How to play guilt by association
Posted on Wednesday 30 March, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, New Labour, The right
MOST people would recognise at least a difference of degree between a peaceful student sit-in at an upmarket grocery store and a posse of skinheads on a Paki bashing expedition. Among those who seemingly cannot Simon Heffer, who effectively asserts in the Daily Telegraph this morning that UK Uncut and Combat 88 are ‘every bit as evil’ as one another.
That alone would be a hard act to follow, but Heffer manages to top even trick by painting the decision of a Labour Party leader to address a quarter of a million people from all walks of life as some kind of ‘association’ with ‘the whole package of rioters, police-beaters, subversives, degenerates, fantasists and criminals’.
Rioting anarchists are reminiscent of the IRA, he goes on. Perhaps, he concedes, a few Irish republicans were ideologically motivated; the rest were simply using the armed struggle as a cover for their drug smuggling operations. It is many years since I last came across that ridiculous claim, once a commonplace on the Conservative right.
Neither then nor now does the contention explain exactly how knee-capping estate level retailers facilitated the smack business at the retail level, nor why ten young Irishmen became the only dope dealers anywhere in the world ready to starve themselves to death over an arcane dispute about prison uniforms.
If I were a prominent rightwing columnist, I would be a little bit more cautious before launching such a master class in the techniques of spurious analogy and unsustainable assertions of guilt by association.
Heffer is, for example, an unabashed admirer of Enoch Powell, a man about whom he has written an acclaimed biography. Powell was not himself a fascist, but his ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968 was a catalyst for the emergence of a sizeable fascist political current in 1970s.
As a highly intelligent man, Powell could not have failed to appreciate that he was playing to that spectacularly nasty gallery, made up in part of the very ‘shaven headed loons’ that Heffer is at pains to denounce as the moral equivalents of Laurie Penny or Adam Ramsay. Indeed, unlike Miliband, Powell was consciously providing political sustenance for noxious elements.
Heffer’s heroine is, naturally, Margaret Thatcher. She did not herself overthrow a democratically elected government and order leftists to be rounded up and gunned down in a sports stadium. But she was a political ally of a man that did, and I have yet to read Heffer’s passionate denunciation of her friendship who did deny many the right to vote or to participate in society.
If Ed Miliband has indeed – as the headline claims – ‘wrecked his reputation by siding with the criminal class’, then Heffer sullied his standing as a democrat many years ago.
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39 Responses to “How to play guilt by association”
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I suppose those attacking UK Uncut would point to Heffers bullshit as proof that their actions are counter productive. Credit you for pointing out that Heffer is the problem and not UK Uncut, but others on the left will take this tosh seriously.
For once I agree with Sewer, don’t know what all the fuss is about. If you want vandalised buildings come and see the council owned community buildings where I live. A splash of paint would improve them no end!
Can never figure out who I hate more, Peter Hitchens or Simon Heffer.
I have the same problem with Rod Liddle and James Delingpole.
Will get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.
Actually I quite enjoy reading Peter Hitchens who is enough of a conservative to really detest most aspects of the modern world – even if he is doing so for the ‘wrong’ reasons.
He was for instance as vociferous an opponent as his brother was a supporter of the Gulf War.
Heffer however is just a highly-paid Tory troll who has never said or thought anything interesting or unpredictable in what? – 30 or 40 years of writing?
I can’t reconcile the fact that Christopher and Peter Hitchens came out of the same body.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100081665/thrifty-prim-snobbish-anti-bling-uk-uncut-is-like-the-youth-wing-of-the-womens-institute/#disqus_thread
Dave. I recall some old lefty saying every nation has a right to self determination. Enoch Powell was never a racist. He in my opinion stopped the mass exodus of people from other countries into Britain for the sake of cheap labour. By doing so he stopped what could have been a real move towards fascism. The fascists now are on the sidelines. But still as always hangin about. Not to mention the loony lefties.
When it comes to the Hitchens brothers, I vastly prefer Peter, who, despite being a tory reactionary, is far more honest and far less bloodthirsty than his turncoat scumbag brother.
dinsky. How can you be far less bloodthirsty. Do you measure it in pints or litres.
