rhetorically speaking..

synergised till it hurts

2009-11-17T14:40:00.003Z

Nadine Dorries is over at Comment Is Free proudly describing the "uncanny synergy between Conservative Central Office and the grassroots membership." I'm presuming that her own political history equips her with special insight - and that "uncanny synergy" is some kind of euphemism for.. well.. let's go to the record:

Back in 2000, Nadine Dorries (nee Bargery) managed to shave ten years off her age and get thrown out of the seat she was due to contest, within six months of having been selected.

That is until CCHQ stepped in to save the day but not before she apparently had to attend that year’s Tory conference in limbo, which seems to me to be the perfect venue for a Tory conference, unless there’s a vacancy in one of the other circles of hell.

Dorries was then dropped happily into her mid-Bedfordshire seat when senior Tories made it clear to local members that they would like the seat to go to a woman and presented the constituency with a shortlist of seven women and five men to underline the point.

So singing the praises of selection on merit and ability.. well, it's uncanny, indeed.

people opposed to sex education oppose sex education, shock

2009-11-06T10:58:00.005Z

Cath Elliot at Liberal Conspiracy sketches out the details of the ridiculously minimal reform of sex education and touches on the knee-jerk responses falling from the mouths of self-appointed family values campaigners.

It's never been quite clear how these supposedly moral crusaders square their morality with a track record of - with the full support of certain newspapers - lying, transparently and repeatedly, about the value and content of sex education programmes.

For example, if a newspaper is going to quote the Family Education Trust on the issue of sex education, it should also take the time to point out that they embody a tiny conservative minority who are badly informed, prone to lying and think that the real problem with sex before marriage is that it turns your wife into a whore. They're also opposed to any discussion of homosexuality because it might make people think that gay relationships are legitimate.

Furthermore, their resistance to sex education is part of a specific, socially conservative agenda which they have no problem in forcing on everyone else. So, while - as should be transparently obvious - contraception reduces pregnancy, it should be treated with fear and mistrust because it "undermines" marriage.

On that note, compare and contrast Cornerstone Group's Edward Leigh's approach to sex education ("you can’t and shouldn’t seek to impose your ideas from the centre") and Edward Leigh's approach to marriage ("We need to explain how we will buttress and support it through the tax and benefit system.")

patron saint of irony

2009-11-05T08:38:00.003Z

Third day in a row but here's Melanie Phillips' take on a recent court ruling extending anti-discrimination protection to a man with firmly held environmental beliefs:

In any rational universe, he would be sent away with a flea in his ear for trying it on. [my emphasis]

That appeal to rationalism is followed, of course, by outrage that religious beliefs are not being accorded special status in law.

Finally, there's space for a quick renewal of victim status: that a woman (Phillips, M) who writes regular columns - some of which appear in national newspapers - voicing her scepticism of man-made global warming is somehow the victim of discrimination because people don't take her entirely seriously.

Also: for continuing discussion of Phillips' Israel purity test - which has now extended to castigating Britain's "timid Jews" for failing to vocally agree with her - see Obsolete. As noted earlier this week, Phillips is now arguing that to criticise her is a form of violence - a verbal pogrom, a phrase which she has now repeated to describe the treatment of Israel by "Britain’s political and intellectual class." Will Phillips be extending this metaphor to directly accuse those who criticise her of anti-semitism?

victimhood

2009-11-03T12:40:00.000Z

Melanie Phillips declares herself to be the victim of a verbal pogrom - in other words, that criticism of her is a form of violence.

Would anyone - possibly M. Phillips of the Daily Mail - like to take her to task for the kind of hyperbole which can only belittle the memory of those who died in literal pogroms?

this is not ordinary hypocrisy: this is melanie phillips hypocrisy

2009-11-02T11:10:00.008Z

Melanie Phillips' dedication to personal liberty - and the enraged argument that the Labour government seeks to control every part of our lives - has one or two blind spots, most obviously relating to drugs policy. Here, the government can't act quickly enough to stop adults from making their own decisions about risk or harm, though Phillips does her best to dress her paternalism as concern for the little children.

But this is not ordinary hypocrisy - this is Melanie Phillips' hypocrisy, where the claim that Professor David Nutt's research is selective and inadequate must be married to Phillips' own "people who agree with me" use of research i.e. a response from 29 psychiatrists is "far too few for a reliable assessment," but a quote from one psychiatrist who happens to agree with Phillips means we should dismiss everything that Professor Nutt has argued.

