The Spectator Is A Racist Endeavour

There have been rather a lot of accusations hurled around recently, especially at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, suggesting he is racist, and leads an institutionally racist party. This is complete crap. And what makes it stink to high heaven is that many of those hurling the accusations are standing in a dreadfully draughty glasshouse right now.

Fraser Nelson, editor, the Spectator

This is especially true of those labouring in the service of the Spectator magazine, which was already suspect on the race hate front, but has now removed all doubt. If any publication out there in the little Wild West Show that is the Fourth Estate were to win a racist bigotry competition hands down, it would be the Speccy.

Jusht having the one bottle, honeshtly

While its pundits rail at everyone to the left of them, which means most of the population, the Speccy continues to give a regular platform to Panagiótis Theadoracópulos, better known as Taki, a virulent anti-Semite and casual dropper of the N-Word. Also on regular pundit duty is nailed-on Islamophobe Doug Murray The K, who infamously demanded “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”.

Douglas Murray, the thinking bigot's bigot

But the real proof of the racist Speccy pudding has come from Rod “a smile, a song, and a four-pack of Stella” Liddle, whose back catalogue of bigotry has been summarised today by Sunny Hundal (see the thread HERE). This disgraceful excuse for a journalist has just excreted his latest Magnum Opus, titled “Is it possible to draw Serena Williams without being racist?” to which, in his case, the answer is No.

Here’s his pub-bore schtick, and as Theresa May once said, I am not making this up: “I have spent the morning trying to draw a cartoon of a black person without it being racist. It’s bloody difficult. Especially the lips. Make them too big and anti-racist people will accuse you of being a white supremacist peddling, in their words, the old ‘sambo’ myth.”

Was this a mere aberration? Was it heck. “But too small and they don’t look like the lips of very many black people. It’s the same with the colour. At first, on my cartoon, I used a black felt-tip pen and so the figure came out very black indeed. Sambo territory again, especially when I added big red lips and very white teeth. In the end I used cross-hatching with a pencil but this was, to my mind, unsatisfactory”. And there was more.

“My little drawing was the consequence of the furore which enveloped an Australian cartoonist, Mark Knight, who works for the Melbourne Herald Sun. He had produced a very funny cartoon of the perhaps inaptly named tennis player Serena Williams having a temper tantrum on court, and was immediately accused by the National Association of Black Journalists of having drawn a ‘sambo-like’ cartoon”. It wasn’t funny. It was racist.

Perhaps the title of the article should have been “Is it possible for Rod Liddle to open his North And South without being racist?” Yet, as Abi Wilkinson notes, plenty of those in the Westminster bubble, from across the political spectrum, are more than happy to attend the annual Spectator summer party, and thereby legitimise this racist endeavour.

That is inexcusable. This is a publication that is normalising racism. It should not be favoured with fawning acceptance. It should be shunned until it cleans up its act.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet1