Tag: racism

PANDEMICS THREATEN MORE THAN OUR HEALTH

February 3, 2020 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

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

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS ABOUT ROGER SCRUTON’S CONSERVATISM

January 20, 2020 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

WHITENESS, CLASS AND THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

January 6, 2020 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

IMMIGRATION AND THE LEFT – A DEBATE

January 5, 2020 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

THE SHIFTING LINES OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

October 14, 2019 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

THE QUESTION WE NEVER ASK ABOUT IMMIGRATION PANICS

September 16, 2019 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

THE OPIOID CRISIS AND THE EXPLOITATION OF PAIN

September 2, 2019 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

RACISM, MONARCHY AND PRIVILEGE

August 26, 2019 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

DIVERSE, PERHAPS, BUT NOT MODERN

August 3, 2019 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

WHITE IDENTITY AND WORKING CLASS POLITICS

July 27, 2019 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

MASS DETENTION – THE LAST TIME AROUND

June 29, 2019 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

SEEING WHAT WE WANT TO SEE

June 10, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how we often interpret the news through the lens of what we want to see, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 9 June 2019, under the headline ‘Fake news will thrive as long we are happy to see only what we want to see’. If a gorilla walked right in front of your eyes, you wouldn’t miss it, would you? Actually, half the country probably would. In a classic 1999 experiment, psychologists Christopher Chabris and […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Photos, Race & Immigration • Tags: assisted dying, central park five, christopher chabris, daniel simons, ethics, euthanasia, fake news, invisible gorilla experiment, noa pothoven, racism, usa, when they see us, wilding

WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK?

May 31, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the Bristol Festival of Ideas, 21 May 2019, as part of the Coleridge Series. ‘Who has the right to speak?’ It is the key question in debates around free speech. Who should be allowed to speak? What should be permitted to be said? And who makes the decision? Historically, the issues were relatively clear. Censorship was imposed from the top. Its aim was to deflect, contain or deem illegitimate any […]

Categories: Free Speech, War on terror • Tags: anti-terror laws, blasphemy, censorship, corporate censorship, fake news, free speech, gill valentine, hate speech, incitement laws, iqbal sacranie, muslim, offence, prevent, racism, self-censorship, social media, tariq modood, universities

DANNY BAKER, RACISM AND PUNISHMENT

May 13, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate around Danny Baker’s racist tweet, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on why we need poetry.) It was published on 12 May 2019, under the headline ‘We thrive on provocation. But are we too quick to punish those who stray?’. There was something shocking and absurd about Danny Baker’s tweet of a photograph of a posh couple with a costumed monkey in response to the arrival of the royal baby. You […]

Categories: Free Speech, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: bbc, danny baker, punishment, racism, social media

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