What happened over the weekend is that every single media outlet in the country went into overdrive to say that Braverman’s comments are fuelling the “far right”. If you’re not entirely clued up on British political designations, in this country the far right generally refers to people who:
– are racist and intolerant towards other ethnic and religious groups
– harbour prejudice against sexual minorities
– consider women inferior to men and treat them as second-class citizens
– use violence to achieve their political objectives and incite violence in public
In other words, the “far right” have been on British streets for weeks chanting genocidal slogans, calling for Jihad and saying things like “death to all the Jews” and “Hitler knew how to deal with these people”.
But that is, of course, not who the media mean when they talk about the “far right”. What they mean is a small number of football fans who like to get pissed and get into scuffles with the police. When these people did turn up, this was immediately taken as evidence that Braverman had incited a riot. Because if there’s one thing we know about football hooligans it’s that they all have a subscription to the Times and take inspiration from powerful brown women.
– Konstantin Kisin (£)
So those non-white types, dressed in Muslim attire, shouting “Death to the Jews” and “From the River to the Sea”, are they now the Right Wing?
Because there seemed to be quite a lot of them on the London march yesterday, along with the usual lefty / Antifa type.
Fat, white racist football hooligan types? Not so much. A few here and there but vastly outnumbered by the pro-Palestinians with their blatant antisemitism.
Just so we’re all on the same page, Suella Braverman was fired for calling the Far Right march a hate meeting and accusing the police of treating the hatemonger Right Wing with kid gloves.
Didn’t anybody at the Met for a second ponder that here they had an opportunity to prove their critics wrong about two tier policing? No, they went ahead and did exactly what everybody expected them to do, and further reduced the public’s opinion of them.
I never had any hopes for Rishi, but, nevertheless, he’s a disappointment. I hope Suella contests the leadership. She has more of Thatcher about her than any other Tory (including Kemi, who if she had any sense should resign in disgust).
Well, if nothing else I now know who is a subscriber to KK’s substack. The quoted remarks are behind the paywall.
Yup
To be fair, those bullet points could equally apply to the police themselves…
I wondered if any of those labelled as far right actually vote Labour?
The inconsistency in all of this is near-pathologic.
One of the points that occurred to me as I was constructing my little experiment lower down in the post-tree was that there’s an extremely blatant dichotomy in how many on the insane side of politics construct these things.
Consider the treatment of the Gazan Arab vs. the Israeli. That Hamas may do whatever it likes to whomever it likes on the Israeli side of things is a given; they all deserve it, ‘cos, ya know… Israeli. Blood guilt; they’re all guilty for the sins of their fathers and all those other nasty little Jews that wouldn’t die…
Yet… You’re supposed to flip that around, when talking about all those “innocent” Hamas-supporting Gazan Arabs. They’re not culpable for the things their voted-in government does, and all their non-combatants are to be treated with respect and dignity, ‘cos they’re “uninvolved” in the current conflict. They’re innocent bystanders, right?
So… Launch unguided missiles into Israel, where they’ll hit God alone knows who, and that’s just hunky-dory. No cares, no worries, it’s all good ‘cos it’s those nasty Jews we’re shooting at… Should Israel respond by bombing Gazan Arab, though? Oh, dear… That’s morally wrong. Those are innocents, non-combatants…
This double-standard dichotomy suffuses the presumed thought-process of the insane side of politics. Consider the idea behind affirmative action: We’re going to penalize cis-hetero white males ‘cos they’re what they are, guilty as charged, for things done by other individuals decades and centuries ago that the current lot had no agency over. Could you have a clearer definition of blood guilt? That’s a wunnerful, wunnerful idea, to be implemented everywhere, ‘cos we get to put those white bastards in their places.
Not really pertinent that none of the current generation took part in or personally benefited from those bad old days. We’re still gonna screw them over because… We can.
The inconsistency applied here, and the sheer hypocrisy is lost on those doing it. They’re literally blind to it, mostly because they’re dolts.
Blood guilt. It’s just for cis-hetero white males and Jooos. Nobody else has either agency or culpability for the actions of others, just them.
