Obnoxio The Clown

It is a depressing indictment of British politics that the left has emotional but untrue articles of faith on its side, and the right has totally capitulated to the forces of statism and authoritarianism.

Jeremy Corbyn has shaken off most of his dusty geography teacher image and is now becoming a polished media performer. His hideously adoring acolytes greet his every utterance as the profound words of some venerable sage, and go round chanting "Tory scum" and "hang the Tories" wherever they go. And it's not an idle threat, I believe that if they do come to power, there will be "justifiable" violence. If someone doesn't die, it'll be lucky.

For those of us who have a job and better things to do than gather every bloody protest march, the pickings are slim. "Anyone but May" was my message to the world when the Tories were picking a leader, and really, could anyone have done a worse job in front of an open goal than she has? She should have absolutely stomped Jeremy Corbyn into the ground, instead she gave him credibility and made him look prime ministerial by comparison.

And her policies are equally repulsive. Mayism is an awful hodgepodge of big state nannyism and nonsensical market intervention. Honestly, when lefties are pointing out that Help To Buy is a terrible idea and Tories think it's the answer, we have gone through the looking glass.

It all came to a head for me when Jacob Rees-Mogg was accosted by a bunch of Corbynista thugs at a Conservative Party Conference fringe event. He calmly spoke plain words of common sense to the idiot who was screaming at him. He told him some calm facts. He pointed out that someone's policies did not inherently make them a bad person, just someone with a different view. I'd love to say it was a Damascene conversion, but it won't be. Shabbir Lakha will doubtlessly go on to great depths as a third-rate politician, knowing righteously in his heart that only Corbynistas know the true path to enlightenment and anyone who disagrees with them deserves to swing from a tree.

How has it come to this? How have blood-thirsty, thuggish, middle-class Corbynistas come to be so devout? Why does no-one on the right have any useful riposte or any balls? How has a backbench politician become a media star for just calmly pointing totally reasonable and sensible things out to a screaming buffoon? Why does the screaming buffoon now have a media presence?

I don't want "Moggmentum". I don't want a leadership cult politician running the show, of either stripe. I was calm, confident competence. I want opposing views to be heard, discussed and tolerated. I don't want this underlying threat of violence that underlies so much of our politics today.

Jacob Rees-Mogg might well hold some awful views, but the people shouting at him hold even worse views. There isn't a politician out there who doesn't hold some awful views in someone's opinion. In my opinion, they all hold awful views. So maybe someone who can actually calmly speak in the face of thuggery, keep calm and have manners is all we can hope for.

Can we have more of this from politicians, please?

Well, it's no surprise that Saint Jezza is cleaning up with a certain sector of the body politic. For those whose hearts swell in righteous anger at the murderous, sub-human, cruel and vile Tory; those who like nothing more than a big march through a metropolis and those who feel that it's only good and fair to terrify baristas on minimum wage and bank staff trying to get through the day by smashing windows, throwing trash around and burning things, Saint Jezza is in fact the perfect inspiration.

A kindly-looking, avuncular man who has followed his own moral code all his life, with a belief in the correctness of the ends justifying the means, he has set an enthusiastic and adorable example to thousands of acolytes. For example, his belief in the cause of Palestinians has allowed him to justify turning a blind eye to overt and covert anti-Semitism wherever it may find him. His belief in the cause of a unified Ireland allowed him to ignore the ruthless murders and maiming of innocent people.

Lately, his belief in the non-existence of the Srebrenica massacre meant that it was cool to spend the dinner on the evening of the anniversary of this ghastly slaughter scoffing pizza with a vocal Srebrenica massacre denier.

On the anniversary of the massacre. Let that sink in. I mean, if Theresa May did something like that, the outrage on the left would be able to power London for weeks.

But because Saint Jezza has always been on the right side of history, it's all good. His morality is unsullied by the fact that he's forever hanging out with murderers, terrorists and people with the most hideous of views. His blithely ignoring open Jew-hatred on Press TV, Iran's state broadcaster - that's Iran, that kills people for being gay - in exchange for money, is nothing of import.

John McDonnell and Saint Jezza earn proper fat cat salaries, just like Len McCluskey, but of course that's perfectly OK, because they're all on the right side of history. They all earn their money literally being parasites on the working man, but of course that's perfectly OK, because they're all on the right side of history.

