Tag: working class

RADICALIZATION IS NOT SO SIMPLE

October 7, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my talk entitled ‘The Making of European Jihadis’ that I gave to the International Institute at the University of Michigan this week. (I have not had time to put in the links and references; I will do so soon.) Ifthekar Jaman was born in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, one of four children. His parents, Enu Miah and Hena Choudhury, were first generation immigrants from Bangladesh, who had come to Portsmouth in 1981, opened […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, War on terror • Tags: europe, france, identity politics, islam, islamic state, islamism, jihadism, left, multiculturalism, racism, radicalization, working class

MARX AND MORALITY

April 26, 2015 by Kenan Malik

To accompany the newly-published paperback edition of The Quest for a Moral Compass, I am running a series of extracts from the book. Previous extracts were on Joshua Greene’s idea of two modes of moral thinking and on whether universalism is merely a form of Western particularism. This extract, from Chapter 13, ‘The challenge of history’, examines Marx’s claim to be a moral thinker. You can buy The Quest for a Moral Compass in most bookshops, through Amazon or from […]

Categories: History of moral thought • Tags: anti-capitalism, capitalism, communism, hegel, history of moral thought, left, marx, marxism, morality, working class

TO SEE BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES

April 5, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 5 April 2015, under the headline ‘Diversity and immigration are not the problem. Political courage is…’ Two events this week, some 2000 miles apart, captured the fraught character of the current debate about multicultural Britain. On Wednesday, nine Britons from Rochdale were arrested in Turkey, apparently as they tried to cross the border into Syria. One was the son of a local Labour councilor Shakil Ahmed, who said he was ‘shocked’ to hear […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, diversity, identity politics, immigration, islam, islamism, multiculturalism, muslims, ukip, working class

THE FAILURE OF MULTICULTURALISM

February 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This is an essay about multiculturalism in Europe that I wrote for the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, which has a series of features on ‘The Trouble with Race’. 1 Thirty years ago, many Europeans saw multiculturalism – the embrace of an inclusive, diverse society – as an answer to Europe’s social problems. Today, a growing number consider it to be a cause of them. That perception has led some mainstream politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron […]

Categories: Britain, International, Multiculturalism, Race & Immigration • Tags: assimilationism, britain, british asians, europe, france, germany, handsworth riots, identity politics, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism, turkish migrants, working class

ISLINGTON WOMAN AND WHITE VAN MAN

December 23, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on British politics and public attitudes to immigration published last month in the International New York Times under the headline ‘A Collision with “White Van Man”‘. Rarely can such an unremarkable photo have such heavy political repercussions. Last Thursday, a senior Labour Party member of Parliament, Emily Thornberry, tweeted a photo of a terraced house in Rochester, Kent. It showed three flags of England draped across the facade and a white van […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, immigration, labour party, racism, ukip, working class

WHITE VAN MAN AND CAR CRASH POLITICS

November 28, 2014 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for the International New York Times is on the furore created in Britain by Emily Thornburn’s tweet, and what it tells us about British politics. Published under the headline ‘A Collision with “White Van Man”‘, here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full version in the INYT. Rarely can such an unremarkable photo have such heavy political repercussions. Last Thursday, a senior Labour Party member of Parliament, Emily Thornberry, tweeted a photo of a house […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: british politics, labour party, racism, ukip, working class

THE WRONG KIND OF PANIC

November 10, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my preface to the book on European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate, here is the talk I gave to the discussion about populism at the European Parliament last week, organised by the European Liberal Forum and Fores. The context of this discussion is not just the rise of groups such UKIP in Britain, the Front National in France, the Sweden Democrats, but also the panic about it within mainstream circles. And if there is one […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, europe, immigration, left, populism, racism, ukip, working class

POPULISM: WHAT, WHY, HOW?

