Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
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Did anybody see Question Time last night? The panel largely seemed to be competing to out-outrage each other about Donald Trump. And in their great Trump-off most of the guests continued to do that sawn-off shotgun ‘phobes’ thing. Trump as a ‘misogynist, homophobic, racist, Islamophobe’ etc. You would have thought after the second election in
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For 18 months, Donald Trump was amazingly useful to British politicians. Whatever their party, he provided them with the most magnificent means with which to polish their liberal credentials. In January, when the British Parliament spent three hours debating a public petition to ban Trump from entering the country, we learned from Labour’s Rupa Huq
From our UK edition
For 18 months, Donald Trump was amazingly useful to British politicians. Whatever their party, he provided them with the most magnificent means with which to polish their liberal credentials. In January, when the British Parliament spent three hours debating a public petition to ban Trump from entering the country, we learned from Labour’s Rupa Huq
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There have been two fascinating developments in the case of Shakeel Begg, the Imam of the Lewisham Islamic Centre. As I described here on Friday, Begg sued the BBC for describing him as an extremist, only for the judge in the case to last week dismiss the claim and confirm for the whole world to
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Shakeel Begg is an influential extremist who is also chief Imam of the Lewisham Islamic Centre. His radical views are readily available and well-known. But despite these downsides a chap like him also possesses certain considerable advantages. Not least is the fact that he lives in a society which is only very slowly waking up to the threat
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I have never met Donald Trump, but I knew his parents. A fact that makes me feel about 100 years old. Which was actually nearer the age Fred and Mary Anne Trump were when, as a teenager, I made my first trip to New York. I remember riding backwards in their limousine on the way
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The exit of Emma Rice from her position as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe is a happy day for Shakespeare and a happy day for the Globe. Rice – for those who haven’t followed her work – is one of those directors who thinks that Shakespeare doesn’t quite cut it and needs serious intervention to be
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Both Brendan and I have written about the strange martyrdom of Louis Smith. But here is an ugly coda. As readers may recall, the Olympic athlete got drunk at a friend’s wedding and, along with a friend, ended up doing a joke version of the Muslim call to prayer. Something to do with Aladdin apparently.
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At the end of Sunday night’s US presidential debate, the moderators snuck in a final question from a slightly shell shocked looking member of the audience. After an hour and a half of brutal, bitter exchanges, a man asked Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if they could think of ‘one positive thing that you respect
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After voting for Brexit earlier this year did you come over all homophobic? I mean after you did all the obvious stuff like beat up a few ethnic minorities and burn a Torah. A piece in the Guardian at the weekend explains that ‘Homophobic attacks in UK rose 147 per cent in three months after Brexit vote.’ It
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It is a shame that ‘subversion’ of the state is no longer a crime in Britain. One result of it not being so is that people have become blind to the idea that it is even going on. The other day I wrote about the ‘academics’ who had signed a letter to the Guardian insisting
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Hurray! It is not often one gets good news, but here is some. Jan Boehmermann, the German comedian who read out a rude poem about Sultan Erdogan on German TV, has had the prosecution against him dropped. In the last couple of hours prosecutors in Mainz said that they did not have ‘sufficient evidence’ against
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This is how the madness spreads. While some politicians of the left continue to pretend that the situation in the Labour party and on the British left in general is salvageable, they seem not to realise that all their sluices are up. Take a piece in Thursday’s Guardian written by Alice Ross. The headline is
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In March of this year the Turkish government complained about an item on German television which was critical of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A fortnight later – to prove that Germany was a free country – Jan Boehmermann read out a poem that was rude about Erdogan on his evening comedy show. Not only did the
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Mark Twain once said that if you give a man a reputation as an early-riser he can sleep in till noon. The same is true of calling someone ‘a moderate’. Call someone ‘a moderate’ and they can rant like a fascist any day of the week without reprimand. President Rouhani of Iran has been called
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Incidents of ‘Islamophobia’ are really getting out of hand in Britain. In fact there has been such a wave of attacks that it’s amazing that politicians and commentators across the political spectrum, (not to mention all those supposed ‘anti-fascist’ groups) aren’t grand-standing like crazy. Perhaps their problem is that this wave of attacks does not
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Here is one of those stories that matters even though it preoccupies the Guardian. Last week the celebrated novelist Lionel Shriver gave an address at the Brisbane book festival. It was heralded as being about ‘community and belonging’ but ended up being about ‘fiction and identity politics’. In particular Shriver (the author, most famously, of We Need
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The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has announced that the French police and intelligence services have identified 15,000 people across France who are either ‘radicalised’ or in the process of becoming radical. In response to this Nicolas Sarkozy (who is of course in campaigning mode) has given an interview to Journal du Dimanche in which
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Here’s a strange thing. In a TV interview on Thursday morning, Hillary Clinton said that Isis want Donald Trump to become President of the United States. In her words, Isis are currently saying, ‘Please, Allah, make Trump president of America’. Personally I have no idea which ticket Isis will be campaigning for, come November. But
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Why do people always fall from grace for the wrong reasons? I had always hoped that if Keith Vaz finally fell from whatever form of grace he could lay claim to, it would be for really good reasons. Regular readers will know that my detestation of him dates back to 1989 when as a young MP
