Author Archives: Kenan Malik

THE THRILL OF THE ACTUAL

September 22, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the virtual and the actual, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 18 September 2022, under the headline “The web has expanded the reach of art but nothing beats standing in front of a Picasso”. It is more than 30 years since I saw Pablo Picasso’s Guernica face to face, as it were, in Madrid’s Prado Museum, shortly before it was moved into the Museo Reina Sofia, where it still hangs. Painted in 1937 in furious protest at […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: andre malraux, art, digital art, guernica, moma, pablo picasso, painting, virtual museum

QUESTIONING THE MONARCHY

September 15, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the need to question the monarchy, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 10 September 2022, under the headline “We can respect popular affection for the Queen and question the idea of royalty”. King Charles III. As soon as one monarch dies, another takes her place. It is a seamless transition that, for many, is both necessary and reassuring, helping sustain the myth of monarchy that, while kings and queens may pass on, the institution endures. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: democracy, king charges, monarchy, queen elizabeth, republicanism, royal prerogative, royalty

CUTTING ACCESS, NOT MEETING NEEDS

September 8, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the rise of the regulatory state and its impact of public services, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 4 September 2022, under the headline “It’s no wonder I couldn’t see a GP: limiting access to services is the point”. It’s a problem familiar to millions: the trials of trying to book a doctor’s appointment. Last week, suffering from a debilitating condition but not an emergency, I called the GP surgery to get it checked out. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: austerity, grenfell tower, nhs, regulatory state, trilateral commission

HOME OFFICE STATISTICS AND HOME OFFICE PROPAGANDA

September 1, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the reality of immigration statistics, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 28 August 2022, under the headline “There are lies, damn lies, and then there is Home Office propaganda about migrants”. There are Home Office statistics and then there are Home Office press releases. And the gap between the two is often so wide that even the most resourceful migrant would be unlikely to discover a way of navigating from the one to the other. Last week, the […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: afghan refugees, albanians, asylum seekers, channel migrants, home office, immigration, immigration statistics, priti patel, refugees, rwanda deportation scheme

MANAGING THE UNWANTED

August 25, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Britain’s Rwanda deportation scheme, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 21 August 2022, under the headline “Treating refugees like ‘waste people’ is abhorrent, wherever they end up”. “There are state control, security, surveillance structures from the national level down… Political opposition is not tolerated and arbitrary detention, torture and even killings are accepted methods of enforcing control too.” The email from a Foreign Office official to colleagues in the Home Office in response to Britain’s plans to […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: deportations, fortress europe, human rights, offshoring, paul kagame, priti patel, racism, rwanda, rwanda deportation scheme

TO SAY THE UNSAYABLE

August 18, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Salman Rushdie and free speech, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 14 August 2022, under the headline “Where Salman Rushdie defied those who would silence him, today too many fear causing offence”. “A poet’s work,” one of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses observes, is “to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” “And if rivers of blood flow from […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: ayatollah khomeini, censorship, fatwa, free speech, islam, muslims, offence, peter mayer, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

BENEATH THE SKIN OF OUR OBSESSION WITH WHITENESS

August 11, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the contemporary obsession with whiteness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 7 August 2022, under the headline “Beneath the skin of our obsession with whiteness lie deeper fears about our place in the world”. It is Viktor Orbán’s worst nightmare: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” It is the opening line to Mohsin Hamid’s new novel The Last White Man, a line that deliberately echoes […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: critical race theory, derrick bell, franz kafka, identity politics, mohsin hamid, racism, ta-nehisi coates, the last white man, viktor orban, white identity, whiteness

THE ENDS OF EDUCATION

August 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the working class and the meaning of education, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 31 July 2022, under the headline “If education is all about getting a job, the humanities are left just to the rich”. “We rented a garret, for which we paid (I think) 25s a year, bought a few second-hand forms and desks, borrowed a few chairs from the people in the house, bought a shilling’s worth of coals… and started our […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Culture & Books • Tags: browne report, david runciman, diversity, education, education cuts, humanities, jonathan rose, robbins report, universities, working class

