Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

recent posts

email me

  • Vitriolic hate

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    "Why do none of them fear the consequences for their vitriolic hate?" Good question.

  • Corrosive antisemitism on campus

    Tali Smus, a Jewish student at King's College London, in the Times:

    Students across the country are excited about the start of the new university year. One exception is Jewish students, many of whom are wondering: “Am I safe to return to campus?”

    I should know. I have experienced crippling antisemitism in the past year, from threats to physically remove me from class to complete isolation. The trouble began after I asked members of a class group chat why they believed “Zionists need an education”, and because I had an Israeli flag in my Instagram bio.

    I received messages on the group chat saying “ur indoctrinated” and “ur horrifically outnumbered here go to bed”. This continued: “is there a f***ing Zionist in this group chat” and “we’ve fished out a Zionist”. And threats: “As a group we should just band together and carry her out.”

    Out of a class of over 100 students, only two or three still speak to me. The rest? Either turning a blind eye or shunning me and urging others not to associate with me. Things got so bad I missed most of the first term last year. When I eventually returned to campus, I never felt safe…

    More of the same at the JC:

    Brodie Mitchell, who studies politics, international relations and law at Royal Holloway, University of London, is not Jewish but openly supports Israel, and has witnessed numerous examples of antisemitism.

    "Students have said 'Hitler was right, Jews control the world' – all this 1930s ideology. I never heard anything like it till I went to university.

    "I feel like they can be open [in their antisemitism] at social events. Even when they know about my views, they will still openly talk about Hitler and how he should have ‘finished the job’.

    "A lot of Jewish students are too afraid to speak up because they're such a small group."

    Mitchell claims he has received threats because of his pro-Israel views.

    Over the summer holidays, he visited Israel and after posting a picture online from his trip, a student wrote: "Don't let me catch you in Royal Holloway." Another student wrote: "Let's remove your dirty soul from this planet."

    Asked if he feels the university does enough to combat antisemitism on campus, Mitchell says: "My university isn't doing enough for Jewish students and also for people like me.

    "The university just turns a blind eye."

  • Disappearing journalism

    Gary Geipel at Quillette on the Gaza aid-site controversy:

    On 31 July 2025, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a press release in which it announced that “at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food” since 27 May. “Most of these killings,” the statement added, “were committed by the Israeli military.” Subsequent UN “situation updates” during early September have increased that number to 2,146. If the UN is telling the truth, this would constitute the largest military atrocity committed by a liberal democracy in at least half a century, by a wide margin. For context, according to official tallies, US troops murdered between 347 and 504 civilians during the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. There are, however, good reasons to believe that the UN’s figures are wrong.

    The exquisite precision of “1,373” and “2,146” notwithstanding, the OHCHR has dispensed entirely with evidence and sources for its Gaza claims. Instead, it hung its entire late-July press release on the word “reportedly,” and offered no external attribution whatsoever in its subsequent updates. That was deemed sufficient by far too many people in today’s information environment, especially after the claims are laundered through credulous “news media.” Not only clickbait sites and wire services but also legacy media such as the BBC and the New York Times promoted the UN’s precise numbers this summer. Other news sources hedged with “more than 1,000” killed, while influencers on social media simply printed the bumper stickers…

    Missing from any of these information sources, however, are photographs or videos of the killings, documentary records of any kind, or any independent confirmation of the UN’s claims besides a handful of (unverified) first-person anecdotes. In a typical example, USA Today and its local-news affiliates linked a “gallery” of 22 photographs to a 4 August wire story about aid-site killings in Gaza, not one of which includes a dead person, let alone evidence of a larger atrocity. The slide-show makes clear that cameras do exist in Gaza, but we are invited to believe that not a single phone or other image-recording device documented even one of 1,400 killings that by then had allegedly taken place near crowded food-delivery locations and access routes over the course of more than two months.

    In late July, a self-described “eyewitness” finally emerged—a former US Army green beret named Anthony Aguilar, who had been dismissed as a security contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. News organisations (including the BBC and PBS), websites, and numerous podcasts carried interviews with Aguilar in which he was described as a “whistleblower” and permitted to allege “barbaric” tactics and “war crimes” on the part of US security contractors and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Nobody seemed to mind that the accompanying footage from Aguilar’s body camera showed not a single killing. Aguilar’s most heart-rending story—in which he claimed to have been kissed by a grateful Palestinian boy whose killing he then witnessed—was later found to have been fabricated in every detail. The boy was never shot and remains alive. At the time of writing—four days after Aguilar’s claims had been fully discredited in early September—neither the BBC nor PBS had amended their earlier coverage.

    This is, to put it mildly, something of a disgrace – though this does seem to be the level of reporting we're now getting from Gaza. 

    Disproportionate responsibility for this growing detachment from reality falls on the practice of journalism, or lack thereof. Whether it’s a once-in-a-generation military atrocity, a brazen smear by the OHCHR and its allies, or a nuanced example of war’s tragedies, the Gaza food-aid story is not only a big story but also a reportable story. Yet it is not being reported. Truth is not being sought by those who were, until recently, entrusted to do so. Gaza is challenging terrain for journalists, but Geneva is not. Reporters could begin by asking the United Nations OHCHR to open its books and provide a detailed justification for what it meant by “reportedly.”

    Disappearing journalism is not the only problem. Academic experts increasingly avert their eyes as well, either because they have succumbed to alternative realities themselves or simply because they fear the professional and social risks of offering basic reality checks on tribalised topics. An expert might observe, for example, that even the worst militaries learn from mistakes and adjust, which makes the rising curve of supposed butchery by the highly competent IDF around aid sites farcically implausible. The UN’s estimate of the killings rose from 798 dead on 11 July to 1,373 on 31 July to 2,146 on 4 September, as already noted.

