The Big Ben Show: Douglas Murray on Free Speech, Mamdani, and That Rogan Debate

Plus thoughts on the Texas theater kids

Aug 07, 2025

The latest edition of The Big Ben Show is here! Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts.

We’re not taking a break in August, rolling out episodes on schedule (albeit with some prerecorded evergreen interviews), so stay tuned on your summer vacations!

It’s obviously always a pleasure to talk to Douglas, but particularly on a day when he (and The Spectator) achieved a big free speech win in the courts:

One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why much of the media finds it easier to report fluff than to write about difficult issues is that the latter can be costly in terms of money, as well as time.
Three years ago I wrote a column in this magazine about some of the downsides of diversity. At the time there had just been serious disturbances in Leicester between local Hindus and Muslims. One of the people who decided to throw himself into the middle of that trouble and to try to make things worse was an online pugilist known as Mohammed Hijab.
Hijab had already been filmed intimidating Jews in Golders Green and whipping up a crowd of masked men outside the Israeli embassy in London. In Leicester he chose to make a derogatory speech about Hindus to a crowd of men and then picture himself leading a ‘Muslim patrol’ in the city.
After I pointed this out, Hijab tried to sue me and The Spectator. I retained the excellent Mark Lewis as my lawyer and for years, along with the magazine’s brilliant legal team RPC, we watched Hijab perform every known legal and rhetorical contortion. Hijab’s lawyers repeatedly dragged out their case, avoided every opportunity to drop it and insisted not only that what I had written was untrue, but that Hijab had suffered serious emotional and mental distress, as well as financial loss, as a result. Hijab seemed to think that he could use the courts not just to pursue me but to debate me.
Last month the case was heard in London before Mr Justice Johnson. Many of Hijab’s witnesses failed to show up, claiming ill health or having appeared to have skipped the country. Hijab himself spent several days in the witness box.
This week the judge delivered his verdict. Mr Justice Johnson found that what I had said in my article was accurate, that Hijab had hurt his own reputation more through his actions and social media posts than I could ever have done with my article, and that the number of lies Hijab told in court were so numerous that his ‘evidence overall is worthless’. The judgment also noted that as well as being ‘combative and constantly argumentative’ when cross-examined by my barrister and The Spectator’s barrister, Hijab also demonstrated a ‘palpable personal animosity’ towards your columnist.
…
In summary, the judge found that ‘the claimant is a street agitator who has whipped up a mob on London’s streets, addressed an anti-Israel protest in inflammatory terms, and exacerbated frayed tensions (which had already spilled over into public disorder) between Muslim and Hindu communities in Leicester by whipping up his Muslim followers including by ridiculing Hindus for their belief in reincarnation and describing Hindus as pathetic, weak and cowardly in comparison to whom he would rather be an animal’. The judge ruled that what I wrote three years ago was true and Hijab was a liar.
What to conclude about all this? Only that the press in this country often has to put up with Hijab-like figures. Few readers will be aware of the fact that one of the perils of an otherwise wonderful profession is litigious individuals attempting to silence the press from saying things about them that are true. Indeed I know journalists who in recent years have had to spend more time dealing with their lawyers than dealing with their editors. It is inevitable that over time many editors, publications and journalists will decide to take an easier route.
Hijab imagined he could use the court system to intimidate me and this magazine. He resolutely and comprehensively failed. It turned out that a London courtroom and a British judge are not X, YouTube or some other online echo-chamber. The court is a place where facts are able to come out and where lies can come out too. I am very proud that The Spectator stood up against this thug and bully, and that a judge has exposed him for everyone to see.

Theater Kids Flee Texas

I regret to inform you: The theater kids are at it again. The Texas Democratic Party is engaged in yet another performative act of resistance – one perhaps less embarrassing than the likes of Representative Greg Casar’s iconic nine-hour “thirst strike,” but far more damaging to Texans in the moment.

