Off The Rails On A Crazy Train

As Dennis Skinner said, “When posh boys are in trouble, they sack the servants.” And the great Professor Robert Skidelsky FBA, Lord Skidelsky, has passed from our midst. Despite Keir Starmer’s pretence that we were either not in the Iran War or at least not in it all the way, its effects are damaging Britain more than any other major economy, so we have never needed Skidelsky more, and that is saying something.

Instead, we must make do with a sex toys MP called Niblett. Is this a Carry On film? Which of the legendary ensemble cast should play which of today’s politicians, and why? Anything more sophisticatedly satirical would be impossible when Reform UK’s candidate for Lambeth’s Brixton Windrush ward was called Oliver Cromwell Khan.

In anticipation of the local elections, Reform is now in negotiations with Unite to resolve the Birmingham bin strike. The Labour Party is simply and rightly being bypassed. Did Sharon Osbourne ever follow through on her pledge to move to Birmingham and contest Sparkhill? The Conservative Party wanted her as its candidate. Is she a member? At any rate, she has promised to attend Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s Unite the Kingdom rally on 16 May, when both British and foreign speakers will call on Donald Trump to invade this country to effect regime change. Will Kemi Badenoch’s Sharon Osbourne be one of them?

No one seems to be telling Osbourne to say in her lane. They save that for the Pope, about whom Trump has lied directly by claiming that, “The Pope made a statement, he said “Iran can have a nuclear weapon”.” The Pope’s brother’s Illinois home has had to be evacuated after a bomb threat, while the Pope himself teaches, “Jesus told us, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” but woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic, or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

The Pope is in Cameroon, where there has been a civil war for nearly nine years. While of course his words have a wider application, they were not immediately addressed to Trump or to his supporters. Still, they have clearly heard them, so let them take them to heart. As Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas tweeted on Wednesday, “Public officials may opine about theology, as is their right. The Successor of Peter teaches. This is his office. If what he teaches doesn’t sound like what we want to hear, we should admit the likelihood that the problem is in what we want to hear, and not in what he teaches.”

The “anything but a definition ex cathedra is just his opinion” school of these things is on the same level as the German Synodal Way, or the attempts to justify the impending entrenchment of the Lefebvrian Schism, or the quotations from Shakespeare in the Book of Mormon because Joseph Smith thought that they were from the Bible, or Pete Hegseth’s quotation from Pulp Fiction on the same misapprehension, which has made some of us feel our age as surely as the forthcoming induction of Oasis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

To The Usual Standard Set

Has anyone nicked Keir Starmer’s phone yet? I dare not become Prime Minister while Pippa Crerar lives, and since she is only a year older than I am, then that means never. Could she really be about to bring down a second? Yes. Yes, she could. Gosh.

To whose benefit? For only the twenty-second highest population in the world, the sixth highest military spending is still not enough for some people, and they have always got their money's worth from George Robertson. Wes Streeting's next day agreement with him, that benefits would need to be cut to enrich the arms trade even further, was followed within hours by The Guardian's confirmation that Starmer had lied to Parliament about Peter Mandelson. Streeting was Mandelson's schoolboy protégé, and the old Blairites had never trusted Starmer even before he had pretended to keep Britain out of the Iran War, so might Mandelson be the source of the leak? Streeting, or Mandelson, has offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer to Yvette Cooper, and no doubt plenty of other things to plenty of other people.

Whatever happened to Josh Simons, the Minister for Digital ID who had tried to frame critical journalists, including Starmer's Independent opponent at the last General Election, for crimes against the Official Secrets Act and the National Security Act? Whatever happened to Simons's close associate Joani Reid, the Lewisham councillor whom Mandelson imposed as the Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, and who turned out to have been carrying on drunkenly with 50 per cent of the captains of Britain's nuclear armed submarines while married to a man who had been arrested as an alleged Chinese spy three weeks after his firm had paid her £2,400? Like the meningitis that was set to cause another lockdown a month ago, those matters must have resolved themselves. As, we trust, will this.

Due Diligence

To bring about a Leadership challenge after the forthcoming elections, someone has leaked the fact that Keir Starmer lied to Parliament in order to appoint Jeffrey Epstein’s best mate as Ambassador to Washington, as Paul Lewis, Henry Dyer and Pippa Crerar write:

Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting clearance but the decision was overruled by the Foreign Office to ensure he could take up his post as ambassador to the US, an investigation by The Guardian can reveal.

