Just to illustrate how much worse it's got, I have received more abuse over the past year and a bit - including death threats and a large volume of antisemitism - for what I write than in the previous 15 years of covering migration and the far right put together.

Last year I wrote for @lrb.co.uk about the families of Majella O'Hare, a young girl killed by a British soldier, and Tony Harrison, a British soldier killed by the IRA, who were campaigning together against the Legacy Act - and the vested interests supporting it. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

2/ This by @trillingual.bsky.social in @lrb.co.uk from June (ostensibly a review of @leninology.bsky.social’s important book, but much more than that) is a brilliant account of the new global and UK far right. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

If you want to know what the UK government's position is on its obligations under the Genocide Convention in relation to its support for Israel, here's what it argued in court this summer.

An independent UN commission has concluded that Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza

Had a few conversations recently that make me think, for the first time in ages, there are some exciting things happening in media. This is one of the highlights: Equator, a new magazine set up by Nesrine Malik, Pankaj Mishra, Jonathan Shainin and others. Sign up for info here: www.equator.org

I wrote this with the aim that it would be a durable piece, relevant every time there's a flare-up of far right violence or as far right ideas make further advances into the mainstream. Hope people find it useful.

So brilliant. RIP Conor Gearty, the British government's essential critical friend

Regardless of whether Reform's deportation plan "works", if they get a chance to try it - like the Tories' Rwanda policy, or Trump's deportations - it will ostentatiously torment thousands of people and further engrain racism in British politics. It must be opposed on that basis.

¿Esto es fascismo? Tribuna de @trillingual.bsky.social en la revista Nueva Sociedad n9.cl/qh9vf ¿Cómo comprender este fenómeno? ¿Qué fuerzas podrían hacerle frente? ¿Hasta qué punto sirve pensar todos estos fenómenos bajo la etiqueta de «fascismo»? @ccoo.bsky.social @crisfaciaben.bsky.social

I wrote this with the aim that it would be a durable piece, relevant every time there's a flare-up of far right violence or as far right ideas make further advances into the mainstream. Hope people find it useful.

Terrific essay by @trillingual.bsky.social. "The far-right ... thrives on failures in the existing system, yet offers remedies that would make everything much worse. It is difficult, but necessary, to give both parts of the equation due attention."

‘Are​ we, as Richard Seymour suggests, “in the early days of a new fascism”? In 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, Seymour argues that in trying to understand the new far right, we have been looking in the wrong places.’ @trillingual.bsky.social on far-right populism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Important read 👇

My long read on Keir Starmer and human rights - for which a I spoke to dozens of current and former colleagues, campaigners and legal experts - is now a podcast. www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...

Relevant passage from @trillingual.bsky.social's recent piece in The Guardian regarding the Starmer government's own deployment of the 'Genocide only applicable as a post-facto designation' line. (Speaker: Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director, Human Rights Watch.) Article: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Important read 👇

EXCLUSIVE: Investigation proves Palestinians indiscriminately shot by Israeli military near food sites across 50 days, from yours truly for the @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I wrote this to explain how we reached this point, in the hope it would be a resource for people arguing with friends and family, people with questions, perhaps even people thinking of joining a protest. Do share with anyone who might find it useful. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Adding this very good @trillingual.bsky.social article from a few years back on this very subject: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“This landscape of destruction looks otherworldly, yet it is not; it is this world, and what is happening may yet come to define one of its darkest eras.”

Great article by @trillingual.bsky.social that highlights the way in which Starmer perhaps embodies the ambivalence of human rights law:the capacity for radical change on the basis of universal dignity vs a conservative reaffirmation of nation state neoliberalism www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

If you are looking for something to read this weekend...

Wonderful Arvo Pärt prom last night.

“We call upon the Government to lead by example: to change the narrative, end the use of divisive rhetoric, treat everyone in society with dignity and respect…, put an end to policies that treat refugees as ‘illegal’… and foster a culture in which local communities are places of welcome and unity.”

"The worst is still preventable." This sets out clearly how. That has to be the priority. But on a personal level I find the denials put out by the Israeli government and its advocates here in the UK (just look at what's on X) sickening.

Good morning, I've written a piece about the prime minister. I spoke to several dozen sources, including government insiders, former legal colleagues and campaigners to ask: what happened to Keir Starmer the heroic human rights lawyer? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Israeli NGOs B'Tselem and PHRI also describe the "development of a genocidal regime" in Israel. Incredibly strong stuff www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters

It's parakeets vs pigeons round our way.

Really pleased and proud to announce a new @ihr.bsky.social seminar - Migration and Mobility History. We want to cover migration across time and space and speak with colleagues across disciplines. If you're interested in attending/presenting, get in touch: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Lovely to receive a copy of the book my friend and occasional ad-hoc photographer @amarichi.bsky.social made with her students at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. More about her work at www.maribastashevski.com.

Interesting (and by "interesting" I mean 😡) how for each long-form piece I write I have to design a new method from scratch for handling, sifting and assembling the material.

I shall reread Neither Settler nor Native in celebration.

Great piece by @will-davies.bsky.social on TikTok, "clustered publics" and their role in far-right resentment. (I've found this shift profoundly challenging to respond to as a journalist. Ignore it and trust what I write reaches readers anyway? Dive in? Something else?) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Current escapism.

Just a throwaway line, at the very end of the piece... 🫠

Request: what are some inspiring/useful examples of advice to young journalists, particularly to journalists from non-elite backgrounds?

The tattered, faded-pink flag flying from the turret of Arding and Hobbs makes it look as if Clapham Junction has seen a failed insurrection.

Action shot.

The real political correctness here is that nobody wants to admit running things fairly and efficiently would likely result in giving more people asylum - unless you abandon parts of the Refugee Convention. The right wants the latter, and trying to fudge the issue makes it a more likely outcome imo.

If you're going to reheat a Blair-era policy you probably need to explain why, last time around, it was so badly run it ended up wrongly deporting thousands of people, some very likely to their deaths, and how you might avoid that this time. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Cannot believe that a) there's a disco version of Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, and b) I've only just found out about it.

‘As the historian Ian Kershaw says, trying to define fascism is “like trying to nail jelly to a wall”, yet for all its slipperiness, “fascism” describes a uniquely destructive force in politics, and one for which we don’t have a better word.’ @trillingual.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Issue 47.10 is now online, featuring: Jeremy Harding on Belgium’s Central Africa Museum Susan Pedersen on Soviet displaced persons @trillingual.bsky.social on the far right Dinah Birch on P.D. James Neal Ascherson on Norman Lewis and a cover by Jon McNaught. Read now at www.lrb.co.uk

Very sorry to hear that Hajar Harb, a courageous journalist from Gaza who we mentored on the Refugee Journalism Project a few years ago, has died in London. There's a crowdfunder here to support her family in the UK and Palestine if you can spare anything. www.justgiving.com/page/hajarharb

New piece: been working on this for the best part of a year. But really it's trying to draw on everything I've seen and thought about since I first started reporting on far right politics in the late 2000s. Online now and in tomorrow's LRB. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

New piece: been working on this for the best part of a year. But really it's trying to draw on everything I've seen and thought about since I first started reporting on far right politics in the late 2000s. Online now and in tomorrow's LRB. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Proofreading errors of our time, an occasional series: