Journalist and author in London. LRB, Guardian Long Read and others. Books about refugees in Europe and Britain's far right. danieltrilling.co.uk for contact details etc
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Having a vacuum like this at the top when there's a far-right government waiting in the wings is a disaster. Farage talks about principle. He talks about justice. He talks about belonging. What he means by these is repellent, but he and his fellow travellers are being allowed to define them.
www.cer.eu/in-the-press...
Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, 2015. (h/t @kabcommons.bsky.social)
Regardless of whether Reform's deportation plan "works", if they get a chance to try it - like the Tories' Rwanda policy, or Trump's deportations - it will ostentatiously torment thousands of people and further engrain racism in British politics. It must be opposed on that basis.
¿Esto es fascismo? Tribuna de @trillingual.bsky.social en la revista Nueva Sociedad n9.cl/qh9vf ¿Cómo comprender este fenómeno? ¿Qué fuerzas podrían hacerle frente? ¿Hasta qué punto sirve pensar todos estos fenómenos bajo la etiqueta de «fascismo»? @ccoo.bsky.social @crisfaciaben.bsky.social
I am trying to offer the equipment in the very limited way I can
I'm suggesting it could be either... but that a bit of flexibility in thinking about how things might turn out would help
I agree but my aim there was to challenge a tendency I've noticed over the years: "why are we worried about the far right? The centre-right [or indeed, centre-left] are doing enough damage as it is..." (We now have the added problem that distinctions between mainstream and far are collapsing ofc.)
I also wrote it in the hope that I would never have to write it again, but... you know...
I wrote this with the aim that it would be a durable piece, relevant every time there's a flare-up of far right violence or as far right ideas make further advances into the mainstream. Hope people find it useful.
Terrific essay by @trillingual.bsky.social. "The far-right ... thrives on failures in the existing system, yet offers remedies that would make everything much worse. It is difficult, but necessary, to give both parts of the equation due attention."
‘Are we, as Richard Seymour suggests, “in the early days of a new fascism”? In 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, Seymour argues that in trying to understand the new far right, we have been looking in the wrong places.’ @trillingual.bsky.social on far-right populism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ditto the Gorecki prom yesterday.
Important read 👇
Original here: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
My long read on Keir Starmer and human rights - for which a I spoke to dozens of current and former colleagues, campaigners and legal experts - is now a podcast. www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...
Relevant passage from @trillingual.bsky.social's recent piece in The Guardian regarding the Starmer government's own deployment of the 'Genocide only applicable as a post-facto designation' line. (Speaker: Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director, Human Rights Watch.) Article: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Important read 👇
I cite, sceptically, a formulation used by the right. It's not accurate for anywhere in the UK.
I'm writing about UK government policy. Contingency accommodation has been used across all four nations over the period the piece covers - not least in Glasgow, which experienced the worst of the outsourcing failures. Where I've referred to protests in England I've specified England.
EXCLUSIVE: Investigation proves Palestinians indiscriminately shot by Israeli military near food sites across 50 days, from yours truly for the @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
I really only have one thing to say about British politics, but "this thing you hate actually started with New Labour but was made worse by the coalition" has proved surprisingly durable
I wrote this to explain how we reached this point, in the hope it would be a resource for people arguing with friends and family, people with questions, perhaps even people thinking of joining a protest. Do share with anyone who might find it useful. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Adding this very good @trillingual.bsky.social article from a few years back on this very subject: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
“This landscape of destruction looks otherworldly, yet it is not; it is this world, and what is happening may yet come to define one of its darkest eras.”
Great article by @trillingual.bsky.social that highlights the way in which Starmer perhaps embodies the ambivalence of human rights law:the capacity for radical change on the basis of universal dignity vs a conservative reaffirmation of nation state neoliberalism www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
If you are looking for something to read this weekend...
Wonderful Arvo Pärt prom last night.
“We call upon the Government to lead by example: to change the narrative, end the use of divisive rhetoric, treat everyone in society with dignity and respect…, put an end to policies that treat refugees as ‘illegal’… and foster a culture in which local communities are places of welcome and unity.”
