We Need to Talk About Spiked
- April 23, 2019
- by
- Matt
There was a time when I thought of Brendan O’Neill and the Spiked Online crowd as a freakish but curious anomaly in the British media.
Occasionally I wondered how a former leftist sect once known for publishing apologetics for war crimes was able to reinvent itself as a pseudo-contrarian thinktank peddling rightwing strawman arguments in order...
The Tony Blair Guide to Fighting Fascism
- April 22, 2019
- by
- Matt
There is no doubt that the resurgence of far-right populist politics across the world poses a direct threat to the rights and safety of migrants and minorities, to the future of democratic coexistence, and to the future of the nation-state as a multicultural and multiethnic space.
Now no less an intellectual authority than Tony Blair has...
Breaking the Irish Peace
- April 19, 2019
- by
- Matt
Back in the early seventies there used to be a political postcard that depicted Northern Ireland trying to speak to an England that had a cork firmly in one ear. Ulster – and indeed the whole of the island of Ireland – has often had difficulty in making itself heard in England. Time and again...
The Gangster-in-Chief versus Ilhan Omar
- April 13, 2019
- by
- Matt
I have to admit I was wrong about Donald Trump. Before he was elected I recognised that he was a danger to his country and to the world, and that he also posed a direct threat to migrants and minorities in the United States. It was clear even during his campaign that Trump was a...
On the Hate Highway
- April 11, 2019
- by
- Matt
Yesterday a British Muslim woman I follow on Twitter posted an anonymous message she had received threatening to skin her alive. This was one of various similar threats that she has received, some of which she had reported to the police – without any response. These threats were clearly intended to intimidate a politically outspoken...
Rootless Cosmopolitans
- April 09, 2019
- by
- Matt
Readers of this blog will know that I’m not a great fan of the pro-Brexit Left that goes under the portmanteau Lexit. But there are various kinds of Lexit. There are those who make compelling and accurate criticisms of the failings of the EU that I actually agree with. To my mind, such...
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