The decision by more than 50 Texas representatives to flee the state for the climes of California, New York and Illinois rather than confront the realities of their political margins doesn’t just act as a grandstanding method of opposition to a redistricting policy that would stand to Republicans’ benefit – it also is holding up the legislative response to the recent flooding disaster, something of significant need to the damaged communities.

The entire escapade seems only designed to slow things down and gin up donations from the Democratic base, while turning the political rhetoric about the normal battles of redistricting into the comfortable Democratic language of racial resentment. Speaking to Don Lemon, Democrat Texas State Representative Jolanda Jones likened their battle against the new districts to the Holocaust. No wonder we’re seeing such over-the-top drama, given that the whole escape to the borders is funded by the OG Texas Democrat “born to run” theater kid, Beto O’Rourke.

In response, Governor Greg Abbott has threatened the legislators with arrest, and President Trump suggested he may have to deploy the FBI to bring them back to the state – both posturing threats, in their own right. The most hypocritical aspect of this is that California, New York and Illinois are all some of the most gerrymandered states in the country: in California, Republicans won 40 percent in the last election but netted just nine seats. And Governor Gavin Newsom seems intent on making an initial idle threat of nuclear response into a reality, promising to meet the Lone Star state’s attempt to add five more GOP-favorable districts with five more Democrats from on the West Coast.

This type of escapade never really results in a positive outcome – gerrymandering is too explicitly partisan of an issue for anything otherwise. But in the meantime, it does give resistance people another thing to be mad enough to send in some cash – which is why it’s happening in the first place. Some theater works.

How YIMBYs Are Killing Off Family Homes

Joel Kotkin.

The problem here, for Yimbys on the Right and Left, lies in the small matter of market preferences: most people don’t want to live in the inner-city high rise apartments beloved by planners and Yimbys, but in a house with a garden of their own.
Indeed, generally high-end dense housing has a relatively small market. Condos and apartments may thrill Yimby imaginations – the public, not so much. Surveys, such as one in 2019 by political scientist Jessica Trounstine, have found that the preference for lower-density, safe areas with good schools is “ubiquitous”. Three out of four Californians, according to a poll by former Obama campaign pollster David Binder, opposed legislation that banned zoning which only permitted single family homes.
This mismatch between what is being built and what most people want can be seen in the huge oversupply of apartments, not just in the US but in Canada’s big cities too, causing prices for such properties to drop over the past two years. Yet despite all the evidence, Yimbys show little or no interest in the predominant dreams of their own citizens.
Worse, their ideas are helping to inform the agenda of the so-called “Abundance Democrats”, a fashionable new movement which seeks to make peace between the Left, prosperity and growth, inspired by a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Even the Yimbys’ more moderate ideas as laid out in the book – also called Abundance – largely ignore the suburbs and exurbs, where most Americans live, and stay clear of ownership.
As attorney Jennifer Hernandez suggests, there is an “ugly elitist underbelly” to Abundance, reflecting the values of hipster professionals while eschewing “even a passing wave to those who choose not to live in city centres, who want to be able to buy a detached, single family home, and who don’t want to share a wall, sound, ride or odours with their neighbours…”
The obvious and likely failure of Yimby policies might well empower far more radical approaches to housing, which seem more interested in turning cities into a souped up version of greater Moscow. The Mamdani approach of public housing and rent control may come to be seen by progressives as the best alternative – however disastrous public housing has been in cities across the United States.
Given the utter failure of mainstream Yimbyism, the progressive embrace of a more socialist approach seems inevitable. Well-heeled Yimbys, and their corporate backers, are unlikely to enjoy the results.

✍️ Feature

City Journal: Chris Rufo Interviews Taylor Lorenz

🌍 Foreign

🏛️ Domestic

📰 Media

💻 Tech

Axios: Dialog to Open Campus in DC

🧬 Health

🎭 Culture & Hollywood

🪶 Quote

“I may fall,” said Weston. “But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond.”

— C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

The Transom