Articles
The tyranny of woke capitalism
It often appears that CEOs of some of the largest global corporations have made the cause of the woke their own. Their willingness to join the fray was demonstrated in their response to the launching of GB News in the UK. No sooner was this new, independent news...
Why Boris failed
The Demise of Boris Johnson You could hear the army of cynical Eurocrats chuckle as Boris Johnson announced his resignation this week. Their reaction was summed up by the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, who said he ‘personally will not miss Johnson’, and that...
Joe Biden’s Woke Imperialism
Developing nations have had enough of the West’s lectures Talk of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turning into a proxy war between Washington and the Kremlin has ratcheted up in recent weeks. But there is another international conflict that already resembles a proxy war,...
The twilight of globalism
This anti-democratic ideology is unravelling before our eyes. Until recently, politicians, academics and journalists assumed that globalisation had rendered the nation state redundant. As they saw it, superior transnational institutions had displaced national forms of...
Ukraine In The Crosshair The Revenge Of History
It has all happened very, very quickly. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a little over two weeks ago, it has suddenly become painfully clear that the end of the Cold War did not mark the beginning of an era of permanent peace after all. For too long we have...
Ukraine and the new world disorder
The US and Russia are once again trying to decide the future of Europe. Seventy-seven years on, are we on the road to another Yalta?After all, it was the signing of the postwar settlement at Yalta in Crimea that led to the division of Europe between the Great Power...
Climate of fear erodes power to tackle real pandemic problems
These days, the language of catastrophism permeates public discourse. At times it seems that just about every serious problem facing the world is swiftly reframed as a threat to human survival. Numerous commentators insist the climate emergency is already costing...
Not even the Border Force believes in borders anymore
The people in charge of Britain have lost all interest in defending national sovereignty. Why was I not surprised to hear the outgoing head of the UK Border Force describe ‘bloody borders’ as ‘just such a pain in the bloody arse’? Because it has been clear for some...
The demonisation of Poland and Hungary
Pro-EU media are wrong to portray them as would-be dictatorships. In our polarised media landscape, myths and untruths can spread like wildfire. In the absence of discussion and debate, journalists today often end up cultivating parallel realities. They see what they...
The Culture War Against the Past
The mere hint that a point of view is outdated serves as a signal that it need not be taken seriously. It can be legitimately vilified and condemned. As a sociology professor, I often take note of how students, faculty, and administration speak about topics of...
Does the word ‘ladies’ make you feel unsafe?
The culture of safetyism on campus is becoming increasingly absurd There was a time when people who said ‘I feel unsafe’ were referring to a tangible threat. But not anymore. Take the students at Wolfson College, Cambridge, who have complained that they were made to...
The Trans Assault On Freedom
Gender ideology is not about liberation – it is about coercion and control. Transgenderism has emerged as one of the most influential ideologies of our time. It is shaping people’s behaviour and thought in pursuit of a specific political objective – the erosion of the...
100 years of the culture war
For almost two decades, I have been attempting to understand the origins and drivers of the culture war that has now engulfed the West. Many paint it as a continuation of the age-old conflict between left and right. But that is misleading. If anything, today’s...
They Are Coming For The Classics
Why am I not surprised to read the Welsh National Opera will run a series of lectures on Madame Butterfly to highlight issues of “imperialism and colonialism”? Because in recent years it has become increasingly fashionable to frame Western art and culture in a...
The classroom culture war
Saving education from the forces that wish to politicise it is one the most important cultural challenges of our time “My child has been told in a series of assemblies that she ‘has white privilege’, thatshe ‘subconsciously perpetuates it’, may even ‘consciously enjoy...
The culture war is real and it’s getting worse
Ignore the culture war denialists – we really are in the midst of an existential struggle over the future of society. Unlike the German Kulturkampf of the 19th century – the cultural conflict between Bismarck’s Kingdom of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church –...
ON THE LOCKDOWN LIFESTYLE
For almost half a century, fear has dominated the outlook of Western societies. One of the distinctive features of this outlook is the tendency always to think the worst. And it is this tendency that has exerted an all too powerful influence over policymakers and...