(We will ignore for the moment the slight issue of revisionism transforming things like "overt support for an IRA by any means necessary" into "a vital part of the peace process" when we talk about the "right side of history".)

We are already seeing Stalinist putsches of soft-left MPs, for not toeing the line sufficiently. I'm sure Saint Jezza would never ask for such things, but he's not exactly falling over himself to stop it, is he? He isn't even Secretary General, er, Prime Minister, and already Labour is behaving like a Stalinist party.

Because the ends justify the means.

So here we are. Saint Jezza's fans are clearly quite comfortable with all these things.

They also believe "if you are not with us, you are against us," therefore if you're not an uncritical worshipper of Saint Jezza, you are sub-human and not worthy of civilised discourse. You're a Nazi. You can be, should be and probably will be subject to physical violence.

Of course, worst of all are the venal, Blairite traitors on the soft-left. Their ideological impurity is a stain on the left, that must be expunged even more vigorously than the evil Tory scum.

For those of us on the right, being regarded as sub-human by people on the left is nothing new. Their astonishing arrogance in knowing that their political beliefs make them morally superior has been a source of endless insulting behaviour in the past. Of course, now that the most active and virulent form of left-wing politics has taken over, it's a schadenfreude treat to see Blairites who used to have exactly the same attitude (sans the violence, of course) discover what it's like to be regarded as sub-human by a thug with a different opinion.

And these people are, in their hearts, thugs. I make no apologies to any Labour voters I offend. You regard violence as an acceptable form of political bargaining. If you didn't, you wouldn't have voted for someone who says emollient things but does not do anything to stop Jew-hatred, violence or abuse.

If you're hard-left, at least you're being congruent with your beliefs. This doesn't make you a good human being, though.

If you're soft-left and you voted Labour at the last election, I can only describe you as a self-hating, tribalist moron. Your party hates you more than it hates the Tories. Your blind adherence to "I must vote Labour" is self-defeating stupidity.

Look at the spread of abuse, violence and hatred in politics. Look hard at yourself. If you think that actively hating someone or abusing or committing violence on them for their political beliefs is somehow OK or if you voted for these people, then you're all the problems with society today. You personally. It's not "capitalism" or "free markets" or "bankers" or "Tories" or "libertarians" or "evil right-wing media". You have no right to look down at anyone. You have no moral high ground. Your beliefs or your blind loyalty to a party are poisonous and dangerous.

It's you.

You are the problem.

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
-- The Joker

I've no idea what is happening to people on the left. Since Brexit and the election of the Cheeto Chimp, their butthurt has been spectacularly entertaining. But now they're starting to seriously unravel.

Apparently, it's perfectly OK to now go around punching people just because they have the wrong kind of odious views. Richard Spencer has been extremely careful NOT to call for violence or genocide, though there is little doubt that his views are racist and vile. Unfortunately, they are within the law, the boundaries of which have been set by progressives for decades. So despite him being a very nasty piece of work, he is a legally nasty piece of work. When did it become socially acceptable to go around punching people for perfectly legal points of view? Especially when "your side" has set the limits of tolerance?

There are all sorts of things that I can see going on from here. Firstly, I can see progressives being punched by thuggish neo-nazis at protests. What will lefties say then? Secondly, I can see it escalating beyond sucker punches into beatings, knifings, shootings. Thirdly, I can see innocent bystanders getting hurt or killed. Why shoot up a school when you can mow down a pussy march? Or mow down the accompanying counter-protest?

Assaulting people who are within the law is never acceptable, no matter how odious their views. Assaulting people outside the law shouldn't actually be acceptable to people who believe in statism, either. That's the violence you outsource to the state.

Oh, and while we're talking about "assault", guess who defined shoving someone as an assault? That would be progressives. So don't be surprised or macho or pious when your definitions are used against you.

Yeah, you're upset. Yeah, your weltanschauung has ruled the roost for your entire lifetime. But things have changed and now the wrong people are getting their turn. Now you'll get to see how they've felt: mocked, marginalised, their views laughed at and belittled. Maybe, instead of going round punching people, you can learn from this and see that your arrogance and self-righteousness made a large chunk of the population feel like you feel. Maybe next time your team runs the show, you should be a little more conciliatory and a little more tolerant.

