Brendan O'Neill (columnist)

For other people with the same name, see Brendan O'Neill (disambiguation).

Brendan O'Neill is a British pundit and author. He was the editor of Spiked from 2007 to September 2021, and is its "chief political writer".^[1] He has been a columnist for The Australian, The Big Issue, and The Spectator.

Brendan O'Neill
Nationality	British
Occupation	Columnist
Known for	Editor of Spiked (2007–2021) and columnist for The Australian and The Big Issue

Once a Trotskyist, O'Neill was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and wrote for the party's journal Living Marxism. In 2019, O'Neill said he was a Marxist libertarian.^[2][3]

Career

He began his career at Spiked's predecessor, Living Marxism, the journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which ceased publication after ITN won their libel action following Living Marxism accusing ITN of misrepresenting a picture of a prison camp during the Bosnian war.^[4]

Since then, O'Neill has contributed articles to publications in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia including The Spectator, the New Statesman, BBC News Online, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Conservative, Salon, Rising East and occasionally blogged for The Guardian,^[5] before moving to The Daily Telegraph.^[6] He writes a column for The Big Issue in London and The Australian in Sydney. He also writes articles for The Sun.^[7]

O'Neill has served^[when?] as a visiting fellow and columnist with the Australian right-wing think-tank, the Centre for Independent Studies,^{[8][non-primary source needed]} as well as being a keynote speaker in 2014 or 2015 for the pro-Israel advocacy organisation StandWithUs.^{[9][non-primary source needed]}

Writing as the fictional character "Ethan Greenhart", O'Neill is the author of Can I Recycle My Granny?, a satire of the green movement published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2008.^[10]

Views

Northern Ireland

O'Neill is a supporter of a united Ireland.^[11] He was critical of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA supported. O'Neill wrote, in a 1998 issue of Living Marxism, "The new peace deal is a disgrace... The biggest losers in all this are the republican movement... [W]hat exactly will the republican communities gain at the end of their 25-year struggle? Sinn Fein and the IRA have not just agreed to down arms. They have effectively signed away everything they once stood for, accepting that there will not be a united Ireland."^[12][13]

Racism

In 2020, when football fans booed players taking a knee to protest racism, he wrote that it showed "their disapproval of the colonisation of the beautiful game by the divisive cult of identity politics" and a working class reaction against the "virtue-signalling nonsense of Black Lives Matter". He has also described the right-wing Football Lads Alliance as a "working-class movement" against "terrorism and the ideologies that fuel it".^[14]

Environmentalism

O'Neill has said that the environmental movement has become a "religious cult"^[15] that is "waging war on the working class".^[16] He was later criticised for comments about the Swedish environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg.^{[17][18][19][20]} O'Neill has described warnings concerning overpopulation as a "Malthusian" interference in a women's right to reproductive freedom.^[21] In 2020, in relation to COVID-19, he has argued that "this pandemic has shown us what life would be like if environmentalists got their way".^[22][23]

Brexit

In September 2019, he said on the BBC's Politics Live that British people should be rioting about delays to Brexit.^[24] He said: "I'm amazed that there haven't been riots yet." When asked by guest presenter Adam Fleming: "Do you think there will be riots?", O'Neill responded: "I think there should be." In October 2019, 585 complaints about him calling for riots were dismissed by the BBC's executive complaints unit.^[25]

Bibliography

• A Duty to Offend : Selected Essays. Brisbane, Queensland: Connor Court Publishing. 2015. ISBN 9781925138764.
• Anti-Woke: Selected Essays. Brisbane, Queensland: Connor Court Publishing. 2018. ISBN 9781925826265.
• A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable. London Publishing Partnership. 2023. ISBN 9781913019860.

Sources

1. O'Neill, Brendan. "It's time for a change at spiked 27 September 2021". spiked. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
2. "The Rubin Report 'What is a Marxist Libertarian?". YouTube. Archived from the original on 17 December 2021. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
3. Marsh, Natasha (15 September 2016). "Brendan O'Neill, atheist blogger and the Church's biggest defender". The Catholic Weekly. The Catholic Weekly (Australian).
4. Well, Matt (31 March 2000). LM closes after losing libel action. The Guardian.
5. "Brendan O'Neill Profile". London: guardian.co.uk. 3 June 2008. Retrieved 2 March 2009.
6. . Telegraph Media Group. Archived from the original on 9 January 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2012.
7. "Articles by Brendan O'Neill | The Spectator Journalist | Muck Rack". muckrack.com.
8. . Archived from the original on 8 January 2015.
9. . StandWithUs. Archived from the original on 30 March 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
10. Greenhart, Ethan (2008). Can I Recycle My Granny? : and 39 Other Eco-dilemmas. London: Hodder. ISBN 9780340955659. OCLC 228366450.
11. "Today with Sean O'Rourke, RTE Radio 1 18/12/20 at 1.11.35". Raidió Teilifís Éireann. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
12. O'Neill, Brendan (May 1998). . Living Marxism. Archived from the original on 8 March 2000.
13. Aaronovitch, David (24 April 2019). "The shadowy past of Farage's motley crew – Comment". The Times. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
14. "From football hooligans to 'one of us': a short history of reaction". openDemocracy. 26 November 2020. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
15. Plummer, Kate (20 September 2019). "All the worst right-wing hysteria about the climate strike". Scram News. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
16. Dazed (17 October 2019). "Don't be fooled into thinking that climate activism is just for poshos". Dazed. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
17. Charlie Hancock (25 April 2019). "Like Greta Thunberg, I am on the autism spectrum. She gives me hope". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
18. Moran, Layla (23 April 2019). "Greta Thunberg has changed the course of history – what has Brendan O'Neill achieved?". The Independent. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
19. Hope, Mat (23 September 2019). "Attacks on Greta Thunberg Come from a Coordinated Network of Climate Change Deniers". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
20. Silberman, Steve (6 May 2019). "Greta Thunberg became a climate activist not in spite of her autism, but because of it". Vox. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
21. Revkin, Andrew C. (19 January 2011). "Deconstructing a Bestiary of Malthusian 'Miserabilists'". Dot Earth. The New York Times Blog. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
22. "Virus aftermath: Optimism or pessimism about its effect on climate change?". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 17 April 2020. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
23. Hope, Mat; Derler, Zak; Hope, Mat (1 April 2020). "The Coronavirus Crisis: The Dangerous Crossover Between Climate and COVID Denial – Byline Times". Byline Times. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
24. "BBC guest says people should riot over Brexit delays: 'Why have the British people been so patient?'". Newsweek. 27 September 2019.
25. Tobbitt, Charlotte (14 October 2019). "BBC dismisses 600 complaints over Brendan O'Neill's Brexit riots claim on Politics Live". Press Gazette. Retrieved 15 October 2019.

External links

• Personal website
• Instagram account with link to recent articles