Author Archives: Kenan Malik

POPULISM: WHAT, WHY, HOW?

November 5, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my preface to a new book on European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate. Edited by Clara Sandelind, and published by the European Liberal Forum and Fores, the book brings together many contributors including Matthew Goodwin, Mikael Hjerm, Andrea Bohman, Jamie Bartlet, Meindert Fennema, Sjoerdje van Heerden and Sarah de Lange. It is launched today at a roundtable discussion at the European Parliament and available free online from the ELF or Fores. Preface to European Populism and Winning the Immigration […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: europe, front national, identity politics, immigration, left, populism, racism, ukip, working class

NOT QUITE DESERT ISLAND DISCS

November 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was recently a guest on Richard Holloway’s Sunday Morning programme, talking about my life and work and choosing three of my favourite musical tracks. It was like Desert Island Discs, but with more talk and less music. And since that’s the closest I will probably ever get to Desert Island Discs, I thought I might as well choose my own favourite eight tracks. Choosing three tracks for the Richard Holloway show was impossibly difficult, choosing eight has been barely […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: billie holiday, blind willie mctell, bob dylan, charles mingus, malian music, mozart, music, schubert

POPULISM IN EUROPE: THE BOOK, THE DEBATE

October 30, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I have written the preface for a new book on European populism and winning the immigration debate. Published by the European Liberal Forum and Fores, other contributors include Clara Sandelind, Matthew Goodwin, Mikael Hjerm, Andrea Bohman, Jamie Bartlet, Meindert Fennema, Sjoerdje van Heerden, Sarah de Lange and many others. The book will be launched next week at a roundtable discussion at the European Parliament. It will be available free online from the ELF or Fores. I will publish my essay […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: europe, europe union, immigration, populism

ON MORALITY AND MORALISM

October 27, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my introductory comments to a discussion about moralism at the recent Battle of Ideas conference. The other discussants were Hannah Dawson and Alister McGrath. Every year I give a lecture to a group of theology students – would-be Anglican priests, in fact – on why I am an atheist. Part of the talk is about values. And every year I get the same objection: that without God, I can simply pick and choose which values […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: elizabeth anscombe, enlightenment, harriet martineau, humanism, modernity, moralism, morality, positivism, radical enlightenment, religion, sam harris, talks

GERMANY AND BRITAIN, MEMORY AND MYOPIA

October 24, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my latest column for the International New York Times, published under the headline ‘Germany’s history lesson for Britain’. You can read the full version in in INYT. Ernst Barlach was one of Germany’s great expressionist artists of the early twentieth century. A virulent nationalist in the run-up to the First World War, Barlach found that his experience of the Western Front stripped him of his jingoism. Much of his subsequent work explored the sorrow and suffering that he saw […]

Categories: Britain, History, International • Tags: britain, british museum, britishness, ernst barlach, first world war, germany, holocaust, imperialism, second world war

ON THE HIGH LINE, DAY AND NIGHT

October 19, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The High Line is New York’s newest public park, built on a reclaimed elevated freight rail line above the streets of west Manhattan. It has become both a battleground for green politics and a magnet for real estate developers who are now throwing up luxury condos all along the line. It is also quirky, surreal and often quite magical, especially at night, a space that wonderfully reworks the idea of an urban park. It is difficult to convey the experience […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: new york, photos, the high line

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH MULTICULTURALISM?

October 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my talk about multiculturalism that I gave to the Secularism 2014 conference in London last week. For a more detailed discussion of multiculturalism, see my Milton K Wong lecture ‘What is wrong with multiculturalism?’ or my extended essay Multiculturalism and its Discontents. Before we can discuss multiculturalism, we need to distinguish between two processes or phenomena that all too often get confused. On the one hand, the lived experience of diversity; and, on the other, […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-racism, cultural diversity, equality, identity politics, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

LIFE, IDENTITY, MORALITY, GOD AND EVERYTHING…

October 13, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I was a guest this weekend on Richard Holloway’s Sunday Morning show on Radio Scotland talking about life, childhood, racism, identity, morality, religion, politics, multiculturalism, the Rushdie affair, the Euthyphro dilemma… The full version is available on iPlayer – but only for the next 4 weeks (the conversation starts about 8.30 mins in). If you have missed that 4-week cut off, or cannot access the iPlayer for any reason, here is an extended extract embedded as an AudioBoom track (the third section of the […]

