Brendan O'Neill is a British pundit and author. He was the editor of Spiked from 2007 to September 2021, and is its "chief political writer".[1] He has been a columnist for The Australian, The Big Issue, and The Spectator.
He began his career at Spiked's predecessor, Living Marxism, the journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which ceased publication after ITN won their libel action following Living Marxism accusing ITN of misrepresenting a picture of a prison camp during the Bosnian war.[4]
Writing as the fictional character "Ethan Greenhart", O'Neill is the author of Can I Recycle My Granny?, a satire of the green movement published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2008.[10][verification needed]
Since 2018, Brendan O'Neill has hosted the monthly podcastThe Brendan O'Neill Show.[11]
O'Neill has described the Orange Order as an "organisation which was founded in 1795 with the sole purpose of intimidating Catholics and Irish nationalists" and which "played an important role in defending the sectarian set-up in Northern Ireland and in ensuring that Catholics were denied their basic civil rights." O'Neill has also been critical of the Parades Commission established to monitor parades in Northern Ireland.[14]
O'Neill was critical of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA supported. O'Neill wrote, in a 1998 issue of Living Marxism, "The new peace deal is a disgrace... The biggest losers in all this are the republican movement... [W]hat exactly will the republican communities gain at the end of their 25-year struggle? Sinn Fein and the IRA have not just agreed to down arms. They have effectively signed away everything they once stood for, accepting that there will not be a united Ireland."[15][16]
Sexual abuse
In a 2012 Huffington Post article,[17] O'Neill argued against victims of sexual abuse by high-profile individuals like Sir Jimmy Savile coming forward publicly, stating: "I think there is more virtue in keeping the abuse as a firm part of your past, rather than offering it up to a scandal-hungry media and abuse-obsessed society that are desperate for more episodes of perversion to pore over".[17][18]
Homosexuality
O'Neill has said he views the success of gay liberation movements in the 20th century as a "wonderful gain for humanity, which transformed people's lives for the better".[19] He has, however, also characterized the increasing dogmatism of LGBT organizations and their corporate sponsors as a form of "queer imperialism" by demanding LGBT rights be promoted in Russia and other states with conservative laws.[18][20] He also claims that the depiction of homophobia as "a mental disorder" mirrors the way that homosexuality was once depicted,[21] and criticized the legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia, made possible by public referendum, arguing that it has been "attended by authoritarianism wherever it's been introduced." He cited concerns it may impinge on religious freedom and feared the demonization of those who disagreed with the expansion of marriage.[22]
O'Neill considers efforts to combat racism in football to be a "class war driven by the elite's utter incomprehension of the mass passions that get aired at football matches".[25] Referring to high-profile cases of racial abuse and alleged racial abuse, he argued, "these incidents and alleged incidents are not racism at all, in the true meaning of the word", due to the levels of passion involved, describing anti-racism efforts as "a pretty poisonous desire to police the ... working classes".[25] In 2020, when football fans booed players taking a knee to protest racism, he wrote that it showed "their disapproval of the colonisation of the beautiful game by the divisive cult of identity politics" and a working class reaction against the "virtue-signalling nonsense of Black Lives Matter". He has also described the right-wing Football Lads Alliance as a "working-class movement" against "terrorism and the ideologies that fuel it".[26]
O'Neill has said that the environmental movement has become a "religious cult"[28] that is "waging war on the working class".[29] He criticised the Swedish environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg in his 2019 article "The Cult of Greta Thunberg"[30] in which he describes her as a "millenarian weirdo" and criticises what he describes as the "monotone voice" speech patterns[31][32][33][34] of the Swedish environmentalist. O'Neill has described warnings concerning overpopulation as a "Malthusian" interference in a women's right to reproductive freedom.[35]
Brexit
In September 2019, he said on the BBC's Politics Live that British people should be rioting about delays to Brexit.[36] He said: "I'm amazed that there haven't been riots yet." When asked by guest presenter Adam Fleming: "Do you think there will be riots?", O'Neill responded: "I think there should be." In October 2019, 585 complaints about him calling for riots were dismissed by the BBC's executive complaints unit.[37] In 2020, O'Neill called for loud, open celebrations of Brexit, which formally took place on 31 January 2020, describing such celebrations as celebrations of democracy.[38]
COVID-19
In 2020, in relation to COVID-19, he has argued that "this pandemic has shown us what life would be like if environmentalists got their way"[39][40] and condemned the "chilling" and "dangerous" "witch-hunting of those who criticise the response to coronavirus".[41]
↑ O'Neill, Brendan (13 April 2010). "The Secular Inquisition". Spiked. Spiked Online. Archived from the original on 14 August 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2024. ...my only concern, as an atheistic libertarian, is with analysing the emergence of a new form of hysterical and repressive atheism. And the New Atheists...pursue their own, deeply problematic, fearmongering, illiberal agenda under the guise of trying to win justice for 'the powerless'.
