“A demonstration of the toxic melding of the inchoateness of popular discontent, the inability of the left to speak to working-class grievances and the venomous malevolence of the far right that shapes so much of politics.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

As straightforward a case as you can find of being cancelled not because of spewing hate or celebrating murder but because the most powerful political figures in the land did not like being criticised: news.sky.com/story/jimmy-...

“Conservatives who have (rightly) insisted that free speech must include the right to be obnoxious and hurtful, now want retribution for hurtful words directed at their hero.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/interna...

Meanwhile, free speech across the Atlantic. Wonder what JD Vance has to say about this? www.benrothenberg.com/p/us-open-do...

While Lucy Connolly was being feted at the Reform conference, hundreds were being arrested for their speech opposing the proscription of Palestine Action. Yet those turning Connolly into a free speech martyr seem to have little to say about those arrests. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“‘The Overton window is moving and we are helping move it’… The fact that arguments that once belonged to the far right are now seen as mainstream, and the growing assertion of casual bigotry, is hardly something to celebrate.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

“The argument for mass deportations and for refusing to process asylum claims is that ‘we have to look after our own, not the rest of the world’. The trouble is, ‘our own’ will also suffer from the kind of policy Farage proposes.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Thursday photo Mist over the Cambrian hills (taken from the Machynlleth road near Dylife)

“It is morally incumbent on those who defend free speech also to take a stand against bigotry and hatred wherever it reveals itself. Too many fail that test.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Who said this? “I'm not going to get dragged down the route of mass deportations or anything like that… It's a political impossibility to deport hundreds of thousands of people. We simply can't do it." Keir Starmer? Some loony left lawyer? Actually it was Nigel Farage… 1/

Looking forward very much to speaking at the festival and to a conversation with the wonderful Sujeev Sahota offtheshelf.org.uk/events/not-s...

“Free speech is too important an issue to leave to be hijacked by those who imagine that Lucy Connolly is any kind of moral exemplar.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

So, (very) belatedly, my @theobserveruk.bsky.social column on immigration, culture, the Judeo-Christian tradition and echoes across a century: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“It is a portrait of two Britains, one of which barely comprehends the challenges facing the other.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“It is less that AI is the cause of degradation in reading and thinking, and more that the creation of a culture that views knowledge primarily in an instrumental manner has made it easier to misuse AI.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“What Fanon had discovered was a contradiction that has shaped the modern world - between societies that defined themselves through a commitment to equality and social practices that denied such equality to the majority of people.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“The very desire to control the narrative by curtailing public information not only undermines democracy but leads inevitably to the narrative spinning out of control.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“The very desire to control the narrative by curtailing public information not only undermines democracy but leads inevitably to the narrative spinning out of control.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social column, online today, in print tomorrow: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Can people please learn how ‪@bsky.app‬ works before making idiotic comments such as this (there have been a few of these). In ‪@bsky.app‬, the OP sets the options for the thread, including all responses, and in this case, the OP to whom I was replying limited replies...

“Laments over white decline are less about immigration than attempts to transform concerns over immigration into existential fears about identity.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

And now for a day-long feast of cricket, tennis and football (and me crying out for three screens to watch them all simultaneously)

Britain hasn’t suddenly become more racist, but racists have become more assertive in their bigotry. My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

On the anniversary of 7/7, an extract from *From Fatwa to Jihad* on “The making of a British jihadi” kenanmalik.com/2013/06/06/t...

Sunday photo Rainbow over Aberdovey

“What such cases expose is the way that expanding the meaning of incitement has become a means for greater policing of speech.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Create a stereotype of what an “authentic” Muslim must be like, and when someone doesn’t fit that stereotype, mock them for not being authentic.

“What such cases expose is the way that expanding the meaning of incitement has become a means for greater policing of speech.” Back with my ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Rain storm over Cobra Mist (the old American surveillance radar) in Orford Ness

And now, I’m off to the strange, bleak, haunting beauty of Orford Ness.

“Diminishing the rights of one group only makes it easier to diminish the rights of all.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬ column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“As racism has diminished, discussions of identity have become more fraught. Such debates have also served to allow racism to rebrand itself in the language of identity and to reshape perceptions of nationhood and of whiteness.” My ‪@theobserveruk.bsky.social‬: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

I’ve seen many such comments. What the data shows, though, is both that those of Pakistani heritage are over-represented *and* that the majority of group CSE suspects are men not of Pakistani heritage. Only those with particular agendas would deny either part of that claim. 1/

“It is this social pessimism, as much as the jettisoning of the ancient concept of telos, that has given rise to many of today’s moral and social predicaments. We can see this in MacIntyre’s own intellectual journey.” My Observer column on Alasdair MacIntyre: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“We should no more support secular versions of blasphemy laws than the old religious variety.” As Hamit Coskun is found guilty of “a religiously aggravated public order offence” for burning a Quran, my article on blasphemy, religious & secular, from February: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is very good on the pessimism and fatalism of postliberalism.

Good response. The attempt to publicly smear Greenwald because of his politics is more degrading than anything consensual he may do in private.

No, I don’t think he should be banned. But let’s be clear: this is a diatribe against working class people wrapped up as an anti-Scouse joke. The safe way to be anti-working class. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXoE...

“‘Ever since I understood liberalism’, Alasdair MacIntyre once told an interviewer, ‘I have wanted nothing to do with it.’” My Observer column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

When they asked for a fiction list, I'm not sure this is what they meant. But this the path down which media is going, cutting costs, replacing humans with AI.

“The idea that any criticism of Israel’s destruction of Gaza is antisemitic and “siding with Hamas” is to claim carte blanche for Israel’s actions. It is as cynical as the history of Israel’s decades-long use of Hamas.” My Observer column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

“Israel helped nurture Hamas for the explicit aim of denying Palestinians a state. And now… it has laid Gaza to waste, in pursuit of a monster it helped spawn.” My Observer column, in print tomorrow, online today: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

“The difference between immigration now and in the 1960s and 1970s is not simply a matter of numbers, huge though they are. It is also the social context within which migrants find themselves.” My Observer column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

“The cynicism of the NI debate is not just disdainful of the working class. It is also corrosive of democracy.” My Observer column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

A talk and a discussion this month. First, in Newcastle next week

#20 And with a God named Mo #YNWA

So, the new @ObserverUK and my new column

Once again a discussion, this time on BBC Radio Four Today programme, of pre-sentencing reports and who faces social disadvantage when it comes to the justice system, and no mention of class, perhaps the most pertinent issue in evaluating offenders’ social background.

As it's Easter, some churches and cathedrals. Beginning with Gaudí's Sagrada Família in Barcelona

“The lack of viewpoint diversity can be a real issue. The solutions proffered, though, often threaten to make the problem worse.” My @observeruk.bsky.social column: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“A view of Islam as fixed and static, a belief that it has remained the same throughout history, as have Muslims’ beliefs about their faith… a perspective ironically shared by dogmatic Islamists and implacable critics of Islam.” My @observeruk.bsky.social column: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...