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Spiked (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Spiked is a British
Internet magazine
focusing on politics, culture and society from a humanist
and libertarian
viewpoint.
's departure in January 2007, and features regular contributions from James Heartfield
, Michael Fitzpatrick
, Patrick West
, Rob Lyons, Nathalie Rothschild, Tim Black, Duleep Allirajah, and Frank Furedi
.
, a magazine whose point of view has been described by The Guardian as "extreme corporate libertarianism" and by J. G. Ballard
as "the most interesting and provocative magazine I have read for many years". LM, an acronym for Living Marxism, closed after losing a libel
case brought against it by the broadcasting corporation ITN. The case centred on LM featuring an article by Thomas Deichmann called 'The Picture that Fooled the World' that alleged that the photographer who took the famous ITN picture of Bosnian Muslims behind a barbed-wire fence in a Bosnian Serb-run camp during the Yugoslav war gave the false impression that this was a Nazi-style concentration camp. Deichmann claimed that it was really the photographer who was in a fenced-in area and that it was a transit camp.
ITN won and the ensuing award and costs, estimated to be around £1 million, bankrupted LM and its publishers.
, environmentalism
and what they see as a recent trend in Western foreign policy: humanitarian intervention
.
A prominent focus of the magazine is the defence of the freedom of speech
. Spiked says that it opposes all forms of censorship
, by the state or otherwise. Its writers call for a repeal of libel, hate speech
and incitement
laws. They have criticized laws targeted at paedophiles. Spiked also regularly critique risk society
; animal rights
; political correctness
; and environmentalism
. As regards the latter, a particular Spiked target has been what they see as "exaggerated" and "hysterical" interpretations of the scientific consensus on global warming
.
Other notable positions of Spiked are their opposition to the post-9/11
invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq
and Western aid for or interference in developing nations in general.
Spiked has been described by journalists such as Johann Hari
and George Monbiot
of pursuing a right-wing and pro-corporate agenda under a guise of being left-wing. Some have said that Spikeds stance has more in common with free-market libertarians than with the left.
Frank Furedi
, interviewed in Spiked, responded that the stance of LM and Spiked springs from the tradition of the "anti-Stalinist left
". He argued that the reason why many in the left tradition have difficulties in identifying these ideas with the left is that they completely misunderstand the humanist political position of being progressive in terms of human progress, science, rationality and freedom, and yet be completely anti-state:
Furedi listed Marxist activists, politicians and writers who he said had influenced LM and Spiked, including Roman Rosdolsky
, Henryk Grossman
, György Lukács, Paul Mattick
, Christian Rakovsky
, and Leon Trotsky
.
The journalist Nick Cohen
described Spikeds positions as mere attention seeking
:
and the Lobbywatch
network of websites argue that Spiked ideas are simply a front for their corporate funding. Monbiot and Lobbywatch therefore have also accused the contributors of Spiked (and its predecessor, LM (Living Marxism
) of adopting a strategy of entryism
into the media, communications and science networks.
For example, Monbiot posits what he calls the “LM Network” — and goes on to state that this 'network' is responsible for the formation of front groups, the infiltration of pressure groups, think tanks and governmental advisory committees to pursue what he sees as an agenda suiting a diverse range of corporate funders. Spiked has responded at length to these allegations and vehemently denied that they are paid to provide a corporate point of view:
Spiked dismiss the claims as conspiracy theory
and liken such critics to McCarthyites
. For example, Brendan O'Neill has stated:
In other articles Spiked has compared these critics to the tiny group of neo-Nazis who have accused them of being a Jewish front organization — and have asserted that these critics have limited themselves to attacking Spikeds associations (with certain companies and institutions) rather than tackling its ideas.
However, Spiked declines to release accounts detailing the source of it's funding so the claims of both sides in the debate are unverifiable.
. It accuses environmentalism of misanthropy
for supporting cuts in population and economic growth, particularly in response to climate change
. James Heartfield
, for instance, argues that the environmentalist concern with cutting back growth is linked to elitist prejudices:
George Monbiot
has accused Spiked of climate change denial
: "there are articles on Spiked Online that say there is no [climate change] problem and that take the side of the anti-scientists, the climate change deniers."
