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.
Imagine living in a country so religiously uptight that even making a smudge on a copy of the Quran could turn into a police matter. A country so nervous of offending Islam that even kids could be punished for allegedly disrespecting that religion. A country so determined to ringfence certain religious beliefs from scrutiny or
Let me get this right. In Scotland’s political class it is de rigueur to believe that someone with a penis can literally be a woman but it is the height of bigotry to think marriage should be for heterosexuals only? It is good and ‘progressive’ to say that men, even rapists, should be put in
The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity readers – what we used to call censors – have been employed to pore over his works and expurgate any word or passage that might hurt a kid’s feelings. If you weren’t worried about cancel
The middle-class left cracks me up. They’re always wringing their hands over the lack of working-class people in politics. And yet the minute a man from a working-class background – a former miner, no less – starts to soar in the political realm, they launch a hate campaign against him. They brand him thick, an
So is Shamima Begum a celebrity now? Tonight, a documentary about her airs on BBC Two. Over the weekend, her picture was splashed on the front page of the Times Magazine. ‘I was in love with the idea of the Islamic State. I was in denial. Now I have a lot of regret’, says the
In Sydney today, the LGBT movement had its Westboro Baptist Church moment. It protested at someone’s funeral. Like that cranky religious sect in the US that noisily demonstrates at the funerals of soldiers, LGBT activists waved placards calling the deceased a ‘monster’ and ‘scum’. They chanted for him to ‘go to hell’. ‘Burn in hell’,
Is Nicola Sturgeon a transphobe? I ask because she has decreed that Isla Bryson, a violent man who identifies as a woman, should not be locked up at a women’s prison. And every woman who has said similar in recent years, every feminist who has said that no blokes should be allowed into women’s prisons,
Remember when Britain knew how to do a good political scandal? Secretaries of State sharing showgirls with Soviet attachés. A member of parliament faking his own death. The Tories launching a ‘Back to Basics’ moral crusade even though half the party seemed to be getting their leg over someone who wasn’t their wife. Those were
This is a shameful week for Scottish nationalism. Let us state plainly what has happened: the government in Westminster has had to intervene in Scotland to save women’s rights. Central government has had to use its legal powers to defend women’s safety and liberty from Scotland’s devolved nationalist government that seems to have diminishing regard
The crusade to erase JK Rowling continues. The latest ruse of the Rowlingphobes is to scrub her name from her own books. Yes, they now want to make even the Harry Potter universe a Rowling-free zone. A ‘book artist’ in Toronto by the name of Laur Flom has set himself the task of memory-holing Rowling.
I’m just going to say it: I’m Team William. In that scrap that Prince Harry says happened at Nottingham Cottage, where Prince William allegedly lost his rag and pushed Harry to the floor, I’m cheering Will. Everyone who has a brother — I have five — knows they sometimes need a clip round the lughole.
So, are you Team Tate or Team Thunberg? Do you side with the muscled misogynist who has convinced tragic TikTok incels that he’s a ‘real man’? Or with the pint-sized prophetess of doom famous for scaring the world witless about the coming climate apocalypse? I say neither. I can’t be the only person who finds
Christmas is coming and it isn’t only the goose that’s getting fat – so are you. That’s according to the skinny, pie-dodging miserable lot who make up the public-health lobby. For these people – who are living proof that a lack of sugar makes you cranky – the countdown to Christmas isn’t an opportunity to
There is always a tipping point in Twitterstorms. A moment at which the digital hysteria over something somebody said becomes far more offensive, and far more dangerous, than what that person said. You can feel when it happens, when the shift takes place, when it is the behaviour of the howling mob that becomes the
The latest Twitter Files revelations are the most disturbing yet. They show how the employees of this private company, not voted for by a single American, conspired to censor the democratically elected President of the United States. It was nothing short of corporate tyranny, a sinister assault on public life by social media suits most
Is anyone else starting to feel harassed by Harry and Meghan? There’s no escaping them. Open Spotify and there they are. Browse Netflix and you’ll be invited to hear ‘their truth’. The one we already heard on Oprah? Not again. The line the Sussexes love to spin is that we’re intruding into their lives. In
On the Lady Susan Hussey affair – is anyone else more horrified by the Palace’s behaviour than Lady Hussey’s? Yes, it seems Lady Hussey was a tad blunt in her interaction with charity boss Ngozi Fulani. At a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, she reportedly asked Ms Fulani where she is ‘really from’, repeatedly,
David Baddiel could not have asked for better evidence for his thesis that ‘Jews don’t count’ than the online reaction to it. Channel 4 broadcast his intelligent and touching documentary this week with that very title – Jews Don’t Count – and instantly there was an explosion of Baddielphobia. It was almost as if people
Here’s my question for Stephen Fry after he said his trans friends had felt ‘deeply upset’ by some of the comments made by J.K. Rowling: why didn’t you just say to them, ‘So what?’ Fry used to be all about saying ‘So what?’ to people who went on about feeling offended by words. His irritation
Donald Trump is done for. Trumpism too. That’s the main takeaway of the Midterms. Many of the candidates Trump backed performed badly and Trump’s own incessant meddling in the Republican campaign seems to have turned voters off. That curious, manic, sometimes amusing little epoch in modern Western politics – the Trump era – is over.
