Ed West

Ed West

Ed West writes the Wrong Side of History substack

Isis’ European recruits are made by alienation

Sweden’s latest attempts to integrate its migrant population have suffered one or two hiccups after it was learned that staff at its ‘assimilation guide service’ were recruiting people into the Islamic State. A partial success, then. According to a recent BBC report, the Scandinavian country now tops the European jihadi league, although others give Belgium

What’s the point of the BBC if we no longer share common cultural values?

Is privatising BBC3 as bad as Isis’s destruction of Nineveh? That was the wonderfully trolling headline on a Stewart Lee piece in the Guardian over the weekend. He was making the point that even though BBC3 was not to his tastes it should be preserved because the Beeb is ‘the greatest cultural achievement of any 20th-century democracy’ and

The Labour party loves to hate Tony Blair

I’ve met people at political events who seem otherwise normal, and then Tony Blair’s name is mentioned and their eyes light up in a way that suggest a chemical reaction has taken place in their brain. Likewise whenever the former Labour prime minister is mentioned online, it’s like a hand grenade has been thrown into the

Can we have some critical thinking in discussing Islam?

There are many disheartening aspects to the war on cartoonists, one of which is the way that some people are so caught up in their own culture war that they can’t see the difference between their opponents and enemies. A small number of anti-racism activists still see the power + prejudice formula in a way

PEGIDA and the Left’s morality play

Germany is on its feet again, ja, so what can go wrong? This week Good Germans have been taking to the streets to counter-protest the PEGIDA (the Bad Germans) and their ‘anti-Islamisation’ rallies that began in Dresden; Europe’s media is horrified, if also slightly fascinated, with the clear subtext being ‘if the rest of Europe

Wow, just wow – liberalism is dead

I tend to avoid Camden these days as it makes me feel even more like Mark Corrigan than usual, so it’s been a few years since I visited the Proud Gallery. I seem to remember it was for some industry event and there was lots of free beer; it was a nice venue with a