November 5, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is my preface to a new book on European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate. Edited by Clara Sandelind, and published by the European Liberal Forum and Fores, the book brings together many contributors including Matthew Goodwin, Mikael Hjerm, Andrea Bohman, Jamie Bartlet, Meindert Fennema, Sjoerdje van Heerden and Sarah de Lange. It is launched today at a roundtable discussion at the European Parliament and available free online from the ELF or Fores. Preface to European Populism and Winning the Immigration […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: europe, front national, identity politics, immigration, left, populism, racism, ukip, working class

AS I WAS SAYING ABOUT UKIP…

October 11, 2014 by Kenan Malik

The debate abound UKIP swirls unabated after its success in winning the Clacton by-election from the Conervatives, and in almost winning Heywood and Middleton from Labour. There remains considerable confusion about the nature of the UKIP phenomenon (the clarifying work of academics such as Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford has been useful here). There is even greater confusion over how to challenge it. I have been writing about UKIP and immigration for a while now. So I thought I would pull together […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, immigration, populism, racism, ukip, working class

IF ONLY SHE HAD READ MY ESSAY FIRST…

March 27, 2014 by Kenan Malik

On Monday my essay ‘In Defence of Diversity’ – which exposes the hollowness of contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric, and places it in historical context – won the 3 Quarks Daily 2014 essay prize. And on Monday, the Times’ new columnist Melanie Phillips – my old colleague from the days when I was a panelist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze – published a polemic trying to claim the progressive ground for critics of mass immigration. Her arguments are familiar – […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-semitism, british politics, david goodhart, fortress europe, immigration, liberalism, melanie phillips, muslims, racism, working class

IN DEFENCE OF DIVERSITY

November 25, 2013 by Kenan Malik

There has recently been built in Merton in south London a ‘mega mosque’ that has inevitably become the focus of much controversy. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart, director of the centre-left think tank Demos, takes the mosque as symbolic of the unacceptable change that immigration has wrought upon the nation. The mosque, he writes, ‘replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles — an icon […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: christopher caldwell, cultural diversity, david goodhart, fortress europe, identity politics, immigration, jews, lampedusa, paul collier, racism, robert putnam, working class

THE LONDON DIFFERENCE

October 30, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of my essay on London and immigration policy that was published las month in the International New York Times (I could not contractually published it on Pandaemonium till now). Not so long ago there was a beer commercial on British TV in which two pointy-headed aliens order a pint in a rural pub. ‘Up from London, are we?’, the barman asks politely. If the rest of Britain often views London as a planet from outer space, […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: boris johnson, british politics, david cameron, immigration, london, working class

THE NOT-SO-SECRET HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

October 20, 2013 by Kenan Malik

This is a coda to my review of Paul Collier’s book Exodus. In Exodus, Collier makes a case for restrictions on immigration, from the perspective both of the countries of origin and of the host countries to which they migrate. In my review I questioned the moral and social arguments that Collier employs to justify his arguments, and suggested that ‘there is often a chasm between that evidence and Collier’s more contentious arguments’, while many of his policy prescriptions ‘are […]

Categories: History • Tags: capitalism, eric williams, frantz fanon, imperialism, paul collier, poverty, progress, racism, robin blackburn, slavery, working class

REFLECTIONS ON UKIP – AND ON REFLECTIONS ABOUT UKIP

May 9, 2013 by Kenan Malik

A week on from the local elections, and there seems to be no end to the debate about UKIP’s success. Explanations fall into two broad categories. Some insist that UKIP garnered merely a temporary midterm protest vote. Others see Nigel Farage’s outfit as a lasting threat to which the main parties must respond by adopting more hardline policies, especially on Europe, immigration and welfare. Both views are right. And both are wrong. UKIP does draw the protest vote. But the […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, conservative party, european union, immigration, labour party, racism, ukip, working class

IMMIGRATION AND LOSS

April 26, 2013 by Kenan Malik

On Saturday I reviewed David Goodhart’s book The British Dream which explores, in the words of its subtitle, the ‘successes and failures of post-war immigration’. Goodhart, I suggested, ‘touches on some of the critical issues that we face today’. But ‘his insistence on seeing contemporary problems primarily through the lens of immigration only obscures those issues and makes it more difficult to formulate adequate responses’. Goodhart responded to that review, suggesting that my attempt to marry a critique of multiculturalism […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british politics, Class, david goodhart, debates, immigration, labour party, multiculturalism, working class