You never know, it might actually win people over, rather than alienating them.

It is, of course, that "the left" accuses "the right" of demonising the poor, immigrants, blacks, Asians and the infirm (or whatever the socially acceptable term for these people is, this week).

This is an actual conversation on twitter:

Literally a post made by the social media campaign for a political party representing an entire state. Gross. LINK
-- Tom Nix

@TheTomNix @SpaghettiJesus and?
-- Me

OK, so here we go. I read that link and all I got was "if you hand out stuff, the recipients become dependent on the handouts". I don't think there's any particular controversy in that argument. But if you're looking to be offended, the obvious thing to do is to drag something irrelevant into the point.

@obotheclown @TheTomNix they compared poor people to animals
-- @SpaghettiJesus

@SpaghettiJesus @TheTomNix we’re all animals, last time I looked
-- Me

@obotheclown @TheTomNix yeah but people running for political office tend not to want to insult their voting base on principle.
-- @SpaghettiJesus

I'm afraid that if you go around looking for things to be offended by, it's very difficult not to offend you. I'm frankly astounded by the lengths to which someone will go to be offended. And anyone looking for votes is trying very hard not to offend potential voters.

But watch this...

@obotheclown @TheTomNix of course they're inbred and basically brain dead so object permanence is hard for them.
-- @SpaghettiJesus

Having just accused someone of making a sweeping generalisation that could be considered offensive, the obvious thing to do is to make a sweeping generalisation that could be considered offensive. I mean, right now I'm pretty poor and I didn't take offence at the handouts thing. But if I was an Oklahoman, I'd probably be mildly annoyed at being described as inbred and brain dead because of an accident of birth. You can't really choose where your born, any more than you can choose your skin colour. So where is "the left's" moral high ground now?

Of course, that's just one conversation, but it's one I see quite often:

Left: Tories hate the poor / blacks / immigrants / women

Right: No they don't

Left: Of course they do, look at the Infographic from Labour Eoin / video of Iain Duncan Smith which I'll pretend is him cheering murdering the poor / innocuous comment from David Cameron that I'm going to twist and take out of context.

Etc.

I think that "the left" hate "the right" far more virulently than "the right" hates anyone. "The right" just has a different set of things that they believe is important to make the poor better off than "the left". That doesn't mean they want them dead or ground under heel, it just means that their compassion and reasoning has led them to a different conclusion. This doesn't mean their motives or objectives are evil.

If "the left" genuinely wants to engage and change the way "the right" thinks or behaves, then not blaming them for every evil in the world and ascribing the worst of human nature to their every word, thought and deed is possibly a good place to start.

I'm not holding my breath.

Right, so as far as I can ascertain, lefties are frothing about the expulsion of Trenton Oldfield, while being horrified that the EDL's Tommy Robinson remains in the country.

Trenton Oldfield is apparently proud of the fact that 500,000 people googled "elitism" after his fucking up something that two teams of people had trained pretty much their whole lives for.

I can therefor only assume that as soon as Tommy Robinson starts drawing attention to Islamic "religious elitism", lefties will be queueing up to beg him to bomb mosques.

Seriously, what is this fucking bullshit? Why is it OK for Trenton Oldfield to "draw attention" to the "damage" that "elitism" is doing to the country, while Tommy Robinson is hated for "drawing attention" to the "damage" that "Islam" is doing to the country?

It's perfectly feasible to argue that both have benefits and both have drawbacks. But picking on one is fine, picking on the other is the ultimate thoughtcrime.

Arguably, you have less control about which social circle you're born into that which religion you choose to follow.

Picking on someone because they're born black is disgusting and shameful. Picking on someone because they were born gay is hateful and cruel. Picking on someone because they were born rich is ... fine?

Can someone please clarify for me why being born in the "person of colour" group is a reason for veneration, being born in the "alternate sexuality" group means you're great, but being born "rich" means you're an unspeakable cunt and there's no reason to give you the same respect you'd give anyone else?

And can someone please explain why people who are all fans of Richard Dawkins (or even Richard Dawkins himself) can rip the shit out of Christianity (which is a load of bollocks perpetuated by fallible misogynist cunts) but not Islam (which is a load of bollocks perpetuated by fallible misogynist cunts)?

Surely they're all deserving of respect or none of them are deserving of respect?