Pandaemonium

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB

August 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest monthly (and 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 Anti-Democratic Urge Astra Taylor, The New Republic, 18 August 2016 In reality, our political system is far less democratic than it was a generation ago. Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen unions crushed, welfare gutted, higher education defunded, prisons packed to overflowing, voting rights curbed, and the rich […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

ECHOES FROM THE PAST: CREATING THE UNDERCLASS

August 25, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Continuing the series of extracts from my books on the theme of historical fears of the masses and of democracy, this third extract from The Meaning of Race explores the late twentieth century ‘underclass’ debate, and what it tells us about the changing character of the perceptions of race and class. The Meaning of Race was published in 1996 and, to a degree, shows its age. It discusses issues specifically of that time; in the 20 years since, much of […]

Categories: Class, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: charles murray, conservatism, dangerous classes, elitism, liberalism, michael katz, poverty, race, racial science, the bell curve, underclass, working class

GOD-FEARING AND QUITE MAGICAL

August 21, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It may be the most God-fearing place in Britain. So strongly Presbytarian is the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides that it is said to be to be the last place in Britain where the fourth commandment – Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy – is observed in letter as in spirit. It is not just that virtually every shop and cafe and museum and sports hall and workplace closes its door. It is also that barely […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: isle of lewis, photography, scotland

ECHOES FROM THE PAST: THE RACIAL VIEW OF CLASS

August 18, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I am publishing through August on Pandaemonium a series of extracts from my books on the theme of historical fears of the masses and of democracy. This second extract (the first is here), from The Meaning of Race, is not about democracy as such but about how the Victorian elite saw class in racial terms (I have not included full references here, but they are in the book). When I wrote The Meaning of Race, I wanted to challenge conventional ways […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: harriet beecher stowe, henry mayhew, kenan malik's books, liberalism, race, racial science, slavery, working class

ECHOES FROM THE PAST: FEAR OF THE MASSES

August 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

A system in which ‘confidence tricksters, rich men, quacks may be given power by the votes of an electorate composed in great part of mental Peter Pans, whose childishness renders them peculiarly susceptible to the blandishments of demagogues and the tirelessly repeated suggestions of the rich men’s papers’. That could have been any number of contemporary commentators, from Richard Dawkins to Andrew Sullivan, expressing their fears about democracy after the Brexit vote in Britain or the rise of Donald Trump […]

Categories: Britain, History, Politics • Tags: aldous huxley, beatrice webb, crowd psychology, democracy, elitism, emile zola, fabians, freud, gustav lebon, liberalism, racial science, vilfred pareto, working class

THESE DAYS OF RAGE

August 10, 2016 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times, on the nature of contemporary terrorism. In the past, the distinction between political violence and sociopathic rage was relatively clear. No longer. There seems today almost a continuum between ideological violence, disjointed fury and some degree of sociopathy or mental illness. What constitutes ideological violence has decayed; instead, amorphous rage has become a persistent feature of public life. Read the full article in the International New York Times. […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: islamism, jihadism, terrorism

LINES AND SQUARES (NOT ALWAYS STRAIGHT)

August 7, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I rarely set explicitly out to photograph lines or shapes. But the images are often defined by them. Perhaps I only notice the lines and shapes around me when I later look at the photographs. Here, though, is a somewhat random collection of photos from over the years defined by lines and squares and other shapes. And I will leave you to work out where each is from.

Categories: Photos • Tags: photography

PLUCKED FROM THE WEB

August 3, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest monthly (and 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. . Donald Trump and the Myth of Mobocracy Robert Zaretsky, Atlantic, 27 July 2016 Terrorist bombs shattering lives and buildings. Waves of immigrants stirring popular fears and anxieties. Corruption and scandal staining the reputation of politicians. Commerce and industry convulsing amid dizzying and divisive change. Ambitious men with no political experience […]

Categories: Pandaemonium

AND IF MY THOUGHT-DREAMS COULD BE SEEN…

July 31, 2016 by Kenan Malik

‘A poet’s work’, he answers. ‘To name the unnameable, to point a frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.’ And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, then they will nourish him. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses And if my thought-dreams could been seen They’d probably put my head in a guillotine But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only. Bob Dylan, It’s alright Ma, I’m […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech, International • Tags: apostasy, ashraf fayadh, blasphemy, culture, palestine, poetry, saudi arabia

ON BREXIT, BORDERS, BEING OFFENSIVE (BUT NOT BEING IN A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE)

July 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave a long interview to Dutch journalist Marco Visscher about Brexit, migration, democracy, politics, being offensive, growing up in racist Britian, and not being in a Hollywood movie. It was published in the Belgian magazine Knack (and a shorter version in the Dutch paper Trouw). The interview has been translated from English to Dutch then (roughly) back to English, so may not read very coherently in places. I have edited it lightly. It was published in Knack under […]

Categories: Britain, Kenan Malik • Tags: anti-racism, brexit, british politics, cultural diversity, democracy, european union, free speech, immigration, left, populism, racism

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND ACADEMIC COWARDICE

July 22, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is in response to the decision of the University of Cape Town to ‘disinvite’ Flemming Rose, former cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten responsible for publishing the Danish cartoons, from giving this year’s TB Davie Lecture on Academic Freedom. Last year, I was honoured to be invited to the University of Cape Town to give the 2015 TB Davie lecture. It was a privilege to have been able to become part of the history that is the TB Davie lecture, a history of resistance […]

Categories: Academia, Free Speech, International • Tags: academic freedom, danish cartoons, flemming rose, free speech, islamophobia

TALKING MIGRATION, BREXIT AND HOSTILITY

July 21, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I took part last week in a ‘Talking Migration’ podcast with Rob Ford, Professor in Political Science at the University of Manchester, about the Brexit vote and the role within it of migration, and of hostility to migration. ‘Talking Migration’ is a podcast series produced by Clara Sandelind of the University of Huddersfield. (I sound in the podcast as if I’m standing in the middle of a cave and shouting – my apologies, I was obviously sitting in a highly resonant […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: brexit, british politics, europe, european union, immigration, racism, working class

ON DAVID CAMERON’S LEGACY

July 17, 2016 by Kenan Malik

The Observer today ran a series of short comments on David Cameron’s legacy. Here is my take (the original, not the Observer‘s cut version, which made a short comment even shorter). Had David Cameron not won an election he never expected to win, he might not have lost a referendum he never expected to lose. Had the 2015 general election produced a continuation of the Coalition government, as many, including Tories, expected, it is unlikely that there ever would have been […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, conservative party, david cameron

DEMOCRACY WAS NEVER INTENDED FOR DEGENERATES

July 13, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Consider the following quotes: I cannot doubt that our democracy will ultimately refuse consent to that liberty of propagating children which is now allowed to the undesirable classes, but the populace has yet to be taught the true state of these things. A democracy cannot endure unless it be composed of able citizens; therefore it must in self-defence withstand the free introduction of degenerate stock. . Francis Galton, Memories of My Life, p 311 . On the practicability or desirability […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, elitism, eugenics

IN BRILLIANT COLOUR AND IN ITS ABSENCE

July 10, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Two of my favourite contemporary photographers are Yener Torun and Damion Berger. Each transforms the way we look upon the world by using colour in almost opposite ways. Torun is not a professional photographer but an architect from Istanbul, whose work I have published before on Pandaemonium. His shots of Istanbul, usually taken on an iPhone, are of the city as few will have seen it, not the Istanbul of ancient buildings, grand mosques and tradition, but that of modernist […]

Categories: Photos • Tags: damion berger, photography, yener torun