My favourite piece of non-argument is this:

Nutt claims his arguments are 'scientific'. Does that mean that scientists such as Professors Parrott and Appleby or Dr Murray are not scientific?

Because only one person at a time is allowed to scientific: it's a shiny hat which is passed from person to person. The idea that there might be competing evidence which needs to be reasonably assessed is a subtlety that escapes Phillips: there's only the good kind of science, which says drugs are bad, and the wrong kind of science which "create[s] a culture of social acceptability for illegal drug-taking" and will lead to you "getting sucked onto the drug escalator" (which should be slang for something but, sadly, isn't.)

That said, it was a close match between the line above and the following awesomely inane rhetorical questions:

One might as well say that you run more risk of a car accident than being murdered. So what? Does that mean murder should be regarded as any less serious?

For ten points, explain the difference between an accident and murder. For a further billion points, explain what the hell Melanie Phillips was trying to say in the previous quote.

Above all, remember this: how do we know that Professor David Nutt is probably talking sense? Melanie Phillips is on the other side of the argument.

melanie phillips: it's your own fault for not agreeing with me

2009-11-01T10:44:00.005Z

Let she who is without self-awareness write a column. So here's Melanie Phillips:

The question remains, though, quite why Ed Husain feels so viciously towards me. I think it is indeed because of my support for Israel, on which subject he appears to be unbalanced and obsessional. In his Cif piece about me, he claims of me that anyone who opposes her views on Israel is either an Islamist or ‘in the Islamists’ camp’.

This is an absurd misrepresentation of my views. [...] A number of anti-jihadis told me from the start that my support for Ed Husain was misplaced because he had never properly renounced Islamist extremism.

Quite wonderful.

Phillips denounces the idea that she has an "us or them" mentality - you either agree with Philips or are on the side of the Islamists - before turning a few lines later to the claim that Husain has never "properly renounced Islamist extremism." In fact, she explains clearly that the conditions for being a "true moderate" or an "ally of the free world against the enemies of civilisation" are defined solely by.. meeting with her views on Israel.

Whatever criticism you might make of Phillips, she's certainly irony proof.

As ever, the idea that Phillips is some kind of staunch supporter of Islam's "inherent pluralism" should be held against her habit of running off into the wilds of conspiracy theory at every opportunity - for example, the supposed threat of a Caledonian caliphate, the declaration of "jihad in east Londonistan," and - my absolute all-time favourite - the argument that "peace, harmony and mutual goodwill" actually means "submit or die."

iain dale dictionary corner

2009-10-30T12:31:00.004Z

Iain "moral compass" Dale on the subject of Michal Kaminski:

The fact that the left continues this campaign of traducement says far more about their own moral compass than it does about Kaminski.

Golly. Better check what that word means.

Definition:
traducement (transitive verb)
to traduce: to cause humiliation or disgrace to by making malicious and false statements

I'm still not quite clear about... oh, hang on:

Contemporary usage:

When Iain Dale traduced Tom Watson in the pages of the Daily Mail, the newspaper was forced to pay substantial damages.

Much better. Not quite sure what I'm going to do with this surplus of black pots and kettles, though.

(Pssst. For signs of the shakiness of Dale's high-horsed claim of lefty-leftist traducement start with the comments on his post, and then try Denis MacShane in The Guardian.)

hah [pause] hah

2009-10-29T17:24:00.005Z

A minimal understanding of feminism can get you quite a long way, but - as in the case of The Telegraph's Michael Deacon - not quite far enough. Deacon can't quite see why a feminist might have a problem with page 3-lite without falling prey to hypocrisy:

The conundrum is this. Feminists believe, quite rightly, that women should be free, as men are, to make their own choices about what they do in life.

So what about women who choose to pose for photographs without terribly many clothes on? They aren’t being forced to do it. They’ve elected to do it, independently, for their own reasons, whatever they may be.

Should they stop, purely because someone else thinks it’s an activity unsuitable for a woman?

If it’s unacceptable for a man to tell women how and how not to live their lives, isn’t it a bit off for a women’s officer to do the same?

