Pandaemonium

CROWNED WITH NO FALSE PATRIOTIC WREATH

November 19, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on nationalism, patriotism and civic pride, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on academics publishing controversial ideas anonymously). It was published in the Observer, 18 November 2018, under the headline ‘Patriotism is meaningless if it doesn’t embrace acts of defiance’. Nationalism, the French president Emmanuel Macron suggested at last week’s Armistice commemoration in Paris, ‘is a betrayal of patriotism’. The phrase made the headlines, not least because it was seen as a rebuke […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: britain, civic pride, civil society, colin kaepernick, emmanuel macron, langston hughes, nationalism, patriotism

MADNESS, MADNESS, THEY CALL IT GLADNESS

November 16, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Trojan Records is 50 years old this year. It was the label that, together with Island Records (founded a decade earlier in 1958), introduced first ska, then reggae, to Britain. To celebrate the 50th anniversary, a new film, Rudeboy, has been released. It is, as the blurb says, ‘a film about the origins and ongoing love affair between Jamaican and British youth culture’. It’s a wonderful film, and an even better soundtrack. And it got me delving back into my […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: bluebeat, music, reggae, ska, trojan records

TERRIBLE CRIMES AND TAWDRY DEBATES

November 12, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Asian ‘grooming gangs’ and the debate about them,, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 11 November 2018, under the headline ‘We’re told 84% of grooming gangs are Asian. But where’s the evidence?’ Few debates about academic methodology result in a researcher being labelled a ‘posh socialist ‘activdemic’’ or another being told that her work is akin to a BNP leaflet. But this is no ordinary academic debate. It’s about Asian ‘grooming gangs’ and a report on the issue […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain • Tags: asian grooming gangs, britain, british asians, british muslims, ceop, child sexual exploitation, ella cockbain, grooming gangs, haras rafiq, islam, maajid nawaz, muna adil, nazir afzal, quilliam, racism

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #48

November 9, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . The people, no Thomas Frank, The Baffler, No 42, November 2018 In 1999, we thought right-wing populism was a historical mystery that needed to be unraveled and understood; in the minds of its legions of analysts today it’s no mystery at all. For them, the common people’s incomprehension of liberal values is […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

BLOOD, SOIL AND CITIZENSHIP

November 5, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on notions of citizenship, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on bootlegging and Bob Dylan). It was published in the Observer, 4 November 2018, under the headline ‘Myths about shared culture have no place in the citizenship debate’. What links Mike Leigh’s new film, Peterloo, to Donald Trump’s threat to deprive children born to undocumented migrants of the right to US citizenship? It might seem an odd question, best left to Only Connect fans. But answering […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: 14th amendment, birthright citizenship, britain, citizenship, Class, donald trump, eric kaufmann, france, jus sanguinis, jus soli, michael walzer, mike leigh, peterloo, usa

NIGHT SHAPES ON THE SOUTHBANK

November 2, 2018 by Kenan Malik

I published a post a while back on the brutalism of London’s Southbank. That brutalism looks very different at night, darkness giving a different shape, as it were, to form and colour. Most of these photos were taken about a week ago, though a couple are from my earlier post.

Categories: Photos • Tags: architecture, brutalism, london, night, photography, southbank

BLASPHEMY, RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR

October 29, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on a European Court of Human Rights ruling and on changing forms of blasphemy law, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the contrast between the EU’s response to Italy on immigration and the budget). It was published in the Observer, 28 October 2018, under the headline ‘None of us should enjoy the right to have our beliefs shielded from abuse‘. Should it be illegal to call the prophet Muhammad […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech • Tags: blasphemy, censorship, european court of human rights, free speech, gay news, iqbal sacranie, islam, james kirkup, mary whitehouse, muhammad

A LITTLE MESSAGE FROM TWITTER…

October 26, 2018 by Kenan Malik

So, there I was writing an article on blasphemy and censorship (my Observer column, to be published tomorrow), when an email from Twitter Legal dropped into my inbox. It began: We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received official correspondence regarding your Twitter account, @kenanmalik. The correspondence claims that the following Tweet, is illegal: https://twitter.com/kenanmalik/status/1041253630018502656 The tweet to which it refers was a link to the Jesus and Mo cartoon shown at the top. The email continued: Twitter has […]

Categories: Free Speech, Pandaemonium • Tags: censorship, free speech, jesus and mo, twitter

WHITE IDENTITY AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

October 22, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Eric Kaufmann’s book Whitehift, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Turkish repression). It was published in the Observer, 21 October 2018, under the headline ‘White identity is meaningless. Real dignity is found in shared hopes’. ‘It’s dignity, stupid.’ Where once economic wellbeing was seen as key to winning electoral support, there is now recognition that more intangible qualities matter too – the ability to be heard, to live […]

Categories: Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-catholicism, demography, eric kaufmann, ethnic identity, ethnicity, identity politics, immigration, racism, white identity, white interests, whiteshift, working class

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #47

October 19, 2018 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of recent essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Brazil’s Bolsonaro-led far right wins a victory far more sweeping and dangerous than anyone predicted. Its lessons are global. Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, 8 October 2018 In sum, it is virtually impossible to overstate the threat level posed to democracy and human rights in the world’s fifth most-populous country as a result of […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE MODERATE?

October 15, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the meaning of being ‘moderate’, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on AI and bias). It was published in the Observer, 14 October 2018, under the headline ‘Call yourself a ‘moderate’? You’re just avoiding the need to make your case’. To be moderate is to be good. That is almost incontestable political wisdom. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, who has declared her intention to step down, is […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: austerity, british politics, european union, extremist, immigration, margaret thatcher, moderate, theresa may

A DANSE MACABRE IN KERMARIA

October 12, 2018 by Kenan Malik

It’s a tiny chapel in the tiny hamlet of Kermaria-an-Iskuit, in Brittany. It was built in several stages from the 13th to the 15th century. The entrance porch is adorned with striking statues of the apostles. And inside is the only danse macabre fresco that survives in France. The danse macabre is a late-medieval visual allegory about the universality of death. It depicts death, usually personified as a skeleton, leading people from all walks of life – pope, emperor, king, bourgeois, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Photos • Tags: art, brittany, churches, danse macabre, death, france, frescoes, kermaria

A GLOBAL MIDDLE CLASS TIPPING POINT?

October 8, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on claims that half the world is now middle class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the difference between engaging with public anxieties and following public opinion). It was published in the Observer, 7 October 2018, under the headline ‘As global poverty declines, we should beware the new class wars’. Half the world is now middle class. So ran the headlines reporting a Brookings Institution analysis of global poverty, according […]

Categories: Class, Politics • Tags: china, economic development, india, middle class, poverty, working class

OTIS RUSH AND CHICAGO BLUES

October 5, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Last week Otis Rush, one of the legendary figures of Chicago blues, died. Not as well know as guitarists such as Muddy Waters and BB King, he was nevertheless probably more influential, especially on rock guitarists from Eric Clapton to Jimmy Page. Chicago blues came out of the Great Migration, when African Americans from the South moved to Northern cities. Through that migration, the Delta blues, which had originated in Mississippi in the 1920s and 30s, gave way, from the […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, chicago blues, music, otis rush

AFTER THE SATANIC VERSES

October 1, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the legacy of the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on a call to halt the housing of asylum seekers in Sunderland). It was published in the Observer, 30 September 2018, under the headline ‘The Satanic Verses sowed the seeds of rifts that have grown ever wider’. Thirty years ago last week, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was published. Rushdie was then perhaps the most celebrated […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: british politics, censorship, clash of civilizations, free speech, identity politics, muslims, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, same sex marriage, the satanic verses