Author Archives: Kenan Malik

ON JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE

January 28, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on public attitudes on immigration in the wake of the Brexit referendum.) It was published in the Observer, 28 January, under the headline ‘A desire for vengeance is human but checks the pursuit of proper justice’. Two court cases last week, on either side of the Atlantic, helped illuminate the tensions in our thinking about justice. The first was the harrowing […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: aeschylus, civilisation, justice, larry nassar, oresteia, vengeance

THE GREAT BRITISH EMPIRE DEBATE

January 26, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay on the debate about the merits of colonialism, and of the British Empire in particular, was published 26 January in the New York Review Daily. The sun may have long ago set on the British Empire (or on all but a few tattered shreds of it), but it never seems to set on the debate about the merits of empire. The latest controversy began when the Third World Quarterly, an academic journal known for its radical stance, published […]

Categories: Britain, International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: adam horschild, belgian congo, bengal famine, british empire, british politics, bruce gilley, colonialism, david olusoga, enlightenment, india, ireland, mordant bay rebellion, nigel biggar, shashi tharoor, slave trade, slavery

RED SCARES AND MILLENNIAL RAGE

January 22, 2018 by Kenan Malik

I am now writing a weekly column for the Observer. It is actually a weekly page with two articles, one long, one short. This week’s articles were on red scares and Millennial rage and a tribute to Cyrille Regis. This is the essay on young people and rage against capitalism, published in the Observer, 21 January, under the headline ‘No reds under beds, but the young are awake to the flaws in capitalism’. Are student Red Guards about to […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: anti-communism, austerity, capitalism, communism, millennials, red scare, working class

LETTER FROM OSMAN KAVALA

January 18, 2018 by Kenan Malik

Osman Kavala, one of the most important intellectual and cultural figures in Turkey, was arrested in November. He remains in detention, in solitary confinement. He recently put out a statement through his lawyers. This is an English translation, first published by the Free Osman Kavala campaign. The situation, not just for Osman, but for hundreds of academics and others who have been detained in recent months, remains dangerous. Earlier this month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s claimed in a speech that […]

Categories: Academia, International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: academic freedom, censorship, erdogan, free speech, osman kavala, turkey

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #32

January 14, 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. . Am I a bad feminist? Margaret Atwood, Globe & Mail, 13 January 2018 It seems that I am a “Bad Feminist.” I can add that to the other things I’ve been accused of since 1972, such as climbing to fame up a pyramid of decapitated men’s heads (a leftie journal), of being […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

BRITAIN AND THE COVERT WAR IN YEMEN 1962-70

January 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This is an extract from Mark Curtis’ superb book Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses. It tells the story of Britain’s secret war in Yemen in the 1960s to restore the monarchy and Saudi control, and to protect its interests, and military base, in the region. Some 200,000 people were killed in the war. Curtis’study provides essential background to today’s conflict in Yemen. It was, Harold Macmillan observed at the time, ‘repugnant to political equity and prudence alike that […]

Categories: Britain, History, International • Tags: britain, british imperialism, imperialism, mark curtis, saudi arabia, yemen

BACK TO SCHOOL ON RACE AND CLASS

January 7, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 7 January 2018, under the headline ‘In British education, the central issue is class, not ethnicity’. The white working class. It’s a phrase that has become so commonplace that few recognise the sheer oddness, and indeed odiousness, of the concept. It denotes both pity and contempt. On the one hand, it is a description of the ‘left behind’, sections of the population that have lost out through globalisation and deindustrialisation. On the other, […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: angela rayner, british politics, Class, education, race, racism, white culture, white working class, working class

A BOOKISH DOZEN FOR THE NEW YEAR

January 4, 2018 by Kenan Malik

A dozen books from 2018 that I’m looking forward to. Not books I have read, so not (yet, anyway) recommendations, but books I would like to read. There are a dozen more I might have included, and many more that I have missed (and there is a decided, and unintended, slant in the list towards non-fiction books), but this is a start. . Zadie Smith, Feel Free Hamish Hamilton, February I enjoy Zadie Smith’s novels. But she is a better […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: books

A YEAR OF PANDAEMONIUM

December 31, 2017 by Kenan Malik

As another year draws to a close, here are some of the highlights of a year of Pandaemonium in 2017. . Liberalism, populism and democracy In my first essay of the year, I wrote that ‘Democracy, on the surface at least, is in rude health. It is liberalism that is in trouble.’ I gave the keynote address at the 2017 Karlsruhe Dialogues on ‘The Pluralistic Society and its Enemies’. The subject of my talk was ‘Can Diversity Embrace Democracy? Can Democracy Acknowledge […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #31

December 28, 2017 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. . God’s oppressed children Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books, 21 December 2017 Many Indian houses still have a simple pit toilet, which consists of a large hole in the floor. The feces are collected at night by ‘manual scavengers,’ who, Sujatha Gidla writes in Ants Among Elephants, ‘carry away human shit’ and […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

TOO POLARISED? OR NOT ENOUGH?

December 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 24 December 2017, under the headline ‘A Britain of common values was always a myth. By arguing, we shape ourselves’. What links the results of the Catalonia elections last week with the row in Britain over the proposed new blue passport? The one is the latest expression of the polarised character of electorates, the other of the way that the most arbitrary, irrelevant issues can become the focus of intense political controversy. Neither […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: 1984/85 miners strike, brexit, british politics, donald trump, protests, thatcherism, vietnam war, working class

GREEK LESSONS FOR BREXIT TALKS

December 21, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on the state of the Brexit talks. It was published under the headline ‘What to get Theresa May for Christmas’. Mr Varoufakis, who led the Greek negotiating team, writes in Adults in the Room that rather than negotiate in good faith, the troika employed a number of tactics to ensure that it got its way. The key maneuver was insisting that negotiations be staged in two parts: Greece […]

Categories: Britain, International, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, european union, greece, syriza, yanis varoufakis

DAWN ENCHANTMENT AT YELLOW WATER

December 17, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The Yellow Water billabong. Quiet and serene, it lies on the East Alligator River in the Kakadu National Park in Northern Territory in Australia. In the heat of the day, it feels relatively ordinary. At daybreak it is magical. Watching sunrise, enshrouded in a mist that adds enchantment to the light, and seeing the mist give way to wonder and colour and crocs and snakes and birds and flowers is simply glorious. Together with Uluru at first light, and the […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: australia, photography, wildlife

LANGSTON HUGHES ON DREAMS AND DREAMS DEFERRED

December 14, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Two poems by Langston Hughes (1902-1967), the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance, that speak to our moment as profoundly as many a political analysis. . Dreams . Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. . A dream deferred . What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: dreams, langston hughes, poetry

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB #30

December 10, 2017 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. . This poisonous cult of personality Pankaj Mishra, NYR Daily, 1 December 2017 Donald Trump’s election last year exposed an insidious politics of celebrity, one in which a redemptive personality is projected high above the slow toil of political parties and movements. As his latest tweets about Muslims confirm, this post-political figure seeks, […]

Categories: Pandaemonium