Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)
The more excitable and less well-educated elements of the liberal left are forever apt to observe that politics today resemble those of the 1930s, being prone to denounce a development or policy they disdain as being ‘just like Nazi Germany’. To be fair, they have a point. It’s not just the street brawls we’ve seen
There once was a time when you couldn’t move for some progressive voice complaining in superior tones about the latest ‘moral panic’ bestriding the country, stoked in their imagination by right-wing neurotics fearful that Britain was going to the dogs. Whether it be concerns related to pornography, video nasties, Mary Whitehouse’s latest campaign to clean
Most of us have had disagreements with friends over politics at some point in our lives. Or worse. One of the constant threats to friendships is that such differences could one day spill over into acrimony or result in a full-blown falling-out. In my youth, the election night parties held by my parents seldom ended without
Many teenagers today find Christianity off-putting because Jesus seems too fond of ‘mansplaining’. He appears to have a ‘God complex’, while the Almighty is alienating on account of being ‘really violent and aggressive’. These are the findings in the report Troubling Jesus, the third part of Youthscape’s ‘Translating God’ project, based on a recent survey of 14- to
In the fevered imagination of those obsessed with implementing ever greater ‘diversity’, there is seemingly no object or aspect of life they won’t seek to change at all costs. Thus it’s no surprise to hear that the latest target of opprobrium is the British countryside itself. It epitomises the blundering ignorance of the global, Anywhere
From our US edition
It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as “chairman” and “headmaster” and replace them with gender-neutral
It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as ‘chairman’ and ‘headmaster’ and replace them with gender-neutral
At last, the BBC has been forced to admit what even the dogs on the street know to be true: that the corporation is guilty of ‘shoehorning’ diversity into its television drama output, in series such as Shetland and This Town, and making them feel ‘preachy’ and ‘inauthentic’ as a consequence. Productions which distort history
Labour has long prided itself on being the party of compassion. Indeed, ever since Thatcherism, personified in the minds of many by the fictional television character Alan B’Stard – and ever since Theresa May gave her 2002 speech admitting that the Conservatives were the ‘nasty party’ – being compassionate has been a trademark and a
Heaven knows we could all do with a laugh right now, what with 2026 having begun in such an inauspicious manner, with tumult abroad and a stream of grim headlines at home. It would be a relief to be able to make light of it all, and to skewer the powers that be with a
Much has been written in recent years, and even recent days, about the threat posed to the mental wellbeing of children by malign external forces, whether it be X generating nude images of women, the misogyny spread by influencers such as Andrew Tate, or the welter of ‘misinformation’ available online. But a story at the
Is it right to put human remains on show? It’s a question that museum curators and the public have been asking themselves ever since European institutions began displaying bodies of the dead – notably Egyptian mummies – in the early 19th century. It’s the same question that continues to be posed today in Canterbury. Here,
In one respect, the scaremongers are right: Racism is alive and well in this country, being imbedded in our institutions and abetted by the arms of the state. But this scourge manifests itself not in the hackneyed and often illusionary variety forever invoked by the liberal-left. This is the benevolent, ‘nice’ form of racial discrimination,
We’re scarcely into the new year and already luminaries on the liberal left have resumed one of their favourite pastimes: issuing alarmist forebodings about the threat posed by populism, and imploring everyone that Reform UK must be stopped. That is why Starmer and those on the left will always invoke the bogeyman of Reform and
The death of the Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne this July, and the huge reaction it provoked worldwide, represented something of a landmark to us heavy metal fans. After decades of having been shunned, scorned and ridiculed, this genre had not only become acceptable, but the passing of the frontman of heavy metal’s founding fathers
Do the Eskimos have many more words for ‘snow’ than the rest of us, and does this question matter? As we approach the full blast of winter, now would seem a good time to lay this old chestnut to bed for good. The person we have to thank for setting this debate in motion is
Some might say that trying to define ‘Islamophobia’ is a foolish enterprise, given that words these days are so wantonly manipulated. Yet this hasn’t stopped Labour from trying. In 2018, the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims called for the following definition to be adopted by the government: ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and
In the wake of a tragedy it is only fitting that public figures issue words of condolence. But there’s a vast difference between making a statement that conveys condemnation and anger, sentiments that most ordinary people have felt after the attack on Bondi Beach yesterday, and proffering bland, evasive platitudes that ignore the grave problems
One of the most common arguments made by those with a liberal approach to immigration and asylum, and one you will hear repeated at length on Question Time, is that people who come to these shores ‘are human beings, just like us.’ This mantra epitomises a certain kind of bland, shallow humanism, one which seems
Everyone recognises that teenagers today are unduly anxious. Many people attribute this to a rise in smartphone use. Some even blame an education system that places too much pressure on young people. Yet the acute dysfunction of adolescents and young adults these days could have a more simple, and more serious, explanation: they don’t spend