We dismiss the culture war at our peril
Unless we win the culture war, society will never meet the needs of ordinary people. Time and again, media commentators insist that the culture wars are a distraction from the big issues of our time, such as the cost-of-living crisis. They often argue that ordinary...
Who made woke capitalists gods?
When Scott Morrison raised the alarm about the rise of identity politics, was he thinking about its ascendancy in the world of business? For Australian corporations, like their competitors abroad, have decided that going woke is good for business. They are not simply...
Challenging Our Fatalistic Addiction to Safety
The aim of this essay is to explore the impact of contemporary safety consciousness on the reaction to threats like COVID-19 and, more generally, on the way society fears. It argues that in recent years, safety has been sacralised to the point that it has become a...
Trans Issues. A film censor to tell parents and children what they should think.
The British Board of Film Classification has stepped into the trans debate by highlighting five films for families to watch and discuss. But it’s not the job of an official censor to promote films that advocate certain ideologies. Who would have imagined that, one...
The Therapy Industry Invents Re-entry Syndrome
Watch out, fellow Covid inmates – our long-awaited liberation from house arrest may apparently cause anxiety, stress and ‘Reentry Syndrome’. Or is this all just another case of ‘Makee-Uppee Syndrome’? Why am I not surprised that mental health charities are now warning...
The free-speech crisis is not a right-wing myth
Too many on what passes for the left today are keen to dismiss the free-speech crisis in universities as a ‘right-wing myth’. They brush off the countless examples of censorship as overhyped. And they ignore concerns about the moral policing of dissenting views. In...
The making of a Covid mental-health crisis Scaremongering about the psychological impact of lockdown
It seems that the only legitimate grounds on which the UK government’s lockdown policy can now be criticised is that of mental health. Take the The Sunday Times this weekend. It featured an article about how Covid has spread an ‘epidemic of fear’ among the young, and...
Turning misogyny into a hate crime is a travesty of justice
By criminalising misogyny we accept the totalitarian idea of thought crime, because in a just society people are prosecuted for what they do, but not what they think. Have you noticed that we live in an age where a variety of different campaigns are constantly calling...
Cancelling national heroes makes us historically illiterate
A headteacher in England has confirmed he is erasing the names of significant historical figures from his school after a pupil complained. But this lack of respect for the past will cause major problems in future. You could not make it up! The primary school...
How ‘too white’ has become the meaningless default criticism of the morally superior elite determine
Everything from US states to the classics to British TV is now routinely criticised for being ‘too white’. How has this happened when describing something as ‘too black’ would be considered unacceptable? Have you heard of the expression ‘too white’? In the jargon of...
Incels – Be Careful Before You Call Them Terrorist!
I wince when I read when someone wants to promiscuously brand any group they don’t like ‘terrorists’. The recent calls to expand it to include the misogynist ‘incel’ movement are a perfect example of the term’s devaluation. Incels, are ‘involuntary celibates’ who...
We are Addicted To Addiction
The medicalisation of everyday problems – such as spending too much time on your phone – is stunting our development. It is creating a society of powerless ‘patients’ who refuse to take accountability for their actions. So, what are we to make of a recently published...
Even conspiracy theorists like David Miller must have freedom of speech
I don’t know what’s going on inside the head of Professor David Miller of Bristol University. I do know that he is a fantasist devoted to conspiratorial thinking. I also know he hates Israel, and Jewish people who take exception to his vile polemics against Zionism....
Classical Music Racist?
A scandal involving an obscure music journal confirms that the crusade against whiteness is out of control. In a world where, sooner or later, everything is racialised, it was only a matter of time before classical music became a target of the crusade against...
Big Brother comes to America
8 February 2021 Experts in the US are calling for the creation of a Reality Czar. They mean a Ministry of Truth. At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A writer for the New York Times was enthusiastically supporting a call made by ‘several experts’ around the...
No, the last days of Trump were not ‘just like Hitler’
For four years, commentators have triviliased the horrors of Nazi Germany to score cheap political points. Nothing demonstrates more clearly the exhaustion of mainstream politics and its vocabulary than its constant reference to Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust...
We need scepticism more than ever
Thanks to the Enlightenment, and the development of scientific thought and technology, the sceptical mind has largely been at home during the modern era. But not anymore, it seems.This is because the freedom of speech on which scepticism depends has come under...
