Tag: democracy

GRASPING DIVERSITY, EMBRACING DEMOCRACY

March 5, 2017 by Kenan Malik

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York . This is the keynote talk I gave at the 2017 Karlsruhe Dialogues on ‘The Pluralistic Society and its Enemies’ on 4 March 2017. It was entitled entitled ‘Can Diversity Embrace Democracy? Can Democracy Acknowledge Diversity?’ If there are two issues that define contemporary political debate, they are those of diversity and democracy. From the migration crisis to radical Islam to multiculturalism, fears about the consequences of […]

Categories: Multiculturalism, Politics • Tags: Class, cultural diversity, democracy, diversity, edmund burke, europe, identity politics, left, working class

A CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY OR OF LIBERALISM?

January 4, 2017 by Kenan Malik

I reworked my essay ‘From the End of History to 2016’ for Sunday’s Observer, developing the theme of the tension between liberalism and democracy, and of the distinction between the ‘politics of solidarity’ and of the ‘politics of identity’. It was published in the Observer under the headline ‘Liberalism is suffering but democracy is doing just fine’, and was slightly edited down from this original version. Welcome to 2017. It will be just like 2016. Only more so. This will be […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, far right, front national, geert wilders, identity politics, left, liberalism, marine le pen, populism, solidarity, working class

IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

October 24, 2016 by Kenan Malik

This is an extended version of the talk I gave at a debate on freedom of movement at the Battle of Ideas conference in London on Saturday. The default position, in discussions such as this, is that immigration controls are the norm and that those advocating free movement have to justify what is seen as an outlandish position. I want to turn this claim on its head. In any public space, humans have, or should have, the right to move as they […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: democracy, european union, freedom of movement, immigration, immigration controls, open borders, refugees, sovereignty

ECHOES FROM THE PAST: DEMOCRACY AND PLATO’S REPUBLIC

August 31, 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. The granddaddy of all philosophical arguments against democracy originates in Plato. This is an extract from The Quest for a Moral Compass exploring Plato’s dialogue The Republic, which discusses Plato’s views on the problems of democracy. . Plato’s Republic From The Quest for a Moral Compass, pp25-30 All humans divide naturally, in Plato’s eyes, into […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: democracy, greek philosophy, plato

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

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

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

BEYOND THE BREXIT DEBATE

June 21, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Whatever the result of the Brexit referendum on Thursday, of one thing we can be sure: Britain will neither be invaded by marauding Turks, as anti-EU campaigners suggest might happen if the country votes ‘Yes’, nor will Western civilization collapse, as EU president Donald Tusk fears after a ‘No’ vote. There will undoubtedly be economic and political turbulence, but Britain will not be staring into the abyss, however it votes. But, if the world will not end for Britain, neither will the […]

Categories: Britain, International • Tags: boris johnson, brexit, british politics, democracy, european union, fortress europe, labour party, migration crisis, populism

THE BROKEN RAINBOW: THOUGHTS ON SOUTH AFRICA

September 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

These are some initial thoughts on the current state of South Africa, and how it has arrived at this point, emerging from various discussions I had with activists and academics while I was out there. I write, of course, as an outsider. But sometimes an outsider’s perspective can be quite useful, especially as I’ve engaged with many of issues at the heart of South African politics – such as race, class, identity, social change – though in a different context. […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: anc, apartheid, democracy, freedom struggles, identity politics, jacob zuma, nelson mandela, nonracialism, racism, south africa

A BROTHERHOOD INQUIRY IN BAD FAITH

April 22, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my latest column for the International New York Times is on David Cameron’s inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood. The full version I will publish on Pandaemonium next month. Imagine that an elected president is ousted by the military. That the president’s party is declared a ‘terrorist’ organization. That dozens of protesters are shot in the streets, thousands of people imprisoned and hundreds sentenced to death. How should a liberal democracy respond? Presumably, by condemning the coup, denouncing the violence […]

Categories: Britain, International • Tags: arab spring, britain, democracy, egypt, islamism, muslim brotherhood, saudi arabia, war on terror, western policy

THE ROYAL MINT

March 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my New York Times essay on the funding of the British royal family that, in some quarters at least, caused considerable outrage. The British queen is down to her last pennies. Well, actually, her last millions of pennies. Last month, the Public Accounts Committee — Parliament’s watchdog on public spending — published a damning survey of the state of the royal finances. The queen had spent down her ‘reserve fund’, essentially a savings account built up […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: austerity, britain, democracy, monarchy

THE MANY SHADES OF UKRAINE

March 12, 2014 by Kenan Malik

When is an invasion not an invasion? When is sovereignty not sovereignty? When is an unelected regime more legitimate than an elected government? The answer, it seems, is when we are discussing Ukraine. The crisis in Ukraine has swiftly turned into a global stand-off. It has also become the focus for a war of words about the meaning of freedom, democracy, legitimacy and sovereignty. For many in the West, Russia’s operations in Crimea bear comparison to Hitler annexation of the […]

Categories: International • Tags: crimea, democracy, european union, far right, russia, ukraine, vladimir putin, western policy

BEYOND THE VOTE

January 2, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Two key elections are likely to dominate much political debate this year. The contrast between them helps throw light on the meaning of democracy. Later this year, between April and June, South Africans will go to the polls in the first elections of the post-Mandela era. Ever since South Africa’s first democratic poll in 1994, elections in the country have been defined less by political issues than by race and party loyalty. Blacks have overwhelmingly supported the ANC; whites have […]

Categories: Britain, International, Politics • Tags: democracy, marikana, nelson mandela, scotland, scottish independence, south africa

TYRANNY IS ALWAYS TYRANNY, WHOEVER MAY BE THE TARGET

August 1, 2013 by Kenan Malik

When, on 3 July, the Egyptian army ousted President Mohammed Morsi, and took control of the nation, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as a coup but as the military acting on behalf of the people to protect the revolution. When the army imprisoned Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, censored its media and suspended the constitution, many liberals and secularists rationalized it not as an authoritarian crackdown but as measures necessary to check the ambitions of the Brotherhood and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: arab spring, arab world, democracy, egypt, freedom struggles, muslim brotherhood, tony blair, western policy

THE ENLIGHTENMENT – AND WHY IT STILL MATTERS

May 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

‘If I knew something useful to me, and harmful to my family, I would reject it from my mind’, the French Enlightenment philosophe Montesquieu famously wrote. ‘If I knew something useful to my family and not to my country, I would try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my country, and harmful to Europe, or useful to Europe and harmful to Mankind, I would look upon it as a crime’. Montesquieu’s sentiment expresses, for Anthony Pagden, the […]

Categories: History • Tags: aquinas, cosmopolitanism, democracy, enlightenment, european union, hobbes, human nature, jonathan israel, morality, radical enlightenment, universalism