Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator and presenter of The Spectator’s Holy Smoke podcast

Friday

Damian Thompson

‘Jews Got Money’ – challenging anti-Semitism and a Jewish taboo

The other day someone tweeted at me the words 'J£w$ Got Mon€¥'. And I was just about to tweet back: 'Get stuffed, you anti-Semitic scum'. But I clicked on the link and realised I'd got the wrong end of the stick. The tweet came from Sasha Andreas, who's made a documentary about poor Jews, mostly in New York. It features leaders of Jewish charities talking about a subject so sensitive that their own community is nervous about it – understandably. The words 'Jews' and 'money' are usually joined together by anti-Semites. Also, New York Jews are the wealthiest Jewish diaspora in history. 'Poor Jews' is assumed to be an oxymoron. It isn't.

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

The Scottish Catholic bishops and the Nationalists: a scandal is coming to light

Professor Tom Gallagher, a Scottish Catholic historian, wrote a post here yesterday accusing the Catholic hierarchy of Scotland of covertly supporting the Yes campaign. Now there are two pieces of evidence to support his claim. The first is a letter from Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow to departing First Minister Alex Salmond. Never have I witnessed a senior cleric suck up to a politician so shamelessly. Truly he has earned Private Eye's Order of the Brown Nose (OBN). Dear First Minister, You have announced your decision to step down as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party. On behalf of the Bishops Conference of Scotland, I want to acknowledge your long and outstanding career in politics, and your distinguished service as First Minister of Scotland.

Saturday

Damian Thompson

Does Pope Francis believe in the Rapture?

Yesterday Pope Francis preached one of the most extraordinary sermons ever delivered by a pope, one that demonstrates the laziness of those commentators who think he is a typical Latin American liberal. It put centre stage a teaching of the Church that I've never heard discussed in a Catholic homily: the physical resurrection of all saved Christians at the Apocalypse. The Pope told the early-morning congregation in his hostel that Catholics are afraid to contemplate the doctrine – of overwhelming importance to the early Christians – that their bodies (however physically destroyed on earth) will rise from the dead: This is the future that awaits us and this is the fact that brings us to pose so much resistance: resistance to the transformation of our bodies.

Thursday

Damian Thompson

Fear and loathing in the Vatican

Here is a picture of Cardinal Raymond Burke, whose grand title of Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura is matched only by the magnificence of his ecclesiastical dress. He is famous for his willingness to don the cappa magna, the astonishingly long silk cloak often worn by bishops before the Second Vatican Council but now confined to traditionalist ceremonies. The mere sight of this garment is like a scarlet rag to Catholic liberals, and they especially resent it being worn by Burke, who is (a) very conservative in matters of faith and morals and (b) the most powerful American cardinal in the Vatican.

Damian Thompson

Wedding music lives or dies at the hands of the organist

A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the Telegraph, married the beautiful Lida Mirzaii, his girlfriend since university. The service was in Wardour Chapel in Wiltshire, a neoclassical masterpiece described by Pevsner as ‘so grand in its decoration that it seems consciously to express the spirit of the Catholic ecclesia triumphans’. Most of the guests were in their mid-twenties and doing their best to control their boisterousness. The Oratorian priest wore an antique cope; if it had been a Mass he might have been allowed to borrow the chasuble in the sacristy believed to have been worn by Cardinal Wolsey at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Will was a boy chorister at Salisbury so the choice of hymns was spot on.

Sunday

Damian Thompson

Isis and Islamophobes: what a lousy time to be a British Muslim

Just over a week ago I wrote a piece in the Spectator asking if we were on the verge of an anti-Muslim backlash that could spread beyond the strongholds of the aggrieved white working class in Barking and Rochdale and into the home counties. After the gloating videotaped murder of David Haines, a British aid worker, the answer is increasingly likely to be yes. The Telegraph is carrying a piece by the international affairs analyst Shashank Joshi headed: ‘Where does the Islamic State's fetish with beheading people come from?’ He begins: ‘Of course, the practice of beheading is invoked in the Koran, but only the most extreme Islamic militants carry it out in the modern day.’ Really?

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

Could homosexuality split the Catholic Church?

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the ebullient Archbishop of New York, has welcomed the 'wise decision' by organisers of the city's St Patrick's Day parade to lift their ban on gay groups marching under their own banners. He has 'no problem with it at all'. His predecessor, Cardinal John O'Connor, who supported the ban in 1990, must be turning in his grave. More to the point, conservative American Catholics feel let down by Dolan, an orthodox and tribal prelate who likes to roll up his sleeves and jab in the direction of the snidely liberal New York Times.