"The worst is still preventable." This sets out clearly how. That has to be the priority. But on a personal level I find the denials put out by the Israeli government and its advocates here in the UK (just look at what's on X) sickening.
Good morning, I've written a piece about the prime minister. I spoke to several dozen sources, including government insiders, former legal colleagues and campaigners to ask: what happened to Keir Starmer the heroic human rights lawyer? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Israeli NGOs B'Tselem and PHRI also describe the "development of a genocidal regime" in Israel. Incredibly strong stuff www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
Joint statement on Gaza from AFP, AP, BBC News and Reuters
It's parakeets vs pigeons round our way.
Really pleased and proud to announce a new @ihr.bsky.social seminar - Migration and Mobility History. We want to cover migration across time and space and speak with colleagues across disciplines. If you're interested in attending/presenting, get in touch: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
Lovely to receive a copy of the book my friend and occasional ad-hoc photographer @amarichi.bsky.social made with her students at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. More about her work at www.maribastashevski.com.
You've probably seen this but it's a wild story www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/barrist...
Interesting (and by "interesting" I mean 😡) how for each long-form piece I write I have to design a new method from scratch for handling, sifting and assembling the material.
I shall reread Neither Settler nor Native in celebration.
There's only one way to find out for sure. You have to make some dance videos
Great piece by @will-davies.bsky.social on TikTok, "clustered publics" and their role in far-right resentment. (I've found this shift profoundly challenging to respond to as a journalist. Ignore it and trust what I write reaches readers anyway? Dive in? Something else?) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Good point - only a little way in but it has been v male so far...
Current escapism.
I went on the @lrb.co.uk podcast to talk about my piece. www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...
Just call me the Cassandra of the left
Just a throwaway line, at the very end of the piece... 🫠
Thanks very much!
Request: what are some inspiring/useful examples of advice to young journalists, particularly to journalists from non-elite backgrounds?
The tattered, faded-pink flag flying from the turret of Arding and Hobbs makes it look as if Clapham Junction has seen a failed insurrection.
Algorithmic critique...
Action shot.
Maybe... perhaps more accurate to say then that running things properly shouldn't be linked to any politically expedient promises on numbers
The real political correctness here is that nobody wants to admit running things fairly and efficiently would likely result in giving more people asylum - unless you abandon parts of the Refugee Convention. The right wants the latter, and trying to fudge the issue makes it a more likely outcome imo.
See, for instance: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017...
If you're going to reheat a Blair-era policy you probably need to explain why, last time around, it was so badly run it ended up wrongly deporting thousands of people, some very likely to their deaths, and how you might avoid that this time. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
It's on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack! This looks great, v interested to hear...
Cannot believe that a) there's a disco version of Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, and b) I've only just found out about it.
‘As the historian Ian Kershaw says, trying to define fascism is “like trying to nail jelly to a wall”, yet for all its slipperiness, “fascism” describes a uniquely destructive force in politics, and one for which we don’t have a better word.’ @trillingual.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Issue 47.10 is now online, featuring: Jeremy Harding on Belgium’s Central Africa Museum Susan Pedersen on Soviet displaced persons @trillingual.bsky.social on the far right Dinah Birch on P.D. James Neal Ascherson on Norman Lewis and a cover by Jon McNaught. Read now at www.lrb.co.uk
Very sorry to hear that Hajar Harb, a courageous journalist from Gaza who we mentored on the Refugee Journalism Project a few years ago, has died in London. There's a crowdfunder here to support her family in the UK and Palestine if you can spare anything. www.justgiving.com/page/hajarharb
New piece: been working on this for the best part of a year. But really it's trying to draw on everything I've seen and thought about since I first started reporting on far right politics in the late 2000s. Online now and in tomorrow's LRB. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
New piece: been working on this for the best part of a year. But really it's trying to draw on everything I've seen and thought about since I first started reporting on far right politics in the late 2000s. Online now and in tomorrow's LRB. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Proofreading errors of our time, an occasional series:
The "New Deal for Communities" sign on my estate, long-since bleached by the sun, which has been lying on the grass since its posts rotted away a year ago, has finally been cleared away by the council.
