popular and lucrative in the world, both began on Barstool. Mr Portnoy calls this the “Saturday Night Live” model: an incubator of future superstars. Mr Portnoy gives his customers what they want. He has no more obligation to cater to critics than a steakhouse does to vegans. When people assail him, he digs in and punches back, further deepening the bonds between him and his fans, who, he writes, “view an attack on me as an attack on a family member”. Perhaps his reluctance to apologise and eagerness to lambast his critics sounds familiar. Mr Portnoy supports Donald Trump and has interviewed the president in the White House. But whereas politicians need majority support to win elections, businesses just need a steady, committed stream of customers to be profitable. And Barstool has that. To its fans it offers authenticity and a respite from the world of finger-wagging and politically correct jokes. Not everyone likes what Mr Portnoy does. But not everyone has to. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/30/bold-brash-and-divisive-inside-the- barstool-sports-empire
A racist massacre. A white-supremacist coup. A century of lies A new book tells the story of an atrocity in North Carolina in 1898 and its long aftermath Jul 30th 2026 They were confident they wouldn’t be punished—and they were right to be. The paramilitaries who torched the offices of an African-American newspaper in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898 posed smilingly for a photograph at the scene, as Southern lynch mobs often did (see picture). After the arson they murdered dozens, perhaps hundreds of the town’s black residents. “We have taken a city”, a white churchman crowed, “as thoroughly, as completely, as if captured in battle.” Lauren Collins, a journalist at the New Yorker, grew up in Wilmington. “They Stole a City” is her account of the massacre and the municipal coup
d’état that accompanied it. This story has been told before, notably in David Zucchino’s Pulitzer-prizewinning “Wilmington’s Lie”. The new book is distinguished by its deep interest in the origins of the horror and, especially, in its rippling reverberations: the culture of impunity, trauma, exile and resilience. The Daily Record, the mob’s target, had published what, for its time, was an incendiary editorial. In response to scaremongering about African-American rapists, it called out the grisly history of white-on-black sexual violence. But the real grievance of Wilmington’s white supremacists was over political influence; theirs was declining as their black neighbours made overdue yet unusual gains. Three out of ten aldermen were black, as were the customs collector and coroner. White bigwigs, descendants of slaveholders, wanted their power back. White foot-soldiers resented black competition in the labour market. “On the other side of any era of the expansion of rights,” observes Ms Collins, “someone is waiting to claw them back.” A gruesome sequence of events opened with rigging and intimidation at a statewide election. Then Wilmington’s white citizens proclaimed, in a “White Declaration of Independence”, that they would “never again be ruled by men of African origin”. On November 10th 1898 came the killing, committed by militias armed to the teeth in advance. As in the Tulsa massacre of 1921, prosperous and professional black people were targeted; many of those spared were run out of town. City officials, black and white, were forcibly replaced. President William McKinley ignored appeals to Washington for help. Like Patrick Phillips in “Blood at the Root”, which recounts the expulsion of African-Americans from Forsyth County, Georgia, Ms Collins traces the long and tragic aftermath of the atrocity into the 21st century. A black lawyer who fled and became a judge did not visit Wilmington again until 1945. Black people who stayed found themselves working for the perpetrators, or being judged and policed by them. Shortly before her death in the mid-1960s, a survivor grabbed her great-granddaughter’s arm and whispered, “If it ever happens—run.” Ms Collins rightly measures the crime not just in violence but in loss—of livelihoods, opportunities, connections and futures.
