FLIGHT OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES

One of the most notable effects of the Trump phenomenon has been the extent to which conservatives have, en masse, shown a willingness to swallow their previously avowed principles, sometimes overnight. The same Republican party that preaches ‘traditional family values’ and impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob, for example, has thrown its weight […]

HOW MAGA WORKS

Though he had toyed with the idea of entering the arena before, his political career really started with a racist conspiracy theory about the country’s first black President. When he descended the gold elevator and announced his candidacy he began by calling hardworking Mexican immigrants drug dealers and rapists. He refused to disavow the endorsement […]

YOU GOT TRUMPED

Those who have been arguing the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 wasn’t a genuine threat to democracy but just a bunch of weirdos and sore losers on a drunken rampage underestimate the moral violation of those events. The silly looking conspiracy theorist with the horns got all the headlines and all […]

THE GOD THAT FAILED: NOTES ON THE DEATH OF THE LEFT

No Pope for me, whether spiritual or secular. Richard Crossman, The God that Failed: Six Studies in Communism I And in the end, the ‘Absolute Boy’ presided over exactly the kind of absolute disaster many of us predicted he would. Jeremy Corbyn didn’t just lose the 2019 General Election: the Labour Party is now a rump […]

WHY I AM NOT A LABOUR VOTER

It is a moral scandal that a few decades after the unmeasurable catastrophe that overtook the Jewish people in Europe, antisemitic themes and ruses are once again respectable; respectable not just down there with the thugs but pervasively also within polite society, and within the perimeters of a self-flattering liberal and left opinion. It is […]

THE FUCK YOU!! ROUTINE

I went to an open mic shortly after the 2015 general election where one of the speakers – a man in his 60s – got up and started haranguing the audience with an anti-Tory rant that was interspersed with the (shouted) refrain of “FUCK YOU!!” every thirty seconds or so. This excruciating display seemed […]

HOW TO BLOW A DOGWHISTLE

Before we begin, take a quick look at this image: This hastily scribbled banner was left in the media section of a recent Donald Trump campaign rally in Florida. By some accounts hostility towards reporters at these often chaotic events has reached near hysterical levels. The hot-tempered atmosphere of boos and jeers has been stoked […]

Ukip If You Want To

I’ve just finished watching the BBC documentary Meet the Ukippers. A few thoughts occurred to me. Try as I might, I find it difficult to greet Ukip with the same level of fear and loathing as many of my leftist friends, for whom the party are quite obviously tweed-wearing fascists. Mostly, I feel a bit […]

EVERYTHING IS SUSPICIOUS IF YOU SQUINT HARD ENOUGH

Did you know the Scottish referendum result was fixed? That far from rejecting independence, the Scottish people, who pride themselves on being ‘canny’, are actually the unwitting victims of a diabolical plot by the media and the political establishment to rob them of a beautiful, liberated Scotland? This is what I have just been […]

You Can’t Read This Blog: Reviewing Nick Cohen

Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are “fashionable”, it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation. Christopher Hitchens On 7th December last year, some twenty Muslim men stormed a book launch in Amsterdam and promptly declared a death sentence upon the book’s author. They unfurled […]