Thursday

Damian Thompson

Is Britain hardening its heart against Muslims?

British public opinion has never really turned against Muslims. According to Pew’s 2014 Global Attitudes survey, 26 per cent of us have ‘unfavourable’ attitudes towards Muslims in this country; compare that to 46 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Greece and 63 per cent in Italy. Our national tolerance has, so far, proved robust. Even after the 7/7 London bombings, favourable attitudes towards Muslims in Britain dipped by only a couple of points. But is it strong enough to survive the horrors of Isis and Rotherham coming to light simultaneously? It feels as if we are on the verge of an anti-Muslim backlash that could spread beyond the strongholds of the aggrieved white working class in Barking and Rochdale and into the home counties.

Wednesday

Damian Thompson

GQ kills irony as Tony Blair wins Philanthropist of the Year

Satire died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, said Tom Lehrer. Now irony has followed it to the grave. GQ's Philanthropist of the Year is Tony Blair. And no, this isn't some cunning wind-up by the magazine. They gave the former PM a bauble at a ceremony last night. I'd like to say that Blair looks suitably embarrassed holding it, but nope. Neither he nor the lady wife 'do' embarrassment. Even nice Gary Lineker had a go at GQ on Twitter. ‘People will be greatly concerned and wonder if this was the right decision,’ he tweeted when the news came through. They will indeed wonder. Employing four-letter words, I suspect. I would love to have been at the Condé Nast meeting at which this one was agreed.

Saturday

Damian Thompson

Can Douglas Carswell stop Ukip screwing things up?

I rejoiced at the news of Douglas Carswell's defection to Ukip. Not because I'm a Ukip supporter (I haven't made up my mind) but because it highlights the slippery dishonesty of the Tories' modernisation programme – 'the political equivalent of botox', as Charles Moore puts it in today's Telegraph: The pattern of the leader’s actions conveys a message to party workers: they are the problem. Not surprisingly, they tend to leave. Instead of being a renewal, modernisation has become a hollowing out. Douglas Carswell, by contrast, is authentically a moderniser. At the heart of Carswell's vision for Britain lies the expansion of the franchise and political accountability.

Tuesday

Damian Thompson

Have you heard the one about Isis and the ‘Ebola bomb’?

Isis has the Ebola bomb. So be very, very afraid. If you’re a nutjob, that is. The conspiracy website Before It’s News reports that ‘whistleblower and former police officer’ Greg Evensen has discovered that ‘Isis now has the weaponised Ebola virus, here in America!’ Evensen also reveals who’s pulling the strings of Isis. Yup: Barack Obama. Surprisingly, the website omitted the President’s middle name, but I imagine its readers are pretty familiar with it anyway. This is a conspiracy theory of (mostly) angry rednecks. But we shouldn’t’ be surprised if it pops up in African-American and Muslim communities – both, in their different ways, hungry markets for these fantasies.

Friday

Damian Thompson

Cameron has silenced the only minister who understands Islamism

Only one person sitting around the cabinet table truly understands how Islamism works – and David Cameron has silenced him. I'm referring to Michael Gove, who in addition to studying radical Islam for many years was waging war against it in British schools – often surreptitiously, in order not to alert the enemy. The defenestration of Gove was the most cowardly act of Dave's premiership. That fact was underlined yesterday when A-level* students started trolling the former education secretary because, thanks to him, they no longer get an automatic A* just for turning over the paper at the beginning of the exam.

Thursday

Damian Thompson

‘Ashtray’ Annie Fischer was a piano giant. Why didn’t more people realise this?

This year marks the centenary of a pianist whom London orchestral players nicknamed ‘Ashtray Annie’. Only at the keyboard did she have a cigarette out of her mouth. Annie Fischer (1914–1995) was one of those female pianists who, despite their spinsterish appearance, possessed far richer imaginations than splashy male virtuosos. Clara Haskil and Marcelle Meyer also come to mind. Of the three, only Haskil — a physically frail Romanian celebrated for her purity of line — is today given the recognition she deserves: Pope Francis recently named her as his favourite Mozart pianist. Meyer, who as a young woman played for Debussy, had a technique of such refinement that she could liquefy trills and arpeggios without any loss of accuracy.

