Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.

The David Beckham email leak should trouble us all

What would you do if naked pictures emerged of a celebrity you liked? Or one you didn’t? What about a slew of emails that were meant to be private that were hacked and then leaked into the public domain? Would you turn away from them, tutting. Or might you be tempted to read them? Would

Some ‘anti-fascists’ need to look in the mirror

I have noted before in this place that the people who seem most fascist these days are self-described ‘anti-fascists’. The inaugural weeks of Donald Trump’s Presidency are – whatever else you think of them – doing a fine job in smoking these people out. The principal cause of ‘anti-fascist’ ire today would appear to come

Abandoned to their fate

Another day in northern Nigeria, another Christian village reeling from an attack by the Muslim Fulani herdsmen who used to be their neighbours — and who are now cleansing them from the area. The locals daren’t collect the freshest bodies. Some who tried earlier have already been killed, spotted by the waiting militia and hacked

My pick for the pious political hypocrite of the week award

I would like to propose Labour MP Tulip Siddiq as the winner of the pious political hypocrite of the week badge for her response to President Trump’s temporary immigration halt. From today’s Guardian we learn that Ms Siddiq is one of a number of Labour MPs who have warned that the UK Prime Minister’s allegedly ‘feeble’ response to

Dutch courage

It looks like the people might do it again. After the British electorate misled themselves so badly and American voters failed to rotate the Clinton and Bush families for another presidential cycle, the latest fear is that democracy might occur in Holland. Polls currently show Geert Wilders’s Freedom party almost at level pegging with the

The empathy trap

Being against empathy sounds like being against flowers or sparrows. Surely empathy is a good thing? Isn’t one of the main problems with the world that there isn’t enough of the stuff going around? Paul Bloom of Yale University is here to argue otherwise. As he explains, while empathy can be a good thing in

We are living in a seriously phony age

At the risk of coming across all Holden Caulfield, this is a seriously phony age. Everywhere you look there are people objecting to things they think other people have said or would like them to have said. This past Saturday provided a fine example when in Washington and various other Western capitals some people decided

Obama’s decision to free Private Manning disgraces America

Barack Obama’s decision to commute the prison sentence of Private Manning is a final, disgraceful undermining of American interests by the outgoing US President. Manning’s decision to dump vast swathes of stolen information with the Wikileaks organisation, which then published them, caused untold and untellable damage to America and her allies. It revealed operational details

Golden showers and pigs heads: welcome to the era of trash news

While observing reactions this week to allegations against America’s President-elect my mind has been ineluctably returning to 2015 and the story so inventively known as ‘pig-gate’. In case anyone has forgotten, this was a story which was pumped into the British press and then into the world’s media about the then Prime Minister of the

The predictable Muslim ‘good news stories’ have arrived

Since my Tuesday piece on the Berlin attack – when, as the BBC is still saying, a lorry ‘went on a rampage’ in the city – a number of readers have asked if I could give them this week’s lottery numbers. It is true that much of what I predicted has already come true. For instance, I anticipated that

Here we go again – but this time, Je suis Berlin

Well the year isn’t finished, but thanks to what looks to be the combination of the world’s most peaceable religion, a truck and a temptingly bustling Christmas market in Berlin I’m going to have reprise my most frequently written piece of recent years. So here we go again. On Monday night a truck was driven

Decent people don’t ‘explain away’ hideous crimes

A man was arrested on Monday of this week after stabbing a man on a passenger train at Forest Hill station in London.  Reports of the incident say that the knife-wielding assailant had shouted ‘Death to Muslims’ and ‘Go back to Syria’ among other things.  Some reports suggest that he may have been looking for a

Tony Blair’s IRA amnesty should also apply to British soldiers

This morning’s Sun carries the story that all British soldiers involved in killings in Northern Ireland during the three decades of the Troubles now face investigation.  More than 1,000 ex-service personnel ‘will be viewed as manslaughter or murder suspects in legal inquiry.’  According to information received by the paper, 238 ‘fatal incidents’ involving British forces

The Casey review highlights a major problem in British society

Dame Louise Casey’s review into ‘opportunity and integration’ is finally out.  Commissioned a year ago by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, and finished some time ago, there were fears that this review would remain ‘on ice’.  Casey – who also led the government’s review of the Rotherham child-grooming scandal – is nobody’s idea of