Author Archives: Kenan Malik

THE ILLIBERALISM OF THE PHILOSOPHER OF LIBERALISM

September 9, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and the meaning of tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on politics as drama.) It was published on 8 September 2019, under the headline ‘Why western liberals have long picked the wrong historical hero’. Lost in the library of a small American college has lain a text by one of England’s foremost philosophers that no one knew he had written. ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with […]

Categories: History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: catholicism, enlightenment, free speech, jonathan israel, liberalism, locke, radical enlightenment, religious freedom, spinoza, tolerance

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #62

September 7, 2019 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 emptiness of an ending Amanda Hammer, Africa is a Country, 8 September 2019 A day dawned with an early call. Mugabe was dead. And then, nothing. Nothing at all in my heart and mind. Just a gaping, blank canvas, waiting for a clear script to form out of the morass of […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE OPIOID CRISIS AND THE EXPLOITATION OF PAIN

September 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the opioid crisis in America, its roots and its lessons, was published in the Observer on 1 September 2019 under the headline ‘America’s opioid catastrophe has lessons for us all, about greed and racial division’. (I have restored a couple of paragraphs that I had to remove for reasons of space in the Observer.) ‘We’ll build a wall to keep the damn drugs out.’ So insisted Donald Trump at a rally last year to launch the White […]

Categories: International, Science & Technology • Tags: big phrama, david herzberg, donald trump, free market, johnson & johnson, medicine, opioid crisis, pharmaceutical companies, purdue phrama, racism, usa, war on drugs, working class

I HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON, MY FRIEND

August 31, 2019 by Kenan Malik

It is almost two years since I first wrote about Osman Kavala, and it’s almost two years that Kavala has been imprisoned by the Turkish authorities, and still without charge. This is an open letter I wrote for Perplex!, a magazine produced by the Dutch organisation H401. (I have changed some of the dates, as the letter was originally written a few months ago). I really do hope to see Osman soon, ‘to have a drink in a café in […]

Categories: International • Tags: censorship, erdogan, osman kavala, turkey

RACISM, MONARCHY AND PRIVILEGE

August 26, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, racism and the monarchy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on children and happiness.) It was published on 25 August 2019, under the headline ‘Sure, defend Meghan Markle from racists, but let’s not bow to the monarchy’. Take a feudal relic. Add a splash of glamour. A pinch of wokeness. And a dash of hypocrisy. Stir in a lashing of racism. Squeeze out the […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: duchess of sussex, elton john, Jameela jamil, left, meghan markle, monarchy, privilege, racism, royal family, vogue, wokeness

ISLAND OF LIGHT

August 24, 2019 by Kenan Malik

The Western Isles and the Northern Isles, at the very edges of Britain, are rarely blessed with blue skies and bright sun. They are swaddled in cloud and wind and rain. And, yet, there is here a quality of light that you rarely see elsewhere in Britain. The cloudscape is an extension of the landscape, and as the light suffuses through the cloud, it acquires a painterly, almost ethereal, quality. It may be why there are so many artists on […]

Categories: Britain, Photos • Tags: orkney, photography

WILDNESS AND THE HUMAN IMAGINATION

August 19, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on humanity’s entangled relationship with the ‘wild’, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on race, class and diversity.) It was published on 18 August 2019, under the headline ‘Last week, I gazed on a truly wild land… and saw art reflected back’. Achmore is a nondescript hamlet on the A858 that cuts across the isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. This is a gnarled, fractured landscape, swaddled in wind […]

Categories: Britain, Nature • Tags: human imagination, isle of lewis, landscape, outer hebrides, robert macfarlane, scotland, western isles, wild

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #61

August 17, 2019 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. . Britain’s infrastructure is breaking down. And here’s why no one’s fixing it Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian, 14 August 2019 When I am out reporting it is not uncommon to go into a suburban postcode short of money yet still bustling with people – but the banks have nearly all cleared out, the church […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

THE REAL UNDESIRABLES ARE NOT ON THE STREETS

August 12, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on homelessness and official attitudes and policies, first published on 7 July 2019. None are so blind as those who would blind others. Mark Field, the Foreign Office minister suspended for grabbing a protester by the throat, has, according to leaked […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: austerity, british politics, homelessness, london, mark field, rough sleeping

THE NECESSITY OF POETRY

August 10, 2019 by Kenan Malik

As I am away for a couple of weeks, and posting little new material on Pandaemonium, I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a a short piece on the need for poetry, first published on 12 May 2019, after the announcement of Simon Armitage as the new Poet Laureate. Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: george szirtes, howard nemerov, mean alexander, poetry, simon armitage

A TRIBUTE TO BRYAN MAGEE

August 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a couple of weeks, so am posting little new material on Pandaemonium. I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. This is a. short tribute to Bryan Magee, published on 28 July 2019 under the headline ‘Bryan Magee, the man who loved to put big ideas on the small screen’. You can still watch them on YouTube. Two middle-aged white men (and the occasional woman) spending […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: bryan magee

DIVERSE, PERHAPS, BUT NOT MODERN

August 3, 2019 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a couple of weeks, so am posting little new material on Pandaemonium. I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. Having said that, this short comment on the diversity of the Boris Johnson cabinet was published in the Observer on 28 July not as part of my weekly column but as part of a feature on the new Johnson government. ‘People seem to be disappointed that the […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: boris johnson, british politics, diversity, priti patel, racism, sajid javid

HAS THE RETWEET RUINED THE WORLD?

July 29, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Twitter, engagement ad democracy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Bryan Magee.) It was published on 7 July 2019, under the headline ‘Twitter won’t ruin the world. But constraining democracy would’. Has the retweet ruined the world? Chris Wetherell, the software developer who built Twitter’s retweet button, thinks so. Introduced in 2009, retweeting transformed the social media landscape, he suggests, by allowing people to pass on information without having bothered to […]

Categories: Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, education, fake news, social media, social polarisation, technology, twitter

WHITE IDENTITY AND WORKING CLASS POLITICS

July 27, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten on 21 July 2019. The shift has been dramatic. Even a decade ago, discussion of ‘white rights’ and ‘white identity’ belonged to the fringes of politics. It was Nazi-speak. Today it has become a major political issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Not just the far-right but many mainstream commentators now argue that whites should be able to assert what the political scientist Eric Kaufmann calls their ‘racial self-interest’. Why […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: alain benoist, Class, eric kaufmann, identity politics, nouvelle droite, race, racism, white identity, working class

STUMBLING INTO THE PANOPTICON

July 22, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the creation of a surveillance state, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the ‘R word’ and the pretence of not using a word.) It was published on 7 July 2019, under the headline ‘When local councils use data tools to classify us, what price freedom?‘ Are you a ‘metro high-flyer’ or part of an ‘alpha family’? A ‘midlife renter’ or a ‘cafes and catchments’ sort? An ‘estate veteran’ or a […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: jeremy bentham, michel foucault, panopticon, privacy, social scoring, surveillance state