According to multiple sources, Mandelson was initially denied clearance in late January 2025 after a developed vetting process, a highly confidential background check by security officials.

Keir Starmer had by then announced he would be making Mandelson the UK’s chief diplomat in Washington, posing a dilemma for officials at the Foreign Office, who decided to use a rarely used authority to override the recommendation from security officials.

Mandelson’s failure to secure vetting approval has not previously been publicly revealed, despite intense scrutiny over his appointment and the release by the government of 147 pages of documents supposed to shed light on the case.

Further documents are due to be released. However, it can also be revealed that senior government officials have been considering whether to withhold from parliament documents that would reveal that Mandelson was not given vetting approval from security officials.

The decision, which rests with the Cabinet Office, has not yet been taken. Any attempt to withhold the documents from the intelligence and security committee could amount to a breach of a parliamentary motion to release “all papers relating to Mandelson’s appointment”.

The revelation that the now former ambassador was not granted clearance by UK Security Vetting (UKSV), a division of the Cabinet Office that scrutinises the background of prospective civil servants, will raise further questions about the prime minister’s judgment in appointing him.

Starmer will also be pressed over whether he misled the public in remarks about the security vetting process, which he said had given Mandelson “clearance for the role”.

It is not known whether the prime minister was made aware that his pick for Washington ambassador had not been granted approval by UKSV, which conveys its decision as a recommendation to government departments. Neither is it known who in the Foreign Office made the decision to overrule UKSV.

Sir Olly Robbins, the current permanent secretary in the Foreign Office, was the department’s top civil servant in late January 2025 when the decision was made, having taken up the role earlier that month. The foreign secretary was David Lammy, who is now the deputy prime minister.

Starmer’s then chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who resigned in February over his role in appointing Mandelson, could also now be asked whether he had any involvement in, or knowledge or, the decision to overrule UKSV’s denial of clearance.

That decision was made weeks before Mandelson was due to take up his post in February 2025. Seven months later, he was sacked over his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Ministers and officials are now likely to be pressed over whether they have been fully transparent about the process that led to his appointment.

At a press conference in Hastings on 5 February, Starmer responded to a question from a journalist by saying there had been “security vetting, carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise that gave him [Mandelson] clearance for the role. You have to go through that before you take up the post.” He added: “Clearly both the due diligence and the security vetting need to be looked at again.”

This appeared to partly put the blame for Mandelson’s appointment on the failure of a vetting process which, according to sources, his government had overruled.

As a result of Mandelson’s sacking as US ambassador on 11 September 2025, after the extent of his relationship with Epstein came to light, parliamentary scrutiny mounted. On 16 September, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and Robbins, her top official, responded to questions over the vetting process with a letter to the foreign affairs select committee.

“Peter Mandelson’s security vetting was conducted to the usual standard set for developed vetting in line with established Cabinet Office policy,” the letter said, explaining that the process had been undertaken by UKSV on behalf of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

Cooper and Robbins said the process had “concluded with DV clearance being granted by the FCDO in advance of Lord Mandelson taking up post in February”.

What the letter failed to inform parliament was that UKSV had denied Mandelson’s clearance – a recommendation that threatened Starmer having to withdraw a high-profile appointment he had already made public.

UKSV’s vetting decisions are almost always enforced by government departments, but they technically have the authority to override the recommendations. The precise reason that UKSV recommended that Mandelson not receive clearance is now likely to be subject to intense speculation.

Consistent, Insistent

JD Vance has now been rebuked by two Popes. That is quite something. No one tells Douglas Wilson, Brooks Potteiger, Paula White or Franklin Graham to “keep out of politics”. If the Pope should “stay in his lane”, then what about the Bible-quoting Pete Hegseth? But of course this is the Pope’s lane. If war and peace, death and life, are not the stuff of morality, then, oh, I cannot even be bothered to finish that sentence. The criteria for a just war are very specific, and they all have to be met, yet the war with Iran has met none of them.

Nor does it matter whether or not this was an extremely rare definition ex cathedra, protected by the charism of infallibility. Although there are several undisputed examples, there is no definitive list of such definitions, and in any case, your local bishop’s teaching is not his mere opinion. By that bishop’s authority, your parish priest’s teaching is not his mere opinion. And the Pope’s teaching is not his mere opinion, either. In the words of Bishop James Massa, Chairman of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”

Feet of Clay?

