Author Archives: Kenan Malik

ON THE LEGACY OF “THE PARANOID STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS”

November 6, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 November 2024, under the headline “Today’s populism is informed by bigotry, but its roots lie in the promise of equality”. “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” Not a comment on this year’s presidential campaign but an observation on another US presidential race, that of 1964. It is the opening line to one of the most influential political […]

Categories: Culture & Books, International, Politics • Tags: america, barry goldwater, donald trump, eric foner, populism, richard hofstadter, the paranoid style in american politics

THE LONG HISTORY OF TWO-TIER POLICING

October 30, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate around “two-tier policing”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 27 October 2024, under the headline “Our first political prisoner? No. Locking up dissenters is an ignoble British tradition”. In July 1967, the Black Power activist Michael X addressed a meeting in Reading. “The most savage human being in the world,” he told the audience, “is the white man.” He was arrested the following month, charged with inciting racial hatred and sentenced to 12 […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties • Tags: beast of broadwater farm, birmingham six, broadwater farm, eileen turnbull, guildford four, keith blakelock, lord denning, maguire seven, mangrove nine, michael x, peter lynch, policing, racism, ricky tomlinson, shrewsbury 24, two-tier justice, two-tier policing, winston silcott

UNEMPLOYMENT IS NOT A MEDICAL CONDITION

October 23, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on unemployment and weightloss drugs, was published in the Observer on 20 October 2024 under the headline “Pumping the unemployed with weight-loss drugs echoes Victorian attitudes to the poor”. In early 2023, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, chief executive of the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and its UK corporate vice-president Pinder Sahota, met in Whitehall with the then health secretary Steve Barclay, England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, and various health and Treasury officials. They discussed the possibilities of a […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: beveridge report, british politics, george orwell, mounjaro, poor laws, poverty, unemployment, wegovy, weight loss drugs, working class

NEITHER CIVILISATION NOR RESISTANCE

October 16, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Israel, Hamas, civilisation and resistance, was published in the Observer on 13 October 2024 under the headline “Israel is not ‘saving western civilisation’. Nor is Hamas leading ‘the resistance’”. “Israel is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating it.” So proclaimed France’s pre-eminent liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy as Israeli tanks drove across the border and its war planes bombed villages in the south and residential districts in Beirut. “There are moments in history,” he exulted, when “‘escalation’ becomes a necessity and a virtue.” For […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: benjamin netanyahu, bernard-henri levy, civilisation, david nirenberg, ethnic cleansing, gaza, hamas, hezbollah, israel, israeli invasion of lebanon, jews, judaism, lebanon, likud, palestine, plo, ronald schecter, sabra and shatilla, the jewish question, zionism

WHERE NOW FOR LIBERAL CONSERVATISM?

October 2, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the changing fortunes of liberal conservatism, was published in the Observer on 29 September 2024 under the headline “Can liberal conservatism survive the remaking of the right? We’ll soon find out”. Conservatism, the late philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, emerged into the modern world as “a kind of ‘yes but…’” response to liberalism. Conservatives, he observed, believe, like liberals, in the importance of the free market, of private property and of individual choice. They believe also in the overriding significance of […]

Categories: Britain, History, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: alain de benoist, civic nationalism, conservatism, edmund burke, edmund fawcett, edward luttwak, ethnic nationalism, friedrich hayek, illiberal conservatism, immigration, liberal conservatism, liberalism, london, margaret thatcher, national conservatives, national identity, patrick deneen, roger scruton, volkisch, whiteness

ON POLITICS BY LABELLING

September 25, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the penchant for politics by labelling, was published in the Observer on 22 September 2024, under the headline “Too white? Too black? Too woke? Politics by labelling is a disease of our times”. Yes, I’ve been called a “coconut”. When Marieha Hussain wrote the word on a placard she carried on a Palestine march last November, it was to deride Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, the then prime minister and home secretary, for their obnoxious immigration policies and their […]

Categories: Free Speech, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: 1965 race relations act, black identity, coconut, frantz fanon, gatekeepers, identity politics, incitement laws, incitement to racial hatred, kehinde andrews, marieha hussain, michael x, racism, un-jews

SPRINGFIELD AND THE MEMEFICATION OF POLITICS

September 18, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on what the claims about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, tells us about politics, was published in the Observer on 15 September 2024 under the headline “Trump’s fantasy that migrants are eating cats proves the meme has prevailed over real politics”. If one town could be emblematic of the vicissitudes of blue-collar life in America, Springfield, Ohio, might be as good a pick as any. At the heart of the midwest, Springfield’s prosperity was built on manufacturing and publishing. […]

Categories: International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: donald trump, eating pets, elon musk, great replacement theory, haitian immigrants, immigrants, immigration panics, jd vance, memefication, memeification, nathan clark, racism, springfield, white identity

