Oliver Kamm | |
|---|---|
 Kamm in January 2015 | |
| Born | 1963 (age 61–62) |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | New College, Oxford Birkbeck College |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 2008–present |
| Employer | The Times |
| Parent(s) | Antony Kamm (father) Anthea Bell (mother) |
| Relatives | Adrian Bell (grandfather) Martin Bell (uncle) |
Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British journalist and writer who was aleader writer and columnist forThe Times.
Kamm is the son of translatorAnthea Bell and publisherAntony Kamm.[1] Kamm is the grandson ofAdrian Bell and nephew ofMartin Bell. Although his mother was not Jewish, he lost family members on his father's side inThe Holocaust.[2][3] He studied atNew College, Oxford[4] He began his career at theBank of England and worked in the securities industry and investment banking.[5]
Kamm joined theTimes staff in 2008.[6] He has also contributed toThe Jewish Chronicle,[7]Prospect magazine,[8] andThe Guardian.[9]
Kamm was a consistent supporter of former British Prime MinisterTony Blair and the foreign policies ofhis government.[10] According toJohn Lloyd in 2005, Kamm viewed Blair's policies "as the expression of true social-democratic values".[10] At its launch in 2005, Kamm subscribed to the founding principles of theHenry Jackson Society and was an initial signatory.[11][non-primary source needed]
In 2006 Oliver Kamm wrote a blog post titled "The Islamophobia Scam" in which he said "if any reader wishes to nominate me [for an "Islamophobia" award] and I am successful, you can be sure I'll turn up to collect the award and express my reasons for pride in it.[12][non-primary source needed] He states that he is a friend and admirer of Israel, "whose pluralist ethos will be fulfilled when there is an eventual two-state solution with a sovereign Palestine".[13][non-primary source needed] Kamm was an opponent ofJeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. He told Liam Hoare, writing forThe Forward magazine in September 2015, that "the left has incorporated the attitudes of the nativist far-right. Corbyn's alliances with reactionary, misogynistic, theocratic, and anti-Semitic movements bear out what we’ve said".[14]
CommentatorPeter Wilby stated that, although Kamm andStephen Pollard of theJewish Chronicle claim "to be left-wing", they hold "no discernible left-wing views".[15] When interviewed by politics academicNorman Geras in 2003, Kamm said that he wrote to "express a militant liberalism that I feel ought to be part of public debate but which isn't often articulated, or at least not where I can find it, in the communications media that I read or listen to" and that he felt that "the crucial distinction in politics is not between Left and Right, as I had once tribally thought, but between the defenders and the enemies of an open society."[5][self-published source]
Kamm has been accused of expressinganti-Catholic views for his remarks towards Catholic Labour MPRebecca Long-Bailey.[16][17][18]
In 2007, he criticizedWikipedia, saying that its articles usually are dominated by the loudest and most persistent editorial voices or by aninterest group with anideological "axe to grind".[19][non-primary source needed]
In September 2021, Kamm called for Labour leaderKeir Starmer to shut downYoung Labour.[20][non-primary source needed] The reasons cited by Kamm included an accusation that Young Labour members using the historic Palestinian sloganFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, in support of Palestinian liberation, means support of a "second Holocaust against the Jewish people".[20][non-primary source needed]
Kamm has described his marriage as "caring but unsuitable", and after it ended he was a single parent for their two young children. He had a subsequent three-year relationship.[21]
Kamm has written three books. InAnti-Totalitarianism, he argued that military intervention against totalitarian regimes to support democratic values in other countries, can be expression of left wing values; he supported the2003 invasion of Iraq under this rubric and seemed to focus his argument against foreign policies stances based narrowly on thenational interest that are typical of the traditional right. In a review, Nicholas Marsh wrote that Kamm "fails to provide a definition of the totalitarianism he opposes. ... [H]e also fails to provide any sense of how one should weigh the benefits of democratization against the inevitable costs of warfare".[22] On his book on usage,Accidence Will Happen, he argued againstlinguistic prescription and in favour oflinguistic description.[23]
In August 2018,The Bookseller reported on Kamm's bookIn Mending the Mind: The Art and Science of Treating Clinical Depression, in which he "draws on his own experience of the illness as a jumping off point to investigate depression" and "makes a case for embracing both art and science to better understand and treat the condition."[24]
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Media related toOliver Kamm at Wikimedia Commons
