Tag: populism

FROM REFERENDUM TO BREXIT (WELL, SORT OF)

February 1, 2020 by Kenan Malik

So, farewell then, EU. Well, sort of. Almost four years ago, on the eve of the 2016 referendum , I wrote about why, whatever the result, the underlying issues would not be addressed: But, if the world will not end for Britain, neither will the key issues at the heart of the Brexit debate have been resolved – or even properly addressed. Hostility to the EU, not just in Britain, but throughout Europe, has been driven by frustrations about democracy and […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: brexit, british politics, immigration, labour party, left, populism, racism, working class

INDIAN LESSONS FOR GLOBAL STRUGGLES

January 14, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the turmoil in India and its lessons for the rest of th world, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on conservative snowflakes.) It was published on 12 January 2020, under the headline ‘It’s tempting to see India as a place apart. But it offers lessons for us all’. It’s the ‘largest democracy in the world’. It’s also one of the most fragile, one in which dissent has often been curtailed and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: bjp, citizenship amendment act, congress party, hindu nationalism, hinduvta, india, populism

IN DEFENCE OF UNIVERSALISM

May 3, 2019 by Kenan Malik

. . This is an interview with Alex Hochuli, George Hoare and Ben Fogle for the podcast Aufhebunga Bunga, mainly on questions of immigration, identity, class and the left (though it opens with a discussion of the aftermath of the Notre Dame fire). . The image is Untitled by Hans Hartung.

Categories: Class, Kenan Malik, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: culture, europe, identity politics, immigration, left, notre dame, populism, white identity, white working class, working class

IMMIGRATION, INTEGRATION AND SOCIAL FRACTURE

April 29, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on whether the failure to integrate is responsible for social fracturing in European societies, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Roger Scruton debate.) It was published on 28 April 2019, under the headline ‘Talk of integration is a sideshow in a society where many feel unheard’. Uncontrolled migrant flows have made many in Europe more hostile to immigration. The failure of migrants to integrate has helped create more fractured societies and exacerbated […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: bene sagvari, britishness, distrust, europe, european social survey, fear, immigration, integration, migration crisis, populism, social fragmentation, tony blair, trust, vera messing

POSH MAY BE PASSÉ BUT CONTEMPT IS NOT

December 31, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on changing attitudes to class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on cookery books.) It was published in the Observer, 30 December 2018, under the headline ‘Posh is so passé – today’s elite prefers the myth of the meritocracy’. I’m not posh,’ an irate David Dimbleby told the Today presenter John Humphrys. ‘I come from Wales, as you do.’ Dimbleby, who this month stepped down as host of BBC’s Question Time, was being interviewed by Humphrys, […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: brexit, Class, david dimbleby, david runciman, democracy, donald trump, education, elite, elitism, meritocracy, michael young, populism, poshness, privilege, richard dawkins, technocracy, upper class, working class

THE EU AND THE ITALIAN JOB

December 17, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the confrontation between the EU and Italy over the Italian budget, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the nature of public debate.) It was published in the Observer, 16 December 2018, under the headline ‘Europe’s merciless treatment of Italy only hardens popular resentment’. A standoff with EU officials. Ministers flying to Brussels to negotiate last-minute deals. Cries of betrayal at home. Dark warnings of economic calamity and social unrest. No, […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: austerity, democracy, european union, far right, five star movement, italy, lega, matteo salvini, ms5, populism

LOOKING CLOSER TO HOME

June 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my opening keynote talk at the ‘Dehumanising the Other’ conference at the CEU in Budapest. It was called ‘Looking Closer to Home: How mainstream politics paved the way for the demonization of migrants’. A shorter version of the talk was published as the Sunday essay in the Observer on 10 June 2018. In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Some 300 people drowned. It was not the first […]

Categories: International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: africa, britain, emmanuel macron, european union, far right, fortress europe, greece, immigration, italy, lesbos, liberalism, populism, racism, theresa may, victor orban, windrush generation

THE WORKING CLASS, IMMIGRATION & THE LEFT

March 11, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay was the main part of my Observer column this week. (The column included also a shorter piece on sports and ethics.) It was published in the Observer, 11 March 2018, under the headline ‘Aping populist attacks on migrants is not a winning strategy for the left’. On Christmas Eve 1980, Paul Mercieca, the communist mayor of Vitry, near Paris, led a gang of 60 men, mainly Communist party supporters, in a ‘direct action‘ to stop 300 Malian immigrants from […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: communist party, immigration, left, pcf, populism, working class

POPULISM AND IMMIGRATION

October 5, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk given to the European School of Politics in Istanbul, 30 September 2017. It pulls together many of the themes of which I have written in recent years. The obvious point of departure for a talk on populism and immigration is last week’s German elections. The election took place under the shadow of the European Union’s migration crisis and the debate about Angela Merkel’s refugee policies. Merkel was retuned to power for a fourth […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: afd, brexit, class identity, european union, francis fukuyama, germany, identity politics, immigration, left, migration crisis, populism, refugees, social democracy, solidarity, spain, 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

FROM THE END OF HISTORY TO 2016

December 29, 2016 by Kenan Malik

© Art Projects International; Courtesy of artist and Art Projects International, New York . ‘What we may be witnessing is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.’ So wrote Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1989 essay ‘The End of History?’. ‘With the fall of the Soviet Union’, Fukuyama continued, ‘The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide […]

Categories: Politics • Tags: 2016, end of history, francis fukuyama, identity politics, left, managerialism, populism, working class

‘I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK’

October 27, 2016 by Kenan Malik

‘I don’t recognize my country’. ‘I want my country back’. These have for many years been the sentiments of those opposed to immigration into Britain. Immigrants, so the critics claim, have taken over ‘our’ country, turning cities into mini-Kingstons or little Lahores, creating, in the words of David Goodhart, former director of the centre-left think tank Demos, ‘an England that is increasingly full of mysterious and unfamiliar worlds’. Or, as the Oxford University demographer David Coleman, a vocal opponent of mass migration, put […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: brexit, david runciman, eu referendum, european union, immigration, populism, racism, 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

BRITAIN, EUROPE AND THE REAL CRISIS

June 29, 2016 by Kenan Malik

The decision by British voters last week to leave the European Union has brutally exposed two features of contemporary British politics. The first is the depth of popular disaffection with mainstream political institutions. The second is the paralysis of the political class in the face of this disaffection. The Brexit victory was buttressed by a coalition of disparate social groups. Traditional Conservative supporters in the shires and the suburbs have long been suspicious of the European project. Few were surprised […]

Categories: Britain, International, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, europe, european union, far right, front national, left, populism, ukip, working class

THE REVOLT OF THE FRAGMENTS

June 25, 2016 by Kenan Malik

It was, without question, a bloody nose for the political establishment, the biggest it has received for decades. And many have read the unexpected success of the Leave camp in the British EU referendum straightforwardly as a revolt against the political class and as a victory for democracy. Yes, it was a revolt against the political class in London and in Brussels. But the referendum result was also far more complicated than that. The anti-EU sentiment was not UK-wide. It […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, eu referendum, european union, labour party, left, populism, scotland, solidarity, working class