Normally by the number of people killed in stupid bloody wars that arm chair warriors like Chris H cheers on.
dinsky. So the other brother supports wars that are not stupid where people get killed. Kind of sensible wars.
calm down, dear, he’s only a journalist…
Dear oh dear…
Back to Dave’s original piece we really need to stop being surprised by the things they say – for a bourgeois class warrior like Heffer UK Uncut are not just as bad as Combat 88 but far worse – as the former are people who want to take away his money and his privileges, while the latter are just thugs who want to beat up people he doesn’t care about anyway.
As I keep on saying they are our enemies and they are engaged in a real war in which their lives, their power and their wealth are at stake.
Now in an imperfect world the alliances and battle lines sometimes get confused so that George Galloway and the SWP and Peter Hitchens all find themselves ranting against imperialist wars, while liberals and neocons and decent leftists end up demanding humanitarian intervention to remove genocidal dictators.
But back here in England where you can normally tell where someone really stands the moment he opens his mouth, we can accept that the class war is a zero-sum contest: we win – they lose and vice versa.
So when we have enemies as stupid and literally hatefull as Simon Heffer and his readers lets celebrate it and not keep shaking our heads as if it is a great source of wonderment that such people exist.
A Hitchens is potentially a much more dangerous to themselves and to the rest of us as they are real intellectuals whose principles unerringly lead them to the dark places where the battle lines are so muddled that we really don’t know where the real enemy are.
As so many comments threads here illustrate we are usually much better off just not going there at all and fighting our own battles instead.
“a sizeable fascist political current in 1970s”
Really? Must have missed that one. All I remember were the usual regular outings of the grunt-snuffling Left either in CND or Union disguise, the knuckle-draggers of the Right were as minimalistic then as they are today.
I take it that you’re referring to Combat 18 rather than Combat 88?
Well said Dave (Osler oviously , not the bum-boil dismal Duff who has somehow managed to ignore the entire story of the National Front.) Heffer is a thug himself, pure and simple. And Glesga further disgraces himself by coming out in support of Powell. Read the full text of “Rivers of Blood” and then tell me you’re not dealing with a genuine racist.
Finally Dave, yes I think you’ve confused Combat 18 with Column 88, an older terroristic crew, more secretive, less foot-ball thuggish.
Arthur. You are a tosspot. Powell never made a rivers of blood speach. That was the usual press thing.
“Arthur. You are a tosspot. Powell never made a rivers of blood speach. That was the usual press thing”
*sigh* Only one tosspot around here, and an ignorant, ill-informed and stupid one to boot. “I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
NOT the press, HE said it. Word-for-word below, Tory Boy. Just for once could you actually get your facts right (appropriate word, there, for you
), before putting your foot in it? After all, better to remain silent and be thought a twat rather than opening your mouth and confirming it…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html
H. You are wrong. But lets get to the present. What has happened to you lefties regarding Libya and Western aggression. You lot are so silent. Powell is dead and long gone. So why the silence.
Methinks you lefties are defunct middle class hypocrites. That is why you dwell in the past, H. No ideas for the present. Wasters indeed.
Yes, Jimmy, try reading the nasty little rabble-rousing racist fantasy which is the Rivers of Blood speech, and then see if praising Powell affects your conscience at all. You love baiting the left, yes we get that, well done! Yet you always still affect to be a Labour loyalist. Praising Powell puts you on the racist Tory right, fair and square, so that’s how you will be seen as from now on. Racist Tory Rightist Jimmy. Or you could try justifying yourself properly for once.
Back to the worm at hand, having read Heffer’s screed properly Dave you were actually far too fair on him. He doesn’t seek to equate leftist “violence” with racist far-right violence – because he doesn’t mention the latter at all. So the NF/Powell fan boys who beat up thousands of black and Asians over the past few decades, killed the odd few too, don’t get a mention. A broken window at the Ritz on the other hand is the death of society and democracy. What an odious little man, as ugly spiritually and mentally as he is physically, and – fuck me -is that saying something.
Arthur. Like H STILL in the past. Typical pretend lefties. You and H should elist with the Tories. I suspect you two have.
“Arthur. Like H STILL in the past.”
***Lol
You really are an utter cock, ‘Jimmy’. It may surprise you, but it is posible to consider several different things at once, you know. Well, for those of with a three-digit IQ, that is…
“Typical pretend lefties.”
***How exactly, in your deranged little world, does that work? What, we’re really, I dunno, Scientologists, say, not actual lefties? I mean, you don’t even make any sense. I’m actually finding that more disturbing than your ignorance, smugness and crassness, personally
“You and H should elist with the Tories. I suspect you two have.”