Chris Damian writes:

Bishop Barron is in Catholic public discourse again because of President Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV. Following Leo’s recent anti-war comments, Trump lambasted the Pope in a Truth Social post, accusing the Leo of being “weak on foreign policy” and insisting he only became pope because of the President. Trump early the following morning also posted an image of himself depicted as Jesus.

In response, Barron called for an apology from the President, while at the same time praising the President as the greatest in his lifetime in “defending our first liberty.” President Trump, upon hearing of Barron’s post, said he would not apologize. He also that he thought the image, in which he is wearing a white robe and has glowing hands, was depicting him as a doctor. Catholic Vice President JD Vance in response to all this said that Pope Leo should “stick to matters of morality” and “let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy” (I personally find the word choice of “dictating” to be quite telling.)

Catholics across the political spectrum have raised concerns and given commentary about the President’s posts and Barron’s response. But this isn’t the only recent controversy involving Barron.

In December 2025, I was made aware that Bishop Robert Barron’s personal Facebook account was following a number of provocative pages, including one for “Brazilian male feet.” After validating that these were real pages and that the account did indeed belong to Barron, I shared these findings on Twitter. Surprisingly, the Word on Fire account, rather than Barron himself, provided a response.

Shortly before Christmas, a Catholic writer contacted me about an odd discovery. He had found that Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona–Rochester had a personal Facebook account which followed pages for an account dedicated to “Brazilian Male Feet” and a couple of young muscular men who regularly posted provocative pictures and videos…

Word on Fire accused those raising concerns of seeking to “manufacture controversy where none exists.” The ministry stated that Barron’s account had recently been hacked and targeted for “digital fraud.” Of course, these two claims contradict one another, given that a controversy does exist about these follows and the alleged hack. (Insisting to those concerned that there are no concerns is a tactic one can easily trace back to the clergy abuse crisis.) Word on Fire did not provide any evidence of its claims, even though one can easily find a history of account logins, including suspicious access, via the Meta platform.

It is certainly possible that Barron’s account had been the subject of a hack. However, after Word on Fire provided its public defense of Barron and accusations of malice towards me and others, I was made aware of prior similar activity. An individual that I personally know shared screenshots of similar accounts followed by Barron as far back as January of 2024. This, along with the lack of evidence shared, raises significant doubt concerning Word on Fire’s claims. (And one again wonders why the ministry is tasked with the public defense of Barron’s personal accounts.)

According to this individual, Barron followed a number of accounts for young men who posted provocative images and videos, including “Sunshyne Smile,” “Niki Clip,” “Bright Bright,” “Tayo Ricci,” and “The young Jamaican trainer.” He captured screenshots of these follows at various points between January 2024 and May 2025 and shared them with a small group of other Catholics in his circles, trying to make sense of them.

(Some of these accounts seem to have either been deleted or changed since. Bishop Barron also appears to have deleted his personal Facebook page following the December controversy.)

Partly because of a fear of retaliation, not only for himself, but for others involved, the individual who shared all this with me asked to remain anonymous. He was willing to share the following:

“I took these screencaps in two sets, on January 6, 2024, and in May of 2025. The January screen caps were occasioned on the second of two occurrences, when I saw this account, purporting to be Bishop Barron, acting abrasively towards other Catholic figures I respect. The first one involved his making an aggressive and irresponsible statement towards a cleric I admire for his attempt to speak with candor, and this had happened some months prior. The second was his making a blithely dismissive comment towards someone I consider an important Catholic public voice.

Both instances had been accompanied with his not giving any opportunity, for those he impugned, to respond. It was, frankly, bullying behavior, and a weird behavior to see from a bishop aware of social media and the impact thereof.

This behavior was already offensive enough to see the first time, especially given that he was a bishop and the other cleric was not. So when I saw it happen the second time, I began to wonder whether it was even the Bishop, or instead some kind of overly aggressive social media rep.

This led me to look at the profile, where, with experience with Facebook, I found the likes and follows, which were normally not searched. It was on this occasion that I - accidentally, and with more than a little surprise - discovered a number of disturbing accounts in the likes and follows. I found accounts with the names ‘Niki Clip’, ‘Sunshyne Smile’, and ‘The young Jamaican trainer’, among others. At that time, I was concerned that this was not the Bishop's social media account, but a very bizarre scam account.

