London’s mayor needs heavy security to guard against extremists but who protects him from the new rightwing politics?Today, as every day, police protection will be at its highest around the Queen and the prime minister and around a politician who in no…
Shouldn’t progressives be in favour of people wanting to speak their mind? | Nick Cohen
Solidarity at work used to be the governing ethos. Why do we now snitch on each other?Where once the left fought the bosses in the workers’ name, today its loudest voices lobby bosses to police workers. If you are trying to understand why this section …
Meet the brave, consensual mayor set to face down Hungary’s autocrat | Nick Cohen
The opposition parties are uniting behind an unlikely hero leading a broad popular frontGergely Karácsony does not have the commanding features of a warrior who can fight Europe’s authoritarian nationalists. The mayor of Budapest is 46, but his mild ma…
So Sally Rooney’s racist? Only if you choose to confuse fiction with fact | Nick Cohen
The author is the latest to suffer an attempted ‘cancelling’, one born of malice and stupiditySocial media did not create informers and liars. The malicious have always manufactured denunciations and the literal-minded have always confused nuance with …
Climate change deniers are as slippery as those who justified the slave trade | Nick Cohen
Global warming sceptics should be hiding in corners. But still some defend the indefensibleNo one seems as defeated as the global warming “deniers” who dominated rightwing thinking a decade ago. Like late 18th-century opponents of abolishing the slave …
When power thrives on unspoken fear, bravery is in saying ‘I am afraid’ | Nick Cohen
Admitting cowardice is a subversive act within cultures that demand lip serviceMost of us aren’t brave. We wouldn’t protest in the streets of Kabul as armed and triumphant clerical reactionaries fingered their guns. I am hardly breaking news when I say…
What is it about Viktor Orbán that attracts so many rightwing sycophants? | Nick Cohen
Hungary’s leader and Fox News are natural bedfellows in peddling paranoia politicsTucker Carlson is not much to look at. A little man with a face screwed into the scowl of a junior manager passed over for promotion, you might walk by him in the street …