Douglas murray

Tuesday

The Spectator

The Spectator and Douglas Murray win UK defamation claim

The Spectator and Douglas Murray have today won a defamation claim brought by Mohammed Hegab, who "lied on significant issues" in court and gave evidence that "overall, is worthless." The judge rejected Hegab’s claim because the videos he publishes are ‘at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article’ Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article published in September 2022 about the riots in Leicester, England, had caused serious harm to his reputation and loss of earnings as a result.

douglas murray

Tuesday

David J. Garrow

A profound account of the October 7 pogrom

I first learned about anti-Semitism at the age of eight, when my father explained to me that his closest business friend could not live near us because he was Jewish. This was 1961, hardly three miles from Mount Vernon, Virginia, in a new-build neighborhood that was racially segregated, as was my elementary school. Black children descended from George Washington’s slaves lived in a nearby rural ghetto called Gum Springs and were not welcome east of Fort Hunt Road. Somehow that memory – like John F. Kennedy’s assassination two years later and the view of his funeral procession from my father’s office window – is one of my earliest and starkest recollections.

Murray

Friday

Cockburn

Did Douglas Murray break Joe Rogan?

Douglas Murray and the end of ‘historians’ ‘It’s pretty hard to listen to somebody who says, “I don’t know what I’m talking about but now I’m gonna talk”’ Who gets to call themselves an expert? That’s the big question featured in a bruising episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Rogan hosts The Spectator’s Douglas Murray and the libertarian comedian Dave Smith. Murray accuses Rogan of opening “the door to quite a lot of people who’ve now got a big platform, who’ve been throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind.” The nearly three-hour-long program begins with Murray asking if Rogan feels that his show has been “tilted one way” in its guest selection: Dave Smith v.

Tuesday

Cockburn

The State of the Union that isn’t

Welcome to Cockburn’s Diary, a new newsletter from The Spectator sent twice a week from the nation’s capital. Your intrepid correspondent will keep you informed about all the whispers circulating around town. Coming to your inboxes on Tuesdays and Fridays... President Donald Trump is addressing a joint session of Congress tonight — but don’t you dare call it a State of the Union; that term is reserved for speeches given in non-inauguration years. The president is expected to tout successes from the first forty-three days of his second term, while some Democrats are expected to skip it — or to protest by holding up props like egg cartons to spotlight the high cost of groceries.

state union

Monday

Cockburn

Who should replace Tucker Carlson at Fox News?

After what could only be described as a dizzying month in news media, Fox is on the hunt for a Tucker Carlson replacement. Cockburn has some thoughts — and suggestions — on who might be a good fit for the network’s coveted 8 p.m. slot. First, there are obvious candidates within Fox already. Jesse Watters currently hosts Jesse Watters Primetime in the 7 p.m. time slot. Bumping Watters up an hour is thought to be the preferred and likeliest solution within the network. Greg Gutfeld is a close second, having hosted late-night shows from 2007 to the present, with the current Gutfeld! earning impressive viewership numbers. On the more conventional side, there is Brian Kilmeade, who hosts both the weekday Fox & Friends and Saturday’s One Nation with Brian Kilmeade.

tucker carlson

Saturday

Cockburn

Cockburn’s fairytale of New York

Almost every right-of-center writer claims to be leaving New York. So Cockburn headed up to see what's left of the Big Apple — and take in a couple of festive ragers while he had the chance. The book party for Miranda Devine’s Laptop From Hell unfolded at the Beach Café, recently dubbed "the Upper East Side’s Republican Cheers" by New York magazine. After checking his coat and having his vaccine card closely inspected, Cockburn rubbed shoulders with Devine, several of her past and present New York Post comrades and dozens of NYC GOP staples. Cockburn shared a cocktail with Republican fixer Roger Stone, who teased his strategy ahead of his summit with the January 6 Committee next week and reminisced about the stolen election of 1960.

encounter

Friday

Spectator Editorial

Tyranny of the minority

De mortuis nil nisi bonum, the Romans used to say: ‘Of the dead speak only good.’ We can speak nothing else of the friend and longtime Spectator contributor we lost in January. Sir Roger Scruton was a fearless and humane advocate for art, beauty, faith, peoplehood and tradition; a fierce defender of the right to free and honest speech; and a clear-eyed advocate for the legal inheritances and cultural unity of the English-speaking peoples. He was one of the first people to undergo ordeal by ‘cancel culture’, or persecution by progressives, which is why we dedicate this free-speech issue to him. In the early 1980s, Roger was effectively expelled from the academy for expressing conservative opinions in public.