Author Archives: Kenan Malik

MAKE ME WANNA HOLLER

June 6, 2020 by Kenan Malik

I have published a similar post before, but this seemed a good time to resurrect it. The story of the struggle for black rights in America is intimately linked to the story of popular music. And this is a collection of 12 songs that span the past century and have acted as the soundtrack to the black struggle in America. It is largely chronological and reflects the shifts both in the struggle and in the music (as well as my […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, america, anti-racism, black struggle, blues, ferguson, freedom struggles, george floyd, hip hop, jacob lawrence, jazz, police racism, r'n'b, racism, soul

LAUNDERING STATE ACTION, POLITICISING FACT CHECKING

June 2, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the relationship between the public, technology companies and the state, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 31 May 2020, under the headline ‘In a polarised world, even checking facts on Twitter becomes politicised’. Like many a Twitter debate, the war of words that broke out last week between Donald Trump and the social media company may seem inconsequential, even infantile. However, the spat raises important questions about the relationship between the public, technology companies and […]

Categories: Free Speech, Science & Technology

THE IGNORANCE AND THE CRUELTY

May 30, 2020 by Kenan Malik

I have written two short pieces in the Observer over the past couple of weeks about immigration rules. They reflect on similar themes, so I am publishing here together. The first was published on 31 May under the headline ‘Boris Johnson is a picture of ignorance on immigration’; the second on 24 May under the headline ‘Despite U-turns, migrants to Britain are being failed miserably’. The ignorance and the cruelty Imagine a Prime Minister who comes to power promising […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: boris johnson, british politics, coronavirus, deserving, essential workers, immigration policy, migrant workers, no recourse to public funds, stephen timms, undeserving

VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING

May 26, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Viktor Frankl’s existentialism,, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on deserving and undeserving migrants.) It was published on 24 May 2020, under the headline ‘What the lessons from Auschwitz teach us about the choices we make’. ‘To speak about the meaning and value of life may seem more necessary today than ever.’ It’s a quote that might have been plucked from any number of op-eds over the past couple of months. […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: auschwitz, choice, existentialism, holocaust, human agency, human nature, man's search for meaning, meaning, responsibility, social, vienna, viktor frankl, yes to everything

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #72

May 24, 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. . The urgency of critique New Frame, 21 May 2020 In South Africa there is, to our collective shame, a long list of unarmed people who have been killed by the police in the post-apartheid era. People have been killed during protests, as well as during various forms of armed state action such […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN JUDGMENT

May 19, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the difference between human and artificial intelligence, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the return of football in Germany.) It was published on 17 May 2020, under the headline ‘For all its sophistication, AI isn’t fit to make life-or-death decisions’. Artificial intelligence is searching for the drugs to combat Covid-19. It enabled the pandemic to be tracked and information about it to be synthesised. It is diagnosing patients, triaging them, and identifying those in […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, brian cantwell smith, coronavirus, human nature, judgment, reckoning

HOME IS A FOREIGN PLACE

May 16, 2020 by Kenan Malik

Home is a Foreign Place. The title of Zarina Hashmi’s perhaps most famous work, a set of 36 ideograms, sums up many of the tensions that suffused both her work and her life. Zarina (she preferred to be called simply by her first name), who died last month, was one of the most important postwar modernist artists, for whom displacement and loss was the key theme. ‘Memory’, she once said, ‘is the only lasting possession we have. I have made […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: art, home, india, modernism, nasreen mohamedi, pakistan, partition, zarina hashmi

THE PRIVILEGE OF ROMANTICISING NATURE

May 12, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the romanticisation of nature, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 10 May 2020, under the headline ‘Let’s stop romanticising nature. So much of our life depends on defying it’. Cormorants are hunting fish in the now clear waters of Venice. Wild boars roam the avenues of Barcelona and wild goats the streets of Llandudno. Above Los Angeles are blue skies. From smogless Delhi, you can once more glimpse the Himalayas. ‘The Earth is healing, we are the virus,’ runs […]

Categories: Nature, Politics • Tags: alan levinovitz, antihumanism, bhopal, coronavirus, environment, global south, india, inequality, natural, pollution, poverty, romanticising nature, working class

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #71

May 9, 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. . Why we fail to prepare for disasters Tim Harford, Financial Times, 16 April 2020 You can’t say that nobody saw it coming. For years, people had warned that New Orleans was vulnerable. The Houston Chronicle reported that 250,000 people would be stranded if a major hurricane struck, with the low-lying city left 20ft […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE FAILURE OF BRITISH FASCISM

May 5, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on why fascism failed in Britain, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on working class writers and publishing.) It was published on 3 May 2020, under the headline‘British fascism has never thrived but its failure has been useful for the mainstream’. The history of British fascism is a history of failure. In a new book, Failed Führers, the historian Graham Macklin retells that story through biographies of six fascist leaders, from Arnold […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: alain benoist, british fascism, british nationalism, conservative party, failed fuhrers, far right, fascism, graham macklin, identity politics, john tyndall, margaret thatcher, nationalism, nazism, nick griffin, nouvelle droite, oswald mosley

LIGHT INFUSED (ONCE MORE)

May 2, 2020 by Kenan Malik

I have, over the past few weeks, been reorganising Light Infusion, my photographic website. Apart from a bit of tidying up, it’s just about completed. So, it’s open to browse – and buy prints, if you wish. (And if anyone spots any errors, do let me know.) Here is a small sample of photographs from each of the sections on the site. . Landscape . Cathedral Mountain, in Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rockies, bursting through the early morning […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: photography

HEROISM AND THE QUALITY OF BEING HUMAN

April 26, 2020 by Kenan Malik

When we think of heroes, we usually think of superhuman figures, fictional or mythologized, from Achilles to Churchill, from Boudica to Superman, from Joan of Arc to James Bond. They are heroes because they are able to accomplish that which mere mortals cannot. Over the past few weeks, we’ve discovered new kinds of heroes – nurses working with inadequate protection, care workers with exceptional dedication, bus drivers who continue to transport key workers. Few of them would want to be […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: helder camara, heroes, heroism, human nature

THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE LEAST IMPORTANT THINGS

April 21, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the meaning of sport at a time when there isn’t any, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 19 April 2020, under the headline ‘It’s not just the spectacle we crave. Sport also offers identity, pride, hope’. I tried. I really did. But I simply could not get into it. Belarusian football, that is. As coronavirus has brought life to a standstill across the globe, so sport has disappeared from our calendar. And many sports, […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: belarus, bill shankly, coronavirus, david papineau, fever pitch, football, hillsborough disaster, jurgen klopp, liverpool fc, lockdown, nick fornby, noam chomsky

THE HISTORY AND POLITICS OF WHITE IDENTITY – THE VIDEO

April 18, 2020 by Kenan Malik

I gave a talk last year on ‘The history and politics of white identity’ to the Literarisches Colloqium Berlin. This is a video of the talk and the discussion afterwards.

Categories: Kenan Malik, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: democracy, enlightenment, haitian revolution, herder, identity politics, immigration, nouvelle droite, racial science, racism, talks, universalism, white identity, working cla

POLICING THE NEW NORMAL

April 14, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how the coronavirus pandemic may shape policing and surveillance in the post-pandemic world, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 12 April 2020, under the headline ‘Yes, expect more surveillance during a crisis, but beware it once the danger has passed’. ‘We will not at this stage be checking the items in baskets and trolleys to see whether it is a legitimate necessary item,’ Nick Adderley, chief constable of Northamptonshire, warned last week, ‘but if people […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: china, coronavirus, data sharing, pandemic, police, privacyy, surveillance