I made my concerns known to the person whom he had dismissed on the second occasion, on January 6th of 2024, only to learn that this was, in fact, the Bishop's account.

Obviously, this was a surprise and a scandal, but I am not the sort of person to want to air that sort of thing publicly and I am not a journalist, so, with that, I let it be.

However, after some time had passed, and with more instances of concern in the news about the Bishop and Word on Fire, and as as Bishop Barron’s public criticism of various ideological targets became more and more difficult to ignore in anyone’s Catholic news feed, I began to be concerned that I needed to keep more of a record of what I had found in case it was still there, and in case it ever came out, since I had, in fairness, shared it with one other person, and these things can take on a life of their own. Because of this, in May of 2025, I went back to look and see if the profile was still there and still following these things.

On that occasion, I found all the aforementioned pages, and while these might have been present before, I would also find other likes and follows that had, at the very least, come to be since that time. Most notably, I have the screen cap of at least one instance of an account called ‘Bright Bright’, and that picture taken at that time, included a connected picture with that account that was anything but subtly homoerotic.

I did not share that, at that time, in any kind of public venue or to anyone other than the person with whom I had discovered the first instance, because I wanted to make sure I was correctly accounting for everything with a reputable witness of good character. I then did not share it with anyone else until the present.

Recognizing that I held on for these pictures at least since May of 2025, but also, in many cases, since January of 2024, and it is now February of 2026, I want to make it clear that the only reason I now provide these is because I do not wish to see Catholic voices speaking genuinity and truth impugned, by an organization professing to represent the Church and one of its shepherds, a successor of the Apostles, through a malicious lie about being “hacked”, or through the disparagement of those raising journalistic attention to the scandal, especially when Bishop Baron and Word on Fire cannot be anything but culpably aware that they are lying.

It is a sin to bear false witness. It is against one of the Ten Commandments. It is a sin and a recognized cause of injury in the Church to violate the good reputation of another, especially by disparagement in the public eye.

It is an absolute scandal to see both of these things occur out of the mouth of an organization representing a Bishop and having him, a public figure, as its chief officer. His Excellency has any number of strong things to say about others and his conviction about the truth and his missionary ethos, and perhaps some of them might be deserved, but none of them can be justified on the back of a lie, and Catholics cannot permit the witness of his office to be traded for a soup of lies.”

In my personal opinion, this entire debacle is just sad. A bishop I had so admired, and a ministry with so much promise, engaging in such ridiculous defenses of behavior that, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that bad… In my own opinion, the cult-like defenses and refusal to learn from past failures are much worse than following a few provocative pages on Facebook. I believe Barron could offer much to the Church if he could learn a posture of humility and seek personal accountability for failures, whether administrative or otherwise. But his failure to do either makes someone I once admired come off as—if I’m being completely frank—pathetic. 

There is something connecting the odd cultures of masculinity cultivated by Barron, the interest in these sorts of social media accounts, the marginalization of the vulnerable (especially women working in certain Catholic institutions), a refusal to take accounting of personal and institutional histories and one’s responsibility within them, and the Bishop’s partisan preoccupations. A reflection on these and how to find integration could offer much to the Church. I would love for these reflections to one day come for Barron himself. I believe everyone is capable of change and growth. And so I’ll hope for that… one day.

The Challenge Is Far Greater

Máté Kanász-Nagy writes:

On Sunday, 12 April, Hungarian voters elected 199 members of the new Hungarian parliament. As an outgoing MP for the Greens, I had a particular interest in the historic event that ousted Fidesz and left the once-dominant party with less than one-third of parliamentary seats. The remnants of Hungary’s former opposition parties, including my own, were vanquished without a trace.

Viktor Orbán’s defeat was inevitable. For several years, his government has shown little interest in domestic issues. Instead, his efforts concentrated on foreign affairs and establishing himself as an international figure. There was nothing wrong with this. However, it should not have been pursued at the expense of other issues of far greater relevance to the Hungarian people.

