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WRONG ABOUT FREE SPEECH – AGAIN
Earlier this week six writers – Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi – withdrew from the PEN American Center’s annual gala on 5 May in protest...
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I BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH, BUT…
My talk at the Oslo Freedom Forum last week. For more videos of talks from the conference, many of which were moving and inspiring, visit the OFF website.
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BACK TO BRADFORD FOR AN OLD DEBATE
A Dutch TV company, VPRO, is making a documentary about the Rushdie affair, partly using my book From Fatwa to Jihad as a template. And as part of the documentary it wanted a ‘renunion’ between myself...
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FROM THE ARCHIVES: IGNATIEFF ON BERLIN
Continuing my series of old book reviews that I am publishing while I am away in South Africa, here is my review of Michael Ignatieff’s biography of Isaiah Berlin, originally published in the...
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ECHOES FROM THE PAST: FEAR OF THE MASSES
A system in which ‘confidence tricksters, rich men, quacks may be given power by the votes of an electorate composed in great part of mental Peter Pans, whose childishness renders them peculiarly...
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ECHOES FROM THE PAST: THE RACIAL VIEW OF CLASS
I am publishing through August on Pandaemonium a series of extracts from my books on the theme of historical fears of the masses and of democracy. This second extract (the first is here), from The...
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ECHOES FROM THE PAST: CREATING THE UNDERCLASS
Continuing the series of extracts from my books on the theme of historical fears of the masses and of democracy, this third extract from The Meaning of Race explores the late twentieth century...
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THE FAULTLINES OF THE IMAGINATION
‘I hope you’re surviving in these dark times. I don’t seem to understand the world any more. I don’t seem to understand its rationality. I feel all I can do is hunker down.’ So emailed a friend a few...
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A CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY OR OF LIBERALISM?
I reworked my essay ‘From the End of History to 2016’ for Sunday’s Observer, developing the theme of the tension between liberalism and democracy, and of the distinction between the ‘politics of...
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THOU SHALT NOT GIVE OFFENCE
This is an extract from the Afterword to the new edition of my book From Fatwa to Jihad: How the World Changed From The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo. This extract looks at the free speech debates...
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