Spiked has not denied that human carbon emissions are contributing to climate change. Spiked criticises what it sees as the political interpretation of this fact put forward by the environmentalist movement. For example, in 2007 James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky argued that "the IPCC
's fairly sober summary of climate science has been spun [by environmentalists] to tell a story of Fate, Doom and human folly." Josie Appleton argued that: "Today's 'global warming story' — where morality equates to carbon calculating — owes more to the anxious zeitgeist than scientific findings."
Spiked criticises environmentalists for preferring to reduce economic growth in response to climate change, rather than to expand it by finding alternative sources of energy. Furedi argues that "innovation is necessary, not only to deal with climate change, but also to produce a great deal more inexpensive energy in order that more people can enjoy the fruits of modern society." Spiked contributors have thus written in defence of hydroelectric
and nuclear power
, often dismissed by environmentalist campaigners.
Spiked gave favorable coverage to the film The Great Global Warming Swindle
which argued against the scientific consensus that global warming is "very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations".
The Spiked Review of Books is a monthly online literary criticism
feature, based at Spiked. The launch in May 2007 coincided with controversy in the United States
following the scaling back of newspaper book review
sections. The Spiked Review of Books features editorials by Brendan O'Neill and interviews, essays and reviews by a range of writers, many of whom are regular contributors to Spiked, such as Frank Furedi, Jennie Bristow and Josie Appleton. The cover illustrations are by Jan Bowman.
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
Internet magazine
Online magazine
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
focusing on politics, culture and society from a humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
and libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
viewpoint.
Editors and contributors
Spiked is edited by Brendan O'Neill, following Mick HumeMick Hume
Mick Hume is a British journalist and former organiser of the defunct Revolutionary Communist Party. He was raised in Woking and educated at Manchester University where he read American Studies...
's departure in January 2007, and features regular contributions from James Heartfield
James Heartfield
James Heartfield is a British journalist who writes and lectures on economic regeneration. Heartfield is director of the think-tank Audacity.org, and a former member and theoretician of the Revolutionary Communist Party....
, Michael Fitzpatrick
Michael Fitzpatrick
Michael Fitzpatrick may refer to:*Michael J. Fitzpatrick , member of the New York State Assembly*Mike Fitzpatrick , Republican U.S...
, Patrick West
Patrick West
Dr. Patrick West is a freelance writer based in the UK and Ireland.Born in London in 1974, he graduated from Manchester University in 1997 with an MA in Cultural History...
, Rob Lyons, Nathalie Rothschild, Tim Black, Duleep Allirajah, and Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi is professor of sociology at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, therapy culture, paranoid parenting and sociology of knowledge....
.
Origin
The magazine was founded in 2000 after the bankruptcy of its predecessor, Living MarxismLiving Marxism
Living Marxism was a British magazine, originally launched in 1988 as the journal of the British Revolutionary Communist Party . It was later rebranded as LM and folded in March 2000 following an adverse ruling in a libel lawsuit brought by the British news corporation, Independent Television News...
, a magazine whose point of view has been described by The Guardian as "extreme corporate libertarianism" and by J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
as "the most interesting and provocative magazine I have read for many years". LM, an acronym for Living Marxism, closed after losing a libel
English defamation law
Modern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law...
case brought against it by the broadcasting corporation ITN. The case centred on LM featuring an article by Thomas Deichmann called 'The Picture that Fooled the World' that alleged that the photographer who took the famous ITN picture of Bosnian Muslims behind a barbed-wire fence in a Bosnian Serb-run camp during the Yugoslav war gave the false impression that this was a Nazi-style concentration camp. Deichmann claimed that it was really the photographer who was in a fenced-in area and that it was a transit camp.
ITN won and the ensuing award and costs, estimated to be around £1 million, bankrupted LM and its publishers.
Stance
The magazine focuses on issues of freedom and state control, science and technology. It seeks to counter positions such as multiculturalismMulticulturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
, environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
and what they see as a recent trend in Western foreign policy: humanitarian intervention
Humanitarian intervention
Humanitarian intervention "refers to a state using military force against another state when the chief publicly declared aim of that military action is ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is directed."...
.
A prominent focus of the magazine is the defence of the freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
. Spiked says that it opposes all forms of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, by the state or otherwise. Its writers call for a repeal of libel, hate speech
Hate speech
Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....
and incitement
Incitement
In English criminal law, incitement was an anticipatory common law offence and was the act of persuading, encouraging, instigating, pressuring, or threatening so as to cause another to commit a crime....
laws. They have criticized laws targeted at paedophiles. Spiked also regularly critique risk society
Risk society
"Risk society" is a term that emerged during the 1990s to describe the manner in which modern society organises in response to risk. The term is closely associated with several key writers on modernity, in particular Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck...
; animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
; political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
; and environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
. As regards the latter, a particular Spiked target has been what they see as "exaggerated" and "hysterical" interpretations of the scientific consensus on global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
.
Other notable positions of Spiked are their opposition to the post-9/11
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
invasions of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Western aid for or interference in developing nations in general.
Spiked has been described by journalists such as Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
and George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
of pursuing a right-wing and pro-corporate agenda under a guise of being left-wing. Some have said that Spikeds stance has more in common with free-market libertarians than with the left.
Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi is professor of sociology at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, therapy culture, paranoid parenting and sociology of knowledge....
, interviewed in Spiked, responded that the stance of LM and Spiked springs from the tradition of the "anti-Stalinist left
Anti-Stalinist left
The anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule...
". He argued that the reason why many in the left tradition have difficulties in identifying these ideas with the left is that they completely misunderstand the humanist political position of being progressive in terms of human progress, science, rationality and freedom, and yet be completely anti-state:
...much of the left in the twentieth century tended to be influenced by Stalinist and Social-Democratic traditions, which means they could not imagine that you could be left-wing and anti-state...so they were confused by us. But that was their fault, not ours. It was a product of their own abandonment of liberty in favour of ideas about state control.
Furedi listed Marxist activists, politicians and writers who he said had influenced LM and Spiked, including Roman Rosdolsky
Roman Rosdolsky
Roman Rosdolsky was an important Marxian scholar and political activist. He was born in Lviv in Galicia, at that time in the Austro-Hungarian empire, now in Ukraine, and died in Detroit, MI...
, Henryk Grossman
Henryk Grossman
Henryk Grossmanalternative spelling: Henryk Grossmann , was a Polish-German economist and historian of Jewish descent....
, György Lukács, Paul Mattick
Paul Mattick
Paul Mattick Sr. was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions...
, Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist...
, and Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
.
The journalist Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman...
described Spikeds positions as mere attention seeking
Attention seeking
Enjoying the attention of others is quite socially acceptable. In some instances, however, the need for attention can lead to difficulties. The term attention seeking is generally reserved for such situations where excessive and "inappropriate attention seeking" is seen.-Styles:The following...
:
if you strip revolutionary defeatism of its revolutionary content, you have what modern editors and producers want: contrarianism, the willingness to fill space and generate controversy by saying the opposite of what everyone else is saying just because everyone else is saying it – an affectation most people get over around puberty.
Accusations of Entryism
George MonbiotGeorge Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
and the Lobbywatch
LobbyWatch
LobbyWatch is a UK-based organization related to GM Watch founded by Jonathan Matthews.The following is a quote from their Welcome Page:...
network of websites argue that Spiked ideas are simply a front for their corporate funding. Monbiot and Lobbywatch therefore have also accused the contributors of Spiked (and its predecessor, LM (Living Marxism
Living Marxism
Living Marxism was a British magazine, originally launched in 1988 as the journal of the British Revolutionary Communist Party . It was later rebranded as LM and folded in March 2000 following an adverse ruling in a libel lawsuit brought by the British news corporation, Independent Television News...
) of adopting a strategy of entryism
Entryism
Entryism is a political tactic by which an organisation or state encourages its members or agents to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits, or take over entirely...
into the media, communications and science networks.
For example, Monbiot posits what he calls the “LM Network” — and goes on to state that this 'network' is responsible for the formation of front groups, the infiltration of pressure groups, think tanks and governmental advisory committees to pursue what he sees as an agenda suiting a diverse range of corporate funders. Spiked has responded at length to these allegations and vehemently denied that they are paid to provide a corporate point of view:
spiked has never "taken money from the fossil fuel industry", and those organisations that do sponsor us do not dictate our editorial agenda. It is testament to the small-mindedness of today’s illiberal liberal commentators that they think anyone who criticises green authoritarianism must be in the pay of Big Oil.
Spiked dismiss the claims as conspiracy theory
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
and liken such critics to McCarthyites
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
. For example, Brendan O'Neill has stated:
From their craven search for hidden agendas to their spider-web linking of various individuals to their censorious and McCarthyite demands: they might be treehuggers by day, but these individuals share all the worst traits of the most hardened conspiracy theorists.
