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She describes Bourgois, whose 1995 book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio applied French neo-Marxist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of “cultural capital” to the lives of drug dealers such as Big Ray, as an inspiration for her views of everything from Greek debt to British nationalism and France’s anti-austerity protests by Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Vests, whose street riots Anderson has said are nothing “compared to the structural violence of the French and global elites.”

“Waves of political change are sweeping across Europe, fuelled by anger and economic injustice and the elite institutions that have failed to protect its people. The disenfranchised have turned to populists to solve their problems, and Britain can now look forward to Donald Trump visiting them in June,” Anderson said with a poignant raise of her eyebrows, in a video posted April 26. “We should understand Brexit not as a rejection of Europe, but as a rejection of its political class.”

From this side of the Atlantic, European politics can seem distant. You have to squint and shield your eyes. And lately, when you do, the first thing you often see over the horizon has been Pamela Anderson. As ever, you can hardly help it.

Photo by Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images

She has been everywhere, palling around with renegades, political jesters, Marxists, eco-feminists and anti-capitalists. She advocated for Julian Assange in his strange diplomatic limbo in London, and more recently for the Swedish programmer and internet privacy and security activist Ola Bini, imprisoned in Ecuador over alleged links to Assange. She calls British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn “a politician whose integrity I absolutely and unconditionally admire,” and she has hinted at her closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin.