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A post-Covid world in the moral maze

Melanie, , ,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, the 30th birthday of the show and the last in the current series, we discussed morality in a post-Covid world (if there is ever to be such a world..!) To mark the occasion, the show used a novel format. Instead of having one proposition for debate, each of us four panellists proposed a moral principle or something else we had learned from the pandemic crisis that we thought was important for the future of our society. Tim Stanley said we needed to be…

Culture wars Jewish people 

The progressive world: an antechamber to evil

Melanie, , ,

After days of antisemitic rants on social media, the “Grime” rapper Wiley has finally been barred from Twitter and Facebook following outrage by Jews and others that he was allowed to use these platforms for his vicious incitement. This episode was particularly chilling. It involved a sustained onslaught of anti-Jewish invective by a prominent public figure who described Jews as “cowards and snakes,” likened them to the Ku Klux Klan and suggested they should be shot. He could do this with impunity because no one saw fit to stop him…

Holocaust Britain Jewish people 

Betraying Jewish history by watering down the Holocaust

Melanie, ,

In my JNS column below, I refer to a talk given by Baroness Deech. Her text is reproduced below my own article. The British baroness Ruth Deech, whose family were Jewish refugees from Nazism, recently delivered an impassioned address to the Oxford Jewish community about the way the Holocaust is being evacuated of meaning by memorials and museums in its name. Her concern was prompted by the controversial plan to build a Holocaust memorial and learning center in London’s Victoria Tower Gardens, a small park near the Houses of Parliament.…

Global conflict 

China’s persecution of its Muslim citizens

Melanie, , ,

I am pleased to see that the plight of the Chinese Uighurs, which I noted last year here and again here, is now finally on the public agenda having been ignored for so long. On Sunday’s BBC Andrew Marr Show, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, tried to claim the Uighurs were not being abused, even as he was shown video footage of shackled members of that community being herded onto trains. It is astonishing (or at least would be in any sane universe) that so-called progressives, who denounce…

Labour party antisemitism Britain Israel 

Why Starmer cannot succeed over antisemitism

Melanie, , ,

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has now sent its report on Labour antisemitism to the party leadership so it can register its response before publication. The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has said getting rid of the party’s Jew-hatred is his first priority. The big question, though, is whether he can do so even if he accepts all the commission’s conclusions. He drew many plaudits for sacking from his front bench Rebecca Long-Bailey, after she tweeted a link to an interview voicing a Jewish conspiracy theory. But other actions…

Culture wars Jewish people USA 

The Jewish surrender to the west’s eclipse of reason

Melanie, ,

Rarely has a journalist’s resignation from their newspaper created such an impact as the coruscating letter with which Bari Weiss resigned from The New York Times. The moral bankruptcy of that paper has been plain for years to the many who have been shocked by its substitution of propaganda for objective journalism on many issues, including Israel. What really horrified people was Weiss’s description of the way she was victimized by her colleagues for challenging the paper’s group-think. They singled her out for her support for Israel as a Jew,…

march Culture wars Videos 

The long march, and how to reverse it

Melanie,

I took part remotely in a discussion held in London by the New Culture Forum to discuss their new book, “The Long March: How the Left Won the Culture War and What To Do About It.” The first part of the title refers to the “long march through the institutions”, the strategy of achieving revolutionary change by infiltrating subversive ideas into all the cultural institutions of society and thus transforming it from within. As chairman Peter Whittle observed, however, it’s the latter part of the title that’s the most important…

Culture wars Jewish people 

What have the Jews ever done for us?

Melanie, , ,

I gave a talk to the sixth form and staff at London’s JFS school, under the title “What have the Jews ever done for us? The contribution of Judaism to western civilisation and modernity”. You can watch the talk here, and you can read an edited version below. What have the Jews ever done for us? The contribution of Judaism to western civilisation It’s an article of faith that religion and modernity are mutually exclusive. In one box, labelled modernity, are all the good things that we value: reason and…

appearance Audio Culture wars 

Groupthink in the moral maze

Melanie, ,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed “groupthink”, the term for opinions enforced by condign social pressure towards conformity. Those who don’t subscribe to this coerced consensus are being subjected to public denunciation, ostracism and dismissal from their jobs. As the Maze website puts it: “Those accused of this kind of ‘groupthink’ reject that criticism and believe that all public figures should be held accountable for their views. Once made public, they argue, those views can have a direct and adverse impact on people’s lives, so they become…

Culture wars 

Keir Starmer’s magical thinking

Melanie, , ,

We have now been treated to the absurd spectacle of the Labour party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, trying to wriggle out of supporting Black Lives Matter. Astonishingly, he and his deputy, Angela Rayner, were pictured “taking the knee” in support of the BLM demonstrators, regardless of the fact that their protests had given rise to violence against the police and attacks on the statues of historical figures in an attempt to erase Britain’s history and cultural identity. Tweeting this picture, Starmer wrote: “We kneel with all those opposing anti-black racism”.…