by Kenan Malik
I gave a talk last year on ‘The history and politics of white identity’ to the Literarisches Colloqium Berlin. This is a video of the talk and the discussion afterwards.
Categories: Kenan Malik, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: democracy, enlightenment, haitian revolution, herder, identity politics, immigration, nouvelle droite, racial science, racism, talks, universalism, white identity, working cla
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on last week’s violence in Delhi, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece onaudiobooks) It was published on 1 March 2020, under the headline ‘The violence in Delhi is not a ‘riot’. It is targeted anti-Muslim brutality’. In August 1958, gangs of white youths began systematically attacking West Indians in London’s Notting Hill, assaulting them with iron bars and meat cleavers and milk bottles. One policeman reported a 300-strong mob shouting: ‘We will kill all […]
Categories: International, Politics • Tags: bjp, citizenship amendment act, delhi, hindu nationalism, india, kapil mishra, muslims, notting hill riots, racism, riots
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on how mainstream politics helps nurture far-right beliefs, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the costs of Jeff Bezos’ philanthropy) It was published on 23 February 2020, under the headline ‘Beware the politics of identity. They help legitimise the toxic far right’. ‘Hate is a poison that… is responsible for far too many crimes’, said the German chancellor Angela Merkel after the killing of nine people in a far-right terror attack […]
Categories: International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: afd, christopher caldwell, douglas murray, far right, germany, hanau, identity politics, racism, sam harris, terrorism, white identity
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on how responses to pandemics are shaped by more than medical needs, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on when Bonnie met Lozza.) It was published on 2 February 2020, under the headline ‘Locked-down Wuhan and why we always overplay the threat of the new’. ‘A major outbreak of novel, fatal epidemic disease can quickly be followed… by plagues of fear, panic, suspicion and stigma.’ So wrote the sociologist Philip Strong in […]
Categories: Politics, Science • Tags: coronavirus, culture of fear, ebola, epidemics, h1n1, pandemics, philip strong, quarantine, racism, sars, wuhan
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
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the Roger Scruton and his social philosophy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the conundrums of being a Liverpool supporter this season.) It was published on 19 January 2020, under the headline ‘The uncomfortable truths about Roger Scruton’s conservatism’. I first met Roger Scruton almost 20 years ago at a symposium in Sweden. I admired the eloquence with which he could talk about Kant and the elegance of his writing […]
Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: conservatism, david goodhart, edmund burke, enoch powell, eric kaufmann, homosexuality, immigration, liberalism, prejudice, racism, roger scruton, salisbury review, social, trade unions, working class
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the controversy over the funding of scholarship for white working class boys, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece onthe happiness industry.) It was published on 5 January 2020, under the headline‘Bursaries don’t help when it’s not their colour that thwarts these boys’. There is a scene in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in which one of the central characters, Saladin, finds himself incarcerated in a detention centre for illegal immigrants. Saladin […]
Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: british politics, education, race, racism, white identity, white privilege, white working class
by Kenan Malik
I have been involved in a long debate on Twitter with the writer and activist Thomas Fazi, which began with his critique of my article on social conservatism and the working class and ended as a debate about immigration and the left. The debate consisted of very long threads from both of us (the four threads amount to more than 5000 words!), and inevitably was Twitterish in form and tone, peevish and crabby at times, but it got to the […]
Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: blue labour, identity politics, immigration, labour party, left, national identity, nationalism, racism, social conservatism, thomas fazi, working class
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the changing character of anti-German chauvinism and the contested lines of Britain’s relationship to its past, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘We can mention the war. Should we now talk about Britain’s darker history?’ ‘I wonder if Kenan Malik is clear that the “Don’t mention the war” episode of Fawlty Towers is intended to make fun of the British obsession with the Second World War that he criticises?’ So wrote an […]
Categories: Britain, History, Politics • Tags: angela merkel, anti-german chauvinism, brexit, don't mention the war, far right, fawlty towers, germany, john cleese, nazism, nigel farage, peterloo, racism, richard tice, susan neiman
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the common features of immigration panics across the globe, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short tribute to the photographer Robert Frank.) It was published on 15 September 2019, under the headline ‘From India to Britain, every citizen is harmed by anti-migrant hostility’. In the Indian state of Assam, the authorities are building detention camps for ‘illegal immigrants’, most of whom are Indian citizens. In South Africa, hundreds of Nigerian workers have been airlifted home […]
Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-migrant violence, assam, bangladesh war of independence, bjp, cyril ramaphosa, immigration, immigration panics, india, muslims, narendra modi, national register of citizens, nrc, racism, south africa, windrush scandal, xenophobia
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the opioid crisis in America, its roots and its lessons, was published in the Observer on 1 September 2019 under the headline ‘America’s opioid catastrophe has lessons for us all, about greed and racial division’. (I have restored a couple of paragraphs that I had to remove for reasons of space in the Observer.) ‘We’ll build a wall to keep the damn drugs out.’ So insisted Donald Trump at a rally last year to launch the White […]
Categories: International, Science • Tags: big phrama, david herzberg, donald trump, free market, johnson & johnson, medicine, opioid crisis, pharmaceutical companies, purdue phrama, racism, usa, war on drugs, working class
by Kenan Malik
This essay, on the debate about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, racism and the monarchy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on children and happiness.) It was published on 25 August 2019, under the headline ‘Sure, defend Meghan Markle from racists, but let’s not bow to the monarchy’. Take a feudal relic. Add a splash of glamour. A pinch of wokeness. And a dash of hypocrisy. Stir in a lashing of racism. Squeeze out the […]
Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: duchess of sussex, elton john, Jameela jamil, left, meghan markle, monarchy, privilege, racism, royal family, vogue, wokeness
by Kenan Malik
I am away for a couple of weeks, so am posting little new material on Pandaemonium. I am taking the opportunity to publish some of those shorter pieces from my Observer column that I don’t normally post on Pandaemonium. Having said that, this short comment on the diversity of the Boris Johnson cabinet was published in the Observer on 28 July not as part of my weekly column but as part of a feature on the new Johnson government. ‘People seem to be disappointed that the […]
Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: boris johnson, british politics, diversity, priti patel, racism, sajid javid
by Kenan Malik
This essay was published in the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten on 21 July 2019. The shift has been dramatic. Even a decade ago, discussion of ‘white rights’ and ‘white identity’ belonged to the fringes of politics. It was Nazi-speak. Today it has become a major political issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Not just the far-right but many mainstream commentators now argue that whites should be able to assert what the political scientist Eric Kaufmann calls their ‘racial self-interest’. Why […]
Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: alain benoist, Class, eric kaufmann, identity politics, nouvelle droite, race, racism, white identity, working class
by Kenan Malik
Against the background of the debate about squalor and brutality of the USA’s immigrant detention centres – and whether they constitute ‘concentration camps’, a debate I might engage in sometime – it is worth remembering that America has a long history of mass detention camps. Among the most notorious were the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. ‘The Japanese race’, observed General John L DeWitt, head of the US Army’s Western Defense Command, and a key figure […]
Categories: International, Photos, Race & Immigration • Tags: concentration camps, dorothea lange, internment camps, japanese internment, linda gordon, mass detention, photography, racism, usa
