Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.
‘Top priority.’ Those two words in Keir Starmer’s tweet about Alaa Abd el-Fattah stung the hardest. What an affront to the country. On Boxing Day, as people came down from Christmas revelry that they could ill-afford, here was their prime minister prioritising the wellbeing of an Egyptian loudmouth most Britons couldn’t name. Rarely has the
Finally the left is showing an interest in freedom of speech. And all it took was a police clampdown on cries for violence against Jews. They turned a blind eye when cancel culture ran riot on campuses. And when gender-critical women were gagged for telling the truth about biology. And when people lost their jobs
This is not a time to mince words. Moral clarity is our sole duty on this dark day. What happened in Bondi in Sydney was an act of fascist barbarism. It was a pogrom on a beach. It was a massacre of Jews that brought to mind the horrors of the mid-20th century. If this
It’s hard, in 2025, to call out anti-Semitism. You’ll find yourself besieged by digital armies of apologists for bigotry. ‘It’s just criticism of Israel!’, they’ll wail if you express alarm about someone calling the Jewish State a ‘Nazi entity’ or protesters carrying a Jew effigy complete with horns and bloodstained mouth. It’s all the rage
Everything about that rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa is horrifying. First and foremost, the barbaric act itself. It took place on 10 May. Just after 9pm the girl was separated from her friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He frogmarched her to a darkened park with the
The scandal of the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban keeps getting worse. Now we discover that West Midlands Police (WMP), in their report calling for the barring of Maccabi fans from the football game against Aston Villa last month, cited an entirely fictitious football match. Their report said the last time Maccabi played in the UK
Now Ireland is erasing its Jewish history. This week Dublin City Council will vote on a proposal to change the name of Herzog Park in the south of Dublin. The park was named for Chaim Herzog, the Belfast-born, Dublin-raised Jew who later became the sixth president of Israel. ‘Following consideration, the Committee agreed… that the
It’s back. The lie that led to the slaughter of so many Jews has returned to public life. The calumny that caused so much anti-Jewish persecution, expulsion and bloodshed has stirred, zombie-like, from its historic slumber. Jews drain the blood of Christians and use it to make bread – incredibly, unconscionably, this most appalling falsehood
The rot at the BBC is worse than people think. It’s far more serious than the occasional twisting of facts to get one over on a politician the Beeb hates, like Donald Trump – an act of journalistic malpractice for which director-general Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness have now resigned. This scandal exposes
‘Scum’ barked at a Jewish man for the crime of taking a small Israel flag from his bag. ‘Get the f**k out of my city’ hollered at Jews. Masked men hanging signs saying ‘Zionists not welcome’. Posters inviting the public to phone the anti-terror hotline ‘if you see a Zionist’. ‘Baby killers’ yelled in the
So there you have it: the feelings of white men matter more than the rights of black lesbians. That’s the takeaway from the mad fracas at a Gold’s Gym in Los Angeles this week, where a female gym-goer by the name of Tish Hyman says her membership was unceremoniously revoked. Her offence? She dared to
His name was Wayne Broadhurst. He was 49 years old. He reportedly worked as a refuse collector. He was by all accounts well liked in his local town. And yesterday his life was ended in the most savage manner imaginable. He was stabbed to death as he walked his dog on a brisk, bright Tuesday
What’s more scary? A gaggle of old UKIP voters gathering to vent their spleen about mass immigration? Or a march of hulking young men, all masked and clad in black, hollering ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Zionist scum off our streets’? At the risk of being branded with that cheap and meaningless slur of ‘Islamophobe’, I’m going
Who really won the by-election in Caerphilly? I know officially it was Plaid Cymru, and I wouldn’t want to diminish that funny little party’s glee. Congrats, etc. But the true victor was a far newer party. An angry party. A party of the fretful and anxious. A party so fresh it doesn’t even have a
I often wonder – we all do – how human beings can be made to forget terrible events. Like the Tiananmen Square massacre, wiped, just like that, from a billion minds in China. Or the burning of the Jews of Jedwabne in Poland in 1941, which lay unforgivably unremembered until the truth was dug up,
Tel Aviv Bemusement seems to be the main emotion in Tel Aviv following the UK’s mad ban on Maccabi fans. A Maccabi supporter sipping an espresso in bustling Dizengoff Square doesn’t get it. ‘You’re keeping the fans out because you’re worried they’ll be attacked?’ He screws up his face. ‘You should stop the attackers, not
Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked mummy’s boys of the Antifa movement for whom ‘fighting fascism’ means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar oiks who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat
Normal people are cheering the prospect of peace in Gaza. Some might even raise a glass to Donald Trump for his valiant efforts to end this horrible war Hamas started. But there are others who will be feeling forlorn. The anti-Israel mob, to be specific. Won’t you spare a thought for this tragic community that
I knew the modern left had its fair share of narcissists who can rarely see beyond their own navels. But even I never imagined they would spend the second anniversary of 7 October, the worst atrocity the Jews have suffered since the Holocaust, moaning about their ‘mistreatment’ by the Jewish state. Even I never imagined
It is not often that the news gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Today’s news from Manchester does. Two dead and three others in a serious condition following a car and stabbing attack outside Heaton Park Synagogue. Britain must now wear that greatest of ignominies – we have become a