Towards a fearless future
When governments the world over began imposing lockdowns in response to Covid-19 earlier this year, I was surprised by just how many people were comfortable with such measures. Nine months later, and little has changed. Millions, it seems, have learned to live in...
Democracy besieged
From anti-populists to environmentalists, too many regard democracy as an obstacle to their aims. When was the last time you came across a book whole-heartedly celebrating democracy? Or an op-ed saying we can trust people to make wise decisions about the future of...
We’ll soon have thought police exploring our private lives
Silence the wolf whistles, don’t say ‘you look lovely in lycra’ to that woman at the gym, and don’t tweet about transgender women not being real women. You could be breaking the law and be charged. Welcome to an Orwellian world where what you think about women, gays...
Trump’s war against the 1619 Project is a battle for the soul of America
President Trump is correct to call for patriotic history to be taught in US schools, instead of the 1619 Project. Slavery is a dreadful chapter in America’s past, but it does not tell the entire story. I have never seen the woke cultural establishment react to a...
The crusade against the Enlightenment
Edinburgh University has decided to take yet another step to distance itself from its most important intellectual legacy – the Scottish Enlightenment. It has decided to rename its David Hume Tower because some students claim that the 18th-century philosopher’s views...
Uma Guerra Civil Nos Eua?
A mídia recusa-se a noticiar o que é evidente aos olhos de seus espectadores, e intelectuais argumentam que “saques e protestos violentos são vivenciados como eventos alegres e libertadores” No verão passado, quando fiz uma viagem de carro com minha esposa pelos...
Identity politics is turning violent
One of the most disturbing and fascinating developments in contemporary public debate is the attempt to normalise looting. Since the outbreak of Black Lives Matter protests a few months ago, there have been various efforts to rehabilitate violence and looting as...
Is it now okay to kill people we find offensive?
The use of guns is becoming a common feature of the protests and violence raging in many parts of the United States. The way in which the Wisconsin city of Kenosha has been turned into a veritable warzone suggests that some people now see destructive behaviour as a...
Eight new rules for parenting post lockdown
Family rules and routines have been relaxed, or even abandoned, over the past few months. A parenting expert says it’s time for adults to take back control at home. Who won’t admit that lockdown has played havoc with the way we parent our children? For many families,...
The humiliation of Western history
The most important issue at stake in the culture war is who controls the narrative through which society understands itself. At present, those controlling the narrative appear to be committed to reorganising society’s historical memory, and disputing and...
The bonds that hold society together are breaking
Teaching children to ‘know their boundaries’ is a vital part of their education. This is because throughout the history of mankind, boundaries have played a key role in communities making moral distinctions between right and wrong. But increasingly today, those...
The culture war against the past
The cultural conflicts that have engulfed much of the Western world threaten to detach our societies from their past. Almost seamlessly the numerous disputes that have erupted over identity, race, gender and family life have reinforced one another and intermeshed. But...
An ideology without a name
In recent weeks, the Culture War has been widely discussed in the media. Yet there is a lack of clarity about what this conflict is about, who started it, and what are the issues at stake. Many activists targeting historical statues or calling into question the...
Give this wilful traitor an honest trial
Why is the UK more concerned about Shamima Begum’s citizenship than bringing her to justice? It is essential she faces a jury in a British court, so the public can fully understand why traiterous behaviour is unacceptable. I agree with the Court of Appeal’s ruling...
Why did the protests over George Floyd turn into mass hysteria?
A new culture of groupthink is emerging, and it is causing mass psychosis. One of the most distinctive things about the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests across the world is the speed with which they were endorsed by virtually every powerful institution and...
Yes Black Lives Matter, but we mustn’t allow being white to become the new original sin
Watching white people appease their racial guilt by begging for forgiveness from their black neighbours is unedifying. These quasi-religious shows of contrition will do little to solve injustice. Why do I feel like throwing up when I watch a group of white people...
The ceaseless culture war against Hungary
Western cultural elites despise Hungary because it refuses to play by their political rules. If you listen to the Western media, you might think that in the weeks following the outbreak of Covid-19 the government of Hungary had transformed itself into a brutal...
