be seen in Conclave, on joyous
Democrats, arboreal reincarnation,
and tall-people problems

What is your idea of perfect

happiness? Creating something
and feeling proud of it. What
is your greatest extravagance?
A toss-up: my New York
apartment or owning two
horses, two extravagances that
don’t sit well with each other.
What is your greatest regret? Je ne regrette rien, but there in the can, rehearsals starting soon for a new play in London,
are a few star-making roles I turned down. What or who is the 44th anniversary coming up, and the Democrats have
greatest love of your life? Lucky me: my wife, Mary. What suddenly become the party of joy. If you could choose what
do you dislike most about your appearance? My posture. to come back as, what would it be? One of two ponderosa
(I blame perpetual stooping out of courtesy.) What is your pine trees (the other would be Mary) on the banks of a lake in
greatest fear? Climate change, duh. On what occasion do Montana. What do you regard as the lowest depth of
you lie? Backstage visits. Which living person do you most misery? Losing a child or grandchild. What is your favorite
admire? Bill Moyers. What is the trait you most deplore occupation? Hard to beat acting when you’re regularly
in yourself? Conflict aversion. What is the trait you most employed by good people. What is your most marked
deplore in others? Three versions of the same trait: deceit, characteristic? Optimism, I guess. Who are your favorite
hypocrisy, and manipulativeness. What is your favorite writers? Shakespeare, P.G. Wodehouse, Mark Twain, and the
journey? Driving from hill town to hill town in Tuscany and writing staff of 3rd Rock From the Sun. Who are your heroes
Umbria in the month of January. When and where were you in real life? At the moment, Tim Walz. What are your
happiest? Probably the curtain call of my final performance favorite names? Ava, Archie, and Oona (by coincidence, my
when I played King Lear. Which living person do you most three grandchildren). What do you consider your greatest
despise? Vlad the Terrible. Which words or phrases do you achievement? Contentment in old age. How would you like
most overuse? Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Which to die? In my sleep, in the middle of a happy dream. What
talent would you most like to have? Playing the piano really do you most value in your friends? Openness, authenticity,
well. (I can’t play a note.) What is your current state of and above all, humor. What is your motto? Cultivate
mind? Pretty good: The Old Man season two out, four movies humility: You never know when you’re going to need it. 

110 VA N I T Y FA I R I L L U S T R AT I O N BY R YA N M C AMIS NOVEMBER 2024