Sorta odd, that… It’s almost as if there’s actually another agenda out there, behind it all.
Braverman was impressively lucid, straightforward, and always spot-on. I sure hope she remains in politics.
Rumour is that there is a vote of no confidence being sought against Rishi Sunak, so Suella may well go from being sacked to being PM. It’ll take a while to go from letters to motions to resignations though.
Still too late to achieve anything meaningful before the next election though.
Just the usual “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks”.
The reaction to Braverman is a microcosm of the issue I mention, above: Double-standards galore.
Were she to have said what she said, only in support of the protestors? They’d have lionized her for her “bravery”, told her how right she was. Because the woman was contrary to all that? She’s a monster.
If the elites don’t think people aren’t noticing these things, when it’s “fair play for me, but not for thee…”, they’re mistaken. There will be a recoil to all this, a reaction. It may be a long, slow-burn process that doesn’t complete ignition in this generation, but it will come, and it will be monumentally ugly.
The striking thing about modern life, to me? How many of these idiot types seem hell-bent on living out the lies that used to be spoken by all the bigots. It’s like they’re going down the list of all the old canards, and saying “Oh, OK… We’re supposed to rape white women… Let’s make sure that the majority of interracial rape is black-on-white…”
WTF is with that? Remember how jazz was supposed to be “jungle music”, tearing down culture, while Jewish financiers profited from it? Ever looked into who makes money from things like “gangsta rap”? Ever thought about how much damage to the common culture is being done by all that “bitches and hoes” stuff, glamorizing crime and drug use? Ever heard a socially positive message out of a Top-10 rap artist? I have trouble thinking of any, to be honest…
It’s almost like someone is running a finger down a list, and going “Let’s make this real…”
Kisin’s 4 points are an accurate description of the traditional concept of “far right”, though i feel that it is incomplete without the ‘leader principle’ (Führerprinzip).
The distinction between sense and reference seems relevant, though. While the 4++ points are, or used to be, what people have in mind when saying or hearing ‘far right’, the referent to which the term is applied is anything that the people at the BBC, The Guardian, The Economist, and their American equivalents do not like.
Sunak just wants to be remembered as a Kerensky, but without the revolution first.
After a bit, it’s all like that joke about the prisoners calling out numbers instead of telling jokes. The words become symbols, nothing more. Fascist? Nobody knows what that means, any more, in terms of political or economic theory. They don’t see their beloved ideas of state intervention in the economy as being at all “fascist”, because that’s what bad people do…
If you ask any of these vacuous pomposities anything at all about the words they mouth, odds are quite excellent that you’ll only get vague negatives about them. They’ve really no idea at all about the things they support, and even less about what those things mean. All they know? “Fascism bad”. They’re constitutionally unable to recognize the fascism inherent in their own politics. Do note how Antifa mirrors the tactics and policies of the hated Fascist mob they so decry…
I remember when the media told us all about how the Far Right had really caused the riots and burnings in Minneapolis after Drugged Floyd was “killed” by the cops.
We do get around.
“…a fiery, but mostly peaceful, protest…” and the background shows a cityscape aflame.
Good times.
As much as I sympathize with the Jews, I am coming to believe that the current most hated group on earth is those of English decent given how everything that we have built is being torn down all around the world.
According to the media the “far right” is led by a Buddhist lady-of-colour who is married to a Jewish Gentleman – and, according to the Guardian and the BBC, I am myself “far right”.
Sadly I do not believe that Konstantin Kisin will convince the media, or the education system, that the Muslims are “far right” – and the marches do represent the mainstream of the Islamic community (as well as “Woke” Marxist atheists who have joined the marches – to show general hatred of the “capitalist” West such as Israel), the one good thing about the marches is that they have utterly destroyed the idea that this is a matter of “extremists” who have “misinterpreted” or “perverted” Islam – there is no such thing as an “Islamist”, there are only followers of Islam – the teachings and personal example of Muhammed.
By the way – if one looks at the origin of the term “right” in political history it has nothing to do with the things that KK lists here.