‘Safe Spaces’ Enjoying A Morbid Surge In Coronavirus
Not only are people retreating for their health, but many are using the virus as an excuse to create 'judgment-free' zones. n the Anglo-American world, where the idealization of a ‘safe space’ has gained widespread currency, living under quarantine conditions is far...
Parents, overcome your fears
Schools can't stay locked down forever. It's time for bravery and action. Survey after survey suggests that a significant section of the public fears the ending of the lockdown. Such anxieties are especially pronounced among parents, many of whom reacted with...
It’s a mask, not a flag! CULTURE WARS around Covid-19 protection are shameful
Apparently, whether you wear a mask is not simply a reaction to the coronavirus, but a visible statement about your identity and your politics. Some argue that wearing one differentiates you from uncaring men obsessed with their masculinity. Others insist that the...
Dystopian and disturbing: Big Tech censorship lumps together conspiracy loons and proper scientists
YouTube has set itself up as the world’s thought police over Covid-19 and is shutting down the voices of highly respected experts. This has dangerous consequences for us all, as scepticism and questioning gets us closer to truth. As far as YouTube is concerned, it is...
Why the government should not always ‘follow the science’
'Evidence' has been turned into a gospel truth and that's bad for political decision-making. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the word ‘evidence’ has turned into a quasi-religious concept. There are constant appeals to ‘the evidence’. We need more and more of it, we...
Elites who appease the baying mob’s apology addiction have stripped apology of all meaning
No sooner did Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, apologize to the black community for the killing of George Floyd than everyone felt they had to say sorry for the sins of their fathers, erasing the meaning of sincere apology. I’ve stopped counting the number of...
The birth of the culture wars
Many pundits and politicians seem to blame UK prime minister Boris Johnson for provoking the latest installment of the culture wars that now dominate Anglo-American public life. Sections of the media, from the New York Times to the Guardian, have claimed that Johnson...
The identitarians are winning the culture wars
spiked 12 June 2020 This is the second part of a two-part essay exploring the development of the culture wars. Read the first part here. Until recently, discussions about the culture war tended to be confined to the margins of public life. Often, academics and...
Are we allowed to call them riots?
I understand why so many Americans took to the streets after witnessing the slow, painful execution of George Floyd. A powerful sense of racial injustice, combined with concerns about the devastating impact that the Covid pandemic is having on African-Americans, gave...
Don’t sacrifice freedom at the altar of safety
It is clear that many people throughout Europe and beyond really fear the threat posed by the coronavirus. So much so that the vast majority have willingly abandoned their way of life, given up their rights and fundamental freedoms, and accepted a government-imposed...
Adversity begets brave new world
Disasters have a nasty habit of appearing from nowhere. They catch communities unaware, and people struggle to understand what a disaster such as COVID-19 really means. Finding meaning in an apparently meaningless threat to human lives has continually invited...
Covid-19: government can’t solve everything
Britain has gone into lockdown. Outwardly it seems that everything has changed. But the reality is different. The cultural patterns of the past continue to influence the way communities experience and respond to Covid-19. The response of government policymakers,...
Calling those who oppose Covid-19 measures #COVIDIOTS is just another tactic to shut down debate
People who raise doubts about the set up of a police state in response to Covid-19 are denounced as irresponsible idiots. But those who want to be locked down have no monopoly on wisdom, we must resist the locking down of debate. At first, I could not believe what I...
A disaster without precedent
Covid-19 is a disaster without precedent. Not primarily in terms of the disease itself, but in terms of how we have responded to it.The impact of Covid-19 on people’s lives and on economic, social and global relations, both now and in the future, is likely to be more...
For the green zealots, Covid-19 is our penance for sins against the planet
Green zealots want to turn the global catastrophe of Covid-19 into fuel for their alarmist extinction narrative. By blaming humanity’s impact on the planet for the outbreak, they hope to mobilize support for their cause. The hastily cobbled together green playbook on...
Covid-19: stop politicising the pandemic
Throughout history, humanity’s response to major disasters has been shaped by the prevailing attitudes of the day. Our views on the meaning of life, on human efficacy, and on how to manage uncertainty have all impacted on how we deal with severe crises. These...
