Freaky Friday
- June 25, 2016
- by
- Matt
In the Jamie Lee Curtis comedy Freaky Friday, a mother and teenage daughter wake up to find themselves trapped in each other’s bodies as a result of a magic spell. Yesterday I underwent a similar but even more disturbing transformation. On Thursday night I dreamt that Remain had won the referendum. Early on Friday morning I woke up to find Nigel Farage crowing about ‘Independence Day’ and celebrating a victory for the ‘real, decent people.’
Over the next twenty-four hours, along with millions of my unreal and indecent fellow-citizens, I...
Murder in Farageland
- June 19, 2016
- by
- Matt
The brutal murder of Jo Cox has added a seemingly random note of tragedy and horror to this appalling, dispiriting and utterly venal Referendum campaign. And the brave and dignified words of Cox’s husband and sister have only shown us how low we have allowed ourselves to sink during this wretched process.
Anti-intellectualism; complete disregard...
Interview for In These Times
- June 16, 2016
- by
- Matt
The Left Must Put Refugees and Migration at the Heart of Its Politics
Mathew Carr rebukes Europe”s inhumane and fear-fueled response to the refugee crisis.
Tom Ladendorf
The current refugee crisis is the worst that Europe has seen since World War II, and in many countries, it remains in the political center stage. As Syrian and other refugees...
Stand Up to Racism Tomorrow
- March 18, 2016
- by
- Matt
Tomorrow Stand Up To Racism is staging a national demonstration in London to coincide with UN Anti-Racism Day, which commemorates the 1960 Sharpeville massacre when 69 peaceful demonstrators were shot by police in South Africa. Tomorrow’s demonstration takes place at a critical period in European history, when racism, xenophobia, and hatred towards foreigners...
Europe’s Porous Borders: Leonidas Cheliotis and the logic of ‘punitive inclusion’
- March 13, 2016
- by
- Matt
Think of borders in the 21st century and you immediately think of walls, barbed wire fences, razor wire, checkpoints, quasi-military border patrols on land and sea, surveillance cameras, sensors and a panoply of high-tech paraphernalia whose essential purpose is to keep unwanted people out. This is the kind of imagery that we tend...
The Archbishop’s Fears
- March 12, 2016
- by
- Matt
One of the most depressing and inane themes in the great British ‘debate’ about immigration is the idea that there is no debate about immigration. It’s a refrain emanating mostly from the right, which has been replayed for years like a stuck record. It goes essentially like this; ‘we’ aren’t allowed to speak about...
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