PRIDE, SHAME AND BRITISH HISTORY

September 11, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on perceptions of British history in terms of pride and shame, was published in the Observer on 8 September 2024 under the headline “Pride or shame? British history is too complex to be seen in such glib terms”. “Britain’s long and proud history has been trashed by the self-hating left.” “British history is not being taught and people are hugely ignorant of our past.” “We have lost that sense of what was at stake, with a consequent decline of pride in the […]

Categories: Britain, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: anti-woke, battle of cable street, british empire, british history, british social attitudes, britishness, oswald mosley, peterloo, pride in british history, social liberalisation, woke

AGAINST IMMIGRATION – AND THE WORKING CLASS

August 21, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on why many of those hostile to immigration who claim to be supportive of the working class are not, was published in the Observer on 18 August 2024 under the headline “Defending working-class interests requires more than simply opposing immigration”. “Immigration harms British workers. We must restrict immigration to improve working-class lives.” That is the subtext – and often the explicit text – of the argument from those who are hostile to immigration or wish drastically to reduce numbers. It […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-union laws, benefits, exploitation, flexible labour market, immigration, inequality, nigel farage, poverty, social care, suella braverman, trade unions, uk riots 2024, working class

THE WARPING OF WORKING-CLASS GRIEVANCES

August 14, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the roots of the summer riots in England, was published in the Observer on 11 August 2024 under the headline “The roots of the UK’s unrest lie in the warping of genuine working-class grievances”. “The British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing,” the Spectator’s Douglas Murray told former Australian deputy prime minister John Anderson. The comment might sound like a response to the recent riots, but was actually recorded last year (the edited […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: axel rudakubana, conservatives, douglas murray, english riots 2024, identity politics, immigration, islam, john anderson, liberalism, matthew goodwin, muslims, southport killings, southport riot, uk riots 2024, white decline, white identity, working class

WRESTLING WITH AMERICA’S DEMONS – AND HIS OWN

July 31, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the significance of James Baldwin, was published in the Observer on 28 July 2024 under the headline “James Baldwin taught us that identities can help us to locate ourselves. But they trap us too”. James Baldwin was about 10 when he first read Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. The character in the novel that most spoke to him was not the virtuous aristocrat Charles Darnay or Sydney Carton, the dissolute lawyer turned hero, but Thérèse Defarge, a woman […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, black identity, black power, civil rights movement, freedom, harlem, identity politics, james baldwin, nikki giovanni, orilla miller, paris, racism, richard wright, toni morrison, usa, whiteness

POPULISM WITH A FEUDAL TOUCH

July 24, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on why JD Vance’s populism has little to offer the working class, was published in the Observer on 21 July 2024 under the headline “Aristopopulists like JD Vance can offer only empty promises to the working class”. “The tragedy of Trump’s candidacy is that, embedded in his furious exhortations against Muslims and Mexicans and trade deals gone awry is a message that America’s white poor don’t need: that everything wrong in your life is someone else’s fault.” That was JD Vance, Donald […]

Categories: Class, International, Politics • Tags: anti-union laws, aristopopulism, donald trump, elite politics, gop, hillbilly elegy, jd vance, patrick deneen, populism, republican party, sean o'brien, teamsters

WHAT IS THE MUSLIM VOTE?

July 17, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, umpacking the meaning of the “Muslim vote” , was published in the Observer on 14 July 2024 under the headline “Muslims aren’t single-issue voters. Gaza was a lightning rod for their disaffection”. Should we celebrate or fear the “Muslim vote”? The success of independent candidates running on pro-Palestinian tickets, four of whom were elected, overturning huge Labour majorities, has led to a debate about the role of Muslims in British politics. On the one side are radical Islamic groups, including the Muslim Vote (TMV), a […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Politics • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, british elections, british jews, british politics, general election 2024, hyphen magazine, identity politics, islam, jake wallis simons, labour party, luke tryl, muslims, palestine solidarity, rushdie affair, sectarian voting, the muslim vote, uk 2024 election, working class

THE RULE OF THE OLD

July 10, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on contemporary gerontocracy, was published in the Observer on 7 July 2024 under the headline “Biden, Putin, Xi, Modi: what is it that keeps old ideas, as well as old people, in power?”. “States when they are in difficulties or in fear yearn for the rule of the elder men”, wrote Plutarch, the first-century Greek historian and philosopher, as he pondered “whether an old man should engage in politics”. Only the old, he believed, possessed the wisdom granted by age, […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: aaron reeves, class politics, donald trump, gerontocracy, joe biden, plutarch, sam friedman, samuel moyn

JULIAN ASSANGE AND THE MESSY FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

July 3, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Julian Assange and press freedom, was published in the Observer on 30 June 2024 under the headline “Julian Assange is free, but his case is a grim reminder of the fragility of press freedom”. It was a messy ending to an often chaotic story. Julian Assange was released last week from Belmarsh prison to board a flight to the US-governed Pacific island of Saipan. There, under a special deal with the US authorities, he pleaded guilty in court to […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: afghanistan, america, chelsea manning, freedom of speech, iraq war, julian assange, press freedom, whistleblowing, wikileaks