Panicked politicians who want to be seen to be acting are the real danger of the coronavirus outbreak
It does not help that numerous psychologists are telling us ‘don’t let coronavirus tip society into panic’. As a sociologist with a professional interest in how fear works I can confirm that nobody decides to panic. People panic when the messages communicated to them...
How to win the campus free-speech wars
I became a university lecturer almost 50 years ago, in 1974. At that time in British higher education, there were occasional attempts to shut down discussion and limit freedom of speech. But the vast majority of academics and students were relatively open-minded, and...
Why identitarians can’t handle the Hindus
‘How did British Indians become so prominent in the Conservative Party?’, asked Neha Shah in the Guardian. It is a question many on the identitarian left like to ask. It is based on the assumption that something serious has gone wrong when 15 per cent of the cabinet...
The witch hunting of Daniel Kawczynski
The ease with which Daniel Kawczynski, the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury, was isolated and asked by officials of his party to apologise for something that does not need or deserve an apology is testimony to the power of the intolerant and illiberal ‘shut-down...
Some Islamists cannot be saved
Once again an act of terror has been committed on Britain’s streets by a convicted terrorist who had served only half of his sentence. Twenty-year-old Sudesh Amman, who was released from prison just under two weeks ago, must have laughed at the naivety of the British...
Coronavirus and the culture of fear
There is nothing unusual about the outbreak of a new virus. In fact, in recent years, such outbreaks have become almost normal. Avian flu in Hong Kong in 1997, the West Nile virus in New York in 1999, the MERS virus discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012, the outburst of...
Why young and old people need to mix
A few years ago, when I visited a well-known music venue in Nashville, Tennessee, I was struck by a feeling that there was something unusual going on in this place. It took a few minutes before I realised what was special about the venue: it was jam-packed with people...
Our right to free expression is in crisis – can we call ourselves a democracy if we don’t encourage
In this series, writers give their verdict on the previous decade and predictions for the next. Here, Frank Furedi reflects on the decade when no-platforming, cancel culture and trigger warnings took hold. Instead of policing speech in the 2020s, he says, a...
In 2020, we need to fight the new thoughtpolice
During the past decade, and especially this year, those in positions of influence have tried to change the narrative through which society understands itself. There is an insidious crusade afoot aiming at controlling what the public sees, hears, thinks and believes....
Why age is the new dividing line in politics
The General Election demonstrated yet again that the most important division in UK politics is between old and young. Survey after survey indicates that there is a stark difference in the voting behaviour of the generations. According to a recent YouGov survey, 56 per...
The Labour Party’s problem with Jews
As someone who is naturally suspicious about the idea that racism, xenophobia, homophobia and Islamophobia are on the rise, I felt sceptical towards the claim that anti-Semitism has become widespread in the Labour Party. But now my scepticism is waning. This looks...
Play ‘self-identity’, make yourself up as you go
Until recently only children were expected to play and pretend they were someone else — a scary lion, Alexander the Great or Superman. Now adults, too, can join in and get to decide how they want to be seen and identified. Britain’s Universities and Colleges Union has...
Roger Hallam’s insult to Holocaust victims
No doubt many people were appalled when they heard that Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, had told the German weekly die Zeit that there was nothing special about the Holocaust. He said genocides happen all the time. ‘In fact’, he said, ‘you might...
We need to talk about anti-Semitism
I felt genuinely spooked when I heard that gravestones in a 300-year-old Jewish cemetery in Rochester in Kent had been smashed just a few hours before Yom Kippur. I live close to Rochester, so I took this act of anti-Semitic vandalism a little personally. But what...
The war over words
The issue of language is becoming more and more acrimonious and controversial. Politicians are attacked not so much for their views and policies as for the words they use. And this new policing of language is not confined to politically motivated censors. Even the...
The gender-neutral attack on motherhood
I was genuinely shocked by the news that Freddy McConnell, a transgender man who retained his female reproductive organs and gave birth to a child, lost his High Court case to be registered as the child’s ‘father’ or ‘parent’. I wasn’t shocked because I disagree with...