There's no flaw in feminism here, just a flawed understanding of how feminism might operate. For example, feminism does not offer carte blanche to any and all behaviour simply because it happens to have been carried out by a woman and can therefore be minimally described as liberational. Why might a women's officer - or indeed anyone - criticise another woman's choices?

Perhaps because - as the women's officer concerned, Natalie Szarek, pointed out - that certain images reproduce and reinforce harmful attitudes towards women, and that women (and men) might just collectively owe a small debt to each other not to help support or propagate those attitudes, particularly in a society which already has spectacularly fucked up attitudes towards women's bodies. To argue that none of the models involved had been "exploited" is to almost completely miss the point.

This is, incidentally, the same argument raised in criticism of raunch culture, which - last time it raised its head - inspired letters that read like this:

If you want to be a feminist, you need to take heed of other women - in this country and elsewhere - whose circumstances may be radically different to your own. Some women may choose to embrace so-called raunch culture; that's their prerogative - it's a simple matter of civil liberties. But don't try and suggest this is, in itself, feminist. Don't pretend it empowers other women. Don't pretend it advances anyone's interests except their own.

So when Deacon writes

here’s a conundrum that I don’t think feminists have ever satisfactorily answered. Or if they have, I wasn’t listening, being a man and all.

you can enjoy a few moments of cold, shallow laughter.

the spectator: no regrets (updated)

2009-10-28T14:03:00.004Z

Ben Goldacre obligingly provides the cancellation email sent by The Spectator following the collapse of their AIDs denial event. Some high-grade weaselling to note:

I am writing to inform you that, with much regret, the event on “Aids – realism or denial” due to take place on Wednesday 28 October, has been cancelled due to several members of the panel having pulled out at the last minute, leaving us with an unbalanced panel which would not make for a rounded discussion on the film.

The implicit claim here is that the planned panel was "balanced," rather than primarily containing people who a) have no role in AIDs research or b) whose only qualification seems to be in the act of challenging the scientific consensus.

The notion that there can be a "rounded discussion" of the film also presumes that the film is not, at face value, "a globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning." Examining the lopsided makeup of the original panel, Richard Wilson observed:

Perhaps one reason for this imbalance is that the real “leading medical authorities” on AIDS will generally refuse to share a platform with AIDS denialists, or engage in debate with them, largely for the same sorts of reasons that evolutionary biologists avoid Creationists, and established historians refuse to debate the Holocaust with the likes of David Irving.

All of which puts the lie to the following lines of the Spectator email:

The purpose of the event which was to have a rational and balanced discussion in an area of science too often characterised by hysteria.

A nice bit of rhetorical re-direction: the people who are concerned about the very real threats to health posed by AIDS denialists are hysterical; the people promoting a film which engages in baseless speculation and misrepresents the views of those interviewed within it are rational and balanced. The email continues:

House of Numbers is a controversial film and we wanted it scrutinised by leading authorities and to follow its showing with real debate encompassing a wide spectrum of opinion. It has proved very difficult to put together a panel which could do this.

That would be because there is there no wide spectrum of opinion: only the overwhelming majority who understand that HIV causes AIDs, and a tiny number who - through fuzzy logic and selective argument - speculate otherwise. Genuine scrutiny by leading authorities would - and has - lead to the film's central questions being dismissed.

To make it very simple, and to quote aidstruth.org:

House of Numbers asks if there is really a scientific consensus about HIV/AIDS. The real answer is: YES. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus, based on incontrovertible evidence, that HIV exists and is the cause of AIDS.

Things are not so clear for The Spectator, who conclude:

We will look at staging this event at a later date with another, more dependable panel.

Apparently, the problem isn't the quality of the evidence but the quality of the panel - which tells you nearly eveything you need to know about those planning the event. So, while The Spectator might be quietly removing the public traces of the event it was forced to cancel, its private commitment to (frankly irresponsible) fringe science continues unabated, without regret.

UPDATE: Joseph Sonnabend - originally invited to join the panel - explains his reasoning for taking part, and voices his own stringent criticism of the film and AIDS denialists.

pope: UR DOING IT WRONG

2009-10-22T08:48:00.000+01:00

My absolute favourite line from the Telegraph's continued coverage of the decision by the Vatican to welcome married Anglican priests (but, obviously, still no homos):

Anglican congregations who pride themselves on being more Catholic than the Pope will be able to carry on celebrating Mass in antique vestments, in sanctuaries behind traditional altar rails, to the accompaniment of motets sung by a professionally trained choir.