Péter Magyar and his insurgent Tisza Party were able to refocus attention on the economy, healthcare and education. Promising well-functioning public services allowed him to broaden the scope of the campaign away from the perennial question of Hungarian politics – namely, are we an Eastern or Western nation? Orbán’s campaign floundered as attention shifted to bread-and-butter political matters. Fidesz offered no new narrative, no hope for Hungarians who wanted to improve their material circumstances. The recycled mix of familiar themes from past elections – the migration threat from 2018, and the war in Ukraine from 2022 – did not resonate with voters.

Orbán, perhaps recognising that his personal appeal was waning, sought to frame the election as a one-on-one contest between himself and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. It didn’t work. Magyar, however, was incredibly successful in convincing voters that the election was a referendum on Orbán alone. It was this fundamental choice that allowed a heterogeneous group of 3.1million voters to unite behind Magyar.

Two other factors in particular contributed to Orbán’s defeat. One is the 16 years that he has been in power. Many of Magyar’s voters had barely begun their school years when Viktor Orbán became prime minister in 2010; more would have spent their entire youth or a significant portion of their working lives seeing him speak on television. He was playing in injury time, and Hungarians were ready for change. Boredom and familiarity can be just as lethal to a government as bad policy.

Another factor that dealt a severe blow to Orbán was the intense focus on sovereignty. The campaign demonstrated that Hungary is less an independent country than a testing ground for competing foreign interventions. Russia supported Fidesz and Orbán; the EU backed Magyar and Tisza. Things were brought to a head in the final days of the campaign, when it was revealed that Hungary’s foreign minister had leaked plans to Russia regarding Ukraine’s admission to the EU. It was a hammer blow to Orbán’s authority: one cannot preach national sovereignty and, at the same time, suck up to Russia.

Magyar’s victory has been represented as a win for centrists and even progressives. But this could not be further from the truth: the old opposition parties of liberals, leftists and greens have been gutted. They – we – never had a genuine chance of entering parliament. The same storm that swept away Fidesz’s majority destroyed the real opposition. Ironically, the promise to restore political pluralism in Hungary has resulted in the most uniform political landscape since the 1989 transition from Communism. The election has left parliament with three fiercely right-wing parties.

Neither I nor my party contested the election or actively participated in the campaign. Not that it would have made any difference. This election left no space for a small party committed to environmental issues and national sovereignty, not to mention more traditional left-wing social policies. Nor did we have any interest in importing the global ‘progressive’ agenda that has hollowed out green parties across Europe, distracting them from their original mission.

Hungarians are celebrating the end of an era. But for many of us, the question is not how to adapt to a new regime, but how to seize the opportunity to finally represent people and issues that were victims of both a careless government and an ineffective opposition.

This election has raised as many questions as it has answered. Moving forward will be difficult: Hungarians voted for change, but it was a change of personnel rather than policy. Orbán’s unflinching position on immigration and his strong cultural conservatism have proved to be overwhelmingly popular. Will Magyar be able to keep these in place, as he has promised to do, while resurrecting his country’s relationship with the EU? That will be the challenge.

But the challenge is far greater for Hungary’s small opposition parties. Viktor Orbán and Fidesz will be back. The same cannot be said of Hungary’s left-wing parties, which appear to have been driven to extinction by the weekend’s election results.

The real loser was not Orbán, but democratic pluralism in Hungary.

Conflation Matters

An outlet that required fealty to a foreign state ought not to enjoy Lobby access. Notably not in The Guardian, Owen Jones writes:

The Daily Telegraph is being acquired by a German-based media giant - and now its journalists are formally expected to support Israel. The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has cleared the takeover by Axel Springer SE. Its CEO, Mathias Döpfner, has written to Telegraph staff “outlining his commitment” to the paper. An employee at the Telegraph has sent me that letter. It is deeply revealing.

Döpfner insists that the values of the Telegraph and the publishing house founded by late tycoon Axel Springer - dubbed ‘Germany’s Rupert Murdoch’ - are aligned. They are, he says, “Freedom, free markets, individual freedom and freedom of speech.” He goes further. Axel Springer, he explains, is “guided by a clear editorial compass.” Its employees are rooted in its Essentials - “core values to which we are firmly committed.”

There is, he adds, “no such thing as neutral journalism”: only journalism that is “pluralistic and surprising, fair, and fact-based.” And yet, having invoked “freedom of speech” as a foundational principle, he insists these Essentials are not partisan - but rather “define a socio-political framework within which maximum journalistic freedom and intellectual independence can flourish.”