Scaring children witless
‘Eco-anxiety’ has become the latest fashionable malaise. Apparently it is afflicting many children. That kids as young as four and five are feeling anxious about the climate is not surprising – after all, they are fed a diet of doomsday scenarios by the new...
John Locke and the new intolerance
The 17th-century philosopher, John Locke, is often described as the father of modern liberalism. Now a recently discovered manuscript titled ‘Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others’ (1667-8) suggests that he was actually more liberal and tolerant than...
The real lesson of the invasion of Poland
As politicians and pundits commemorate the 80th anniversary of the invasion of Poland, it is telling that there is more focus on this tragic event than ever before. Indeed the horrible events of the Second World War, and particularly the Holocaust, are now readily...
The turn against motherhood
There is a difference between an individual deciding not to have children and someone embracing the view that there is something inherently wrong with motherhood and giving birth to children. Individuals have always made choices about whether or not to have kids and...
Is disability the new normal?
Students in higher education are increasingly classified as either disabled or as suffering from mental-health issues. Disability on campuses has become the new normal and there is a growing demand for providing students with extra time to take exams or with an...
A global culture war
As far as the mainstream Western media are concerned, Vladimir Putin’s interview during the recent G20 summit with the Financial Times was nothing short of a provocation. The Russian president declared liberalism ‘obsolete’. He criticised Western liberalism as a tired...
Manufacturing anxiety
How the mental-health panic is messing up the next generation. We live in a world in which children and young people are constantly told they are at risk of mental illness. Report after report claims that an epidemic of stress, anxiety, depression and other ailments...
The right to criticise George Soros
Anyone who dares to criticise the billionaire speculator George Soros can expect to be denounced as an anti-Semite. So last week, when Roger Scruton spoke unkindly about Soros in an interview with the New Statesman, it was inevitable that sections of the media would...
Thierry Baudet: not your typical populist
The latest challenge to the European Union political oligarchy comes from the Netherlands, where Thierry Baudet and his Forum voor Democratie emerged as the main winner in last week’s provincial elections. What is remarkable about the FvD’s success is that this is the...
Don’t turn the Christchurch killer into Voldemort
I can totally understand why New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern stated that she will never utter the name of the Christchurch mass murderer. She declared in a statement to parliament this week that, ‘He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist....
A perpetual war of identities
Identity politics has been steadily growing in influence. Until recently, however, the promoters of identity politics tended to deny that they were adhering to an identitarian perspective. They often argued that ‘identity politics’ was an invention of the right –...
Why identity politics has been so bad for Jews
It is difficult to know what to make of anti-Semitism in the 21st century. Survey after survey indicates that it is on the rise, particularly in France and Germany. This trend is even noticeable in societies – like Denmark and Sweden – that were historically...
Competitive self-harm
It is difficult not to feel distressed and saddened by the death of Molly Russell. She is the 14-year-old British schoolgirl whose suicide has been widely reported in the media. News sources were quick to suggest that her death was directly or indirectly linked with...
Our age of anxiety
“We look upon our epoch as a time of troubles, an age of anxiety. The grounds of our civilisation, of our certitude, are breaking up under our feet, and familiar ideas and institutions vanish as we reach for them, like shadows in the failing dusk.” When, inspired by...
The crusade against masculinity
Toxic masculinity has emerged as the target of choice of many identitarians. That said, the term itself has almost become redundant, since masculinity itself is now increasingly framed as toxic, as a kind of poison. The recent entry of the term ‘toxic masculinity’...
Academics need courage, not anonymity
As a university professor and fervent advocate of academic freedom and free speech, I felt uneasy when I heard that an international group of academics is planning to launch a new journal that will publish anonymously written articles on sensitive topics. The...
Tragic that love of country is now off the syllabus
Sadly far too many people wish to ignore rather than remember the brave soldiers who fought to defend their country in the past. As we head toward the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, it is evident that our age-old ritual of Remembrance is often...
The politicisation of identity
Public life today is dominated by the politicisation of identity. The grand narratives of the age of ideology have given way to a cacophony of demands for validation from the latest cause-seekers to enter the marketplace of identities. So no sooner is white privilege...