The “right” in the French Revolution were the people who objected to the overthrow of King Louis XVI, a kindly (although weak) man who had, years-before-the-Revolution, abolished torture (“putting the question” – a principle of Roman law going back a very long time) and laws of religious persecution in France (apart from in Alsace – where the King had no legal power to remove these laws) and opposed the murder of the King and Queen as well as the murder of hundreds-of-thousands of quite ordinary people (mostly in the Provinces) – the “left” supported this policy of mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
The “right” also opposed the state take over of the Church (with priests being made to take an oath of loyalty to the new church) and the stealing of the property of the church (and the stealing of the property of lots of other people as well – again many of them quite ordinary people) supposedly to back the new fiat currency (which replaced the gold and silver coins of the monarchy).
I would have been “on the right” back then – just as I am now, as I oppose mass murder, mass robbery and fiat (order – edict – it does not mean “paper” which is what people think it means) money – I support commodity money (and before anyone points it out – yes I know that Napoleon ended the fiat money and Credit Bubble financial system and restored gold and silver coins – as well as ending the persecution of the Christians).
I would also have been a “Conservative” (i.e. “on the right”) in my home town in the 19th century (not just a supporter of Edmund Burke in the 1790s) – as the Liberals here supported prohibition of alcohol, state education, higher taxation, and (well many of them) even land nationalisation.
At the start of the 20th century the leader of “the right” in Britain was the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury – and I would have been a supporter. Just as I am a supporter of Suella Braverman (and so on) now.
Short version – “the left” is whatever and whoever the international “Woke” establishment support, and “the right” is whatever and whoever they oppose.
So everyone involved with this blog is “on the right” indeed “the far right” whether we like or not – as the Collectivist establishment hates us, and what they hate is “the right” and what they hate very much is the “far right” – and they hate us very much.
By the way… the German and Italian “Unification” movements were widely seen as leftist movements, because they were.
Not only is a matter of relatively high tax Prussia and Piedmont conquering relatively lower tax places (such as the Kingdom of Hanover) and imposing higher taxes, conscription (as in Sicily) and religious and even language persecution upon them – it was also the more extreme activists on the ground, such as the extreme egalitarian and anti capitalist Richard Wagner (the composer) in the Germanic land, and Garibaldi (who ended up a follower of Karl Marx) in the Italian lands.
By any objective measure both Mussolini, who had been the most important Marxist in Italy and remained an admirer of Karl Marx to the very end, and Hitler (another extreme Collectivist – who admired the politics of Richard Wagner, not just his music) were people of the radical left.
Hayek and Mises pointed out the leftist economics of the Fascists and National Socialists – and Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn pointed out the radical social (revolutionary transformation) Revolution the Nazis represented. These movements were the opposite of Traditional.
Why “left” and “right”? It’s the French. It is what side of the assembly they sat at. That is where the terms come from and it is that arbitary. This is a point worth reflecting on. If Paul Marks or Suella Braverman are “far right” then so am I. It is now simply a term of abuse. It doesn’t mean anything substantive. If it did then we really could connect the dots between Churchill and Hitler. Alas, I don’t think there are enough dots in the Universe for that. Paul is absolutely on the money here. The “Right” is just anything the “Left” dislikes. Anything. It isn’t even poltical or economic. It is arbitary. The “Left” used to support Israel when it was seen as kinda Scandinavian type social democracy with better weather. It is now public enemy #1 and even the Pippi Longstocking of Doom has got on board for that one. (though she is being careful about being carbon neutral).
And now this…
…I am laughing out my heart of stone at that one.
But wait! It gets better…
… send for Tony!
Oh, FFS!
Paul Marks writes:
Yes, that is what i wrote myself — and not just here yesterday at 8:38 pm, also in a comment at The Economist, maybe 20 years ago.
Yes Paul, but you have to understand that, when the establishment and their henchmen call us “far-right”, what they mean is that we satisfy the 4 Kisin criteria. It’s the distinction between sense and reference: we are the referent, but the sense of “far-right” is the Kisin criteria (plus the Führerprinzip). The establishment is too brain-damaged to notice that we do not satisfy the criteria.
