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.
We really have seen the worst of politics over the past 24 hours. I’m not referring to Rishi Sunak’s dig at Keir Starmer for not knowing what a woman is – a swipe made while Esther Ghey, mother of the murdered trans teenager Brianna, was in Parliament. I’m referring to the cynical milking of this
The Clapham chemical attack is ‘not really about asylum’. An actual government minister said this. Not some junior scribe for the Guardian or a right-on irritant with his pronouns and the Palestine flag in his social-media bio. No, a minister. A member of the cabinet. One of the highest officials in the land. The Tories
Here’s my question about Abdul Ezedi, the suspect in the Clapham chemical attack: what the hell was he doing in this country? He came here from Afghanistan by illegal means. He was twice turned down for asylum. And in 2018, at Newcastle Crown Court, he was found guilty of sexual assault. And yet despite all
Sometimes a politician says something that makes you wonder if they’re living on a different planet. This week it was Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. He said there is a dearth of political concern for the poor people of Gaza. It feels like ‘Palestinian blood is very cheap’, he said. It seems to me that
I see ‘Not in my name’ is trending on social media. It’s in response to the US and UK strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The tweeting classes want to make it clear to the world that such uncouth militarism has nothing to do with them. ‘My conscience is clean’, these time-rich signallers of rectitude
I have a question. What’s more ‘dangerous’ and ‘disgusting’ – a footballer sounding off on social media or a government minister threatening to clamp down on speech that he personally considers to be ‘not acceptable’? For a government functionary to decree that some opinions are unacceptable, and therefore might have to be hushed, is the
A month ago, Claudine Gay of Harvard University was obsessed with putting things into context. Asked at that now infamous Congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism whether calling for a genocide of the Jews is a violation of Harvard’s code of conduct, Gay said it would depend on the context. Her remarks raised eyebrows worldwide. The
Where have all the anti-racists gone? You couldn’t move for anti-racists in recent years. They thundered from their newspaper pulpits about the evils of ‘white privilege’. They were in schools, universities, workplaces, re-educating the throng in racial correct-speak. They loudly wrung their hands over Brexit, and us dim gammon who voted for it, warning that
Anti-Semitism is surging among the young. It is now positively hip to view Jews as ‘problematic’. Consider the recent Harvard/Harris poll which found that 67 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the US view Jews as an ‘oppressor class’. If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, then I humbly suggest you read
What is it about those images of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas that so infuriates certain sections of the public? Since the Hamas pogrom of 7 October, people have been putting up posters of the hostages in cities across the Western world. And almost everywhere they have been torn down, desecrated, destroyed, binned. The faces of
Isn’t it remarkable how similar anti-Zionism is to anti-Semitism? The latest proof of an intimate link between these two ideologies comes from Philadelphia. There, last night, a baying mob gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant to accuse the owners of being complicit in ‘genocide’. Guys, the 1930s called, they want their bigotry back. Last night’s protest was a
Imagine having to be reminded not to be racist. Imagine if officialdom itself felt it necessary to whisper in your ear: ‘Lay off the racial hatred, yeah?’ That’s the mortifying fate that befell ‘pro-Palestine’ marchers on their latest big demo in London yesterday: the Metropolitan Police handed them leaflets pleading with them not to ‘incite
Anyone who’s ever had a conversation with a Corbynista will know it’s impossible to talk to these people about anti-Semitism. The minute you mention the world’s oldest hatred their ‘buts’ come flying. ‘But what about Islamophobia?’, they say. ‘But what about other forms of racism?’, they cry. It’s like a tic, an involuntary ideological spasm
I can’t decide if last night’s Labour revolt was an act of pointless narcissism or sinister appeasement. Maybe it was both. On one hand it will make not the slightest difference to world affairs that 56 Labour MPs defied their party leader and backed an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in the Israel-Hamas war. They ignored Keir Starmer’s
There was a horrendous far-right gathering in London yesterday. Racist cries cut through the air like a knife. One attendee wished death on an entire race. Others celebrated the mass murder of ethnic minority people. Some even wore fascist-adjacent uniforms, showing off their supremacist ideology to a shocked city. People in London were cosplaying as
Those of us who believe in freedom of expression have felt mighty lonely this week. We have watched as, one by one, our fellow opponents of cancel culture have given into the temptations of censorship. Many on the right in particular appear to have fallen under the spell of suppression. Gone is their devotion to
One of the most curious things following Hamas’s massacre of the Jews on 7 October was the silence of Britain’s fascism-spotters. You know these people. They see fascism everywhere. Everything from a fiery speech by a Tory politician to millions of ‘gammon’ going out to vote for Brexit reminds them of the 1930s. The minute
‘We are the victims… therefore nobody should blame us for the things we do.’ Who do you think said this? Some blue-haired campus activist who’s convinced they’re suffering from structural oppression? A trans campaigner, perhaps, who thinks being misgendered is an act of violence? Maybe some other social justice type who feels victimised by everything
So now we know what a ‘globalised intifada’ might look like. That’s what people chanted for on the streets of London on Saturday. ‘From London to Gaza, we’ll have an intifada’, they yelled. And now it’s happening, in Dagestan, where last night there was a violent hounding of Israelis arriving in the country by mobs
We have seen many grim images over the past two weeks. Images of the apocalyptic, Isis-style violence visited upon the people of Israel by Hamas. Images of destruction and grief in Gaza as Israel hammers Hamas for its crimes against the Jewish people, as is its right. And yet it is an image from London,
