Politics – Page 2 – Blogs Don't Burn

January 20, 2020March 10, 2021

Islamism and the ‘Clash of Civilisations’

Background: This academic essay was written in early 2019. In it, I aimed to explore the rise of ‘Islamism’ in the Middle East, an ideology emerging from Islam that claims to represent the political wing of the faith . In light of recent tensions between the United States and Iran after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, I thought now would be an appropriate time to post this essay. Today, Iran is the only internationally recognized state to have adopted ‘Islamic rule’ and ‘shariah law’ as its official mode of government.

Despite this, the ideological convictions driving Iran have not been articulated effectively in the international press, and as a result are not well understood by the public. Hopefully this essay will go some way in bridging this gap of understanding. Whilst the focus here is not on Iran per se, the proliferation of Islamism in that country and across the Muslim World is a development that continues to have a huge impact on efforts at diplomacy in the region. It therefore needs to be understood before an effective solution can be offered.

November 16, 2019March 31, 2020

Into the Gulag: The Prisons of Soviet Russia

This new video, made for Blogs Don’t Burn by filmmaker James Arnold, tells the story of the Soviet Gulags; a vast and complex network of prisons and forced-labor camps which stretched across the USSR throughout much of its history. Started under Lenin and hugely expanding under Stalin, this system would swallow up millions of lives for good. Many prisoners were incarcerated for decades, solely for the crime of thinking and writing against the regime.

This video is dedicated to the prisoners of the Gulag, the dissenters who spoke out for them, and for all the other victims of the 20^th century whose names have been lost to history.

October 30, 2019January 9, 2021

“Let the Mad Dog Bark!” – On the Social Media Ban of Alex Jones and InfoWars

Backlog: this article was written August 23rd 2018

An issue which has been doing the rounds recently online, but which has so far failed to attract much mainstream media attention in the UK, is the decision by three major tech companies – YouTube, Apple and Facebook, to ban the controversial content of Alex Jones and his site InfoWars. Those unfamiliar with Alex Jones and his work should probably take a few moments to count themselves lucky.

InfoWars is an online hotbed of frenzied political rhetoric and elaborate conspiracy theories, which in the past have included claims such as that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, that Barack Obama is the global head of Al-Qaeda, that the U.S. Government is using juice boxes to “make children gay”, and that the U.S. Air Force has in the past created weaponized tornadoes in the Midwest as part of an enduring geo-war against the American people. Come to think of it there may just be a H.G. Wells-style short story in that last one…

October 29, 2019January 9, 2021

Boris and the Burka: discussing the Danish Ban

Backlog: this article was written August 12th 2018

Update: 29/10/2019 – As Boris Johnson is now our new Prime Minister, there is clearly more reason than in August 2018 to be talking about him. However, if Boris’ polemical style hadn’t been so effective in boosting his popularity over the years, then this article likely wouldn’t have needed to be written. It remains to be seen how Mr Johnson handles his position – complex and insecure as it is right now. But, if the first few months of his leadership have been anything to go by, it looks like there will be quite few substantive issues to call him out on in the coming years. Strap in my friends, it looks to be a bumpy road ahead.

A lot has been said in recent weeks about the controversial comments made by Boris Johnson in an article he penned for the Daily Telegraph, concerning the recent law banning the burka in Denmark. In the cacophony of noise, rage and moral panic surrounding his article, in which he compared Muslim women wearing burkas to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”, there has been shockingly little discussion on the actual substance of Mr Johnson’s article.