Author Archives: Kenan Malik

WHAT FOOTBALL TELLS US ABOUT GLOBALISATION

October 27, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on football and globlisation, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Facebook and transparency.) It was published on 25 October 2020, under the headline “Money fosters the cosmopolitan joy of our football but also its soullessness”. If you want to see the dilemmas of globalisation playing out, forget Brexit or the US elections. Watch a game of football (though in Britain, of course, you can’t actually watch a game in a stadium these […]

Categories: Politics, Sport • Tags: english premier league, european premier league, football, globalisation, heysel tragedy, identity, inequality, jurgen klopp, liverpool fc, mohamed salah, pep guardiola

ON BEING WHITE AND ON BEING WORKING CLASS

October 20, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about the “white working class”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 18 October 2020, under the headline “Being white won’t hold boys back. Being working class just might”. White, working-class boys fare badly at school. About that, almost everyone is agreed. More contested is the reason why. Last week, the first witnesses gave evidence to the commons select committee on education’s investigation into “Left Behind White Pupils From Disadvantaged Backgrounds”. The hearing made […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: brexit, education, identity politics, inequality, left behind, racism, schools, white privilege, white working class, working class

TO DEFEND THE FREEDOM TO OFFEND

October 17, 2020 by Kenan Malik

A slightly shorter version of this is published in the Observer, 18 October 2020. The details are still emerging, but the horror is clear – the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, in Paris, apparently in response to his using Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a classroom discussion on free speech. There are always calls after such attacks to moderate attitudes to free speech, claims that “free speech isn’t worth it”. Hardly had news begun filtering out about the original Charlie Hebdo […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: charlie hebdo, freedom of religion, islam, islamism, liberalism, liberties, offence

FROM PETERLOO TO THE MANGROVE NINE

October 13, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Steve McQueen’s new film Mangrove and “black history”, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the public being more liberal than the government on immigration.) It was published on 11 October 2020, under the headline “Mangrove isn’t simply a ‘black story’, but central to our country’s history”. “It’s quintessentially a piece of British history. It is about British citizens who dealt with injustice and triumph.” So says director Steve McQueen about his new film, Mangrove, which […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Race & Immigration • Tags: black history, black history month, bristol bus boycott, british history, clr james, ep thompson, haitian revolution, identity politics, mangrove, mangrove nine, paul stephenson, peterloo, police racism, racism, steve mcqueen, the black jacobins, the making of the english working class

DEBATING THE PAST, CONTESTING THE PRESENT

October 11, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This is the full version of my essay on the statues debate for the NYR Daily, first published 9 September 2020 under the headline “When Monuments Fall”. “We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act – an act which is to go into history.” So said the great nineteenth-century former slave and staunch abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., in 1876. “That we are […]

Categories: History, Politics • Tags: abraham lincoln, anti-racism, black lives matter, boris johnson, cecil rhodes, confederate statues, edward colston, frederick douglass, gandhi, rhodes must fall, slavery, statues, winston churchill

WELCOME TO FLATLAND

October 6, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the shallowness of cultural and political debate, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Home Office plans for asylum seekers.) It was published on 4 October 2020, under the headline “Welcome to Flatland, where shallow appeal ousts substance and reason”. Four international art galleries decide to “postpone” a controversial exhibition. Donald Trump and Joe Biden take part in what has aptly been called a “shitshow” of a presidential election debate. Celebrity activist Laurence Fox […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Politics • Tags: black lives matter, donald trump, joe biden, laurence fox, philip guston, polarisation, presidential debate, racism, reclaim, usa

RETREATING FROM LIBERTIES

September 29, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the left, the right coronavirus and liberties, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on faith and American politics.) It was published on 27 September 2020, under the headline “Where is the voice of the left as ‘libertarians’ annex the Covid-19 debate?” “Not all heroes wear masks.” So tweeted Tory contrarian Toby Young in July after fellow freedom warrior James Delingpole posted a selfie of himself maskless in a supermarket. How daring. How heroic. […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: civil liberties, conservative party, coronavirus, democracy, freedom, hansard society, left, libertarianism, liberties, parliament, right, rightwing libertarianism, statutory instruments, toby young

