Spiked (also written as sp!ked) 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.[1][2]
There is general agreement that Spiked is libertarian, with the majority of specialist academic sources identifying it as right-libertarian, and some non-specialist sources identifying it as left-libertarian. Some on the left associate it with fascism and the far right. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Activists associated with Spiked, sometimes described as part of "the Spiked network", took part in the Brexit Party as candidates or publicists,[10][11] while disagreeing with Nigel Farage on many domestic issues. The publication also takes a strong pro-Israel stance.[12]
Editors and contributors
Spiked is edited by Tom Slater, who was previously its deputy editor. He was appointed in September 2021, and replaced Brendan O'Neill, who had been editor following Mick Hume's departure in January 2007. On ceasing to be editor, O'Neill became Spiked's 'inaugural chief political writer'.[13]
Spiked was founded in 2000 after the bankruptcy of its predecessor after losing a libel case brought against it by the broadcasting corporation ITN.[17][2] The case centered around ITN coverage of Fikret Alić and other Bosnian Muslims standing behind a barbed-wire fence at the Trnopolje camp during the Bosnian war. LM claimed to oppose Western intervention on traditional anti-imperialist grounds, and published an article titled "The Picture that Fooled the World"[18] which claimed that ITN's coverage was deceptive, the barbed-wire did not enclose the camp and the Muslims were in fact "refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished." During the court case, evidence given by the camp doctor led LM to abandon its defence. ITN was awarded damages and costs, estimated to be around £1 million.[14][19][20]
The RCP itself formally dissolved in 1996, but maintained its existence as a loose network, first around LM and then Spiked. The group of writers associated with LM who went on to form the core editorial group at Spiked, are often referred to as the "LM network" or "Spiked network".[21][22]
The Daily Beast, as well as Paul Mason of the New Statesman, have described the site as libertarian.[28][4][29] A study in Policy & Internet by Heft et al. described Spiked as populist, saying that it has "roots in the radical left‐wing scene, but now oppose the political establishment from a position on the right side of the spectrum."[30] According to Tim Knowles, the technology correspondent for The Times, Spiked is right-wing and libertarian,[6] while Evan Smith, a historian who has written on Spiked in the context of its free speech campaigns, has noted its "right-libertarian and iconoclastic style".[31] By contrast, digital media scholar Jean Burgess and James Bowman of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center have referred to the site as left-libertarian.[32][9]
Spiked opposes many public health interventions. For example, it sees campaigns against obesity as state intrusion and “a war on the poor”.[33] It opposes multiculturalism and (as its contributor Munira Mirza put it) sees institutional racism as “a perception more than a reality”.[33]
Spiked saw the UK's vote to leave the European Union as a demonstration of democracy against ruling elites and has celebrated Nigel Farage's Brexit Party and Boris Johnson's Conservative government for their stance on this.[37] Activists associated with Spiked, sometimes described as part of 'the Spiked network', were active in campaigning for the UK to leave the EU, with a number of its activists involved in the Brexit Party as candidates or publicists.[38][39][40][41][10][11] Among those associated with Spiked who joined the Brexit Party were Claire Fox, who said she largely disagreed with Farage on domestic policies.[39]
In 2018 Monbiot wrote that "Spiked's writers rage against exposures of dark money. It calls The Observer's Carole Cadwalladr, who has won a string of prizes for exposing the opaque spending surrounding the Brexit vote, 'the closest thing the mainstream British media has to an out-and-out conspiracy theorist'".[10]
In July 2020, an exposé by The Daily Beast reported that Spiked was one of several mainly conservative websites that had inadvertently published articles attributed to non-existent experts on the Middle East. This network of fake journalists promoted the United Arab Emirates and pushed for harsher treatment of that country's opponents. Spiked did not remove the two articles, instead leaving an editorial note mentioning the articles' questionable authorship.[28][4][6]
Spiked takes a very pro-Israel stance. With a high proportion of its articles supporting Israel's alleged war crimes in the occupied territories.[42]
In May 2007 Spiked launched the Spiked Review of Books as a monthly online literary criticism feature. This coincided with controversy in the United States following the scaling back of newspaper book review sections.[50]
Spiked produces annual "free speech rankings" of UK universities.[51][52]
^ abIdeas, Jenny Turner reports from the Battle of (8 July 2010). "Who Are They?". London Review of Books. pp. 3–8. ISSN0260-9592. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
^Mason, Paul (7 June 2021). "David Lammy is right". New Statesman. Labour MP David Lammy previously sparked outrage among Britain's right-wing circles when he compared the Tory ERG group to the Nazis at a "People's Vote" rally... Spiked Online, a libertarian website, accused him of "foul Holocaust relativism".
^ abcKnowles, Tim. "Fake writers promoting UAE". The Times. The articles were mostly in right-wing publications, including the British libertarian website Spiked...
^ abBartholomew, Emma (8 March 2019). "'Pro-Brexit, anti-feminist, anti-environmental' videos from Hackney charity WORLDwrite spark concern". Hackney Gazette. Retrieved 10 June 2019. Ms Dingle was part of the Revolutionary Communist Party and wrote for its magazine Living Marxism before its successor LM Magazine went bankrupt in 2000, after it was sued successfully for libel by ITN. Key figures in the network – which some commentators have accused of being right-wing rather than left-wing as it claimed – went on to set up libertarian magazine Spiked and the think tank Institute of Ideas (IoI).
^Smith, Evan (21 November 2022). "A Platform for Working Class Unity? The Revolutionary Communist Party's The Red Front and the pre-history of Living Marxism/Spiked Online in the 1980s". Contemporary British History. 37. Informa UK Limited: 89–127. doi:10.1080/13619462.2022.2142780. ISSN1361-9462. S2CID253791729.
