Political Commentators From The United Kingdom

"I think, it doesn't apply to everybody, caveat, for most women the greatest gift their partner can give them is the opportunity, if they want to be at home with the children, to do that."

"One of the things people don't say enough about free speech is "Yes, it causes harm but the harm is worth it." And we don't make that argument because it's too honest and complicated and unpleasant."

"Pavlik Morozov was murdered by his own family in retribution. But, eerily, I still catch glimpses of him in modern Western society, especially at this point in time, when we are routinely encouraged to put politics before the person, snitch on each other via government hotlines and prove our devotion to idealistic agendas."

"The reality of life under the USSR is not something most people can accurately comprehend now, because it happened before most millennials were born and thus preceded the advent of social media, which means to most of my peers it might as well never have happened at all."

"If there is one thing my Soviet childhood taught me, it’s that subscribing to someone else’s ideology will always inevitably mean having to suspend your own judgment about right and wrong to appease your tribe. I refuse to do so."

"This is why so few Russians are rarely, if ever, progressive liberals. They are too busy dealing with the harsh realities of life, such as having to pay the rent or feed their children on a shoestring budget, to partake in self-righteousness and identity politics."

"If anything, free speech is the kryptonite of fascism, regardless of whether it stems from the left or the right. It’s the ultimate disinfectant for bad ideas. Tellingly, this is often why these people are happy to limit free speech: because, beneath all the bluster and virtue-signalling, they have flimsy arguments that collapse under the lightest touch of critical analysis. So, instead of making their ideas more robust—which is what most people would do—they put down debate altogether and hope it goes away."

"The dissemination of his work doesn’t enrich the world; it impoverishes the public conversation with lies and poisons society with hate."

"David Miller's description of how the world works is a fantasy of Zionist conspiracy. In form it is similar to more explicitly anti-Jewish antisemitism. And when he talks about Israel's "time-honoured tactic", and in another article about an "age-old Israel lobby tactic" he inadvertently slips into a way of thinking that is much older than antizionism. David Miller is not articulating a worry that Jews may be over-sensitive about antisemitism or about criticism of Israel. His position is that Jews who allege that there is antisemitism on the left, or on campus, are acting as part of a deliberate and collective conspiracy to lie."

"This is straightforward antisemitism. Here is the problem with those who treated any accusation of antisemitism as a witch hunt: they ended up defending people like this, blinding themselves to glaringly obvious red flags."

"There is a minor character in Shakespeare's Henry IV Pt. 2, Francis Feeble, a woman's tailor and country soldier. Falstaff praises him, "most forcible Feeble." Let me ask: What is feeble in Miller's presentation, and what forcible? The feeble? Everything that should matter to an academic: methodology; research; evidence; history. The forcible? Everything that an academic should shun: extravagant claims, unmoored from evidence; the antisemitic premises of the work; the verbal assaults on Jewish students - assaults which are the inevitable outcome of his writing and speech-making. But of course the feebleness of the analysis does not matter to people who are already convinced of the malign existence of the Lobby. Miller does not have to prove anything to them – still less, anything new. Just to write or speak the word "Lobby" is enough: the sought-after effect is achieved. This is writing as evocation. He reminds his audience of what it already knows. That's why to complain that (as seems likely) many of his supporters haven't actually read his stuff misses the point. All they need to know is that he writes about the "Israel Lobby"."

"[On Miller's sacking as a professor] Bristol [University] has shockingly colluded in another Israeli-run witch hunt."

"Miller claims he suffered discrimination when he was fired two years ago because his anti-Zionism counts as a philosophical belief under the Equality Act. This is no mere critique of Israeli policy. Miller believes that Israel should disappear completely. "Our cause is not to establish a Palestinian state but to dismantle Israel", is how he put it. It feels like an appropriate moment to be asking whether such a belief can ever be, as the law states, "worthy of respect in a democratic society, compatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others"."

"The anti-Zionist theories he taught in seminars may not have envisaged this but Hamas has just demonstrated what trying to defeat the Zionist enemy entails: mass murder, rape, kidnapping, babies slaughtered in unspeakable ways. Anti-Zionism has a very different meaning this week from whatever it may have meant in the past."

"In light of some of the commentary around the employment tribunal's judgment in the case of Professor Miller and Bristol University, I want to clarify that antisemitism must continue to be challenged wherever it arises. We have seen people in this country use their views on Israel as an excuse to display antisemitism."

"It is therefore important to underline that this ruling does not change the fact that while academics have the right to express views, they cannot behave in a way which amounts to harassment of Jewish students."

"The concept that an ideology needs protecting is totally ludicrous. What needs protecting are identities, not ideologies ... The same logic could be applied to a white supremacist."

"The ruling starts to undermine the protections that the Equality Act claims to guard."

"[The Attorney General should] reflect and come up with a solution [...] There will be a consensus in Parliament that this needs ironing out."

"Incredibly, according to Miller, Zionist power is so overbearing that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Jennie Formby, the party's General Secretary under Corbyn, did its bidding."

"Miller has chosen to attack the Bristol University Jewish Society — proper, actual students at his own university — as being part of a co-ordinated campaign of censorship directed by the state of Israel."

"[The university] cannot, however, allow some 18-year-old student who comes up from [the Hertfordshire village of] Radlett to study, say, botany and joins the Jewish society to be characterised by one of its own professors as having signed up to a foreign-backed conspiracy to subvert the country's politics."

"David Miller is a textbook case of a toxic antisemite dressed up as an anti-Israel activist."

"It's disappointing that anyone takes Miller seriously when his hateful rhetoric is replete with so many overt and ugly stereotypes about inordinate Jewish power and our supposed malign influence."

"In the Salisbury case, as Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan has shown, the government initially relied on a phrase that they thought could be defended as true but which was intended to cultivate a deception. This is that the nerve agent involved in the case is of "a type developed by Russia" ... The deception was spectacularly successful. The entire mainstream media went along with it. Embarrassingly, many mainstream journalists deluged Craig Murray with abuse and ridicule for raising modest questions about the government narrative."

"Of course Israel have sent people in to target that, to deal with that. Particularly through interfaith work … pretending Jews and Muslims working together will be an apolitical way of countering racism. No, it’s a Trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community. We saw it in East London Mosque for example, where East London Mosque unknowingly held this project of making chicken soup with Jewish and Muslim communities coming together. This is an Israel-backed project for normalising Zionism in the Muslim communities."

"The Zionist movement, and the Israeli government, are the enemy of the left, the enemy of world peace, and they must be directly targeted."

"[The Labour party is] a mere detail of the Israelis' attempt to impose their will all over the world."

"Do you think that Palestine can be liberated without the Islamic Republic of Iran? Of course it can't. It's absurd – an absurd position."

"[Asked if women in Iran should be able to dress as they please] Are you asking me about sex work and the status of sex workers?"

"If you are not Jewish, do not be cowed by racial supremacists who want to hector you into political subservience."

"The university dismissing me has effectively ended my career in academia [...] I can never get a job at another university because of what she refuses to say here — that I am an antisemite. If I had been given a warning it would have been possible for me to get another job and I would have been out of the University of Bristol’s hair, and we wouldn't be here."

"Zionist forces killed their own people on October 7. Zionist propaganda (also known as Hasbara) has suggested that Palestinian resistance forces were responsible for their deaths, but the narrative doesn't add up."

"The Zionist movement prioritises the radicalisation of Jews outside occupied Palestine, so they become enthusiasts for, promotors of, and participants in, genocide."

"Protests are not enough... Those who are interested in ending this genocide must begin by targeting those responsible near them: the entire Zionist movement globally must live in fear of accountability until it is dismantled and its ideology eradicated. And let's be clear, there are Zionists everywhere. In every town and city. Find out where they are..."

"David Miller writes about conspiracy. Some academics analyze conspiracy theories and explain how they become a force in the world. Miller is not among them. He doesn't scrutinize conspiracies, he builds them."

"It's a question of how we defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice. How do we make sure Zionism is ended essentially. There's no other way of saying that."