Brendan O’Neill

So on Twitter you can lie about war crimes but you cannot tell the truth about biology? That is the only conclusion one can draw from Twitter’s decision to leave up a vile, false tweet posted by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The tweet says the massacres in Bucha are made up. They didn’t happen. The photos and videos of dead bodies on the streets are all part of a ‘hoax’ drawn up by ‘the Kiev regime’, it says. This is a lie. Russia’s claim that the bodies were dumped in the streets by Ukrainian forces after Russian troops had withdrawn, all in an effort to demonise Russia as a commissioner of war crimes, is entirely without foundation.

Boris was right to compare the vote for Brexit with the struggle for freedom in Ukraine. And here’s the thing: deep down, his fulminating critics know it. It’s why they’re so angry, why they’ve been lashing out so furiously against the PM. Because Boris has drawn attention to something that they would prefer to leave in the shadows – the fact that the very same members of Britain’s chattering classes who are currently cheering the Ukrainian people’s fight for national sovereignty waged a reactionary crusade against the British people’s vote for national sovereignty back in 2016. The hissy fit over Boris’s comments has been mad.

So, Facebook and Instagram users are now allowed to call for people to be killed. But only if the people they’re wishing death upon are Russian. If it’s Ruskies you hate so much that you feel the urge to go on social media and plead with someone to kill them, then Facebook and Instagram’s normally censorious moderators won’t bat an eyelid. Knock yourself out. Kill the Russians! This is the news that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has made a temporary change to its hate-speech policy. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it will allow its users in certain countries to make violent comments about Russian forces.

McCarthyism is an overused word, I know. But really, what other word will do to describe the sacking of a conductor for refusing to publicly denounce the leader of Russia? This is the case of Valery Gergiev, who was sacked by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra this week for failing to condemn Putin. Mr Gergiev was literally given an ultimatum. As the Guardian’s headline put it: ‘Denounce Putin or lose your job: Russian conductor Valery Gergiev given public ultimatum.’ Gergiev refused to denounce Putin and so he lost his job. His management team dumped him too, while acknowledging that he is ‘the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency’.

So that’s what leadership looks like. It looks like Volodymyr Zelensky. It looks like a president staying put in his capital city despite coming under attack from one of the largest military forces on Earth. It looks like a tired but proud man rallying his people to defend their nation from foreign onslaught. It looks like someone who warns his enemies that ‘When you attack us, you will see our faces. Not our backs, but our faces.’ It looks like someone who chooses to stay and fight rather than to run away. When US officials reportedly offered to help evacuate Zelensky, he told them he needed ammunition, ‘not a ride’. ‘I need ammunition, not a ride’.

Public life in Britain has taken a dark turn over the past 48 hours. Russia’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine has caused some people to lose their minds. War hysteria is everywhere. Jingoism is surging. Russophobia itself threatens to take hold in polite society. I can’t be the only person who feels deeply uncomfortable with the stifling, conformist and accusatory atmosphere that has descended on these isles in such swift order. Truth is the first casualty of war, they say. In fact it’s more often freedom and reason. Especially freedom of conscience: the freedom to think differently to those banging the drums of war, or, in this case, those calling for a huge Western showdown with Russia.

Not for the first time in her political career, Diane Abbott is getting a lot of flak online. She’s being trolled, heckled and denounced as an enemy of the United Kingdom. Only this time Ms Abbott is being hauled over the coals not for saying something silly, but for saying something sensible. Something true. Something fundamentally correct. Namely, that Nato bears a great deal of responsibility for the current crisis in Ukraine. Browsing the Abbott-bashing headlines you could be forgiven for thinking she had upped sticks, flown to Moscow, and sworn lifelong allegiance to Vladimir Putin. ‘Diane Abbott backs Russia!’, says the Express.

I see the establishment has a new sport: mocking Nadine Dorries. They really do hate her. Or rather, they love taking the mick out of her. She looks drunk! She only has one book on her shelf! She gives car-crash interviews! She wouldn’t know culture if it bit her on the behind! You don’t need a PhD in class studies to work out what’s motoring this frenzied Nadine-bashing: classic, old-fashioned snobbery. You know a political trend has taken off when it finds its way even on to Instagram, the only social media I use. When even this normally peaceful virtual world of cats and selfies is invaded by political memes, something’s afoot. The Nadine memes have come thick and fast. There’s a shot of her looking angry on Channel 4.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with the idea of the police investigating the elected government? I have laughed and fumed at partygate as much as the next upstanding citizen of the United Kingdom. I’ve moaned to mates about the PM partying on the same day I sat in a park with one other person and several tinnies. I’ve shared all those memes featuring Boris looking dishevelled as he ‘comes down from another house party’ or showing bright nightclub lights blaring inside Downing Street as cops stand nonchalantly at the door. But the Metropolitan Police snooping around the seat of political power? The unelected armed wing of the state poring over the antics of the executive wing, led by a man voted into power by 14 million of us?

