Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill

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.

Edinburgh Fringe is becoming a Jew-free zone

Is the Edinburgh Fringe a Judenfrei zone now? With just a week to go before the Fringe kicks off, Jewish comedians are being unceremoniously cancelled. One venue has allegedly cited ‘safety concerns’ from staff, saying the extra muscle to deal with the threats to Jewish acts made them feel more unsafe. So instead of protecting

James O’Brien has disgraced himself

For a man who wrote a book called How To Be Right, James O’Brien sure gets a lot wrong. Consider the message from one of his listeners that he read out on his LBC radio show yesterday. It said Jewish kids in the UK are taught to loathe Arabs and see them as ‘cockroaches to

The shamelessness of Diane Abbott

Labour was dead right to suspend Diane Abbott. Britain is experiencing one of the worst eruptions of anti-Jewish hatred in decades. Jewish schoolkids are being roughed up. Synagogues have been desecrated. Plots to murder Jews have been uncovered. The internet overflows with the effluent of Jew-hating invective. Any MP who minimises anti-Semitism in such febrile

Why is Bob Vylan free but Lucy Connolly in prison?

So now we know. Now we know that Bob Vylan’s sick chant at Glastonbury was not a colourfully worded call for the ‘dismantling’ of a military force, as the band’s leftish apologists claimed. No, it appears that this punk act really does want the soldiers of the Jewish nation to die. A new clip shows

Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism

They’re chanting for the death of Jews at Glastonbury. Yesterday a swaying mob of faux-virtuous poseurs blithely howled for ‘Death, death to the IDF’. They’ll say they were being political. ‘It was an anti-war cry, not an anti-Jew cry’, they’ll insist today, as the hangover lifts and the horror of their noisy clamour for the

Zohran Mamdani and the Hipster Intifada

I see Generation Intifada has a new hero. Those rich white kids who never leave the house without their keffiyeh and who love to annoy their parents by saying ‘Globalise the intifada!’ are falling at the feet of this political idol. At last, they cry, a man who ‘gets it’ and who might even prise

How dare Sally Rooney ‘admire’ Palestine Action

I’m old enough to remember when it was neo-Nazis who smashed up Jewish-owned businesses. Now it’s so-called progressives. Not long ago, a Jewish business in Stamford Hill in London had its windows smashed and its doors kicked in and red paint sprayed all over its walls. Only it wasn’t Combat 18 or the oafish dregs

Did Greta Thunberg refuse to watch the October 7 video?

Did Greta Thunberg refuse to watch footage of Hamas’s 7 October atrocities? That’s the accusation being made by Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz. Greta and her crew, upon their arrival in Israel last night, were taken into a room to be shown the harrowing truth of what Hamas did 20 months ago, says Katz. But

Ireland has been consumed by hatred of Israel

A new religion blights the Republic of Ireland. Catholicism has been supplanted by a far more cultish creed. Its doctrines are declared with great fervour, its icons scar every town and village. You will struggle to find one person who has not converted to this strange and all-consuming faith. Its name? Israelophobia. I knew Ireland

The anti-Israel Eurovision mob are Hamas’s little helpers

Imagine booing a survivor of a fascist attack. People actually did that this week. Pro-Palestine activists heckled and insulted a young woman who survived Hamas’s anti-Semitic butchery of 7 October 2023 by playing dead under a pile of bodies. Take a minute to consider the depravity of this, the sheer inhumanity of tormenting a woman

How America betrayed Edan Alexander

When a US citizen, just 19, was taken captive by a fascist militia, what did America’s progressives do? They cosplayed as his captors. They wrapped their faces in the keffiyeh in gleeful mimicry of the militants who seized their compatriot. They cheered the jailers of their fellow citizen. ‘Glory to our martyrs’, some cried, ‘martyrs’

Kneecap’s phoney punk act has been unmasked

If someone pulled on a Ku Klux Klan hood and went up on a stage and shouted ‘Up the KKK!’, what would you think of that person? Call me a literalist but I’d think that person supports the KKK. I would interpret his donning of the pointy hood and his singing of the KKK’s praises

Kneecap’s Israelophobia has gone too far

The day after the Nova music festival massacre, the Irish band Kneecap posted a photo of themselves grinning from ear to ear alongside the words: ‘Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.’ The bodies of the 364 revellers butchered by Hamas were barely cold before these rappers from Belfast seemed to give smiley support to the militants