Nick Cohen 
Can we talk about this?
Can actors at the National Theatre quote Christopher Hitchens’ destruction of Shirley Williams for her failure to defend freedom of speech against suicide murderers on Question Time, while all the… Continue reading
11 Comments
Should Christians kill Mark Thompson?
I’d rather they didn’t. But perhaps a campaign of clerical terror would make the BBC ‘respect’ Christianity. According to the Telegraph, the director general of the BBC said it handles… Continue reading
52 Comments
The brass neck of Julian Assange
On 1 March, the Old Vic theatre in London is hosting the première of Europe’s Last Dictator — a film documenting torture and state-sponsored murder and kidnap in Aleksandr Lukashenko’s… Continue reading
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Attack of the Militant Secularists
If you want to hear a BBC discussion going hopelessly wrong, listen to the ‘debate’ between the Bishop of Lichfield, Jonathan Gledhill and Alan Beith on the Today programme this… Continue reading
38 Comments
We are all journalists now
As the cops round up journalists, Trevor Kavanagh’s protest in the Sun has aroused amazement and some scorn. ‘Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom’ — ran… Continue reading
29 Comments
Whatever happened to Human Rights?
Human rights campaigners need to follow a self-denying ordinance if they are not to become enemies of the values they espouse. Like a civil servant or judge, they must leave… Continue reading
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Ed Miliband: Britain’s Greatest Leader of the Opposition
Ed Miliband is a geek, a failure and a loser. All the press says so, so it must be true. Yet the apparent no-hoper retains the ability of the boy… Continue reading
29 Comments
An Advertisement for Myself
My You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom is out this week. As the title says, it’s about freedom of speech, a subject that has come… Continue reading
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How freedom goes
Joan Smith has a piece in the Independent about religious censorship of open debate in Britain, a supposedly free country. It is well written and argued, as Smith’s writing invariably… Continue reading
40 Comments
See? Simple. Next!
Ed Miliband is in the happiest position he has been for months. Both left and right are attacking him for stating the obvious. The unions or at least their leaders… Continue reading
27 Comments
A left-wing writer conservatives should enjoy
I have a review of Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank, one of the few left-wing writers I believe conservatives can read with pleasure. He is old fashioned, so old-fashioned indeed that… Continue reading
15 Comments
The Good, the Smug and the Blind
The Economist has a rather good, rather smug and – in the end – entirely self-deluding leader about the predicament of the American right this week. It is good because… Continue reading
16 CommentsInterview with a Danish journalist
He came to talk to me about British Euroscepticism, and I did my best to explain. I said it was far stronger in England than Scotland for nationalist reasons, and… Continue reading
17 CommentsA regiment of women monsterers
Another day at the Telegraph and another attack on Laurie Penny, this time for writing a short piece describing how she had received excellent treatment at a New York hospital.… Continue reading
51 CommentsLord Justice Leveson and the danger of the great and the good
The Leveson Inquiry has all the makings of an establishment disaster. In saying that, I am not defending the behaviour of the tabloids. I find it contemptible that no story… Continue reading
17 CommentsWhen the centre goes berserk
Over at the Leveson inquiry a smug Lord Patten – there is no other kind – said the BBC could not possibly be biased because left wingers attack it on… Continue reading
18 CommentsThe Strange Death of Scottish Nationalism
A few months ago a German magazine phoned me to talk about Scotland leaving the UK. The reporter had bought the SNP line that Scottish independence was a practical proposition,… Continue reading
90 CommentsCan we torch Time Magazine’s offices now?
I should declare an interest and say that I have always admired Time Magazine. It has great journalists. It has even commissioned your humble correspondent and allowed him to join… Continue reading
20 CommentsThe Prison of Nations
By the standards of what was to come in Europe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not so bad – it was not a police state with concentration camps like the 20th… Continue reading
16 CommentsThe Lilliputian "Superstate"
For the past week, the papers have been full of the woes of David Cameron as Tory backbenchers sense the possibility of a new European settlement and try to put… Continue reading
8 Commentsarticles
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How social media helps authoritarians
Have you heard? Do you
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Leveson: Don’t let the state frighten you
If David Cameron had
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Christopher Hitchens’s lefty publisher begged from him – and then betrayed him
Before the crash of 2007,
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'Murdoch betrays everyone in the end'
My guard goes up when
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Export-only justice
In the last few years
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Whose freedom? Whose press?
A love for freedom of
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Nowhere to hide
Ever since the millennium, I
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Censorship Olympics
The guards would not let
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Web of tyrants
The internet can promote freedom
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Nick Cohen
I looked at it and
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Liberal England dies again
The Lib Dems’ troubles are