Because if there's one area where the Pope has been letting his side down, it's in a lack of antique vestments, elaborate churches and carefully arranged choral music.

schism schmism

2009-10-21T08:19:00.002+01:00

What could possibly heal the centuries old religious differences between the Anglican and Catholic Churches?

Traditionalists, including up to six Church of England bishops, had visited and pleaded with Rome to provide some sort of structure inside the Catholic Church for their wing of the Church of England because of liberal moves towards women bishops and gay ordinations.

Of course! A mutual disdain for women and teh gays. I can't believe we didn't think of this before.

damage control

2009-10-20T12:22:00.007+01:00

The Guardian provides coverage of continuing damage control over at the Daily Mail:

The Irish Daily Mail has attempted to distance itself from the Jan Moir's controversial column about the death of Stephen Gately, claiming it is "independent" of the UK edition of the paper. [...]

The Irish Mail on Sunday carried four pages of coverage on Gately's funeral in Dublin and printed a disclaimer, as did the Irish Daily Mail yesterday: "Comments made by journalist Jan Moir about Stephen Gately in her newspaper column caused controversy on Friday. Jan Moir's column has never been published in the Irish Daily Mail which, like the Irish Mail on Sunday, is edited and printed entirely in Ireland – independent of the UK titles – and does not have an online presence."

The paper carries copy from the UK edition, although much of it is rewritten for an Irish readership.

The (apparent/confusing) claim that the Irish Daily Mail doesn't have an online presence is false, unless it's an even more confusing claim that Moir's column doesn't have an online presence in Ireland. Is this a claim that Moir is - and has always been - regionally blocked? If so, is it too late to become Irish?

It's a curious claim because the Irish and UK versions of the Mail website reveal a huge amount of overlap in the "independently edited" titles; at time of writing, for example, the hand-chosen (ahem) "Editor's Six of The Best" features are identical for both Irish and UK versions of the website, with no detectable differences in linked content. Sadly, Richard Littlejohn is available everywhere.

Furthermore, note that the shaky claim on editorial independence doesn't appear to extend as far as a direct rejection of Moir's comments; at best, it's merely a grudging recognition of the issue, forced by Gately's popularity in his home country.

In fact, the (sometimes widely) divergent editorial lines embraced by the Irish and UK editions exist on the basis of happy mutual ignorance, neither truly recognising the existence of the other: never has this been more obvious than in the case of the diametrically opposed editorial stances on the HPV vaccine.

In other words, claiming "independence" is another way of never having to say you're sorry.

melanie phillips: my islamist scaremongering has nothing to do with the BNP's islamist scaremongering

2009-10-19T09:07:00.004+01:00

Melanie Phillips does her level best to draw a line between her brand of reactionary hate and that of BNP's Nick Griffin:

Yesterday, [Griffin] showed his slipperiness in an interview on Sky News in which he unblinkingly claimed that he now had no problem with 'settled ethnic minorities' such as Afro-Caribbeans, Sikhs or Hindus, only with 'colonists who want to change our country into something completely different' - which is code for those who want to Islamise Britain and replace its values with Islamic Sharia law.

Such distinctions should fool no one. The BNP is hostile not merely to Islamic supremacists but to all Muslims, including those who threaten no one's way of life.

It's a really rather important distinction for Phillips to create because she has herself been a regular proponent of the idea that radical Islamists are trying to turn Britain into an Islamic nation under Sharia law.

Furthermore, Phillips has proven rather careless in drawing a line between mainstream UK Muslims and the supposed radical plots of a minority - either blaming the mainstream for failing to respond to her personal conspiracy theories, or failing to mention the majority mainstream at all.

For previous episodes of Melanie Phillips' attempts to clear ground between her own opinions and the racist right, see the attempt to define the BNP as leftists and the whitewashing of her own eliminationist rhetoric.

a failure of hypocrisy

2009-10-19T08:47:00.003+01:00

For the second time in as many days, the Mail publishes an opinion piece condemning homophobia (and this one actually mentions Jan Moir's column) in an attempt to repair its reputation... but still refuses to apologise or recognise that there was anything wrong with Jan Moir's column. It was just an "honest opinion."

