Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
A few years ago, the podcaster Lex Fridman published a list of books that he was hoping to read in the year ahead. It included works by George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse and others. If he had published this in the world of print media he might have got back some encouraging noises. But
As Kim Jong-un might blow up the world next year, if not this, and people are forever trying to work out what is going on in his country, perhaps it is worth describing a military parade I attended in Pyongyang a few years back. The occasion was the centenary of the birth of the current
It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fit the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New
There is an unhappy history of left-wing Britons getting involved in US elections. Back in 2004, the Guardian – the flagship organ of the British left – organized a letter-writing campaign, urging voters in the swing state of Ohio not to re-elect George W. Bush. The good people of Ohio didn’t take kindly to a bunch of
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Democratic lawmakers and commentators found themselves in a quandary
As the West goes woke-mad, Putin doesn’t even recognize the most basic rights
It has become another improbable victim of the culture wars
We’re experiencing an unhealthy overcorrection in racial politics
This is about whether an individual has the right to do what he believes to be right for his family or not
If anyone wanted an encapsulation of the screwiness of our times just consider the following straight question being asked of an interview subject. ‘How does being a communist impact your view of the US presidency, whether it’s Obama or Trump?’ And then consider that this pleasant question was being asked by Teen Vogue. It was
Last week Dave Rubin (of The Rubin Report) sat down for a rare interview with Thomas Sowell. For three quarters of an hour they roamed over an amazing array of issues – social, political and economic. YouTube (where The Rubin Report is posted) demonetised the video immediately. This is a favourite trick of the platform – to … Read more
If I needed a safe space, I would nominate California. Against most odds this seedbed of censorious liberalism has thrown up the antibodies to the lurgy it created. Here within a short space of each other are a group of leftists and conservatives, religious and non-religious, all of whom are united in deploring the ‘You … Read more
In January, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman interviewed the Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. The channel broadcast a short version of the interview on the evening news bulletin, where it would have been seen by the few hundred thousand people who watch the programme nightly. But to its credit, Channel 4 also published online the full half-hour
For many years, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, has been one of my closest enemies. In Switzerland and France this Islamist dauphin had a slightly hard time establishing his reputation. This was not just due to his poor scholarship (the basis of which lay in a fawning book about his … Read more
‘Feminism’ isn’t producing guides for helping men. It is producing manifestos for torturing them
We are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will. And whereas the 1960s saw a freeing up of attitudes towards sex, pushing at boundaries, this counter-swing is turning sexual freedom into sexual fear, and nearly all sexual opportunities into a legalistic minefield. The rules