Politics – Blogs Don't Burn

May 21, 2024

Our universities are failing to tackle student antisemitism

This OpEd was published in CapX on 21st May, 2024

Earlier this month, university leaders from around the country were summoned to Downing Street to discuss the recent explosion of antisemitism on UK campuses, which has been so extreme that the Community Security Trust (CST) labelled it a ‘watershed moment for antisemitism in the UK’.

Unfortunately, despite strong statements from the government that this newest revival of the world’s oldest hatred will not be tolerated, many of the solutions being proposed lack real teeth. If policymakers really want to make an impact on campus antisemitism, they should start naming and shaming those universities which are doing the least to address the crisis.

May 8, 2024May 12, 2024

It’s time for the UK to acknowledge the Armenian genocide

This OpEd was originally published in Reaction on 8th May, 2024

On 24th April, Armenians around the world gathered to observe Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. At local churches and memorials, they commemorated the 1.5 million Armenians who were systematically killed by Ottoman authorities between 1915 and 1923; to this day one of the worst massacres in human history.

Tragically, their pain will be compounded by the ongoing denial and obfuscation of governments across the world, many of whom still refuse to acknowledge it even took place. The UK, for example, has never formally acknowledged the Armenian genocide — and only 33 countries around the world have. Sadly, even the Armenian government itself is beginning to buckle to international pressure, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan telling his people to “overcome [their] trauma.”

November 28, 2023November 28, 2023

‘Ghastly Marionettes with Human Faces’ – Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism

Background: This essay was written in 2019 as part of a master’s degree. It has since been updated to reflect my evolving thoughts on the horrors of totalitarianism, and indeed human evil in general. Whilst the conclusions below are my own, this should be seen more as an illustration of Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism in the 20th century.

This essay will outline Hannah Arendt’s account of the unprecedented evil of totalitarianism in the 20^th century, with specific focus on the regimes of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. This will be done first by outlining the distinctive nature of totalitarianism, and why it cannot be captured under the conventional categories of moral and political thought. Next, I will unpack the comparison that Arendt makes between common sense and ideological ‘supersense’, which will lead into an attempt to distinguish the radical evil of totalitarianism from more conventional forms of evil.

April 18, 2023

Chronological Snobbery: Present-Elitism and the Teen Age

In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022), feminist author Louise Perry uses a phrase which captures one of the governing spirits of our age: ‘chronological snobbery’. Coined by C.S. Lewis, this term refers to the human tendency to uncritically accept the cultural and intellectual trends of the present, whilst rejecting as ‘outdated’ anything which came before some arbitrary cut-off point.

In essence, this is the ethos of the rebellious teenager run amok: a fiery urge to cast off the stifling rules and mores of the fuddy-duddy elders. This powerful, almost primordial force is a common feature of adolescence, as indeed it should be. Rebellion against authority is a healthy part of our ungainly slouch towards adulthood, provided this Life of Brian-esque chorus of ‘I am an individual’ is artfully managed by society.

August 25, 2020September 20, 2022

Learning the Lessons of the Holocaust: Towards a More Sophisticated Conception of Evil

Background: This academic essay was written in late 2020 as the final project of a masters degree. In it, I delve into the nature of human evil by engaging in a detailed study of a historical atrocity: Nazism and the Holocaust. Through this horrifying case study, I aimed to shed light not only on that event, but also on the nature of human evil on a more universal level. The theory I put forward in the final chapter – ‘Towards a New Conception of Evil’ is intended to have contemporary relevance to our understanding of evil in the modern world, and so will hopefully also be of value to readers of this blog.

Indeed, deepening our understanding of evil (and in particular mass evil practiced by the State) has only become more relevant in recent months, given the the woefully under-reported events currently developing in China`s Xinjiang Province. As these words are being written, millions of Uighur Muslims have been incarcerated by the Chinese State and have been forced to endure intense labor, ideological ‘re-education’, and, if some reports are to be believed, sterilization. What we may well be witnessing are the stirrings of yet another genocide, and so now more than ever it is necessary to look back and reflect on the horrors of the 20th century. After all, if we fail to fully imbibe the lessons of history, we may well be left mute and uncomprehending when the next Holocaust comes knocking.

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…