Jason Arday is dead. I understand that any reader who is not British¹ will likely not recognise the name. Arday was one of Britain’s most prominent academics, a young man who had rapidly risen to a Cambridge professorship. He was also black and neurodivergent. This made him a target. Years ago, the attacks began. Weeks ago, the media began a relentless campaign of abuse and harassment against him, publishing literally thousands of articles that dominated headlines. Days ago, he resigned from his position at Cambridge, saying that the relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary had taken a profound toll on him and those he loved. Today, he is dead. The newspapers that turned his destruction into serialised entertainment will no doubt call his death “tragic” and “unexpected,” as though it is not the predictable outcome of their own actions. It would be crude to claim a cause of death that has not yet been officially established; equally, it would be dishonest to erase the circumstances in which he died. The press did not merely uncover allegations against Jason Arday – it pursued him until he was utterly broken and then reported his death in perfect passive voice.

The allegations concerning plagiarism and embellishment were serious. They warranted proper investigation, and Arday was not exempt from scrutiny because he was black, autistic, or famous. Nevertheless, public scrutiny is supposed to establish facts and secure accountability. It is not an unlimited licence to publish every fresh insinuation and feed every imperfection in a person’s life to a ravenous audience. Yes, he was not always perfect. Who amongst us could survive our every action being examined under a microscope for missteps? Yes, he was a serial fantasist and quite possibly mentally ill. I am of the opinion that illnesses should be treated and managed, not used as an excuse for bloodshed. By the time Arday died, he had been publicly humiliated, subjected to multiple investigations, and driven from the position that had defined his public life. What legitimate public interest was served by continuing the spectacle? Quickly, journalism had become punishment, a competitive effort to see how completely a life could be demolished.

The racism was not incidental. Arday was never treated simply as one academic accused of plagiarism. Many do, and never receive a single column inch in the newspapers. Many abuse their students, and are quietly removed – or simply allowed to continue as the administrators turn a blind eye. Arday was different. He was transformed into evidence that black academics are inherently unqualified, that diversity² was a fraud upon the British public, and that Cambridge³ could only have appointed a black professor by bowing to the pressure of the woke mob. The campaign was started by an avowed “race realist” who has stated that this is a “hereditarian revolution” to remove professors like Arday that will lead to him becoming the “head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard.”⁴ Arday’s alleged failings were consciously used to prosecute every black person who has dared to enter academia. The media were echoed by the increasingly foul British political communities on Reddit, where a man’s death provided one final opportunity to congratulate themselves for having been correct. Not every criticism of Arday was racist, but the obsessive determination to make him a racial symbol – and then destroy that symbol – undeniably was.

Now every participant will insist that somebody else is responsible. Editors will say that each individual article was defensible. Commenters will say that each individual insult meant nothing. Cambridge will express sorrow, politicians will offer condolences, and the people who spent weeks demanding Arday’s humiliation will indignantly reject any connection between the campaign and its conclusion. This is how a mob keeps its hands clean: no individual blow is acknowledged as fatal, and thus nobody accepts responsibility for the killing. Arday explicitly said that the campaign was destroying him, and still it continued. Now he is dead at 41, leaving behind two young children and a grieving family.

Britain has seen this ritual before. Though I have no love for royalty, it is undeniable that the paparazzi pursuing Diana caused her death – and the press then mourned the woman it had hunted. Amy Winehouse’s addiction and disintegration became public entertainment. David Kelly was crushed between the government and a ravenous political press just because he opposed the official narrative on Iraq. Trans teacher Lucy Meadows was subjected to such ridicule and humiliation that the coroner directly turned to the assembled journalists and told them: “Shame on all of you.” Caroline Flack was vilified until her death, whereupon the tabloids abruptly rediscovered kindness.

Beyond these individual victims are many, many more who are hurt and killed in less direct ways. The national fervour for austerity killed, by credible estimates, several hundred thousand people⁵ – as many as COVID. Immigrants are treated as less than vermin, and now we have race riots and arson attacks in our cities. Muslims are the enemy – and hate crime rises. Trans people live in such an atmosphere of vicious hostility that many (disproportionately children) take their own lives or are murdered on the streets; Alice Litman and Brianna Ghey are just two examples of an accelerating trend. The causal chain is not identical in every case, and the press rarely kills alone. That qualification is also their alibi. The British media chooses a victim (often ideologically), strips away their humanity, and keeps the mob supplied with ammunition long after any conceivable public interest has expired. Afterwards, they print a solemn paragraph asking how such a tragedy could ever have happened, and select their next victim.