The Revolutionary Communist Party, known as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency until 1981, claimed to be a Trotskyist political organisation formed in 1978. From 1988 it published the journal Living Marxism. It started with only a few dozen supporters; its membership peaked at 200 in the mid-1990s.
Frank Furedi is a Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, education, therapy culture, paranoid parenting and sociology of knowledge.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is a conservative British radio presenter, political journalist, and newspaper columnist. She has hosted a radio show on Talkradio simulcast on TalkTV, called Julia Hartley-Brewer on weekdays from 10am. She has widely expressed her sometimes controversial views and opinions, including her pro-Brexit stance, her disbelief in climate change, and her belief that political correctness damages people's ability to freely express their political views. Many viewers and listeners have accused her of trivialising issues such as racism and Islamophobia, and they have also accused her of posting Tweets which are insensitive or harmful in nature.
Charles Hilary Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham is an English journalist and a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph; he still writes for all three. He is known for his authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in three volumes. Under the government of Boris Johnson, in July 2020 Moore was given a peerage, thus becoming a member of the House of Lords.
Andrew Bolt is an Australian conservative social and political commentator. He has worked at the News Corp-owned newspaper company The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) for many years, for both The Herald and its successor, the Herald Sun. His current roles include blogger and columnist at the Herald Sun and host of television show The Bolt Report each weeknight. In Australia, Bolt is a controversial public figure, who has frequently been accused of abrasive demeanour, racist views and inappropriate remarks on various political and social issues.
Spiked is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine was founded in 2001 with the same editor and many of the same contributors as Living Marxism, which had closed in 2000 after losing a case for libel brought by ITN.
Claire Regina Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley, is a British writer, journalist, lecturer and politician who sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated life peer. She is the director and founder of the think tank the Academy of Ideas.
Munira Mirza is a British political advisor who served as Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 2019 until she resigned in February 2022. She previously worked under Johnson as Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture when he was Mayor of London.
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist known for challenging world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation.
School Strike for Climate, also known variously as Fridays for Future (FFF), Youth for Climate, Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.
Adelaide Charlier is a Belgian activist fighting for climate and social justice. She co-founded the Youth for Climate movement in Belgium. She is mainly known for her involvement in the fight against climate change. Inspired by the actions of Greta Thunberg, she is one of the leading figures, alongside Kyra Gantois and Anuna De Wever, of the first school strikes for climate in Belgium.
Svante Fritz Vilhelm Thunberg is a Swedish actor, author, and father of climate activist Greta Thunberg.
"The 1975" is a 2019 song by the English band of the same name from their fourth studio album, Notes on a Conditional Form. It was released on 24 July 2019, and included on the album as the opening track in May 2020. It continues the tradition of the band's albums opening with an eponymous song, but whereas the previous three had a shared set of lyrics sung by Matty Healy, the 2019 song uses different lyrics delivered by the environmental activist Greta Thunberg. She calls for civil disobedience in response to climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in a modified version of her speech "Our House Is on Fire" from the 2019 World Economic Forum.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg made a double crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 2019 to attend climate conferences in New York City and, until it was moved, Santiago, Chile. She sailed from Plymouth, UK, to New York, United States aboard the racing yacht Malizia II, returning from Hampton, Virginia, to Lisbon on the catamaran La Vagabonde. Thunberg refuses to fly because of the carbon emissions of the airline industry and the trip was announced as carbon neutral. As a racing sailboat, the Malizia II has no toilet, fixed shower, cooking facilities or proper beds.
Xiye Bastida Patrick is a Mexican climate activist and member of the Indigenous Otomi community. She is one of the major organizers of Fridays for Future New York City and has been a leading voice for indigenous and immigrant visibility in climate activism. She is on the administration committee of the People's Climate Movement and a former member of Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion. She cofounded Re-Earth Initiative, an international nonprofit organization that is inclusive and intersectional “just as the climate movement should be.” Xiye is pronounced "she-yeh", [ʃi-jɛ], meaning not available.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been noted for her skills as an orator. Her speech at the 2019 United Nations climate summit made her a household name. Prior to her speaking engagements, Thunberg had demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, using the signage Skolstrejk för klimatet.
Noga Levy-Rapoport is an Israeli-born British climate activist, speaker, and volunteer within British climate strikes at the UK Student Climate Network.
Sherelle Emma Jacobs is a British journalist. She is the Assistant Comment Editor at The Daily Telegraph and has previously written for The Guardian.
Naomi Seibt is a German political activist, known as a climate change denier and for her opposition to climate activist Greta Thunberg. Until April 2020, she was employed by the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and right-wing public policy think tank that marketed her as the "anti-Greta". She has spoken at multiple events organized by conservative think tanks and has self-identified as a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist.
Bristol Youth Strike 4 Climate is an environmental advocacy group that was established in February 2019. in response to the international Fridays for Future and Youth Strike 4 Climate movements. Run by a team of student volunteers aged 14 to 24, the group have organised 10 climate strikes as of September 2020, calling for climate justice and drawing attention to the climate and ecological crisis.
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