Censorship
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…
A joke about Welsh vowels is a hate crime, say the tuppenny panjandrums
It took four days to actually see the pine marten in the flesh. We caught it on a trail cam…
A grand inquisitor
Hidden behind Kensington Palace, in one of London’s smartest streets, there is a grand old house which played a leading…
The internet’s war on free speech
The web was meant to empower us all. Right now, it’s empowering censors
Meet the fans who risk death for heavy metal
We in the West may snigger at heavy metal, but in some parts of the world its practitioners face the death penalty. Karen Yossman reports
You can do anything (but you shouldn’t): the brave new world of internet morality
Going online does not make you invisible – as the adulterers who used the hacked site Ashley Madison are discovering
Why is a festival of Israeli film fighting for censorship in London?
The attempt to ban Jewish men from seeing ‘The Gift of Fire’ sets a very dangerous precedent