CLASS AND POWER IN CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN

July 28, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on class, power the different social meanings of “regulation”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 July 2022, under the headline “Worship the rich, neglect the poor? Adam Smith’s words still capture how power works”. If you want to see how class and power operate in Britain today, look at the different ways in which “regulation” is applied to working-class people and businesses. In the one case, it is about imposing ever-tighter restrictions, making it increasingly […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Justice & Liberties • Tags: adam smith, anti-union laws, conservative party, grenfell fire, grenfell tower, strikes, trade unions

ON DIVERSITY AND ITS LIMITS

July 21, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on diversity and the Tory leadership campaign, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 17 July 2022, under the headline “Give me a pale male PM with great policies over a ‘diverse’ one reinforcing inequality”. It is not the British version of the Obama moment, when the election in 2008 of an African American to the White House appeared to mark a significant moment in American history. The magnitude of slavery in US history, the memory of […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: conservative party, diversity, identity politics, racism

YE ARE MANY – THEY ARE FEW

July 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the legacy of Percy Bysshe Shelley 200 years after his death, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 10 July 2022, under the headline “Long gone, but speaking clearly to our age – Shelley, the poet of moral and political corruption”. “Shall rank corruption pass unheeded by, Shall flattery’s voice ascend the wearied sky; And shall no patriot tear the veil away Which hides these vices from the face of day? Is public virtue dead? – […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: freedom struggles, mary shelley, peterloo, poetry, queen mab, richard holmes, romanticism, shelley, the masque of anarchy, working class

THE DRIP OF FAR RIGHT IDEAS INTO MAINSTREAM THINKING

July 6, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the seeping of far-right ideas into mainstream thinking, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 July 2022, under the headline “It’s not just the far right that should worry us. It’s their ideas seeping into the mainstream”. It is not often that the election of deputy speakers to a parliament can be described as portentous. The appointment last week of vice-presidents (the equivalent of deputy speakers) of the French national assembly was almost unnoticed outside […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: alain de benoist, communist party, douglas murray, emmanuel macron, far right, france, front national, gerald darmien, great replacement theory, immigration, marine le pen, pcf, racism, rassemblement national

IN DEFENCE OF STRIKES

June 29, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the importance of trade unions and the right to strike, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 27 June 2022, under the headline “Enemy within? Hardly… most people see why we need unions prepared to strike”. The Tories love the working class. So long as workers can help them win red wall seats. So long as they can paint them as “socially conservative” and use them as alibis for legislation hostile to immigrants or welfare claimants. So […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Justice & Liberties • Tags: british politics, conservative party, inequality, labour party, levelling up, mick lynch, rail strikes, rmt, strikes, tony blair, trade unions, working class

FANTASY FEARS AND REAL ISSUES

June 22, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on machine sentience and the real problems with AI, was my Observer column on 19 June 2022. It was published under the headline “Forget sentience… the worry is that AI copies human bias”. ‘I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” So claimed a Google software program, creating a bizarre controversy over the past week in AI circles and beyond. The programme is called LaMDA, an acronym for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, a project run by […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai bias, artificial intelligence, blake lemoine, facial recognition, google, lamda, predictive policing, privacy, sentience, surveillance, timnit gebru

OFFENDING THE GATEKEEPERS

June 15, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on attempts to ban the film The Lady of Heaven, was my Observer column on 12 June 2022. It was published under the headline “Film bans are less about offence, more ‘community leaders’ showing who’s boss”. “Birmingham will not tolerate the disrespect of our Prophet… You will have repercussions for your actions.” So claimed a leader of a Muslim protest against the film The Lady of Heaven. There were similar protests in cities from Bradford to London. Fear of “repercussions” led the cinema chain […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, fatimah, free speech, gatekeepers, gurpreet kaur bhatti, hanif kureishi, hudud, islam, mf husain, muslims, offence, roshan muhammad sakih, salman rushdie, sharia, shia, sunni, the lady of heaven