Censorship
Putin’s stranglehold on the Russian press
Two former Izvestiya journalists describe how all but the bravest in the media have crumpled under pressure to toe the Putinist line
How I fell foul of YouTube’s fact-checkers
The day after Mark Zuckerberg said fact-checkers ‘have destroyed more trust than they have created’ I experienced why he has…
The making of a poet: Wilfred Owen’s ‘autobiography’ in letters
How, between 1911 and 1917, Owen became the dazzling poet we know and love is the story told in Jane Potter’s new edition of his selected letters
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism
The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity…
Is Russell Brand really so dangerous?
Once the dust has settled over the government’s mini-Budget, another big political battle looms: the Online Safety Bill. This is…
Guston is treated with contempt: Philip Guston Now reviewed
Philip Guston is hard to dislike. The most damning critique levied against the canonical mid-century American painter is that he…
The closing of the Chinese mind
I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the…
Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
Are cancel-culture activists aware of their sinister bedfellows?
Is there a woke case to be made for freedom of expression? Jacob Mchangama certainly seems to think so. This…
Boris is about to give Silicon Valley censors more power than ever
Four years in the making, the Online Safety Bill has now been sent to senior ministers for review — a…
Kate Clanchy and the new censorship in publishing
‘There’s more than one way to burn a book’, wrote Ray Bradbury, in a coda to the 1979 edition of…
Salman Rushdie’s self-importance is entirely forgivable
I have the habit, when reading a collection of essays, of not reading them in order. I’m pretty sure I’m…
My fight to stop the Chinese censors sanitising Dante
How Dante fell foul of the Chinese Communist party
@jack is the giant
Where is Jack? You know, Jack-the-Giant-Killer? The little fellow who caught the giant Cormaran in a deadfall and dispatched him…
The Big Tech backfire
If your aim is to stop America descending into civil conflict, it’s hard to think of a less effective method…
Trump’s social media ban sets a dangerous precedent
Facebook and Twitter’s decision to suspend Donald Trump is, legally speaking, fairly clear-cut. Both are private companies which set the…
Why AI will never write a great song
Two years ago, the songwriter Nick Cave told his fans that he’d speak to them directly — not through an…
Twitter is in China’s pocket
Twitter has been quick on the draw when responding to tweets by President Trump in the last month, as he…
Was what I said on Facebook really 'hate speech'?
Facebook has been accused of failing to combat extremism and hate-speech among its users. But as I found out this week,…
Unanswered questions for Big Tech
It’s been a full week since the New York Post published their first story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which is…
President Trump should bend — but not break — Big Tech
Americans’ increasing focus on this fall’s elections has awakened in me a tinge of nostalgia for the good old days…
Facebook is right. Twitter is wrong
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey opened up a Pandora’s box two days ago by dropping a fact-check on a tweet by…
How to fight back against ‘cancel culture’
‘Cancel culture’ is a horrible term because outside of a dictatorship nobody can actually be ‘canceled’ or otherwise ‘disappeared’. All…
Is war with Silicon Valley a Trump 2020 strategy?
The world, or at least Twitter, awoke Saturday morning to an extraordinary series of retweets from the site’s most infamous…
Why are men being such wusses over #MeToo?
‘There are two sides to every story’ is an aphorism you don’t hear often lately. Ask anyone amidst a family…