Obvious here is the desire for the Mail to separate it's own routine dehumanisation of gay people - not merely by columnists offering their "honest opinions" but by the newsdesk - from the people who act (violently) on the basis of those beliefs.

We might tell you that gay people are trying to destroy society, break up your family and pervert your children, argues the Mail, but we're horrified that anyone would do anything about it. In other words, the Mail's problem is a failure of appropriate hypocrisy amongst a section of its readers - to loathe gay people is laudable; to act on that hate is terrible.

Some things to note:

the Mail's editorial position - homo BAD - remains unaltered;
Jan Moir is still employed by the Mail;
not a single advertiser boasting commitments to equality and respect has pulled their business from the Mail.

another coat of whitewash

2009-10-18T11:07:00.002+01:00

Suzanne Moore of the Daily Mail writes a column on twitter as our "new virtual conscience," condemns homophobia and those who "pruriently pick over the circumstances of Gately’s death" but somehow manages to avoid any mention of Jan Moir (still happily employed by the Daily Mail) or indeed the Mail's own reputation as the most homophobic member of the British press.

Funny that.

business as usual

2009-10-17T10:15:00.003+01:00

So.

Jan Moir is now in full-denial mode, describing complaints of homophobia in her "tawdry gossip for celebrity-snuff fans" column as as "mischevious" and the product of an orchestrated campaign. She's pushing back with the support of the Mail's own PR firm.

The Daily Mail itself is also pretending this is business as normal: the removal of ads from Moir's page is apparently little more than when ads for power companies are (for example) removed from stories about the possible dangers of power masts, though in this case it seems to be that Moir's work is incompatible with advertising for products for humans in general.

Why are these details of ass-covering important?

Because they're entirely unremarkable.

This is part of a pattern of behaviour which has a long and shitty history with the full support (and indeed encouragement) of the Daily Mail's editorial team and owners. Focussing on Jan Moir is to focus on the very tip of an iceberg of virulent hate stretching back decades.

Why not think back to the many, many months spent campaigning against civil partnerships, and the equally concerted effort to block same-sex adoption?

Maybe you'll recall the Scottish Daily Mail's twin screaming headlines, "Schools told to teach gay sex" and "Gay sex lessons in primary schools," from August 2006. Neither of these claims were even slightly true then, and they're still lies now.

Why not just confine your mental trip to the archive of Melanie Phillips' collected text-vomits? Discover how support for gay rights is the primary threat to British society, her attempt to explain why the problem with Islamic homophobia is that it's Islamic, and how the gay rights movement somehow has nothing to do with the rights of gay people.

Then there's always Peter Hitchens, a reliable source of prolonged homophobic screeds.

If you're in a hurry, just wrap your head around the central argument of the paper's editorial stance for over a decade: protecting the rights of a minority of homosexuals is BAD; protecting the rights of a minority of evangelical Christians, however, is GOOD.

Why is this story different in any sense? Timing - Gately hasn't even been buried yet - and celebrity - day-to-day homophobia in the Mail goes almost entirely unmentioned by the larger world.

We shrug. I've lost count of the times I've read on facebook or twitter "that's why we call it the Daily Heil," or "what do you expect from the Mail?" or "It's terrible, we've always known that." Adverts are being moved "away" from Moirs column, but no-one has said they'll stop advertising with the Mail. Companies are scurrying to cover their reputations while not.. actually doing very much.

"Marks & Spencer does not tolerate any form of discrimination," said a spokesman for the retailer. "We have asked the Daily Mail to move our advertisement away from the article. This is a matter for the Daily Mail."

Such bold, brave, consequential action. "This is a matter for the Daily Mail," the same Daily Mail that edited and approved the article in the first place. I'm sure the issue is in safe hands.

"Nestlé has no influence on the editorial content of the publications in which it advertises. The views expressed in the article are from the author and are not shared by Nestlé," said a spokeswoman. "The company has consistently emphasised the importance of mutual respect and tolerance, regardless of culture, religion or nationality. This a core company value as expressed in the Nestlé corporate business principles."