Damian Thompson

Revealed: The Pope’s war with the Vatican

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_21_August_2014_v4.mp3" title="Damian Thompson and Freddy Gray discuss Pope Francis's plans" startat=904] Listen [/audioplayer]If you want to understand how Pope Francis is planning to change the Catholic church, then don’t waste time searching for clues in the charming, self-effacing press conference he gave on the plane back from South Korea on Monday. It’s easy to be misled by the Pope’s shoulder-shrugging interviews and impromptu phone calls. On his return flight from Rio last year, he said, ‘If a gay person seeks God, who am I to judge?’ What did that mean?

Wednesday

Damian Thompson

Satanists are planning to desecrate the Host at a Black Mass. Let’s stop them

Satan-worshippers are planning to hold a Black Mass in Oklahoma next month. My usual reaction to this news would be: go right ahead. On your own head be it. Those camp Anton LaVey rituals are so 1970s. But there’s a twist – one that truly deserves the adjective ‘satanic’. The nutjobs organising the ceremony on September 21 have got hold of a consecrated Host. It arrived in the mail, they say, purloined from a Catholic church. So it really will be a traditional Black Mass, described by the Catholic World Report as a ‘ritual centred around the desecration of the Eucharist, which is generally done by stealing a consecrated host and using it in a profane sexual ritual, or defecating and urinating on it’.

Sunday

Damian Thompson

Islamic extremism and the hypocrisy of the Church of England

The Church of England has written to David Cameron accusing him of lacking ‘a coherent or comprehensive approach to Islamic extremism as it is developing across the globe’. The letter, signed by the the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, and approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, also reportedly accuses the PM of turning his back on Christians slaughtered or made homeless in northern Iraq – and wonders why Cameron has chosen to concentrate on the plight of the Yazidis instead. These criticisms are spot on. But I’m surprised that the C of E has had the brass neck to make them. For decades, the Anglican and Catholic Churches have ignored the growth of the domestic Islamic extremism that has seen British Muslims travel to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis.

Wednesday

Damian Thompson

Human beings aren’t built to handle ‘celebrity’

When Robin Williams killed himself, his spokesman revealed that he’d been suffering from depression. Cue well-meaning advice about this mysterious and deadly condition – the need to seek help, etc. Then the media caught up with his addiction: he was a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict who’d been with John Belushi on the night Belushi died (‘comedian Robin Williams popped in and snorted a few lines of coke,’ says one account). Now we learn that Williams was on the verge of bankruptcy. Depression, addiction, money worries: that’s a cocktail familiar to anyone in Hollywood or the music industry. And once the ingredients are shaken they can’t be separated out.

Damian Thompson

‘Left Handers Day’ ignores the Ambidextrous and Transhand communities. End this discrimination now!

Today is International Left Handers Day, ‘the 22nd annual celebration of lefthanders’ superiority’. It’s an opportunity for ‘Lefties’ and their Right-handed supporters to highlight the discrimination they face from the Dextrous majority. ‘Getting right handers to do everything left-handed for the day is a great way to make the point!’ suggests its website. Some Righties may object to having a left-hand index finger wagged at them in this fashion, but my problem with Left Handers Day is that it isn’t inclusive enough. (That and the missing apostrophe.) Why are Ambidextrous (AD) people excluded from this exercise?

Monday

Damian Thompson

Obama’s intervention in Iraq proves that religion really is the new politics

Today we are witnessing the extraordinary – and long overdue – spectacle of an American president intervening in Iraq to protect religious minorities from ISIS death squads motivated by their own extreme religious beliefs. The minorities are Christians, whose looming extinction the West has ignored for years, and the Yazidis, members of an ancient faith rooted in Zoroastrianism that very people had heard of until the past fortnight. The butchery in Iraq and Syria – and that is exactly the right word, since ISIS have literally cut children in half – bears out my argument that 'religion is the new politics'. Here is the Spectator cover story on that subject published on June 28: Aren’t Buddhist monks adorable?

Friday

Damian Thompson

At last! An Archbishop of Canterbury recognises that Islamists slaughter Christians

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has just issued a statement about the slaughter of Christians in Iraq that is both brave and perfectly judged. What an outstanding representative of English Christianity he is turning out to be – in sorry contrast to his predecessor. Here is the section of Archbishop Welby’s statement that illustrates his keen judgment. It makes clear that he does not think that Christian lives are worth more than those of Yazidis or Muslims. (The ordained Anglican priest Chris Bryant MP accused me of believing this when I asked him on Twitter today why, in common with many liberal Christians, he had remained silent on the plight of his co-religionists.) The horrific events in Iraq rightly call our attention and sorrow yet again.