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.
I am marvelling at the resilience of New York City. Yesterday afternoon a real monster visited Lower Manhattan, weaponising a truck in the foul Isis fashion to mow down scores of citizens, killing eight. Yet just a few hours later the streets of Manhattan were thronging with pretend monsters. With vampires, skeletons, witches, Leatherfaces and
If someone had told you 10 years ago that it would soon become tantamount to a speechcrime to say ‘Men cannot get pregnant’, you would have thought them mad. That would be like punishing someone for saying, ‘Humans need oxygen to survive’. And yet here we are, in 2017, where PC has spun so violently
Scotland is fast becoming the most strident, unforgiving nanny state in the West. A world leader in the policing of people’s beliefs and lifestyles. It has in recent years passed laws telling football fans what they’re allowed to sing and chant. It has banned smoking in cars and parks and said it wants to make Scotland ‘smokefree’ by
Politicians are always going on about ‘the voiceless’. By which they usually mean poor and working-class people. People who have been shunted from public life and never get to air their concerns. At the Conservative party conference Theresa May styled herself ‘voice of the voiceless’ (before, too ironically, becoming voiceless herself). Impeccably bred Corbynistas, all
In what kind of moral universe would it be considered acceptable for the authors of a war, the people who voted for a war, to get on their high horses over those who make daft or jokey comments about that war? For the people who green-lighted the bombing of a foreign nation to haughtily chastise
I know many Leave voters. Most of my family. Around half of my friends. Lots of the people in the immigrant community in London I grew up in. (We’re bad immigrants, being anti-EU, so we never feature in the migrant-sympathetic commentary of EU-pining hacks.) And not one of them has ever said they chose Brexit
Everyone needs to calm down about the EU Withdrawal Bill. The way anti-Brexiteers are talking about it you’d think Henry VIII himself had risen from his burial vault, sword in one hand, Anne Boleyn’s head in the other, come to crush parliament and the plebs beneath his velvet boot. The Tories’ use of ‘Henry VIII
Here they come, the eco-ghouls, feasting on another natural disaster. This time it’s the floods in Houston. No sooner had Hurricane Harvey caused terrifying waters to consume entire streets and trailer parks than the eco-set was rushing in to try to make moral mileage out of it all. This is climate change in action, they
In a few weeks, a new intake of students will arrive, all fresh-faced and excited, at universities around the country. They’ll be thrilled at the prospect of escaping the wagging finger of mum and dad, eager to absorb new ideas. But I’m afraid they are in for a rude awakening. Unless they’re very fortunate, they
It’s official: people who talk about the problem of Pakistani men abusing white working-class girls have no place in polite society. Raise so much as a peep of concern about Muslim grooming gangs and you’ll be expelled from the realm of the decent. You’ll be shushed, exiled, encouraged to clean out your polluted mind. That
Identity politics is turning violent. It’s been brewing for a while. Anyone who’s witnessed mobs of students threatening to silence white men or Islamists gruffly invading the space of secular women who diss their dogmas will know that, as with all forms of communalism, identity politics has a menacing streak. And at the weekend, in
We used to think it was noble when people made sacrifices for their beliefs, when they were happy to endure hardship in the service of a political goal or moral cause. Now we call it ‘extremism’. Now anyone who is so devoted to an ideal that he’s willing to see his own daily comforts diminished
Justin Trudeau, the wokest world leader, has officially achieved rock-star status. This week he appears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. His pale blue tie is slightly askew — cos he ain’t a stiff like the rest of them, okay? — and his smoky eyes are peering into the camera, but really into readers’ souls,
Jodie Whittaker: what an inspired choice for the new Doctor. Not only is she a very fine actress, whether she’s playing stricken with grief, as she did in Broadchurch, or a comedically exasperated trainee nurse stressed out by aliens and chavs in the wonderful little film Attack the Block. She also exudes that quality every
It’s the casualness with which they’re saying it that is truly disturbing. ‘I’m beginning to think that Brexit may never happen’, said Vince Cable on Sunday morning TV, with expert nonchalance, as if he were predicting rain. He echoed Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt, who a few days earlier informed viewers that there is talk in ‘some
It is 10 years since smoking in public places was banned in England. Ten years since officials decreed that we could no longer light up at work, in restaurants, in pubs and even at bus-stops. Ten years since you could follow your Tiramisu with the satisfying throat hit of a drag of nicotine. Ten years
John McDonnell’s use of the M-word in relation to the Grenfell inferno marks a new low in the political milking of this catastrophe. I’m not normally squeamish, but I must say I have found the marshalling of the Grenfell horror to political ends, the transformation of this human calamity into effectively a meme saying ‘Austerity Bad’ or
So now we know who’s really responsible for the horrible attack at Finsbury Park Mosque: it was the Sun wot done it. And maybe the Daily Mail too. No sooner had Darren Osborne allegedly crashed a hired van into Muslim worshippers than certain so-called liberals were stringing up the tabloids. The low-rent press poisoned his
It takes a lot to make me feel ashamed of London, my beloved home city. But yesterday’s tower-block inferno did it. The raging fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, the disturbing speed with which this home to hundreds was reduced to a smouldering shell of a building, heaps shame on this city. It is
On the street where I grew up there was an old man who was sweet, friendly… and racist. This was the 1980s: every street had one. Always draped in an overcoat, even when it was tarmac-meltingly hot, he’d march back from the corner shop each morning, tabloid tucked under arm, looking to ensnare one of