Why I’m sceptical about stories exposing Russian antics
I must admit that when I listen to the news or read the papers, I struggle to know what to believe and what to ignore when it comes to Russia. I really don’t want to join the ranks of the conspiracy theorist so I decided to give the UK government’s version of what...
Who’s guiding our children?
Though I am not a Tory I was deeply unsettled when I heard Sion Rickard, a teaching assistant, declare on the podium of the Labour Party conference that if we give children a “proper education” they “wouldn’t vote for the Conservatives”. In case anyone missed his...
How ‘gender neutrality’ could screw up the next generation
At first sight, the call from Ann Millington, chief executive of Kent Fire and Rescue, to change the name of the children’s TV character Fireman Sam to Firefighter Sam seems trivial. But this is more than just a silly exercise in virtue-signalling. It also echoes and...
The toxic legacy of parent shaming – and the damage it does to children
Intensive parenting has become the latest target of parent shaming. Having been instructed to constantly supervise their children, parents are now being lectured about the dangers of doing just that. Those who “over-parent” their offspring are being denounced for...
The great jerk rice debate (what a waste of time!)
Poor old Jamie Oliver. He has unwittingly made the mistake of launching a new quick-cooking product titled Punchy Jerk Rice. If he had only called it Quick-Cooking Jamie Rice no one would have accused him of the newly invented sin of cultural appropriation. But...
Identity politics has conquered the Westminster bubble
Something strange has happened to British politics: more and more social and political grievances are being aired and conducted through accusations and counter-accusations of Islamophobia or anti-Semitism or some other form of prejudice. This ‘racism’ game seems to be...
The first culture war
As we mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War, it is clear that the moral wounds it inflicted on Western culture have not healed. Recent incidents, such as the rejection of Remembrance Day poppies by Cambridge University Students’ Union...
Why Labour has a problem with Jews
The attitude of certain sections of the British Labour Party towards Jews raises some important and difficult questions. One of the most striking things in this scandal is that the very term anti-Semitic has become the subject of controversy. In the post-Holocaust...
A war that begins in the nursery
Unlike the 19th century Kulturkampf associated with the name of Bismarck, those of today appear over apparently very small- outwardly non-political battles. They often focus on differences of opinion about the nature of family life, how children should be raised and...
‘The fear of populism is really a fear of the masses’
It often feels like we live in uniquely fearful times – a time of food scares, terrorism and a pervasive fear of the future. In politics, fear, we’re told, is the currency of the day – from the alleged fearmongering of populists to the Project Fear tactics of...
Gyáva lett a nyugati ember – Frank Furedi a Mandinernek
A mai nyugati ember szégyelli a kultúráját és fél a kihívásoktól – mondja Frank Furedi brit szociológus. A magyar származású tudós szerint noha sokan járnak egyetemre, kevés a valódi értelmiségi. A professzort az egyetemi oktatásról, a fiatalok neveléséről, a...
1968: The birth of the new conformism
From the standpoint of history, 1968 represents a brief interregnum. It did mark the end of the apathetic era of the 1950s. But it also foreshadowed the era of depoliticised conformism that kicked in in the early 1970s. To understand the meaning of 1968, one has to...
Stop this moral crusade against circumcision
The banning of male circumcision and the demonisation of religious freedom has become a cause célèbre among Europe’s moral entrepreneurs in recent years. Now, a group of parliamentarians in Iceland, supported by 422 doctors, has proposed a bill that would prevent...
A radical life
‘Everything seemed to come alive and everything seemed possible. It was a very defining experience in the sense that it made me feel that there is always an alternative.’ So says Frank Furedi, prolific author, commentator, academic, frequent contributor to these...
Review: Not safe, just absurdly soft
As if Australia Day isn’t dangerous enough for the culturally insensitive, we are now advised not to celebrate the Australian belief in mateship and the fair go. The language police at Macquarie University have declared these are dangerous stereotypes, generalised...
A revolt against deference
When political commentators talk of the emergence of a post-truth world, they are really lamenting the end of an era when the truths promoted by the institutions of the state and media were rarely challenged. It’s a lament that’s been coming for a few years now. Each...
