British Right-Wing Pundits

Also, we are now on day 3 of pant-shitting tantrums about the ICC statement too

But surprisingly little coverage from actual news outlets in the UK

In many ways that's more comical than the columnist implosions.

Media focus on the Most Evil Woman In The World today.

Diane Abbott?

Paula Vennells or the nursery worker?

Oh what's this about a nursery worker... on second thoughts I don't want to know.

Hilarious huh

On the day that Keir Starmer became leader of the Labour party I wrote a piece for The Times in which I argued he would be PM. The Editor spiked it because he said it wasn't plausible. Well, now we shall see....

— Philip Collins (@PhilipJCollins1) May 22, 2024

needless to say, I had the last laugh

just wonderful stuff from the hitch here

https://x.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1793735035620909089

stupid x url

No. Starmer is a deeply ideological hard leftist, far more radical than Corbyn . I have explained this many times Google Peter Hitchens , Mail on line , Starmer and Pabloite. https://t.co/CMucUHIInP

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) May 23, 2024

boy is my face gonna be red when starmer's first action in office is to implement full communism

We are delighted to announce three new books from Sunday Times bestseller @IanDunt and @Dorianlynskey. These are definitive guides to the most misunderstood ideas in modern politics and are coming at a critical election time this November. https://t.co/DJQXI8gZkB pic.twitter.com/IcyKkob4Mj

— W&N (@wnbooks) May 22, 2024

Imagine if Ian & Dorian is your first read on fascism

Now we know what to get you for Xmas this year.

you might think Peter has early stage dementia or maybe he has always been rather addled and clueless. But then remember in his weird world of eccentric political identifiers both Cameron and Blair were Eurocommunists. But he clearly knows fuck all about Starmer's DPP period which revealed him as a deeply conservative shitheel with a strong authoritarian streak.

you'd probably need to go back to the late 19th century to find a politician that passes the Hitchens' true conservative purity test.

I'm sure we could find a more recent politician who he doesnt have too much disagreement with

Sounds possible, @mrbiswaz but GBnews would have to take up such an idea, and in any case, George Galloway and I (although we differ profoundly on some things) don't really differ enough on eveyrthing to make it work. https://t.co/uu8QGPXKHV

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) September 6, 2021

Besides the obvious

reading up on the michel pablo (he of the term "pabloite”) i discover that the roving revolutionary in question -- afer various 4th international activities polemics and long-irrelevant 50s factional disputes that frankly not even i cannot quite be bothered to remind myself of let alone re-process -- returned to his native greece and helped papandreou found PASOK

in conclusion: p hitch otm

sometimes he is inadvertently otm on some things, like about 0.001% of the time.

the people on twitter saving hitch's tweets for a gotcha should remember that he still considers tony blair to be a trot

in his mind Cameronism and Blairism are practically the same politics, so therefore the pigfucker is a trot as well!

think the core of it is that he thinks any kind of social progress is communism

These terms are increasingly flexible and malleable anyway, so Hitchens is hardly alone in that. I think the underlying animus is anti-liberalism though as with any other self-respecting iconoclast, guru, or dissident, a la Spiked, or presumably Novara eventually

I think Hitchens would hate the Spiked lot and everything they stand for, he's more of a Scrutonite

People's Front of Judea/Judaean People's Front stuff of course

Yes, well, it is perhaps because Sir Roger Scruton had never felt the pull of revolution that he was so duped by the Tory government. I find people who have never been revolutionaries are astonishingly naive about power and those who exercise it. .@kynohy https://t.co/A8vrfMeg0t

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) January 12, 2024

whether ppl are funded by the Koch bros or the 4th Viscount Rothermere doesn't make much difference, they are all scum.

xp haha shows what I know!

hitchens is a long-estranged marxist, from the salad-of-all-the-UK-trots wing

as was his older brother (added psychodramatic dimension: older brother certainly bullied PH as a kid, and was a sleb quasi-marxist for maybe a decade more, prior to his er protracted declension, as they wd both probably call it)

spiked, etc. are obvious grifters with a clear nefarious agenda, who will say or do anything, peter otoh is a true believer (albeit in absolutely insane bullshit) and would never have anything to do with them

does Hitch ever stan for anyone in this era without making withering criticisms? From memory I once heard him stanning for Tooze, well more his book "The Deluge".

he's quite complimentary about gorgeous george upthread

There's an element of this, but I think its overstated, the delineation between grifter and believer I think is a lot more fluid than it might appear

as Calz mentions above all these people are paid, in one way or another, to air their appalling views

think the difference is that if it turned out to be more personally lucrative to have different views, most of them would be just fine with that.

Never be surprised at how many billionaires are out there funding wingnut welfare.

I used to think this more than I do, but I no longer think there is such a clear demarcation.

There's also a weird subtext, which is 'well obviously they dont actually hold those views". Well, why not? Lots of people do, wouldn't it make sense to pay one of those instead?

And it depends what is meant by grifting. There are many motivations besides Money or Ideology.

As an example if Russell Brand becoming born again a grift? and he doesn't really believe it?

I don't think it is a grift. I think his conversion is genuine. But he hasn't converted to Catholicism, Catholicism has converted to Brand. It has been shaped into the form he prefers and he is a genuine believer in that.

I don't think too deeply about the definition of grifter. To me it's not a completely literal term (although in a lot of cases I believe they are grifters, especially Russell Brand) like when you call someone a wanker, it doesn't strictly mean you are labelling them a frequent maturbator!

I don't think it works on the whole to pay someone who genuinely believes these things and is inflexible with it, they do not fit in to the media ecosystem we have in the UK, when the wind changes on something due to events they do not know how to shut up, for a while.

Ultimately I think ego and narcissism are bigger drivers than either

I am not saying the grifters have not convinced themselves that they believe whatever they believe, just that deep down they are complicit with politics being in essence a sport or a game

I think its true in both directions, the ideologues are a lot more entrepreneurial than we might think, and the grifters believe more than we might think, and the boundary isn't clear

And also that beliefs can change on a dime for ideologues too, as they're interested in the bigger picture, and can change side on any issue at any given time if they think it suits their bigger picture better

When I go to the football usually there's one guy who's always runnning to the barrier and screaming his head off about what he thinks is an unfair refereeing decision while everyone else has moved on already. that's what these people think we are.

if someone's job brief is to normalise hard right opinions/crank shit/bigotry and it's in the interests of whoever pays them or it benefits their youtube income to do this. Then to me it's immaterial whether they believe this shit or not, they are grifters.

I think think the issue with that is it shifts the topic away from whether someone is right or wrong about something, and to whether they're on the take, which is often more difficult ("well they're all on the take anyway")

If they are normalising it to a family member or friend, this means we're now attempting to convince them of two things a) they are wrong, and b) they are paid to be wrong, instead of just one thing a) they got this one wrong

the thing is that if people are not arguing from their own genuinely beliefs then it is impossible to engage with any of their "ideas" in good faith, it's simply a waste of energy.

*genuinely held