Pandaemonium

NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

April 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

. Here are details of my new book, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, bublished by Hurst and available from the usual places. In Britain: Bookshop, Waterstones, Book Depository, Blackwell’s, Amazon, Foyle’s, etc. Or, in America Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s, Amazon, Tattered Cover, Schuler. Or Australia: Angus & Robertson, Amazon, Dymocks. Or, best of all, order it at your local independent bookshop. This is the blurb from the Hurst brochure: […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White

OPERA, ELITISM AND THE WORKING CLASS

October 15, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the forgotten relationship between opera and the working class, published in the Observer on 12 October 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. “Opera and ballet will be at the heart of the culture of many people who live in London and the south of England”, former Conservative minister Jake Berry (now a member of Reform UK) once told parliament. “But for many of us in the north it is […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Culture & Books • Tags: a people's history of classics, alexandra wilson, artistic relevance, edith hall, elitism, henry stead, jonathan rose, lilian baylis, opera, robert morgan, sadler's wells, san carlo opera company, someone else's music, the intellectual history of the british working classes, working class, working class autodidacts, working class culture

THE CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM AND THE POLITICS OF ILLIBERALISM

October 8, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the need to distinguish between criticism of liberalism and the politics of illiberalism, published in the Observer on 5 October 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. The threat of mass deportations.The erosion of the right to protest. Treating protest groups as terrorists. The enforcement of blasphemy laws through the back door. Imprisonment for offensive slogans and tweets. The growth of ethnonationalist accounts of belonging. Much of contemporary policymaking and […]

Categories: Class, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: broken social contract, cb mcpherson, illiberalism, individualism, john locke, john stuart mill, liberal norms, liberalism, neoliberalism, possessive individualism, property rights, putney debates, social contract, thatcherism, william wilberforce, working class

THE REMAKING OF ANTISEMITISM

October 1, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on Mark Mazower’s argument about how the meaning of antisemitism transformed in the postwar decades , published in the Observer on 28 September 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. “Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of antisemitism”, said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in 2019, for which claim he won considerable praise from Jewish groups and Israeli leaders. Last month Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France, echoed the sentiment […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-zionism, antisemitism, antony lerman, benjamin netanyahu, censorship, ethnonationalism, free speech, holocaust, ihra definition of antisemitism, israel, kenneth stern, mark mazower, palestinian solidarity

FROM POPULAR DISCONTENT TO FAR-RIGHT TOXICITY

September 24, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally, published in the Observer on 21 September 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. Mixenden lies at the edge of Halifax, West Yorkshire, a working-class town, very white and very poor. I went there more than 20 years ago, making a film for Channel 4 about multiculturalism. A British National Party candidate, Adrian Marsden, had just been elected as local councillor. It was […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-muslim hatred, eric zemmour, eva vlaardingerbroek, far right, filip dewinter, mixenden, racism, remigration, tommy robinson, valentina gomez

CHARLIE KIRK, POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE CULTURE WARS

September 17, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the murder of Charlie Kirk and the responses to it, published in the Observer on 14 September 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. We still know little about Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. What we do know, or at least should know, is that, whatever his motive, there is no political or moral measure by which killing someone for their political views, however objectionable, can […]

Categories: Free Speech, International, Politics • Tags: charlie kirk, donald trump, free speech, political violence

RED, WHITE, BLUE AND CONTESTED

September 10, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on “Operation Raise the Colours”, published in the Observer on 7 September 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. About 10 years ago, we stayed in a cottage in Littondale, a beautiful valley in the Yorkshire Dales. The first night, we went for a drink at the local. It was plastered inside and out with Union Jacks. The moment I saw the flags, the hairs on my neck stood up. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: british flag, douglas carswell, english flag, far right, immigration, liberal elite, matthew goodwin, migrants, migrants as invaders, muslims, national pride, nationalism, operation raise the colours, racism, remigration, st george's croas, union jack, woke

MASS DEPORTATIONS POSE A THREAT TO US ALL

September 3, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the consequences of a policy of mass deportations, published in the Observer on 31 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. 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 that well-known bleeding-heart liberal […]

Categories: Britain, International, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: donald trump, ice, immigration policy, mass deportations, nigel farage, racism, reform uk, usa, windrush scandal

LUCY CONNOLLY SHOULD BE NEITHER IN JAIL NOR ON A PEDESTAL

August 27, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the debate about Lucy Connolly, published in the Observer on 24 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. Somehow, Lucy Connolly has become a hero. Released last week after serving 10 months, 12 including time on remand, of a 31-month sentence, she has become lionised as a free-speech champion, a figurehead for immigration reform and the self-proclaimed “political prisoner” of Sir Keir Starmer. Connolly’s imprisonment was misguided. The acclamation now […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: allison pearson, anti-migrant riots, anti-migrant violence, incitement laws, incitement to racial hatred, lucy connolly, racism, ricky jones, two-tier justice