In other articles Spiked has compared these critics to the tiny group of neo-Nazis who have accused them of being a Jewish front organization — and have asserted that these critics have limited themselves to attacking Spikeds associations (with certain companies and institutions) rather than tackling its ideas.
However, Spiked declines to release accounts detailing the source of it's funding so the claims of both sides in the debate are unverifiable.
Therapy Culture
A long-standing thread in the Spiked critique is what they identify as 'Therapy Culture' - a culture where the victim takes ascendancy and where rationality and logic is replaced by emotions and feelings. For Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, the core issues here are about agency and political autonomy and he argues "we should stop surrendering our sovereignty to the 'therapeutic state'".
The medicalisation of personal problems may relieve the individual of moral responsibility, but at the cost of allowing the therapeutic state to control personal behaviour and psychic life.
Environmentalism and global warming
Spiked has been consistently critical of environmentalismEnvironmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
. It accuses environmentalism of misanthropy
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...
for supporting cuts in population and economic growth, particularly in response to climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
. James Heartfield
James Heartfield
James Heartfield is a British journalist who writes and lectures on economic regeneration. Heartfield is director of the think-tank Audacity.org, and a former member and theoretician of the Revolutionary Communist Party....
, for instance, argues that the environmentalist concern with cutting back growth is linked to elitist prejudices:
The ecological outlook is an expression of middle-class rage at the masses ... Environmentalism, like all political discourses that take shortage as their starting point, will tend towards misanthropic solutions. Any movement that begins with the view that mankind must be curtailed to reduce the pressure on the environment will have to start thinking how it will select those who must make sacrifices.
George Monbiot
George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
has accused Spiked of climate change denial
Climate change denial
Climate change denial is a term used to describe organized attempts to downplay, deny or dismiss the scientific consensus on the extent of global warming, its significance, and its connection to human behavior, especially for commercial or ideological reasons...
: "there are articles on Spiked Online that say there is no [climate change] problem and that take the side of the anti-scientists, the climate change deniers."
Spiked has not denied that human carbon emissions are contributing to climate change. Spiked criticises what it sees as the political interpretation of this fact put forward by the environmentalist movement. For example, in 2007 James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky argued that "the IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
's fairly sober summary of climate science has been spun [by environmentalists] to tell a story of Fate, Doom and human folly." Josie Appleton argued that: "Today's 'global warming story' — where morality equates to carbon calculating — owes more to the anxious zeitgeist than scientific findings."
Spiked criticises environmentalists for preferring to reduce economic growth in response to climate change, rather than to expand it by finding alternative sources of energy. Furedi argues that "innovation is necessary, not only to deal with climate change, but also to produce a great deal more inexpensive energy in order that more people can enjoy the fruits of modern society." Spiked contributors have thus written in defence of hydroelectric
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...
and nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
, often dismissed by environmentalist campaigners.
Spiked gave favorable coverage to the film The Great Global Warming Swindle
The Great Global Warming Swindle
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a polemical documentary film that suggests that the scientific opinion on climate change is influenced by funding and political factors, and questions whether scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming exists....
which argued against the scientific consensus that global warming is "very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations".
Spiked Review of Books
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
feature, based at Spiked. The launch in May 2007 coincided with controversy in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
following the scaling back of newspaper book review
Book review
A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review could be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or on the internet. Reviews are also often...
sections. The Spiked Review of Books features editorials by Brendan O'Neill and interviews, essays and reviews by a range of writers, many of whom are regular contributors to Spiked, such as Frank Furedi, Jennie Bristow and Josie Appleton. The cover illustrations are by Jan Bowman.
Funding
Spiked receives its funding via online advertising and organising online debates, surveys, seminars and conferences; with a variety of partners, corporations and organisations. It also receives donations from readers. In October 2009, Spiked appealed to readers for £20,000 to ensure its continuation.External links
- Sp!ked Online
- Theresa Clifford: Is Wikipedia part of a new ‘global brain’? (Spiked article)
- Lobbywatch entry on Spiked
- Frank Furedi Official Website
- Mick Hume's column in The Times
- James Woudhuysen Website
- James Heartfield Website
- http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5822 A Response to Spiked on Ethiopia's Floods and Dams by International Rivers