Members of the Corbyn-supporting Momentum movement/cult here, and the Antifa (Anti-Fascist) movement/cult in America...
...share the extraordinary ability to stare reality in the face - and then to deny what's right in front of them. How else to account for the above picture? How can someone who advocates free speech be a nazi or a fascist? How can people who spend most of their time desperately attempting to deny a platform to anyone who disagrees with them not realise that they are the real totalitarians - be they fascists, nazis or communists? (Why am I asking so many questions? What about some answers?)
I've spent a lifetime listening to left-wingers propagating lies about people on my side of the political divide. Here are just a handful of examples:
You're full of hate!
In which case, why does every political march/riot seem to consist solely of left-wingers screaming insults and destroying public and private property? When the centrist politician Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen in last week's French elections, the only street violence afterwards involved left-wingers. When conservatives lose elections, there aren't any right-wing "protests". When the left loses an election, leftists immediately pour onto the streets, screaming, shouting, destroying property and beating people up. All looks a bit hatey to me! In my experience, right-wingers tend to love their country, their culture, their history, their traditions, their landscape, their families, their friends, their monarch and their military... all sounds distinctly unhatey to me.
You're philistines!
If you mean we largely reject the crass, ugly, silly, worthless, anti-human pseudo-art produced by talentless charlatans routinely foisted on us by left-wing quangocrats spending our taxes - that isn't proof of philistinism: it proves the very opposite. Most of the art funded by our publicly-funded left-liberal arts establishment is, by any standards, rancid, desecratory shite produced by people who are adept at marketing themselves, but useless at producing decent art. (NB Video installations aren't art.)
You hate the environment!
This is so silly, so nonsensical, so insultingly wide of the mark, I can't even be bothered addressing it. I'll just point out that, when it comes to destroying the environment, socialist states have always left right-wing states gasping (and choking and retching) in their polluted wake.
You're selfish!
Every existing piece of research shows that right-wingers give a larger proportion of their income to charity than left-wingers. Just drop it.
You're greedy - all you care about is making money!
Well, I'm not. And I'm not aware that my left-wing acquaintances are any more or less keen on making money than my right-wing acquaintances. I'm also unaware that any of the well-off left-wingers I know have volunteered to pay more in tax than they needed to. Or sold their house for less than the asking price because a potential buyer needed a helping hand. Or urged their children not to enter a high-paid profession. Or turned down a salary hike. Or didn't stomp all over the competition when it came to fighting for promotion. (And, as Thomas Sowell pointed out, why is wanting to confiscate the money someone else has earned in order to spend it on things that please you not considered greedy? That's what thieves do, isn't it?)
You hate poor people - that's why you don't believe in welfare!
Nope - we just believe that making poor people dependent on the state for charity destroys their desire to work and their sense of self-worth. Welfare makes the middle-class people who dispense it feel great about themselves - but, if provided willy-nilly, it tends to enervate the individual recipient and to create a permanently idle, demoralised underclass. What may be necessary for people in the short term can destroy them in the long term: you give patients morphine in any emergency, not in perpetuity. I suspect that dispensing largesse (especially when it consists of other people's money) can be as addictive as injecting heroin - and just as harmful to the soul.
You hate LGBT people!
Don't be silly. Many of the best and brightest right-wingers are are as LGBT as all get out. I've yet to meet a conservative who would refuse to read the writings of Douglas Murray because he's gay, or who don't see Ruth Davidson as a future Tory prime minister. We just don't see why we should be forced to celebrate homosexuality and we're nauseated by selfish, idiotic teachers determined to convince little children they're "transgender". Apart from genuine cases of hermaphroditism, I have absolutely not a clue why anyone else should be forced to contribute to another person's bloody sex-change operation! As for transvestites - oh, grow up!
You want poor people to die - that's why you want to destroy the NHS!
I've never visited a private doctor in my life - in fact, most of the people I've known who have chosen to go private have been left-wingers. The vast majority of right-wingers (I suspect) would like the NHS to be run for the benefit of the patients, not the staff, would like it to stop wasting scarce resources on paying grotesque amounts of money on cheap, over-the-counter medicines, on agency nurses and doctors, on pointless prescriptions or on getting a light-bulb changed. Limiting the sorts of operations offered free, punishing people who misuse the service by not bothering to turn up for appointments or who go to A&E with a "bit of a headache" because they can't be arsed to wait to see their GP, sorting out the scandalous system that means only 20% of people actually pay for their prescriptions (!), and seriously looking at whether to go on providing free treatment for people who seem determined to destroy their health with drink, drugs, over-eating or extreme sports - well, these all seem perfectly sensible measures. Most of all, we object to being morally guilted into worshipping the NHS as a secular deity, and of treating those who work for it as if they were all secular saints: some are, most aren't.
You want to destroy state education and send poor kids to factories when they're 12!
No - we'd just like them all to be taught something while they're there. And if the left are so determined to abolish private education, why have I literally never met a middle-class person with the means to send their children to a private school who chose to send them to a state school instead? The left's hypocrisy on this issue is absolutely nauseating.
You're humourless!
No, we just don't find left-wing Radio 4 comics funny (and there is no other kind). In fact, finding a Radio 4 comic funny is a sure sign that you have no sense of humour. Besides, when it comes to comic novels and satire, the greatest practitioners of the 20th Century - e.g. Evelyn Waugh, Auberon Waugh, Michael Wharton, P.G. Wodehouse, Richard Ingrams - have either been wholly or mainly conservative. Significantly, just about all the genuinely funny satire on social media wings in from the right.
You're angry!
Which is why I'm always out on the streets waving banners and screaming about "Tory scum" and throwing rocks at the police and setting cars alight... Oh, no, I'm thinking about left-wingers. Sorry!
You go low, we go high!
Like physically attacking journalists attending the Conservative Party conference? And vomiting anti-Semitic bile on social media? And accusing successful black conservatives of being "Uncle Toms"? And holding parties to celebrate the death of Mrs. Thatcher? Yeah, sure.
I could go on...but there are enough examples there to support my case, I suspect.
But I can't resist one more:
Leave it, Dalie! He's not worth it.
Another excellent post.
ReplyDelete"You hate LBGT people!" is particularly spot on.
Naom Chomsky - how can an intelligent human being say things like that and still be regarded seriously by his peers? Half of these lunatics [my third choice of word] should be in padded cells.
I suspect Chomsky may already be in one.
Delete