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #76

September 27, 2020 by Kenan Malik

The latest (somewhat random) collection of essays and stories from around the web that have caught my eye and are worth plucking out to be re-read. . Xenophobia turns migrants into scapegoatsJan Bornman, New Frame, 23 September 2020 In recent months, as South Africa has been dealing with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been growing calls for migrants to be deported and for the government to take action against crimes allegedly committed by people born outside […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

WORTHY BOTH OF CELEBRATION AND CONDEMNATION

September 22, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about the legacy of David Hume, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) It was published on 20 September 2020, under the headline “David Hume was a complex man. Erasing his name is too simplistic a gesture”. “Learn, Mr Hume, to prize the blessings of Liberty and Education, for… had you been born and bred a slave, your Genius, whatever you may think of it, would never […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: david hume, david hume tower, edinburgh university, enlightenment, jonathan israel, racism, radical enlightenment, slavery

‘SCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY

September 19, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. A shorter version of this article appears in the Observer, 20 September 2020 It is one of the defining moments in the story both of rock and of black expression. Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock 1969, finishing his set by deconstructing the Star Spangled Banner. A black man on stage, claiming the anthem as his own, stripping it of its reverence, and, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War – in the midst of the song Hendrix recreated the sound of […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: blues, eric clapton, jimi hendrix, mitch mitchell, music, noel redding, racism, rock, usa, woodstock

TURNING INHUMANITY INTO POLICY

September 15, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on what the fire at the Moria detention camp on the island of Lesbos tells us about migrant policy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short tribute to Toots Hibbert.) It was published on 13 September 2020, under the headline “Moria’s only success has been to turn inhumanity into policy”. A fire rips through a refugee camp. Migrants are blamed for starting it. Outraged locals vent their fury and demand that the migrants be removed. […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: angela merkel, asylum seekers, deterrence, eu, fortress europe, greece, immigration policy, moria, pull factors, refugees

WHEN MONUMENTS FALL

September 12, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This is the opening section of my essay in the New York Review of Books‘ NYR Daily on the statues debate. Read the full article on NYR Daily. “We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act—an act which is to go into history.” So said the great nineteenth-century former slave and staunch abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., in 1876. “That we are here […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: abraham lincoln, black lives matter, boris johnson, confederate statues, edward colston, emancipation memorial, frederick douglass, iconoclasm, racism, statues, toppling statues, winston churchill

HANDING OUT SWEETIES IN THE COMEDY WARS

September 8, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the debate about BBC comedy being too leftwing, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on protests, persuasion and coercion.) It was published on 6 September 2020, under the headline “Our culture has lost its appetite for risk and making people feel uncomfortable”. “A real comedian – that’s a daring man,” Eddie Waters, an old standup turned evening class tutor, tells a group of would-be comics in Trevor Griffiths’s brilliant, mordant […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Politics • Tags: bbc, bernard manning, chris gethard, clapter, comedians, culture wars, geoff norcott, have i got news for you, nish kumar, racism, simon critchley, tim davie, trevor griffiths, wokeness

PANDAEMONIUM WHILE WRITING A BOOK

September 6, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This is just a short note to apologize if posting on Pandaemonium is slightly erratic over the next year. I have started work on a new book which unpacks ideas of “whiteness” – white supremacy, white identity, white privilege. More details in due course. But working on a book may mean that posts are a bit more irregular than normal. My apologies, but I hope you continue enjoying what is posted here – and the book, too, when it […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Pandaemonium

RACE, CLASS AND WHITE PRIVILEGE: A RESPONSE

August 30, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. The political philosopher Chris Bertram published two posts last week on Crooked Timber, the philosophy and social science blog, the first challenging critiques of the concept of “white privilege”, the second arguing that certain claims about race and class are irrational. As I was one of the targets of these articles (Chris linked to one of my posts as exemplifying the problem, and we had previously debated the issue on Twitter), this is a response. (It has been published on […]

Categories: Class, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, chris bertram, inequality, police killings, racism, school exclusions, white identity, white privilege, working class