But it's the kind of core value which doesn't actually stop Nestle from advertising elsewhere in the paper. It's one of those important core values that doesn't actually inform business practice. It would be jolly nice if major corporations wouldn't wear their commitment to equality like some kind of paper party-hat, worn to entertainment and soothe the awkward child at the table but discarded before the first course arrives.

So. Business as usual. Or is anyone up for trying something else?

slight return

2009-10-07T08:35:00.003+01:00

Here's Teresa May on R4's Today programme (around 3.10) explaining that the Tories are allied with virulent homophobes in eastern Europe for the simple reason that they share the same views about the future of Europe.

Nice to have that particular political pecking order explained: the Tory party is fully supportive of the rights of gay people until passport control at Dover.

open and shut case

2009-06-14T18:58:00.003+01:00

Peter Hitchens makes the case that he is a dangerous idiot:

I have no idea if the MMR is safe or not. But I know many thoughtful and well-informed people who believe that it damaged their children, or fear that it might do so.

If you know nothing about the issue then maybe you should keep your fucking mouth shut, Hitchens.

hatchet-job

2009-06-13T12:55:00.002+01:00

The remarkable thing about Steve Doughty's otherwise fairly unremarkable anti-feminist hatchet job of Dr Katherine Rake is the fear of choice.

Doughty tries his best to present Dr Rake as a radical (she wants to "revolutionise" lives!), somehow hypocritical (she's married!), an insufficiently feminine woman (she has short hair like 70s feminists!) and willing to work with gay people (ZOMGZOMG THE GAYS!). He also fabricates one outright lie - the notion that wanting to support greater equality in relationships means she refuses to help "ordinary families" or "parents as they are."

This points to the underlying rhetorical device: to pretend that creating greater choice and freedom in the way we live our lives is the same thing as forcing people to change their lives - that, for example, to open mother and toddler groups to stay-at-home fathers is the equivalent of demanding that all men should stay home and look after their children. So the story leads with

..Dr Katherine Rake, who wants to see men bring up babies

and tries to pretend that this is some kind of blanket policy where men will uniformly take over duties of care and - as in the words of centre-right think-tank Centre for Policy Studies - her agenda is "more about reversing sex roles than helping parents."

And that's without touching the (fairly insulting) ridiculousness of suggesting that many men wouldn't be interested in having more of a role in their children's lives.

business as usual

2009-06-12T09:38:00.003+01:00

A week after the election of two BNP MEPs - which, of course, is the exclusive fault of the left, ZOMGZOMG - the Mail goes back to printing misleading immigration stories:

Want a British passport? Just stand on a picket line or canvas for Labour

Migrants will win fast-track passports if they stand on picket lines or knock on doors asking people to vote Labour, it emerged last night.

The Home Office says trade union activism and political canvassing should count towards the planned new system of 'earned citizenship'.

It's a fairly obvious attempt to make it seem as though Labour is bribing immigrants into campaign work on their behalf in exchange for passports - even though political activism, for any party, is only one of the ways in which applicants might complete 50 hours of voluntary work. The one shred of honesty in the report notes that "even aiding the BNP would count - if it was willing to accept help from an immigrant." Hah.

James Slack - the "journalist" responsible for this story - also helpfully looks into the future to invent conspiracy theories for critics who don't exist:

Critics will point to the historic relationship between Labour and the unions. Migrants cannot vote until they become citizens - so, by using union membership to speed their applications, Labour is potentially swelling its own support.

Except, of course, that the scheme is not restricted to joining Labour-friendly unions: you can also work at a soup kitchen for the homeless, serve as a school governor or help out a local museum. You can even volunteer for a faith organisation.

You'll probably recall that one of the recurring arguments presented by critics of immigration in general (and multi-culturalism in particular) is that that migrants should adopt the language and culture of the UK. So what's so objectionable about this proposed scheme, which affirms the need for "newcomers" to speak English and to "participate in our civic and political life"?

Or is the argument that visitors should "fit in" a thin cover for a rather more ugly hostility?

not for nothing

2009-06-11T10:50:00.002+01:00

Amongst the clutch of conservatives and neo-cons attempting to claim that the BNP are left wingers - sorry, that's LEFTISTSXOMGXOMG!!!! - is Melanie Phillips. My absolute, hands-down favourite part of her argument is when she claims this:

The philosophical antecedents of the BNP lie not on the right but on the left.

and refers to the following text in support of her thesis:

Ze’ev Sternhell’s classic work, Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France

Neither on the left or the right, except when it's entirely on the left, apparently. Phillips also manages to throw in one of the more obvious canards:

Not for nothing were the Nazis called ’national socialists’.

