London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

0:00
0:00

The witch trial of Amber Heard

For the first few weeks of watching Johnny Depp and Amber Heard attempt to turn each other into twelve cans of cat food, it felt like some silly if savage sideshow. But as the defamation trial dragged on, it became obvious there was something unusually grotesque about this case; as with a boxing match, turning the spotlight on the audience revealed even more ugliness than that which was taking place in the arena.
Samuel Butler wrote about his friend Thomas Carlyle: ‘It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.’ Both Heard and Depp would appear to be nightmares to be married to – but there was a very real imbalance in the abuse aimed at each of them. As we have seen from the casualties of the culture wars, women who speak out are far more likely to be savaged and shunned than men for saying the same thing. I’m by no means a shivering snowflake seeking a safe space, but the reek of misogyny surrounding this case was revolting; Team Johnny, Depp’s fans were labelled, as though this harrowing tale of marital violence was some soft-ball sport. And it wasn’t just men doling out the denigration – there were a whole set of Depp groupies who, like the ever-present Bully’s Best Friend, may be lacking in brawn and brain but will be there cheering twice as hard from the sidelines to make up for it. What does it say about women who metaphorically throw their knickers at a man who called the mother of his children ‘an extortionist French c***’ in a message to Elton John?

Equally icky were the texts between Depp and his mate Paul Bettany (‘Darling’) during which the former suggested ‘Let's drown her before we burn her!!! will f*** her burnt corpse afterward to make sure she's dead’ and the latter agreed ‘My thoughts entirely. Let's be certain before we pronounce her a witch.’

Females who are fine with this kind of gynophobia are the type of half-wits who drool over podcasts picking over the gory details of the violent deaths of women or who write love letters to serial sex killers. They’re the sort of dunces who unconsciously believe that if they ally themselves with violent men, that violence will pass them by and fasten onto some other woman. As for the male section of the geek chorus baying for Heard’s blood, theirs was a decidedly ‘incel’ vibe – men who have far less sex than they’d like delighting in the demonisation of a beautiful woman of the kind they’d never stand a chance with. The prejudices of the jury aligned with a legal system which – according to a 2019 report by the crime and justice specialists Crest Advisory – inflicts harsher punishment on women than on men, with only 15 per cent of women sentenced to prison committing serious offences compared with 27 per cent of men, and which, as the Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Baird said in 2020, has ‘decriminalised’ rape. All this while police harass women for daring to tell the truth about biological sex.

That tired old straw man, that ‘men are domestic violence victims too’, was dragged out yet again. Two women a week are killed by partners and ex-partners. According to the latest figures from the Office For National Statistics, these make up 44 per cent of female murder victims compared with 6 per cent of male murder victims. Hatred makes strange bedfellows and while those who rail against Amber Heard think of themselves as proudly unwoke, wokeness has given misogyny a new energy, with the now familiar sign of screeching young masked men threatening uppity women – ‘TERFS’ – with violence, sexual or otherwise. We’ve been told to mistrust White Women’s Tears and White Women’s Fragility and Pretty Privilege; that a woman who reports a rapist can be contributing to Carceral Feminism.

This was a vicious case of hurt pride pursued by a pathetic Peter Pan who grew up to be Captain Hook – a pantomime grotesque, pushing sixty and still dreaming of rock stardom. A man accustomed to looking into the mirror of women’s eyes and seeing his beautiful young self reflected back met a woman who refused to be complicit in his self-deception – and millions of fellow self-deceiving also-rans felt his self-inflicted pain. Many men rejected by a pretty woman, and many women rejected by a man for a prettier woman, found their feeding frenzy in the smorgasbord of spite that has sparked the immolation of Amber Heard. Maybe it’s true that Gentleman Johnny was ‘only joking’ when he chuckled about burning and raping his wife – but this was truly a witch-trial and, if they could burn Amber Heard, I have no doubt that the monstrous mob who idolise this sad excuse for a man would do so. The true shame in this sorry tale – no matter what a show the principal players made of themselves – is theirs.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×