FROM JEWISH ALIENS TO SMALL BOATS INVADERS

August 20, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on what old debates about Jewish refugees tell us about the immigration debate today, published in the Observer on 17 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. “East of Aldgate one walks into a foreign town”, foreigners “swamping whole areas once populated by English people”. The “substitution of a foreign for an English population” has created “increasing bitterness of feeling”. No, not Robert Jenrick or Nigel Farage, but William Evans-Gordon, […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: antisemitism, british brothers league, british culture, culture, jewish refugees, judeo-christian tradition, taliban, william evans-gordon, working class interests

DEFLECTING THE BLAME FOR BROKEN BRITAIN

August 13, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on immigration and the debate about “broken Britain”, published in the Observer on 10 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. Is the UK “a rich country”, asked the economist Max Mosley earlier this year in a report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). It might, he observed, seem “a surprising question to ask” about the world’s sixth largest economy. The answer, though, is not as “straightforward” […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: broken britain, food banks, food insecurity, housing, immigration, poverty, working class

KNOWLEDGE IS MORE THAN A COMMODITY

August 6, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the the value of knowledge and the place of AI, published in the Observer on 3 August 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. In 1940, the translator and educator AJ Jenkins organised a survey of the reading habits of working-class children. The study, mostly of students who would leave school to enter the workforce at 14, looked at what they had read outside the school curriculum in the previous month. Jenkins worried […]

Categories: Academia, Britain, Culture & Books, Science & Technology • Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, books, browne report, classics, creativity, critical thinking, generative ai, jonathan rose, knowledge, marketisation of universities, reading habits, robbins report, universities, working class autodidacts, working class culture

FRANTZ FANON AND THE MEANING OF LIBERATION

July 30, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the legcy of Frantz Fanon, published in the Observer on 27 July 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. “Every brother on the rooftop can quote Fanon”, the Black Panthers’ Eldridge Cleaver once claimed. In the 1960s, Frantz Fanon, the Caribbean-born Algerian revolutionary, was a hero of Black Power and national liberation movements, drawn as they were to his excoriation of colonialism. By the 1980s, Fanon had become an […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: adam shatz, algeria, algerian independence struggle, algerian war, black identity, black skin white masks, blackness, contradictions of modernity, eldridge cleaver, fln, frantz fanon, french colonialism, gaza war, hamas, identity politics black identity, imperialism, israel, palestine, racism, wretched of the earth

THE NARRATIVE IS NOT FOR CONTROLLING

July 23, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on government attempts to cover-up a catastrophic data breach on the Afghan resettlement scheme, published in the Observer on 20 July 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. It is a cliche that a cover-up is usually worse than the cock-up it is attempting to conceal. In the case of the Afghan superinjunction, the story of which was finally revealed last week, the cock-up – a data breach that potentially handed […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: afghan resettlement scheme, immigration, john healey, lewis goodall, superinjunction

THE REASSERTION OF RACISM

July 16, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on why racists have become more confident in proclaiming their bigotry , published in the Observer on 13 July 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. “This photo should strike fear into the heart of all Englishmen”, wrote one. “Why are they all foreigners?” asked another. “You are literally teaching children that genocidal replacement is good, so long as it’s white people being replaced,” claimed a third. All were responding […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: british identity, chris philp, david goodhart, douglas murray, ethnonationalism, far right, immigration, katharine birbalsingh, matthew goodwin, michaela community school, migrants as invaders, racism, white decline, white identity

BOB VYLAN, LUCY CONNOLLY AND TWO-TIER ADVOCACY

July 8, 2025 by Kenan Malik

This is the opening to my essay on the debate around Bob Vylan, Lucy Connoly and free speech, published in the Observer on 5 July 2025. You can read the full version in the Observer. In October 1989, the Muslim Institute helped organise a meeting on the Salman Rushdie affair at Manchester town hall. It had been eight months since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini had imposed his fatwa calling for the killing of Rushdie for his “blasphemous” novel The Satanic Verses, forcing […]

Categories: Britain, Free Speech • Tags: asa winstanley, bob vylan, frances d'souza, glastonbury, haim bresheeth, kalim siddiqui, lucy connolly, muslim institute, palestine solidarity, richard medhurst, rushdie affair, salman rushdie, two-tier justice, two-tier policing