“We support the right of Israel to exist”

Döpfner then sets out those ‘Essentials’:

• We stand for freedom, freedom of expression, the rule of law, and democracy.
• We support the right of Israel to exist and oppose all forms of antisemitism.
• We advocate the transatlantic alliance between the United States and Europe.
• We uphold the principles of a free-market economy.
• We reject political and religious extremism, as well as all forms of discrimination.

Note where “we support the right of Israel to exist” sits: second.

“Freedom” - within limits

Döpfner emphasises that editorial independence will be protected, including from pressure by politicians, celebrities, or advertisers. “I value debate in the spirit of pluralism and freedom of expression,” he writes. But the description of the Essentials is, frankly, Orwellian. It is not reconcilable to argue that these tenets create the conditions for “maximum journalistic freedom” while simultaneously requiring adherence to a political position on a specific foreign state. Out of 193 UN member states, only one is singled out in this way. No state has a “right to exist” under international law. Peoples have a right to self-determination - a right denied, in this case, by Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and by subjecting its people to apartheid, colonisation and genocide.

 A Telegraph journalist put it to me bluntly: “To be firmly told by our new parent company-to-be’s CEO that the second most important guiding principle is affirming the right of a country committing genocide and ethnic cleansing is more than a little concerning. It also raises the question of how any reporting from the paper can be considered factual if that is our core principle.” As they note, this principle comes before any explicit rejection of discrimination.

What “Israel’s right to exist” means in practice

In practice, the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” has been repeatedly deployed by Israel’s cheerleaders across the West to justify Israel’s crimes - from occupation and colonisation to apartheid and, now, mass destruction in Gaza. It is also telling what is not said. The Essentials do not prohibit racism in general, despite later rejecting “all forms of discrimination”. There is no explicit rejection of Islamophobia, for example, or anti-Arab racism. Instead, “oppose all forms of antisemitism” is fused directly with “support the right of Israel to exist.” That conflation matters. Because we know that defenders of Israel have repeatedly blurred the line between antisemitism and opposition to the actions of the Israeli state. So how, exactly, might Axel Springer SE interpret “oppose all forms of antisemitism”?

“Free Palestine” is a “pro-Hamas topic”

There are very strong clues, let’s put it that way. The late Axel Springer himself declared: “It is the task of our generation to stand firmly by Israel’s side, even if this causes difficulties for our policies elsewhere.” He further added: “The country does not need encouragement, but advocacy, wherever and whenever it can be provided – in the European Community, in the United Nations, in diplomatic relations, at work, in the family.” He described this as a “German duty”.

In June 2021, when employees complained about the Israeli flag being raised at company headquarters, Mathias Döpfner responded: “I think, and I’m being very frank with you, a person who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after antisemitic demonstrations, should look for a new job.” He was referring to demonstrations against Israel’s assault on Gaza that May. In October 2023, a Lebanese employee at Welt TV - part of the Axel Springer empire - was dismissed: he says it was after he challenged the outlet’s pro-Israel positions. Axel Springer SE refuse to comment on “individual personnel matters.”

In an internal email which was leaked that year, Döpfner reportedly summarised his political worldview with the phrase: “Zionism über alles” - “Zionism above all.” He has penned repeated pro-Israel polemics. “Will we stand with Israel against the enemies of freedom despite the risks, or will we allow fear and opportunism to prevail?” he wrote in October 2023, demanding “massive, unstinting political, financial and military support”. On a podcast for his employees, Döpfner claimed “a majority on Instagram, on other social media, and in particular on TikTok, took sides for the Hamas’ actions.” He argued that “an almost global wave of Anti-Semitism suddenly showed its ugly face”, which he described as a shock, despite knowing “that it is here and there, well hidden or presented in a politically correct manner as Anti-Zionism or “Woke-ism” or whatever.” And he said something deeply revealing about TikTok: “Concretely, more than 4 million posts until today have been published under the hashtag of #FreePalestine or other kind of pro-Hamas topics. And only 50,000 something, 53,000 posts basically standing by Israel.” “Free Palestine”, he argued, was a “kind of pro-Hamas topic”.