Nincs szükség egy európai transznacionális birodalomra
Az EU-párti technokraták és értelmiségiek gyakran úgy tekintenek az évszázadok során kialakult európai hagyományokra és értékekre, hogy azok a 21. században egyrészt idejétmúltak, másrészt hogy több szempontból is problematikusak és hibásak – nyilatkozta az Origónak...
Campuses are breaking apart into ‘safe spaces’
The meaning of a “safe space” has shifted dramatically on college campuses. Until about two years ago, a safe space referred to a room where people — often gay and transgender students — could discuss problems they shared in a forum where they were sheltered from...
Paranoid parenting means university students are treated as kids
In the 21st century answers can range from 18 to 21 through to 26 and all the way up to the early 30s. Sociologists have invented an intermediate phase between childhood and adulthood, a stage of extended adolescence that is said to last until the late 20s. Once upon...
Don’t blame Corbyn for the rise of anti-Semitism
Suddenly, every critic of the Labour Party and especially its leader Jeremy Corbyn is holding forth on the scourge of anti-Semitism. According to Labour’s critics, Gerry Downing and Vicki Kirby, the two anti-Semitic activists expelled from Labour recently, show...
Operation Midland: Treating fiction as fact
Thankfully, it seems that Operation Midland, the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into an alleged establishment paedophile ring, has become so discredited that it will soon collapse. Over the past three years, we have seen a proliferation of police operations and...
The crusade against Ted Heath: Dancing on people’s graves
People are finally starting to express some serious concerns about the injustices committed by the British Inquisition Against Historical Cases of Sex Abuse. The tawdry spectacle of the child-protection industry, along with sections of the police and the media, trying...
No, it’s not ‘just like slavery’
Whenever someone declares, ‘it’s just like slavery’, it is useful to remind yourself that the only thing that is ‘just like slavery’ is slavery. Because of its highly charged association with human evil, the term slavery has been hijacked by numerous moral...
Mother loses child because of her beliefs
At first I thought that I had misread the report that a 7-year old boy had been taken away from his mother because a judge ruled that the youngster had been damaged by his mother’s religious beliefs! Judge Clifford Bellamy ruled that the boy had been damaged by the...
Why the Armenian genocide still haunts the world
The genocide inflicted on the Armenian people a century ago continues to haunt the world. Last Sunday, Pope Francis referred to the 1915 mass slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey as the ‘first genocide of the twentieth century’. He demanded that the global...
In defence of privacy
In the twenty-first century, the privacy of individuals, groups and institutions is continually being tested, by a variety of forces that seem determined to undermine it. Computer hackers threaten to uncover the most personal details about our lives. Reports of...
The real clash is within civilisations
The aim of this slim volume of essays, The Clash of Civilisations? The Debate: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, is to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Samuel Huntington’s controversial article, ‘The clash of civilisations’. It republishes the original article as...
Knee-jerk reaction as nuclear hysteria engulfs German society
Almost instantaneously the catastrophe that devastated Japan was transformed into an immediate existential threat to the German way of life. Now and again it was possible to hear expressions of sympathy for the Japanese victims of the earthquake, but such...
Possibilities for fear remain endless
In the contemporary vocabulary of public life, the term climate change signals the idea of an alarming threat, which in turn demands that something must be done immediately. This script is not used simply by environmentalists insisting that we adopt a low-carbon...
Japan: a catastrophe, not a disaster movie
The devastation unleashed by the mega earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last Friday is one of the greatest disasters the country has faced. Yet the Japanese refuse to respond as if they are two-bit extras in a Hollywood disaster movie. By all accounts, people...
Treating human beings as little more than carbon
Below a picture of 12 black babies, the caption warns: ‘Babies in Dakar, Senegal.’ Then, with a literary sigh of relief, the subtitle to the caption points out that a ‘cost analysis commissioned by [the Optimum Population Trust] claims that family planning is the...
New King Herods target babies as potential polluters
It is reported that the British government-sponsored Sustainable Development Commission believes that curbing peoples’ right to reproduce should be central to the fight against global warming. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the commission and is also a patron of the...
Why the British elite is so scared of babies
Most normal adults regard a new baby as an object of love and affection. Traditionally, a new life has been seen as a blessing, as a symbol of humanity’s hopes for a better future. Thankfully, many of us still think this way. Yet Western culture has also become prey...