Paul again:
There are no objective measures wrt “left” and “right”.
Every political movement has been called “left-wing” in some time and place, except for Divine-Right monarchism. Since i do not want to be associated with the latter, i reject the label “right-wing”.
Every non-American political movement has been labeled “right-wing” in some time and place, even Marxism. Lenin called himself a right-wing communist, and as i wrote several times, Mussolini explicitly defined fascism as “right-wing”. But Paul presumes to understand fascism better than Mussolini did!
Part of the Americocentric delusion is the belief that the current American definitions of “left” and “right” apply to all times and places.
The labels are part of the rhetoric, and have been purposefully polluted.
If you can’t clearly discuss the positions with terms both sides recognize as labeling the actual object, then it’s all too easy to slip the blinders on your own adherents.
Look at the capital-L Left here in the US: If you were to talk to the majority of their “true believer” types, they’d label everything in the US Bill of Rights as being “Fascist”, because they have no idea at all what Fascism really is. That they’ve got a leadership that has established actual Fascist-style control over the media and tech industries? Totally escapes them, because they’ve been conditioned to interpret that label as “anything the other side is doing and that we’re against”.
Because of that, the terms are meaningless. It’s like we spoke of in the other thread, where the symbolic terms are constantly shifting for mental deficiency… What was an acceptable clinical term several generations ago has now got all the connotations of the pejorative mortal insult. Why? Because the label takes on the attributes of that which it is applied to…
Rendering it essentially pointless. The way this is going, individualist values of freedom are going to be de facto attributes of Fascism, regardless of dictionary definition. And, at that point, just like with “racist”, it’s going to become a null term of zero actual value.
You can screw around with the language and the labels all you like, but at the end of the day, a spade is still going to be a spade, even if you call it something else.
Shakespeare put it pretty eloquently: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.
What he was actually saying there was that what you call something, no matter what that is, does not affect what those things really are. Their intrinsic nature and qualities will eventually overcome the labels so as to change their meaning completely from what the original was.
Meddling with language is essentially a futile and pointless exercise, over the long term. Black will become white, white will become black, and away we go into a Reversi future.
Which is also why Confucius came up with what is my favorite analect, the 13th.
Said analect runs about like this:
They had language-shifters even back then. They’re known as bullshitters in the colloquial language I’ve always spoken.
You make some excellent points Snorri.
NickM – yes the terms do come from the French Revolution.
And as I do not support the overthrow of Louis XVI (weak man though he was) let alone his murder, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of other people (mostly quite ordinary people in the Provinces) or the fiat money (which replaced the gold and silver coinage of the monarchy – I support commodity money and was, for example, deeply upset when the link between gold and the Swiss Franc was broken in 2000) or the take over of the Church by the state, or the robbery of the church or of all the ordinary people who were robbed, I am “on the right” by the old definition.
It would appear that any person who tries to be “righteous” will be “on the right” in this sense – the position being the opposite of Mr Hitler and co (although they sat on the right hand side of the German Parliament).
Snorri is correct – these terms are often arbitrary, for example the free market economist Bastiat sat on the left hand side of the French Assembly in the early 19th century, and when the socialists objected, Bastiat replied that he could sit wherever he wanted to.
Paul: thank you for your reply.
Did not know that Hitler sat “on the right”.
It is of interest that the main monarchist party in Italy, when it shrank to insignificance, was split on whether to join the crypto-fascist party (MSI). Most of them did.
WRT the French Revolution, i tend to the view that seems to transpire from Tocqueville’s book on the subject: the collapse of the Ancient Regime was unavoidable, because of the burden of public administration; but unfortunately it was the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Church that paid the price, while public administration survived.
BTW, in a speech in Parliament after the 1848 revolution, Tocqueville said that democracy and socialism have only one word in common: equality; but while democracy is democracy in liberty, socialism is democracy in slavery.
Did Tocqueville sit on the left hand side?