Who’s Afraid of George Soros?
- May 14, 2019
- by
- Matt
There was a time, many years ago, when I knew of George Soros as the billionaire who made a billion from speculating on the Pound during ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992. Since then I’ve often came across his name as a philantrophist associated with various progressive liberal and pro-democratic causes, and I once applied for a grant from his Open Society to write my book Fortress Europe ( Spoiler alert: I didn’t get it).
In an ideal world, issues such as democratic transparency, the empowering of civil society, migrant rights, developing independent media and social justice...
The Caliphate According to Saint Matteo
- May 03, 2019
- by
- Matt
The Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is a busy man. With less than a month until the European Elections, he has been touring the continent to shore up the troops for the new nationalist/populist bloc that he and his cohorts are seeking to establish in the European Parliament
The far-right has tried this before. In 2007...
In Praise of Political Correctness
- May 01, 2019
- by
- Matt
There was a time, in the Thatcher years, when the concept of ‘political correctness’ was used to de-legitimize the left and/or bring feminism and particularly antiracism into ridicule and disrepute.
Bliss was it to be alive in those days, when the British yellow press regaled the nation with mostly invented stories about what ‘loony left’ councils...
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...
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...
Springtime for Fascists
- March 23, 2019
- by
- Matt
It’s become something of a cliché to look back on Nazi Germany and shake our heads and ask how the country of Goethe and Beethoven could have descended into barbarism. There are obviously very specific historical reasons why Germany took the path it did, but there is also a more universal lesson that can be...
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