Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)
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
For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, here’s some advice: keep your thoughts to yourselves. Or at least select carefully who you share such sentiments with. That’s because there are some people today who even find the concept ‘white’ offensive and unacceptable. For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, here’s some
Is it ever acceptable to say the ‘n-word’? As you will have immediately inferred by that sentence, it’s rare to see it even spelt out in full today. It’s perhaps the only word in the English language you will never see written without asterisks in a newspaper or magazine. It is, to use that phrase
Trends in society always come and go, but one that shows no signs of abating is the propensity among many to take offence at words or symbols. Just because that derisive word of the last decade, ‘snowflake’, has fallen out of fashion, it doesn’t mean that these hypersensitive souls have disappeared. Being compassionate in a
One of the most grating and nauseating verbal constructions of our times – ‘Our NHS’ – has with grim inevitability began to evolve and expand. It was only a matter of time before someone or some organisation deemed it necessary to affix that possessive determiner to another state-run organisation, and you hardly need to guess
A famous pop star once sang that sorry seemed to be the hardest word. Almost fifty years after Elton John uttered those sentiments, nothing has changed. Saying sorry for your own errors or moral transgressions remains for many individuals and organisations an almost impossible task. Saying sorry for your own errors or moral transgressions remains
One of the greatest dangers posed by the government’s curriculum review is that it will result in children abandoning more demanding subjects such as history, geography and languages at GCSE. This is the fear voiced by a number of educationists, including Baroness Spielman, the former chief of inspector at Ofsted, who said that scrapping the