*** This is great! vintage ‘Glesga’ idiocy! From pretend lefties to Tories despite the fact that ther eis and has been absolutely nothing ever to suggesy any commonality with them, unlike your frequent racism and cheerleading of Enoch Powell, of course. you utter twat.
And then, of course, you dismiss the proveable historical facts regarding Powell with the typical arrogance and smugness of the religious fundamentalist!! You are WRONG – the speech was made, as Arthur said, it’s there in black in white, you cretin.
Christ, don’t you feel even remotely embarrassed? Your poor, poor maw. Must be burling in her grave, poor cow…
H. My maw wis burnt. She may well have been a cow. You know what war wimmin were like. Real wimmin. You are sounding like an arse H. Are you living a boring live. I find people mentioning the word christ to be dodgy! And have a smiley sleekit grin…… What about the present Tory Boy.
The present Tory Boy? Is that one you were given or are you asking about a Tory Boy who exists currently?
Or can we just add piss-poor punctuation to your general stupidity
By the way, why were you so blatantly wrong about Powell making that speech? Straight answer, any chance?
H. WHAT ABOUT LIBYA! Tory Girl. Forget about stupidity and punctuation!
By the way, why were you so blatantly wrong about Powell making that speech? Straight answer, any chance?
He made a speech. The press called it rivers of blood.
I hope no-one associates me with Ed Miliband just cos I was on the smae demonstration as him.
H the real Toryboy. Going on about Powell and the past and deviating from the aggression in Libya. H you must have shares in Persian Oil!
I think you are safe Janine. On the contrary. Milliband has a lot more to worry about if he keeps trying to associate with the likes of us. Anyone else notice how he popped in and cleared off long before most of the march had even left the Embankment. He looked and sounded like the most embarassing uncle at a wedding. Tosser.
He was even too bloody scared to rebut the simplistic lie’s that the last Govt alone caused all this. Not once mentioning the one’s who did. The effing bankers. No doubt because he was off to crumpets and tea with the self same buggers at the Ritz afterwards.
On the other hand arch leftie, and ‘destroyer of civilisation as we know it’, Mark Serwotka was stunningly brilliant.
Also on question time last night. To anyone who saw it. Anyone notice how the rest of the panel did not attack him. Seemingly utterly phased by the stark honesty of views not usually allowed air time. Instead shuffling uncomfortably around stuff he said. As if one should not say such stuff in company. As if the vicar at a tea party had farted. Did me good. More of calling the buggers bluff please.
Jimmy and Libya. Oh dear. Maybe here we really part company. The wide screen freeview of Thatcher/Blair and Cameron send more ‘brave young men’ across another bloody desert. Expecting you and me to rush to get HD and hoist the bloody flag. Money miraculously found from state coffers that were empty a month ago. Enough money apparently to risk countless civilian casualties. But not enough to invest in the bloody education of it’s own youth.
It is truly sickenening Jimmy. What is more the whole point of the left is we do not just ‘quack’ when Murdoch and the like try to call us a Duck.
Our agenda. Not theirs.
Word to others who like this blog – time to start ignoring dribbling fool Glesga. No longer amusing, and drenching the comments boxes under his manky phlegm. Interesting discussions are derailed by his increasingly tedious dim-wit contrarianism. I will never again reply to his ramblings, and I can only imlore others to follow suit. That even bigger tosser Obnoxio eventually fucked off once ignored, Glesga will too – eventually.
Martin. Have you indulged in crumpet(s) at the Ritz. A Kind of lefty place maybe you would be seen at!and can afford.
Well Arthur Seaton (premature ejaculation)slow down a bit and enjoy whatever comes.
Jimmy, what is the point of your comments now? If it’s just to be annoying, you are getting a bit old for such schoolboy antics.
If you truly want to make a point about how bad support for military intervention in Libya is, then go ahead and make it in a sensible way. I will happily support you in that.
Les. Just got a bit pissed aff. Even the lefties are a bit quiet about the West involment in Libya. They were out in their thousands about Iraq. Maybe the left has quit.
Les. Just got a bit pissed aff.
Worth pointing out that supporting the Western military intervention could be a major mistake Jimmy, but not sure you were achieving that with some of your comments.
Good advice, Arthur. I’ll try and heed it.
H, Les and Arthur I was trying to establish if you were lefties. Seems not.