Shunning people like Steve Bannon risks playing into their hands by allowing them to pose as victims

Shunning people like Steve Bannon risks playing into their hands by allowing them to pose as victims

In death he is achieving his life’s work. Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi patriot and reformer, whose journalism helped expose the reality of Saudi Arabia and the cosseted, hypocritical relationship the kingdom enjoys with the west. Through his brutal, pitiless death, he has succeeded more effectively in that mission than he could ever have imagined.

In death he is achieving his life’s work. Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi patriot and reformer, whose journalism helped expose the reality of Saudi Arabia and the cosseted, hypocritical relationship the kingdom enjoys with the west. Through his brutal, pitiless death, he has succeeded more effectively in that mission than he could ever have imagined.

If it were up to me, I’d write this piece next week or perhaps the week after. Let the dust settle a bit. But I have my father’s voice in my head, and he’s insistent: the story is now, so you write it now. No one wants to read last week’s news. I’m listening to that voice because my father, Michael, died unexpectedly this week. He was a journalist to his core. He started at age 16, straight out of school in 1951, on his local paper, the Luton News – and once he’d started, he never stopped.