Categories: Kenan Malik, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: broadcasts, From Fatwa to Jihad, interviews, left, morality, multiculturalism, racism, religion, richard holloway, rushdie affair, the quest for a moral compass

AS I WAS SAYING ABOUT UKIP…

October 11, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The debate abound UKIP swirls unabated after its success in winning the Clacton by-election from the Conervatives, and in almost winning Heywood and Middleton from Labour. There remains considerable confusion about the nature of the UKIP phenomenon (the clarifying work of academics such as Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford has been useful here). There is even greater confusion over how to challenge it. I have been writing about UKIP and immigration for a while now. So I thought I would pull together […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, immigration, populism, racism, ukip, working class

HATREDS, OLD AND NEW

October 9, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on anti-Semitism in Europe published in the New York Times in August under the headline ‘Enough Hate for Everyone’. (I cannot post the full versions of my New York Times articles on Pandaemonium until a month after the original publication.) A few years ago, I was a guest on Start the Week, a BBC radio discussion show. Among the other guests was the novelist Eva Figes, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and a […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, anti-politics, anti-semitism, dieudonne, europe, eva figes, identity politics, israel, muslims

TIME TO UNFENCE OUR VIEW OF MIGRATION

October 6, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Ruben Andersson is an anthropologist at LSE’s Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, and the author of Illegality, Inc: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering Europe. He recently published a post on the LSE politics blog which described how immigration border fences feed the very problem they supposedly address. I am delighted to be able to republish it on Pandaemonium. Ruben Andersson It is time to unfence our view of migration Migration panic is upon Calais yet again. Amid […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: borders, britain, european union, fortress europe, immigration, immigration controls, refugees, ruben andersson, spain, use

ONE PERSON’S OFFENCE IS ANOTHER ONE’S ART

October 3, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the mural that Banksy painted in Clacton this week. The mural that local council officials painted over for being ‘offensive’. Clacton, a small seaside town near London, is host next week to a by-election, triggered by the defection of the local Conservative MP, Douglass Carswell, to UKIP, the populist anti-immigration, anti-EU party, whose growing success is causing panic in mainstream ranks. Carswell will almost certainly win the by-election in his new political colours, which would make him the […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: banksy, censorship, exhibit b, free speech

AUTUMN TALKS

October 1, 2014 by Kenan Malik

I am giving a number of talks over the next month, from Wigtown to Brussels, on issues from moralism to populism, from atheism to multiculturalism. Do come along if you are able. . 5 October Wigtown ‘The Quest for a Moral Compass’ Wigtown Book Festival ScottishPower Foundation Marquee Wigtown Square 13.30 Details and tickets from the Wigtown Book Festival. . 11 October London ‘Multi-faithism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship’ Secular 2014 Conference Tower Hotel St Katharine’s Way London E1W 1LD 16.20 This […]

Categories: Kenan Malik • Tags: talks

EXHIBIT B AND THINKING FOR ONESELF

September 28, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Rushdie’s critics lost the battle – they failed to prevent the publication of The Satanic Verses. But they won the war. Policy makers and arts administrators came broadly to accept the argument that it was morally unacceptable to cause offence to other cultures, and that every community possessed the right to be consulted over how it may be depicted. So I wrote in ‘Arts for whose sake?’, the keynote essay in Beyond Belief – Theatre Freedom of Expression and Public […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, Race & Immigration • Tags: behzti, exhibit b, free speech, index on censorship, offence, racism, rushdie affair

SCOTLAND, CLACTON AND THE POLITICS OF DISAFFECTION

September 26, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the first part of my latest column for the International New York Times, published under the headline ‘United Kingdom, Divided People’, on the fallout from the Scottish referendum. You can read the complete version in the INYT. Last week, Scotland voted to reject independence and to remain part of the United Kingdom. Yet — oh, the irony! — the greatest impact of the vote may be the fomenting of an English nationalism and the greater fragmentation of the Union. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: devolution, england, englishness, identity politics, national identity, nationalism, scotland, scottish independence, snp, ukip