The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast

Anna Khachiyan – Who Controls the Zeitgeist?

I’m excited to share our second episode of the Restoration Podcast on YouTube, this time featuring the wonderfully insightful Anna Khachiyan!

27 Jun 2024

I’m excited to share our second episode of the Restoration Podcast on YouTube, this time featuring the wonderfully insightful Anna Khachiyan!

I have been following Anna for a while now but only managed to meet her for the first time in New York last month. And I was very glad to do so. She is one half of the illustrious Red Scare podcast duo along with her co-host, the actress and director Dasha Nekrasova. I encourage you to check them out on Spotify here or follow them on Patreon.

People flock to Anna for her hot takes on everything from feminism, to politics, to art and her imaginative, and at times piercing, critiques of modern culture.

We spoke about student protests, feminism and relations between the sexes, whether one can ever be in control of the zeitgeist, conservative art, and Lana del Rey. It was also refreshing to hear Anna talk about Faith in a way that was very touching to me.

Both Luke and I really enjoyed talking with her, and we hope you learn as much from her analyses of contemporary culture as we did.

Here’s an excerpt of some of her words addressing the tide of activism we see in society today:

“The young have to find a way of rebelling and conforming at the same time and the way that they solve for that, is rebelling against their elders and conforming with their peers…

“The big problem in our society is that the dominant hegemonic worldview is driven by  left-liberal concerns and causes and those are the causes of progress. And progress is never ending. Once you wrap one cause up you have to move on to the next one because their jobs livelihoods and egos are on the line. You can’t just pack up and go home… that’s why everything feels like a grab bag of incoherent ideas…

“Feminists in general have this idea that women who have a more normative view of sex roles and gender relations and their own desires are suffering from a “false consciousness” that is imposed on them by men or the patriarchy. But of course, they never stop to ask themselves whether they are suffering from a false consciousness of their own.”

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In our next episode I will make sure I don’t have my scarf over the mic, so you should be able to hear me better! Apologies, but it is a work in progress, and I really thank you for your support and for bearing with us. And I encourage you all to subscribe on YouTube as well for more video content as it comes out.

Enjoy.