I’m not sure I should be writing this piece, given I am not Jewish. Are Gentiles like me allowed to comment on matters relating to the Jewish community? It’s hard to know these days, in this increasingly rigid era of identity politics, when apparently we must all ‘stay in our lane’; when anyone who veers beyond his or her own ‘lived experience’ risks being accused of cultural appropriation or some other identitarian crime. But anyway, here goes: Maureen Lipman is wrong to say Helen Mirren should not be playing Golda Meir in an upcoming film. Yes, these two dames, two of our finest actresses, have locked horns somewhat. Mirren will play the former Israeli PM, the Iron Lady of Israel, in Golda, which is due to be released later this year.

The scaremongers have overplayed their hand. Omicron could prove disastrous, they warned. They scoffed at the early indicators from South Africa suggesting it was milder than Delta. ‘MYTH BUSTER’, declared the Sun when Chris Whitty poured cold water on the idea that Omicron might be milder than Delta. ‘Deaths could hit 6,000 a day’, screamed the Guardian, turning Sage's worst-case scenario into a chilling headline. The news was full of it: we’re doomed. Yet now it seems pretty clear that these fearful prophecies were way off. Just a week after we were being bombarded with these visions of the Biblical horrors Omicron would visit upon our nation, it’s being reported that this variant really is milder than the Delta one.

We can’t carry on like this. We can’t keep resurrecting restrictions every time a new Covid variant emerges. We can’t keep suspending certain liberties whenever this blasted virus mutates. Somehow we have got stuck in a spiral of doom and kneejerk authoritarianism, and we urgently need to find a way out of it. People, of course, will say it’s only mask-wearing in shops and on buses. It’s only a PCR test if you’re coming back from overseas. It’s only mandatory quarantine if you come into contact with someone infected with the Omicron variant. These are hardly onerous regulations. And Boris says they’ll be temporary. They will be reviewed in three weeks’ time. So calm down, yeah? This misses the point.

Every week brings fresh proof of what a bunch of bourgeois snobs Extinction Rebellion are. The latest exhibit is their blockading of Amazon’s main distribution centres. The eco-loons and their apologists are dressing this up as a principled stand against venal capitalism. Pull the other one. This is just a noisy middle-class moan about the greedy masses and all the ‘crap’ we’re planning to buy on Black Friday. Yes, not content with irritating deliverymen, builders and other productive members of the working classes by plonking themselves on the M25 and other major roads a few weeks ago, now XR is trying to stop us from getting the things we’ve ordered off Amazon.

So three million quid gets you a seat in the House of Lords? That’s according to the latest revelations about our sleazy second chamber. According to a Sunday Times and Open Democracy investigation, people who give big bucks to the Conservative party are virtually assured a seat on the red benches. Wealthy benefactors seem to be ‘guaranteed a peerage if they take on the temporary role as the party treasurer and increase their own donations beyond £3m’, the report says. It stacks up. Fifteen out of 16 Tory party treasurers have been offered a seat in the Lords. And 22 of the party’s main financial backers, including those who have doubled up as party treasurer, have been offered seats.

Something stirring happened online yesterday. People rushed to the defence of a media outlet they dislike. In the name of standing up for freedom of speech, political differences were put aside and the case was clearly made that even people we passionately disagree with must be at liberty to speak and publish. This was freedom of speech in action. People of all political persuasions rallied together to demand ‘freedom for the thought we hate’. The outlet in question is Novara Media. When YouTube temporarily suspended Novara’s channel, it wasn’t just the middle-class millennial Corbynistas who make up the bulk of its viewership who rushed to its defence.

Every decent person was horrified by the senseless slaying of David Amess. And everyone will want to know what can be done to prevent similar atrocities from occurring in the future. But I fear that in the haze of anger and concern that has descended on the country following Amess’s death, we are coming to some questionable conclusions about the causes of such violence, and coming up with some iffy ideas for how to ensure that such a horrific attack on a public servant never happens again. Right now, the finger of blame is primarily pointed at the shouty, divisive nature of political discourse in the 21st century. The horror visited upon Amess is what happens, apparently, when political rhetoric is so heated and public life so polarised.