In the memory of the white elite, this act of terrorism became a noble “revolution”. For some black people, dwelling on the outrage seemed imprudent. When it dawned, the civil-rights era was harrowing in Wilmington. The sheriff’s office was a nest of klansmen; school desegregation was brutally resisted; the imprisonment of local student activists became a global scandal. Only in the 1990s did the facts of 1898 begin to be publicly acknowledged. Typically for the region, those keen to commemorate them had to respect the feelings of the culprits’ descendants. As she chronicles “a centuries-long day that isn’t over yet”, Ms Collins sometimes loses sight of the families she purports to focus on. Some readers may reject the parallels she draws between the coup and American politics today and her call for reparations (less impractical at a local than a federal level). Yet as the White House and militant book-banners try to downplay past racial injustices, a more fundamental struggle is being waged again: for the truth to be told and heard. This is a moving contribution to that effort. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/30/a-racist-massacre-a-white-supremacist- coup-a-century-of-lies
Border walls are symbols of power—and monuments to delusion A summer stroll along Hadrian’s Wall is also a rendezvous with history Jul 30th 2026 To Caledonian tribesmen, it must have looked awesome. At Winshields Crags, the highest point of Hadrian’s Wall, the fortification runs toweringly atop a steep escarpment. For the legionaries who built it in the second century AD, hauling up the rocks would have been backbreaking. Today walkers carrying only water bottles can find themselves out of puff. “These Romans”, one pants, “must have been mad.” For almost 300 years Hadrian’s Wall was guarded by Syrian archers, Thracian cavalrymen and other forces dispatched by Rome to this northerly imperial redoubt. Tread this picturesque stretch of northern England now, and you instead encounter history-hungry Americans, well-equipped
Scandinavians and parents trying to stop their offspring eating the snacks too soon. The wall is an impressive monument—but, visitors may wonder, as they might at many ancient ruins, a monument to what? To power, runs one answer. Let there be a wall, the emperor Hadrian decreed in 122ad, and in fairly short order—at least compared with recent border- wall projects—there was. His ran 117km across the Roman province of Britannia at its narrowest point. Today, in the ruins of its watchtowers, castles and forts, you try to imagine yourself as a Roman soldier facing barbarians, harsh military discipline, the biting westerly wind and frigid winters. The lucky ones were sent warm socks and underwear from home. Up on the crags, you run into one of the big problems with history, especially the remote kind for which records are patchy. So much of it seems to be about violence, and most of it is about men: where they stood guard, which weapons they wielded, the safekeeping of their regimental standards and wages, and maybe where, after they were paid, they went boozing, bathing and whoring. You go in search of a human past and stub your toe on the lifeless rubble of a turret. Perhaps this is why one of the popular stops on the wall is for something that isn’t Roman—something, in fact, which is no longer there at all. In 2023 two numskulls sawed down a tree in a dip between hillocks, in a spot called Sycamore Gap. The culprits became more infamous than most murderers; the tree became better known than ever. “It’s so sad,” laments a walker approaching the treeless gap. The martyred sycamore is somehow more vivid and poignant than the traceless soldiers. That is, until you head south from the gap, across moorland studded with wildflowers and sheep dung. In the museum at Vindolanda, site of a Roman fort and adjacent civilian village, are toddler’s shoes and a toy sword. A man etched his name on an amphora to stop comrades swiping his olives, like a flat-sharer labelling his milk. Broken pieces of an ornate glass vessel were unearthed far apart; a guide speculates that a slave girl smashed it accidentally and scattered the proof. On a writing tablet, like a Roman postcard, a commander’s wife invited a friend to her birthday party.
So it wasn’t all sentry duty and repelling enemy hordes. Indeed there may not have been all that much repelling to do. Compared with other Roman regions, says Greg Woolf of New York University, this “wasn’t a very dangerous place”. The tribes beyond the battlements were too sparse to pose a consistent threat. And the wall was not an immutable border. Roman forces pushed deeper into modern Scotland before and after its construction; Hadrian’s successor built another, less famous wall farther north. What seemed a statement of imperial might could instead be seen, says Professor Woolf, as “a monument to Hadrian’s ego”. Eventually, as the empire crumpled in the early fifth century, the orders and wages dried up. So must have the care packages of socks. The last detachments wound up defending only themselves. Such disintegration is the long-run fate of empires, and of grandiose walls. You build one to demonstrate your tyrannical clout—over rugged terrain, your enemies or your own people—and with time it becomes a symbol of delusion. Rather than keeping invaders or immigrants out (or dissidents in), the barrier is scavenged for materials, as were bits of the Great Wall of China, or becomes a tourist attraction, like the Berlin Wall. Or Hadrian’s, which developed into a cherished landmark and route of a bracing trail. A Belgian hiker cites two strategic advantages of the old empire’s northern periphery: it is cooler than the broiling continent and you get fish and chips for dinner. Once patrolled by men sent far from their relatives, today the wall is a beautiful place to commune with yours.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/30/border-walls-are-symbols-of-power-and- monuments-to-delusion
Economic, data, commodities and markets
Economic & financial indicators | Indicators Economic, data, commodities and markets Jul 30th 2026
This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/economic-and-financial-indicators/2026/07/30/economic- data-commodities-and-markets