Britain Culture wars 

We’re giving in to the race revolutionaries

What is even more shocking than the violent disorder on Britain’s streets over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis is the spineless reaction by those in authority. Many police officers have been injured, the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square vandalised, and a flame held to the Union Jack on the Cenotaph. In Bristol, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston was pulled down and thrown into the harbour. Superintendent Andy Bennett of Avon & Somerset police said: “While I am disappointed that people would…

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Europeans lose minds and moral compass Culture wars Jewish people 

How racist “victim culture” tears up Jewish moral norms

The appalling rioting that followed the shocking death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer has left a trail of devastation across America. Once again, however, Jews have found themselves singled out for particular attack. In Los Angeles, Jewish-owned stores and synagogues in Beverly Hills and the heavily orthodox Fairfax district were looted and defaced with anti-Jewish graffiti. How could this Jew-hatred have occurred in what was repeatedly described as “protests” against racism? And why were so few Jewish voices raised against either this or the general…

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Britain Culture wars 

Kneeling to surrender British and western values

When people in London demonstrating over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis shouted at police guarding the Downing Street gates “take a knee”, four Metropolitan Police officers meekly got down on one knee as demanded. Last night, hundreds of people around Britain came out onto the streets at 6pm, in the coordinated demonstration suggested by “Stand Up to Racism” activists, and all sank to one knee. The death of George Floyd after more than eight minutes pinned down on the ground by a police officer kneeling on his neck…

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migrants Britain Culture wars 

Britain has lost the plot on migrant crossings

With Britain’s attention distracted by the virus emergency, migrants have been redoubling their efforts to breach the country’s border defences by arriving in small boats from across the Channel. Their numbers have now reached record levels. At least 1,085 migrants have arrived on British shores since lockdown started, compared with 1,890 for the whole of 2019. Far from turning these illegal migrants back, UK Border Force vessels escort them into British ports. Even worse, as Nigel Farage has been protesting, French patrol boats escort them carefully from French to British…

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culture wars Britain Culture wars 

Even coronavirus can’t kill our grievance culture

Optimism has been expressed in some quarters that our poisonous culture wars will fade away under the impact of a global emergency with real victims and real heroes. So how’s that playing out? Not terribly well. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, the ship that sailed from Plymouth for the New World bearing 102 Puritans fleeing religious persecution in England to start a new life. Commemorations are being organised by Mayflower 400, a UK-wide body that has created a variety of resources to enable…

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lockdown Audio Coronavirus Culture wars 

Lockdown, liberals and literature: NZ podcast

While under lockdown in Jerusalem, I took part in a podcast with New Zealand broadcaster Leighton Smith. We discussed my personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, of which he was kind enough to say :”It leaps off the page with an immediacy and relevance that few books achieve”. We discussed Israel’s measures against Covid-19, and how its use of data technology in this effort wouldn’t be tolerated in Britain even though the evidence is that it has helped Israel achieve far greater success in saving lives from the effects of…

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Pope Culture wars 

Is the Pope a pagan?

The observations by Pope Francis on the coronavirus pandemic published in The Tablet are startling. They reveal with unusual sharpness just what kind of person currently heads the Catholic church. Asked whether the economic devastation wrought by the virus was a chance for an ecological conversion by reassessing priorities and lifestyles, the Pope replied: “There is an expression in Spanish: ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives.’ We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18…

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Britain Culture wars 

Why so many “experts” make such disastrous errors

If you want to discover why so many of our experts are getting things so terribly wrong, Giles Fraser’s interview on Unherd’s “Confessions” with the former Bank of England governor, Lord King, is essential listening. King asks what it means to be rational in an age of deep uncertainty. Many experts, he says, have come to believe that mathematical calculations and computer modelling provide us with an authoritative representation of reality. This is hopelessly wrong because such calculations can never encompass the uncertainties that help form human behaviour. Yet these…

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Culture wars Global conflict Israel 

How the virus exposes magical thinking and short-term greed

The coronavirus emergency has affected virtually the entire world. In the west, it has brutally exposed the effects of a cultural characteristic that is as amoral as it is self-destructive. There is a refusal to face reality and the difficult choices it often requires, taking refuge instead in magical thinking and short-term greed. It’s a characteristic that has made victims of Israel and the Jews, along with many other people. In the current crisis, the west is paying the price of pretending that China’s communist regime does not represent a…

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Phillips Britain Culture wars Jewish people 

What will Jewish leaders say about Trevor Phillips?

The veteran anti-racist campaigner and former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, has found himself accused by his own Labour party of Islamophobia. The case is grotesque. Phillips has done much for British Muslims. And none of the accusations against him meets any reasonable test of bigotry. His allegedly “Islamophobic” comments are for statements over issues such as the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, or polling which found that a quarter of Muslims were “sympathetic” to the aims of the terrorists who killed the Charlie Hebdo journalists…

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