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 often wonder – we all do – how human beings can be made to forget terrible events. Like the Tiananmen Square massacre, wiped, just like that, from a billion minds in China. Or the burning of the Jews of Jedwabne in Poland in 1941, which lay unforgivably unremembered until the truth was dug up,
Tel Aviv Bemusement seems to be the main emotion in Tel Aviv following the UK’s mad ban on Maccabi fans. A Maccabi supporter sipping an espresso in bustling Dizengoff Square doesn’t get it. ‘You’re keeping the fans out because you’re worried they’ll be attacked?’ He screws up his face. ‘You should stop the attackers, not
Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked mummy’s boys of the Antifa movement for whom ‘fighting fascism’ means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar oiks who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat
Normal people are cheering the prospect of peace in Gaza. Some might even raise a glass to Donald Trump for his valiant efforts to end this horrible war Hamas started. But there are others who will be feeling forlorn. The anti-Israel mob, to be specific. Won’t you spare a thought for this tragic community that
I knew the modern left had its fair share of narcissists who can rarely see beyond their own navels. But even I never imagined they would spend the second anniversary of 7 October, the worst atrocity the Jews have suffered since the Holocaust, moaning about their ‘mistreatment’ by the Jewish state. Even I never imagined
It is not often that the news gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Today’s news from Manchester does. Two dead and three others in a serious condition following a car and stabbing attack outside Heaton Park Synagogue. Britain must now wear that greatest of ignominies – we have become a
JK Rowling has broken her silence on Emma Watson. And if I were the Harry Potter actress, I would lie low for a few months. In fact, I would go full hibernation and spend the rest of winter in some far-flung cottage sans internet. For Rowling’s critique of Watson and her lazy, luxury beliefs is
Imagine if, following the rape charges against Harvey Weinstein, a mob of angry people had rallied to his defence. Imagine if this smug, seething crowd had raged against the women who accused Weinstein of sexual offences. Imagine if they wagged their fingers in the women’s faces. Imagine they branded the women troublemakers. Imagine they went
Who does Keir Starmer think he’s kidding? There he is in that glossy video imperiously decreeing there should be a State of Palestine, yet he can’t even hold the British state together. Under his half-hearted purview our borders have become more porous, our state machinery has become more enfeebled, and the country has become the
Has there ever been a lamer protest group than Led By Donkeys? I’m old enough to remember when protest was raucous, occasionally even sexy. The young and the angry rising up in fury against their irritant rulers. Now it’s four craft-beer bros from Stoke Newington whose idea of ‘rebellion’ is to titillate the middle classes
He was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Freedom’. A one-word rallying cry emblazoned in black across his chest. It was his core belief: that liberty, especially the liberty to speak, is preferable to tyranny. Then, following the crack of gunfire, that word was stained red with blood. We’ve heard of blood being spilt for freedom:
Did Iryna Zarutska’s life matter? Judging by the delayed, sheepish media coverage of her killing in North Carolina last month, it seems not. Apparently the violent death of this young, beautiful refugee to the United States was a non-event, undeserving of the liberal rage and tsunami of pained thinkpieces that tend to follow other senseless
I have been lamenting Britain’s authoritarian turn for years. Yet even I was taken aback, physically repulsed in fact, by a news alert that pinged my phone today. It was from the Telegraph. It contained just 11 words — 11 words that ought to chill the blood of all who believe in liberty. This is
There are dark whispers on the internet about Britain’s coming ‘race war’. The protests outside migrant hotels prove the ‘native English’ have had a gutful of these ‘invaders’, say nefarious actors on X. Others foresee a civil war: a showdown between a haughty left and a resurgent right over the very soul of the kingdom.
There you have it: in certain parts of England it’s easier to fly the Palestine flag than the English flag. Take Tower Hamlets in London. The Palestine colours fluttered from lampposts there for months in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October pogrom. Yet when patriots tried to hoist up the St George’s flag this week,
Who does Uefa think it’s kidding? It says the huge banner saying ‘Stop killing children’ unfurled at a Super Cup match last night was ‘not political’. It was ‘about humanity’, insists an insider. ‘In fact, you could just say it is common sense’, they said. They must think we were born yesterday. Everyone whose moral
I told off four strangers last week. The first was a foreign gentleman lounging on a side lawn at Marble Arch and cooking a meal. He fanned the flames of his makeshift barbecue with a flap of cardboard as four women in long robes looked on, awaiting their feast. ‘You can’t cook here’, I said.
They’re making Jews dig their own graves again. In grim mimicry of their Nazi heroes, who would often force Jews to dig ditches before shooting them into them, Hamas has released a video showing a shockingly emaciated Israeli hostage digging a grave. ‘This is the grave where I think I’m going to be buried,’ says
Is the Edinburgh Fringe a Judenfrei zone now? With just a week to go before the Fringe kicks off, Jewish comedians are being unceremoniously cancelled. One venue has allegedly cited ‘safety concerns’ from staff, saying the extra muscle to deal with the threats to Jewish acts made them feel more unsafe. So instead of protecting
For a man who wrote a book called How To Be Right, James O’Brien sure gets a lot wrong. Consider the message from one of his listeners that he read out on his LBC radio show yesterday. It said Jewish kids in the UK are taught to loathe Arabs and see them as ‘cockroaches to