Conflating antisemitism with critique of Israel

When Israel launched its first war on Iran last June, Döpfner declared it was “surprising that Israel is not being celebrated worldwide for its historic, extremely precise and necessary strike.” Instead, he claimed: “the public response is dominated by anti-Israel propaganda. The intelligence and precision of Israel’s actions are not admired but are instead used here and there to perpetuate blatantly antisemitic stereotypes. This attitude is characterized not only by racist undertones, but also by a strange self-forgetfulness.” In other words, he directly conflated critique of Israel’s war with antisemitism. A few months ago, he quoted claims about atrocities committed on October 7th which included: “A first responder testified before the Knesset that he had seen the severed skulls of three children.” The claims that Israeli children were beheaded have been comprehensively debunked.

He went on to write that: “justified criticism of decisions made by an Israeli government is mixed with deep-rooted hatred of Jews and that, as a result, instead of an obvious global wave of compassion and solidarity, a global wave of cold-heartedness and increasingly aggressive anti-Semitism has emerged.” The piece further criticised the German government - Israel’s most loyal European defender - for “massively” restricting arms sales to Israel. Tellingly, he said that decision meant that “From now on, unconditional support for Israel’s right to exist is effectively subject to conditions.” He described the recognition of Palestinian statehood “as a reward for the barbarism of Oct. 7.”

Last October, Al Jazeera published an investigation into German tabloid Bild, a cornerstone of Axel Springer SE, headlined ‘The Story of Israel’s Propaganda Machine Specializing in Anti-Palestinian Incitement’. Al Jazeera reported that the newspaper had suggested that a Palestinian journalist killed by Israel was a “terrorist”, denied famine in Gaza, and published a lengthy report it claimed had been found on the computer of late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. It transpired that the document was old, not authored by Sinwar, and had reportedly been leaked by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The newspaper, reported Al Jazeera, had also “consistently demonised pro-Gaza demonstrators in Germany, labelling them as “mobs”, “Israel-haters”, and “anti-Semites”.” Bild has described student protesters in the US as “Judenhasser-Studenten” (“Jew-hater students”) - even though they included Jewish students.

What happens to Jewish critics of Israel in Germany?

We should also note the atmosphere in Germany, in which antisemitism is widely conflated with critique of Israel, to the extent that Jewish people there have been repeatedly denounced, deplatformed, and arrested. Alex Springer SE’s outlets have repeatedly singled out Jewish critics of Israel. Die Welt newspaper argued that Jewish American photographer Nan Goldin “misused the opening of her retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie to level serious accusations against Germany and Israel – supported by pro-Palestinian activists.” Another article attacked Deborah Feldman, a Jewish American-German writer who has spoken out about how the German government ignores “the way dissenting Jews in Germany are being thrown under the same bus as they are in Israel.”

A piece in Bild said of her: “Her political views are close to conspiracy theories: in Germany, one is not allowed to say what one wants, the police are infiltrated by right-wing extremists, and the Federal Republic is preventing “peace” in the Middle East (anti-Semitic subtext: because it obeys the all-powerful Israel lobby). This is roughly the worldview of the author, who years ago also had a Netflix hit with her autobiographically inspired bestseller Unorthodox.” In other words, falsely suggesting a Jewish writer holds antisemitic views because of her opinions about Israel.

Rewarded by Israel

Last October, the Israeli President Isaac Herzog presented Döpfner with the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor - alongside Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American business tycoon who donated $100 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Israel’s justification for Döpfner’s award was that he “is a brave voice against antisemitism and a staunch supporter of Israel. He has demonstrated unprecedented solidarity with Israel during the current war.”

Herzog incited genocide back in October 2023, when he declared of Gaza: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true.” Notably, Axel Springer SE has a business empire in Israel. That includes acquiring Israeli classifieds platform Yad2 for €165 million in 2014. Yad2 is involved in Israel’s property market, and reportedly advertises properties in illegal settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank.

What this means for the Telegraph

To be clear, the Telegraph has already had a partisan pro-Israel orientation, publishing multiple pieces justifying Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza. But this takeover embeds pro-Israel bias into the newspaper’s very fabric. Its new owners are zealously pro-Israel, and have repeatedly conflated antisemitism with critique of Israel. They claim that “freedom of speech” is a core value. The truth is that Israel’s supporters in the West have launched the biggest assault on free speech since the height of McCarthyism. We can see where the Telegraph’s new owners stand on that.