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.
Here’s a sobering fact for you: yesterday in Brussels, Isis sympathisers killed five times as many civilians in one hour as British airstrikes have killed or injured Isis fighters in Syria since December. At the last count, in late February, British airstrikes over Syria had killed or hurt just seven Isis fighters in three months. Seven. Not even
Which of us who grew up in the thrall of Paul Daniels’ magic, under the spell of his Saturday-night humour and charm, could have imagined he would spend his latter years as a kind of sexual outlaw? Not many of us, I would wager. But that’s what happened. When, in 2012, he bravely criticised the
The self-important slayers of ‘cultural appropriation’ have gone too far this time. Clearly they didn’t get a big-enough moral kick from chastising white people who do yoga (on the basis that yoga has ‘roots in Indian culture’), moaning about Beyonce donning a sari (‘how is this different from white folks wearing cornrows?’, the racial police demanded), and fuming
Sadiq Khan, I’m sure you and your supporters think you’re being super right-on when you say that it would send a ‘phenomenal message’ to the world if Londoners were to elect their first-ever Muslim mayor in May. But actually you’re playing an incredibly dangerous game. You’re Islamifying what ought to be a straight political contest.
The American comic Toby Muresianu put it best: last night’s Oscars felt like ‘three hours of being told to eat your vegetables’. If there has ever been a more grating gathering of smug, self-important asses keen to educate the TV-watching blob about Serious Stuff, then I’m struggling to remember it. Hollywood has clearly forgotten what
The Third Wayists are quaking in their boots. The middle-class, middle-of-the-road technocrats who have dominated politics for the best part of three decades are freaking out. These people who bristle at anything ideological, are disdainful of heated debate, and have bizarrely turned the word ‘moderate’ into a compliment feel under siege. And no wonder they
Taking petulance to dizzy new heights, the LGBT officer of the National Union of Students has refused to share a platform with Peter Tatchell because she doesn’t like some of his views. Yes, the self-styled spokesperson for gay students is snubbing a man who has spent 40-odd years agitating for gay rights. Tatchell has been
If you think it’s only crybaby students who set up safe spaces in which they might hide from gruff words and ugly sentiments, think again. More of the world beyond touchy campuses is being safe-spaced too. Consider Twitter, which this week announced the establishment of a ‘safety council’ — Orwellian much? — to ensure its
‘Do you really not like Hillary Clinton, or are you just sexist?’ Cosmopolitan actually asked that question last week. Claiming that much anti-Clinton commentary is ‘gender-specific’, with Hillary frequently described as ‘dishonest’ or ‘shrill’, the mag asked Clinton’s critics to search their souls to see if they really do oppose Clinton the politician or just hate
As if to make a massive display of their dearth of self-awareness, Twitter feminists have spent the past few days nagging the Oxford English Dictionary over its definition of the word ‘nagging’. They have also rabidly denounced its definition of ‘rabid’. And they have deployed shrill lingo to slam its definition of ‘shrill’. To nag
The shamelessly censorious MPs and petition-signers who want Donald Trump banned from Britain are basically saying: ‘Oh my God, he wants to ban people from entering America! This is so outrageous we must ban him from entering Britain.’ Can these people hear themselves? The thing they claim to find repulsive in Trump — that he
That’s it. The nanny state has won. The nudgers and naggers are victorious. The buzzkilling, behaviour-policing new elite that sees smoking as sinful, boozing as lethal and being podgy as immoral has conquered the political sphere. Its miserabilist writ now extends even into a political zone where once it held no sway: Boris Johnson’s brain.
Everyone is paying tribute to David Bowie’s musical feats, as well they should. Seldom, if ever, has one man made such a massive, beautiful dent on pop music and pop consciousness. A gender-bending, genre-hopping genius, deserving of all the accolades coming his way today. But I want to pay tribute to another of Bowie’s feats,
How’s this for dark irony: throughout 2015, ‘white male privilege’ was the buzzphrase on every rad tweeter and liberal hack’s lips, as they fumed against the easy, pampered lives allegedly enjoyed by human beings who had the fortune to be born with a penis and pale skin. Railing against ‘white men’ and their cushy existences
At No 5 in the Spectator’s most-read articles for 2015 is Brendan O’Neill’s cover piece describing ‘Stepford Students’: those who want to shut down debate when it involves people they disagree with and arguments they don’t like. Brendan spotted this phenomenon in 2014 but his article returned to our best-read list this year as more and
What Oliver Letwin wrote in that 1985 memo to Thatcher was ugly. But you know what is also ugly? The forced extraction of an apology from Letwin for the things he thought and said three decades ago, when the political world was a very different place. The attempt to drag Letwin’s name into the gutter
If you hear any of your friends refer to the rise of Podemos in Spain as a revolution, please buy them a dictionary for Christmas. For far from representing the sweeping aside of the political establishment by a new, angry class in society — which is what a revolution is — the success of Podemos speaks to
This has been a difficult year for me. For I have been compelled to break a pact I made with myself when I was 18 years old and do something I promised I would never do, something which goes against every cell and fibre of my being. I’ve defended a leader of the Labour Party.
These figures should send a chill down the spine of anyone who values basic human dignity: in England in 2013, 2,018 newborn babies were taken from their mothers and put into the care of the state. This represents a huge hike from five years earlier, in 2008, when 802 newborns were taken into care. To put
What’s with the orgy of fawning over Hilary Benn’s Syria speech? It was eloquent, yes, but content-wise it reminded me of those historical re-enactment shebangs where sad men in their fifties try to inject meaning into their lives by pretending to be a Viking in a field for a couple of hours on a Saturday
