Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a football team. ‘But who would they play?’ it goes. ‘Why, Israel of course.’ There may not be much humour in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since
Does anyone remember ‘Free Tibet’? Way back when, in the olden days of about the 1990s, if you knew nothing much about the world or politics but wanted to show you generally had the right outlook on things it was normal that you might have a sticker or a poster, or even go on a
My mind keeps going back almost ten years, to Nigeria in 2014. As some readers will remember, on the night of 14 April, 276 mainly Christian schoolgirls were abducted by terrorists from the Boko Haram group. It happened at a school in a town called Chibok in Borno State. In some ways it is obvious
There is a stage direction in The Glass Menagerie in which Tennessee Williams describes a tune that will recur through the play. Like a piece of delicately spun glass, he says, it should summon the thought of ‘How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken’. The cleverer young people want to live
A friend of mine was recently doing business with the Qataris. Nothing strange there: a lot of people have in recent years. But of course Qatar is one of the main funders – and the main international host – of the terrorist group Hamas. The Gulf state has form in the area. In the decade
Ever since the atrocities in Israel more than two weeks ago, I have had one main thought. Yes, Israel has its problems. But we also have ours. Subsequent weeks have borne that instinct out. For years I have noticed that in all the wars and exchanges involving Israel – no matter the actual size or
There are times when you wonder how history happened. And other times when you realise how it did. The past two weeks have been one such time. The inconsistencies, naturally, have been legion. People who label everything as aggression, including microaggressions, who believe that speech is violence and that misgendering a trans person is ‘literal
The following is an edited excerpt from Douglas Murray’s lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre earlier tonight, in honour of Sir Roger Scruton. It features the actor Kevin Spacey reciting a scene from William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. By the last year of his life Roger had finally been not just honoured in his own country but
I’m not Jewish myself, but most of my best friends are Jews. The reason I mention this is that, all my adult life, I’ve been surrounded by, or chosen to be surrounded by, Jews. And why should that be? In my secular moments, I’d say it’s been luck or good fortune. In my more religious moments, I’d say it’s a
It was 7 a.m. when the ‘peace rave’ outside of Re’im was reaching its peak. Outside the kibbutz, five miles from the Gaza border, the participants of the dance festival were ‘coming up’ at just the moment that the terrorists of Hamas started to come down. They arrived on motorised paragliders, with machine-guns in position,
What follows may suggest that I require an ‘intervention’. Readers might even interpret this column as a cry for help. Please let me assure you that it is not. But I have just learned of a new addiction, and it is possible that I suffer from it. It is not an addiction to crack cocaine.
Long-time readers may recall that I take a special interest in the art of corruption. And this week America has thrown up a delicious example. Democrat Senator Robert Menendez was indicted last week on bribery charges. This follows a raid on the New Jersey Senator’s home in which federal agents found more than $480,000 hidden
It is eight years now since The Spectator sent me to Lampedusa to see the boats coming in. That was at the start of the 2015 migrant crisis. The island, which is home to just 6,000 locals, had just buckled under the weight of another 1,300 arrivals. I followed them to Sicily and then on
Like all hacks, I sometimes wonder whether I should just screw my self-esteem, do a Jonathan Freedland and start writing trashy novels for cash. As I fill the pages with every cliché, I can at least console myself by thinking of the wonderful piles of lucre about to come my way. It is very sensible
If any readers are having those September, back-to-work blues perhaps I might offer them a sure-fire palliative? Just go online and watch videos of this year’s Burning Man. For anyone who doesn’t know, Burning Man is a week-long festival of music and ‘self-expression’ which takes place in the Nevada desert. It is especially popular among
There should be a term in anthropology for what happens to a certain type of Tory male in middle age. The type who after decades of espousing often unpopular causes suddenly attempts to ingratiate himself with the masses. Ordinarily this breakdown expresses itself in a desire to legalise drugs, but it can take other forms.
Who is Perry Johnson? It is a question not many American voters can answer. He has a grand total of 16,000 followers on Twitter and recently pulled in precisely zero votes in a poll in Des Moines, Iowa. He describes himself as a ‘self-made businessman, problem-solver and quality expert from Michigan’. Nevertheless, this slightly cadaverous-looking
The only strikes I really enjoy are actors’ strikes. Teachers’ strikes leave me cold. Train strikes get me into a cold fury. But there are few more enjoyable spectacles in life than members of the acting profession making demands which – if left unmet – will see them refuse to work. Why should girls dream
‘Only boring people get bored’ is what we were all told as children. What we were not warned about was that boring things can also make you boring. Boringness is infectious. Or so I have come to believe. Due to the backlash against the extension of Ulez, the Mayor has come up with a fresh
I don’t always watch ‘Strongest Viking’ competitions on cable. But the other day I was channel-hopping and became mesmerised by one. Firstly because I wasn’t previously aware that such banality was possible on television. People really watch men trying to push a stone or pull a rope? This was new data to me. But I