Indeed, not for nothing - sadly for Phillips case, that "something" was the propagandist attempt to encourage working class support. As this site summarises:

Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers.

To call Phillips' work intellectually dishonest cherry-picking would be a disservice to idiots working in orchards.

conspiracy fail

2009-06-09T17:32:00.005+01:00

Nick Griffin reveals himself to be a mere amateur amongst conspiracy theorists:

Speaking to the BBC after the protest Mr Griffin said he believed the march had been organised by his political opponents.

"There was shouting from down the road and I got 80 people marched up with eggs, bottles [edit: bottles which strangely no-one else seems to have spotted] and placards and that was the end of the press conference. It's an absolute outrage," he said.

"We do have a problem with this organised mob which is backed by all three main political parties. It's a disgrace. They clearly had orders.

"I was splattered. It's a very sad day for British democracy. It seems the ruling political parties who want this to carry on have lost sight of what democracy really is.

"They are silly left wing students, lecturers and probably civil service parasites off on their lunch break. This is a mob for hire. This does not represent the normal people.

"This is organised by the Labour party and funded by taxpayers' money."

There are some points here for general incoherent inconsistency (is Labour, or are all three parties to blame?) but what about the homosexuals, blacks, Muslims and feminazis? And what about the Jews? Is there so little room in your heart for hate, Nick?

ugly bedfellows

2009-06-08T09:20:00.004+01:00

Following last night's unbelievably shitty news that the BNP could get less votes than in the last election and still pick up two MEPs, the Mail reports:

Conservative Party leader David Cameron described the success of the BNP as 'depressing': 'It is obviously a depressing day for all of us. The BNP are completely beyond the pale... they are an appalling bunch of people.'

How, then, would Cameron describe the European parties on the far right with whom he would ally his party? During last night's Euro election coverage on the BBC, David Dimbleby asked William Hague about the problem of grouping with parties and politicians who are either virulently homophobic or manifestly racist.

Hague deflected the question, not by rejecting the possibility of working with such people but by arguing that "politics is different in Poland," that they share "our kind of politics" and that it would be part of a strong "mainstream" conservative grouping. A racist, homophobic grouping, apparently.

If we're going to get a Conservative government (which, given the ongoing collapse of both the Labour vote and the Labour party is fairly damn likely) that's serious about opposing the politics espoused by the BNP, now would be a good time for the Tories to reject policies which are "beyond the pale" regardless of their country of origin.

it would not be all bad news

2009-06-08T09:16:00.003+01:00

Hyperbole, where are thou?

Caroline Flint on her own has set back the cause of women's equality by about a millennium.

If true, it would mean that Melanie Phillips would be prevented from writing any more terrible articles.

Sadly, no.

fail

2009-06-04T10:08:00.005+01:00

In the middle of the BNP's education policy - which is gloriously low on necessary detail, logic and reality-based fact - is a river of cognitive dissonance. From the preamble:

“Citizenship” lessons are a euphemism for political indoctrination.

Indoctrination bad, right? Except when the BNP is doing it:

The introduction of a compulsory Community Award Scheme for all school-leavers to teach them work ethics and social and community values. [...] These courses would be character-building and instil discipline, social and community values and work ethics in all young people.

Yes, it's the bold policy of sweeping away citizenship lessons and replacing them with.. uh.. a compulsory citizenship organisation for young people. While re-introducing compulsory collective worship in schools, and claiming only certain areas of knowledge are "proper subjects." (Oh, and don't forget to re-introduce competitive sports which have.. uhm.. never stopped being played.)

The silliest rhetorical tick is to set up a vacuous opposition between "traditional" and "old-fashioned" approaches and the "modern," "fake," and "politically correct." Are we given any sense of what those words might mean? Is there any detail of any of the educational techniques being proposed or critiqued? Do we know which degrees will be considered "proper" degrees? No. That would be actual political content, rather than vapid posturing. Seriously: the "policy" page for education on the BNP website is shorter than this blog entry.

Remember, these aren't just racist bigots: they're deeply stupid racist bigots masquerading as a political party.