Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.
David Baddiel could not have asked for better evidence for his thesis that ‘Jews don’t count’ than the online reaction to it. Channel 4 broadcast his intelligent and touching documentary this week with that very title – Jews Don’t Count – and instantly there was an explosion of Baddielphobia. It was almost as if people
Here’s my question for Stephen Fry after he said his trans friends had felt ‘deeply upset’ by some of the comments made by J.K. Rowling: why didn’t you just say to them, ‘So what?’ Fry used to be all about saying ‘So what?’ to people who went on about feeling offended by words. His irritation
Donald Trump is done for. Trumpism too. That’s the main takeaway of the Midterms. Many of the candidates Trump backed performed badly and Trump’s own incessant meddling in the Republican campaign seems to have turned voters off. That curious, manic, sometimes amusing little epoch in modern Western politics – the Trump era – is over.
This week, on BBC radio, I made a confession: I am a denier. Not a climate-change denier – an apocalypse denier. I thought it was a clever point – to distinguish between my acceptance that climate change is happening and my scepticism that it will imminently bring about the fiery destruction of Earth. Apparently not.
I don’t normally vote Tory. But I did in December 2019. And for one reason only. Because I wanted Brexit ‘done’, properly. I wanted a Brexit-leaning government after those two long years of the Remainer parliament and its various efforts to frustrate our leaving of the EU. Millions of people, especially in Red Wall areas,
There are no two groups more different than climate protesters and striking workers. The former are mostly plummy layabouts, posh road-blockers whose chief aim seems to be to inconvenience working people. The latter are working people. Their concern is not with the fantasy eco-apocalypse that so bothers the pretty heads of Extinction Rebellion agitators but rather
Is silence still violence? I’m just wondering because this week Graham Norton was asked about the deluge of hateful slurs and threats that are frequently fired at JK Rowling and he dodged the issue. Instead he rambled on about how celebs should not comment on difficult topics like transgenderism. So was his silence on the
There was a truly electric moment at the Morrissey gig at the Palladium in London last night. Moz was introducing his new song, ‘Bonfire of Teenagers’. It’s about the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 people were killed. He looked out at the audience and asked us a question. How come you know the name
What drives someone to do something as morally depraved as throw human faeces on a monument to Captain Sir Tom Moore? The video allegedly showing a climate-change campaigner dousing a likeness of Sir Tom, in what was reportedly a mixture of urine and excrement, is deeply chilling. The person in the video is part of
I know we’re all meant to be quaking over the election result in Italy. That we’re all supposed to be gnashing our teeth over the ‘first far-right politician since Mussolini’ to lead the Italian people. That is how much of the media is referring to Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party and
The left needs to shake off its ‘bourgeois environmentalism’. It needs to distance itself from the ‘bourgeois environmental lobby’ and make the case for fracking and the building of new nuclear power stations. Who do you think said this? Some contrarian commentator? A right-winger irritated by eco-loons? Nope, it was Gary Smith, the general secretary
The images coming out of Iran are remarkable. Women are ripping off their hijabs and burning them in public. They’re dancing in the streets and shaking their freed hair as onlookers whoop and cheer. These are stunning acts of defiance in a theocratic state in which women are expected to mildly, meekly accept their status
No one should ever be arrested for what they think or say. It is remarkable – and depressing – that this still needs to be said in the 21st century. But it seems it does. Over the weekend we witnessed an alarming, almost medieval act of censorship. A woman was dragged away by cops for
I am a republican, always have been, and yet I now feel a great sense of loss. And not only because a 96-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother has died, which is always an occasion for sadness, whether the deceased was a monarch or an ‘ordinary’ member of the public. No, also because Elizabeth II represented
Can we all take a moment to marvel at the courage of Joe Lycett? Imagine the cojones it must take to go on the BBC and make fun of the Tories. How truly stunning and brave. Roll over Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks – there’s a new comedy insurgent in town. I’m being sarcastic, clearly.
I’ve read some batty celebrity profiles in my time. But that piece about Meghan Markle in the Cut takes the biscuit. It is almost unbelievably preposterous. It shines a glorious if unwitting light on the narcissism and outright daftness of the right-on celeb set of which Ms Markle is now kween. Where to begin? How
Celebrities used to dread being outed as gay. Now they seem to dread being outed as straight. Consider Harry Styles. The poor fellow seems to live in constant fear of being exposed as a boring old heterosexual. Mr Styles, the current king of pop, dances around questions about his sexuality. It’s ‘outdated’ to define your
So according to Iran it is Salman Rushdie’s own fault that he got stabbed. It had nothing to do with the vile death warrant issued by Iran’s own ayatollah in 1989. It’s unrelated to the fact that the fatwa was reaffirmed in 2005. It’s not because Iran’s Revolutionary Guards once said ‘the day will come
We are all praying that Salman Rushdie will be okay. What happened in Chautauqua in New York today is indescribably appalling. An author, a man, stabbed in the neck just as he was about to speak on freedom of expression. This attack is a vile affront to liberty and to the principles of an open
If you find yourself wondering over the next few days why it is so swelteringly hot, I have an answer for you. It’s because of rich people. It’s because of those wealthy elites with all their gas-guzzling vehicles and reckless holidaymaking. It’s their fault you’re sweating on the Tube. This infantile claim really is being