For someone who #wouldprefernotto you put in more than enough hours!
Btw, for those that are interested, having to write the same piece over and over and over again was starting to corrode my soul so I'm trying to write fewer, more durable pieces on migration these days.
Think this holds up fairly well so far... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
We have a system that already makes people pay through the nose to be here and traps them in various forms of precarity. It hasn't notably improved the politics. Quite the opposite in fact. Why would doing more of the same help?
Investing in skills and raising wages are desirable goals. Perhaps, if you're willing to make the case for a far more disruptive social and economic transformation (and why it's worth it) that will lead to lower immigration. Measures to further punish immigrants just reinforce the right's arguments.
As if I have a shed!
To cope with the unremitting horror of the world right now/get off the internet/save my energy to intervene better where I can, I have been learning a new musical instrument. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Think this holds up fairly well so far... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
This is specifically because the AfD don't consider Muslim Germans to be German - only yesterday an interviewee told me it's becoming rare to see Western liberal institutions explicitly defend the idea that democracy means protecting minorities (and, I'd add, is incompatible with ethnonationalism).
61 days of total siege on 2 million people in the Gaza strip, with no food entering
Unless you're prepared to actually redistribute wealth and power the only kind of change you can offer is some variation on "we will improve your lives by making other people's worse".
Never had him down as an Adbusters fan.
What a joy to learn that Alexander Baron's The Lowlife has finally been reissued (out next week from @faberbooks.bsky.social). I wrote about Baron's life and work for @lrb.co.uk a little while ago here. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
A friend once described Labour's Corbyn years as "the bit where the prow of the ship goes up before sinking", and that has always stuck with me.
*Tower of the Winds intensifies*
Badar’s fellowship is partially subsidized by the Scholars at Risk program, which works with U.S. universities to host international scholars facing threats in their countries. He never imagined that a country with a Scholars at Risk program would one day pose a risk to scholars. A powerful essay ⤵️
Memory from a trip to Greece 12 years ago.
Wow. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...
Thanks! Sometimes wonder what I'd have written if I knew what was coming down the line
The right now want to radically alter that core function for the worse. It may be that improved efficiency and more data takes the wind out of their sails, but Appadurai's argument is one reason I think it won't.
Even if maximum bureaucratic efficiency was achieved it would still get tricky when deporting someone might breach their human rights, eg if they would be sent to a place where they would be killed or tortured, or left stateless. A choice still has to be made to either defend those rights or not.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
It's a pretty old book now but Arjun Appadurai's "Fear of Small Numbers" is a great essay on why moral panics over minority groups can actually get more intense the smaller that group is. I often think of it these days.
I know there's more to it than this but how badly do you have to have screwed things up as a political class to be threatened by a party that goes into local elections in 2025 saying "we're going to do more austerity to councils, here's a racist dogwhistle instead".
Glad to be of service!
Favourite new musical discovery in a long time.
You can watch Sam's film here. youtu.be/sih7G8x0rFs?...
Another nomination for one of our mentees - Samuel Munia of Africa Uncensored won an award from the International Center for Journalists, for his documentary on the border communities trapped by the conflict between al-Shabaab and the Kenyan military. www.icfj.org/news/news-cr...
is this good
Dreamed I was writing a long read on my complex feelings about having Russian-speaking Ukrainian Jewish heritage. Nobody wants to read that!!
(It's still bad, obviously.)
Not surprising Orban would do this; but efforts to hold Netanyahu accountable were already being undermined by governments of the centre. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
More info here... www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/cou...
Taking part in this 'hearing' on the Rwanda policy at the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes - an artists' intervention hosted by the Serpentine (off-site) in mid-April. Will be talking about what my reporting uncovered. Free but you need to book! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cicc-schoo...