    The writer here bemoans the collapse in journalistic standards, what it says about the media now, and what it means for our society in general. Important issues, no doubt, but I can't help wondering if this is something that happens in particular when the reporting is from Gaza, and when one particular country, the Jewish state, is involved.

  • Brick terraces of Leeds

    Photos of Leeds by Ricky Adam, taken between 2006 and 2024. From his book Back to Back.

    These photos are the result of going round the houses, quite literally, all over Leeds, in all manner of weather, taking snapshots in and around the red brick terrace houses that surround the city like a giant donut made from red bricks.

    Adam1

    Adam2

    Adam3

    Adam4

    Adam5

    Adam6

    Adam7

    Adam8

    Adam9

    Adam10

    Adam11

    Adam12
    [All images © Ricky Adam]

  • Revolutions

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    The French Revolution was a disaster: killed 2 million people, led to the rise of Napoleon–perhaps the world's first totalitarian fascist dictator, who began wars of conquest that killed an additional 4 million people, led to the restoration of slavery, to the restoration of the monarchy, and a delay of democracy in France by perhaps a century.

    Russian Revolution killed several million, led to the Russian Civil War–which killed another 9 million–led to the rise of Stalin, who killed 20 million.

    There's an old cliché: you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Well, it ignores the fact that people aren't eggs, and that generally does not result in an omelette.

    Again, the Chinese Revolution, perhaps the most disastrous event in history, led to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, killed perhaps 30 to 40 million people altogether.

    Pinker started his career in psycholinguistics under the influence of Chomsky. Politically now he seems to be making up for lost time as a kind of anti-Chomsky. 

    It's tragic when you think now of what could have been if the post-Mao liberalisation under Deng Xiaoping had continued, before Xi Jinping took over and turned into another Mao-style despot. Was it inevitable? – with no liberal or democratic tradition to fall back on? – the system just waiting for another authoritarian to fill the Mao-shaped hole. I don't know – but how different the world might look now…

  • “No love lost”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    "There's no love lost in Israel for Hamas or its political leadership. Most people in Israel hold them directly responsible for what happened on October 7."

    "No love lost" – as if Israel has some sort of petty squabble with the organisation which committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

    "Hamas or its political leadership" – as if there are two wings to Hamas, the military and the political, rather than (as every nation which proscribes it recognises) it being one terror organisation. Not for Davis, it seems.

    "Most people in Israel hold them directly responsible for what happened on October 7" – as if there is some sort of question mark over who was responsible, and only a majority in Israel think it was Hamas.

    This is the level of the BBC's reporting. For which we are forced to pay under threat of imprisonment.

  • Getting mad at Israel

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Also the hostage rescue at Entebbe. Also the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Etc. etc..

    The BBC – Bowen: Diplomacy in ruins after Israel strikes Hamas leaders in Qatar.

    What diplomacy, ffs? This is Hamas: not some kind of liberation movement, as the BBC love to think, but a terrorist group committed to the destruction of Israel. Not people interested in a deal, but people dedicated to an Islamist world-view that has no place for Jews – any Jews – in their vision of Palestine.

    Hamas and the rest of them – Hezbollah, the Houthis, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and their sponsors in the Qatari and Iranian governments  – aren't interested in peace with Israel. They and their predecessors and the surrounding Muslim countries have been fighting for the destruction of the Jewish state ever since its foundation. Peace and statehood have been on offer since 1947 and have been spurned on every occasion.

    The Gazans had autonomy and the opportunity for prosperity in 2005 but instead they opted for the genocidal ideology of Hamas, and permanent warfare – enabled and encouraged by UNRWA. It can't go on. Some Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are, perhaps, beginning to realise this. Not the BBC though.

  • The carceral logics of racial capitalism

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Journal

    We need to preserve these gems for future generations.

  • “A hotbed of fascism”

    This is grim.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Full text:

    According to him, he feels "very sorry for the Finnish people, who do not deserve the fate and situation they now find themselves in."

    "But if this utterly incompetent policy of Finland's current leadership leads to any tragic consequences, then that will be on their conscience. We know how to defend our interests, and we are prepared for any possible developments," he said.

  • An aura of untouchable purity

    An interesting article in Fathom from German-based Kurdish academic Dastan Jasim – White Feminism – White Orientalism:

    A German woman with blonde hair and blue eyes walking beside me – just her presence seemed to transform me into a different person on the streets of Iraq. I received friendly yet respectful looks from drivers, vendors, and esteemed researchers, where usually I received belittlement, disrespect or, at best, a full-fledged ignoring of my presence. It was as if my being was uplifted, even eased, by the fact that a white female companion covered me with the aura of her untouchable purity. They are valuable, worth a lot, and men in the Middle East recognise it….

    The average Middle Eastern woman could only dream about the esteem that white skin and blue eyes trigger in the hearts of their compatriots. The white woman, in turn, can now not only claim a privileged status in this new community, but also touch upon claims of being discriminated against. Especially for Germans – who could never find a healthy way to deal with their Nazi past – it signifies a welcome exit ticket from being the oppressor, right into the position of the oppressed….

    White female journalists covering Iran often gracefully follow hijab rules, which thousands of women in Iran openly defy every day, acting as if the hijab is a symbol of authenticity on the field. While in the past, the Twitter profile picture with a helmet and bulletproof vest signified courage for white international reporters, now the image of a white woman mingling ‘authentically’ with societies that are arguably some of the most hostile environments for women is a new prestigious symbol.

    But yes, read it all.