Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.
The mob has claimed another scalp. This time it’s Howard Donald’s. The Take That star has been found guilty of likecrimes. That is, he liked some ‘problematic’ tweets, including a tweet that said – brace yourselves – ‘Only women have periods’. For this, for giving his approval to a statement of biological fact, he’s been
There is something faintly ridiculous about the Privileges Committee’s report on partygate. Sixteen pages in, you encounter the following sentence: ‘We have evidence that trestle tables were set up for drinks to be laid out.’ You have barely caught your breath from this nightmarish vision of a trestle table being erected in the Downing Street
For a month that’s supposed to be all about love and acceptance, Pride has a pretty nasty streak. Maybe that’s what one of the mysterious colours on its indecipherable flag represents: the cruelty community. Consider Oxfam’s Pride animation, which it tweeted out earlier this week. Alongside all the usual Pride platitudes – we must love
It is often said that Prince Harry is a ‘New Royal’. Emotionally literate, racially aware, eco-friendly (except when he’s flying in a private jet to hang at Elton John’s swanky pad in the south of France) – he’s nothing like the stiff royals of old. He’s the metrosexual prince. He even occasionally partakes of a
It’s 2023 and a lesbian requires security guards to speak at the Oxford Union. That image of Kathleen Stock arriving in Oxford yesterday, looking badass in shades and a baseball cap, surrounded by burly blokes who were tasked with protecting her from assault, shames Oxford university. This is meant to be one of the highest
I have never felt such a strong desire to buy a man a pint as I did when I watched that builder clear Just Stop Oil protesters off the road. The clip has gone viral. We see an irate bloke take direct action against doom-mongering posh irritants. They were doing one of their funereal marches
Anyone who has ever visited New York City will be scratching their heads over Harry and Meghan’s claims about a car chase. The Duke and Duchess of Montecito have said paparazzi subjected them to a ‘relentless pursuit’ and ‘near catastrophic’ chase that lasted for ‘two hours’. In NYC? Where you famously can’t drive so much
The chattering classes are mad at Suella Braverman again. What’s she done this time? Brace yourselves: she said racial collective guilt is a bad idea. She said we should not demonise an entire race just because some members of that race did something bad. She said we should never engage in racial shaming. Is there
Here’s an interesting exercise. Next time you read a diatribe about white people, in your mind change the word ‘white’ to ‘black’. You’ll be horrified by the results, I guarantee it. All those op-eds in the liberal media attacking ‘white women’ for ‘weaponising’ their tears are transformed into flagrantly racist screeds. So a Guardian headline
What century is this? I ask because today, in London, peaceful protesters have been handcuffed and arrested for daring to express disapproval of King Charles. For daring to believe Britain should be a republic, not a constitutional monarchy. This is a grotesque assault on freedom. It is borderline medieval. No one’s feelings, not even the
The right needs to calm down about Sinn Fein. It needs to chill out about the fact that the party’s vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, will be attending the coronation of King Charles. It needs to relax about that selfie featuring Sinn Fein’s former president, Gerry Adams, gurning next to Joe Biden during his jaunt in Ireland.
The radical left have a new favourite phrase: ‘hierarchy of racism’. This is when one form of racism is treated more seriously than another. Such racial favouritism infuriates online leftists. It is anathema to the noble cause of anti-racism to elevate one ethnic group’s suffering over another’s, they cry. All racism is bad, they’re forever
Who is the real victim in the Dominic Raab bullying saga? I know the story is that he was a monster in his various departments, allegedly barking instructions and wagging a finger at his stressed-out minions. But the anti-Raab revolt smacks far more of bullying to me. Civil servants clubbing together to drum an exacting
I see it is acceptable again for men to tell women what to do. And to snap ‘Get over it!’ if any of the little dears dares to quibble or speak back. How else do we explain William Hague taking to the airwaves to wag a patriarchal finger at the Women’s Institute and instruct it
The misogynist mob strikes again. Its target this time was the American swimmer Riley Gaines. What was her offence? What did this young woman do to attract the attention — and the jeers and insults and threats — of the woke witchfinder-generals? She said men should not compete in women’s sports. Obscene. Fetch the ducking
This week I read the most extraordinary and chilling statement. It was issued by a fringe group called the Trans Resistance Network. It was about the horrific gun attack at the Covenant School, a private Christian school, in Nashville this week. The suspect in the attack is Audrey / Aiden Hale, a young woman who, according to
This is what it must have been like when women were marched to the stake. Yesterday in Auckland the British women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker found herself surrounded by a deranged, heaving mob. She had tomato soup and placards thrown in her face. She was doused with water. Huge men screamed insults and expletives in
Why are politicians so incapable of answering basic questions about biology? Yesterday it was Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s turn. A journalist asked him a yes or no question: ‘Do you believe that Barbie Kardashian is a woman?’ Barbie Kardashian, whose birth name was Gabrielle Alejandro Gentile, is a violent man who identifies as a woman. Last week
So the cancel-culture set believes in free speech now? What a turnaround. People who have spent the past decade turning a blind eye to the unpersoning of gender-critical feminists by the tyrants of Big Tech and the persecution of every poor soul who makes the mistake of holding up a picture of Muhammad have suddenly
The worst thing about Gary Lineker’s intervention in the small boats discussion is not whether he broke BBC rules on impartiality. It’s not that he has, once again, used his privileged platform – one largely funded by us! – to spout dinner-party platitudes about the evil Tories. No, it was his political use and abuse
