A certain lack of Self-awareness

From that moment, I’ve always had a soft spot for Will Self. I report this mainly because I am quite sure my fondness for him, despite his stated disdain for me, will irritate him considerably. 

Lately, Will has been cosplaying Emile Zola with a flurry of J’Accusings on his SitRep blog. The first one (7,384 words!) attacks a long list of named journalists for what Will sees as their direct culpability in the dreadful apparent suicide of Jason Arday. 

The second SitRep (6,325 words!) spends a long, long, long, very long time attacking Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber for their analysis of the media’s role in the Jason Arday tragedy on their podcast Media Confidential. 

But, in amongst it all, Will also takes a little detour to have a go at me and Steve Anglesey, the editor of The New World, for refusing to publish a column he had written for The New European (as we were then). It was an example, (I think) he argues, of the kind of editorial cowardice that leaves difficult topics unaddressed. 

I’ll let Will explain the problem in his own words from his blog: 

“In September 2024, while I was a columnist [at The New European], I submitted a satire about A$AP Rocky, Bottega Veneta, rap, luxury consumption and the Hegelian master–slave dialectic. Its argument was that the folie à deux between luxury brands and African-American rap stars converts racial rebellion into conspicuous consumption, while liberal fear of appearing racist disables criticism of the violence and misogyny marketed with it. The editor, Steve Anglesey, rejected it because he was ‘not interested in publishing something that’s going to see you and us called racists’; declared the decision final; refused further discussion; and invited a replacement column. When I objected to being tried for prospective racism without so much as a conversation – and pointed out that I had had the piece read and approved by two Black colleagues – the publisher, Matt Kelly, replied: ‘Fucking grow up.’ The column, he said, was ‘unintelligible, self-indulgent bullshit’.” 

That wasn’t why I told him to fucking grow up, and since he clearly still has all the emails (as do I), he knows it. The main problem I had with Will’s column was one paragraph in particular, which seemed so obviously provocative and offensive that its only purpose was to engender some kind of furious backlash from our subscribers. He rather gave that away in his parenthetical “yeah, yeah – I dare”. This is the paragraph:

“Or, should that be Oreos and blacks? (Yeah, yeah – I dare.) Because when you see the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Ye, Drake and the aforementioned A$AP, strutting their stuff in thousands of dollars of swag, while still banging on about killing each other over drug money, fucking ‘hos’, and generally living out the Grand Theft Auto fantasies of a billion bedroom-bound adolescent white incel males, it’s difficult to accord these men any identity other than that of slavish adherence to precisely the same values that resulted in the initial enslavement of black Africans.”

I do not for one second think Will Self is remotely racist. Quite the opposite. But that paragraph was certain to be interpreted by many readers as such and cause them unnecessary offence and confusion about why a marquee writer in their magazine would be referring to Black people as “Oreos”.

When this was put to Will, he accused us of “being in the same camp as the Rochdale social workers”. This was why I told him to “fucking grow up”. It was an example of absurd absolutism and illogical-conclusion-reaching that I fear, based on the evidence of his latest SitReps, is still infecting his thinking to this day.

That private exchange – which I have until now kept to myself but he has chosen to reveal, without permission I might add – was the end of our relationship and we haven’t spoken since, which does make me a little sad. Despite it all, I enjoyed working with Will immensely. He did some terrific writing for us. Two pieces in particular stand out as memorable.

The first was an entire edition (25,000 words long, proving that he can actually write at length and remain interesting) of The New European entitled A Plague On Both Your Houses. It was a quite magnificent assessment of post-Brexit Britain. I can’t think of any other contemporary writer who could have pulled it off with such wit and bravura.

The second was another long piece Will sent to us out of the blue, more, I believe, in amusement than any real expectation we’d publish it. It was a satirical assault on Adrian Chiles and his installation of an actual urinal in the bathroom of the home he shared with his wife, Guardian editor Kath Viner. It was outrageous. I knew full well it was going to cost me friends and all sorts of endless complaints, but still; it was very funny so I thought, as I occasionally do, ah well, fuck it. I emailed Will to tell him we’d run it: 

“My prediction is it will be our most read piece ever and I will still be being asked to apologise for it in five years time.” Well, it was and I am, so that much I got right. Still, there was no editorial cowardice on display on that occasion.

What’s the difference between Will’s Oreo outrage and the urinal outrage? There is, I believe, a massive delta between taking the piss out of a media power couple and a paragraph demeaning Black artists as complicit in slavery’s value system.

I still really admire Will’s writing – although he desperately needs a good sub-editor and his readers a good dictionary. But if Will Self wants to cosplay Emile Zola, then allow me to cosplay Voltaire for a paragraph or two. I’ll defend his right to say what the hell he wants, as I would any journalist. But the right to publish is not the same as the right to be published. 

It is (obviously) an editor’s job to edit. Part of that is protecting a writer from themselves on occasion. I was amazed to hear just how much editing and consideration the late Rod Liddle’s weekly columns underwent at The Spectator. Given what they actually did publish of his, god only knows what the unfiltered Liddle would have on his record today if editors were not watching his back.

So as Will Self calls on journalists to have their laptops seized by the Met and face investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service (under what legislation it’s not clear), our Zola du jour might take a deep breath and ask himself if the journalistic freedoms he complains about being denied aren’t the exact same journalistic freedoms he would today have others put on trial for? It does seem to lack a certain, ahem, Self-awareness.

And anyway, who is going to be the judge in all this? Surely not Will Self? He’s way too busy writing all his endless unintelligible self-indulgent SitRep blog posts.

Matt Kelly is editor-in-chief of The New World