A guest post by Christopher Read
It appears that the new right is in a tizzy about the leftie protests over unpaid labour for multinationals. That means a juicy Mad Mel article - her very own guide to new right cliches!
1. Remember to avoid that loss of nerve! The Great British Loss of Nerve explains much these days...
"So how on earth can the British Government have been pushed off course like this by a few far-left thugs? The immediate answer is the contemptible absence of spine displayed by these firms in the face of such manipulative and bully-boy tactics."
2. Working class socialism is elitist. Just like how capitalism is egalitarian.
"Does this not just tell you all you need to know about the left? Purporting to care about the poor, they kick away from them the ladder of opportunity they provide for their own young people. Bloated with often inherited wealth themselves, they flay companies that make wealth and opportunity for others."
3. It aims to destroy society! With fire perhaps.
"The SWP want to destroy that scheme because their aim is to destroy British society."
4. When a lone socialist goes up against a panel of right wing demogogues, it's fine. But if the right is outnumbered, even by feeble liberals, it's a scandal! A bloody scandal!
"In particular, she points out that BBC2’s Newsnight spent all week putting solitary Government ministers up against panels made up of the hard left’."
5. The liberal elite are also simultaneously Marxists. Do use all these terms uncritically.
"On one of these shows, presenter Jeremy Paxman four times asked the Tory MP Harriet Baldwin: ‘Do you understand why people find the schemes offensive?’ Another presenter, Kirsty Wark, opined the following day: ‘It’s just essentially cheap labour.’"
6. The interenet is inherently Anarcho-Marxist. It should be shut down.
"The protest campaign was being pushed by social media manipulation."
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4 Comments on "A Guide to New Right Clichés"
By Christian, on 02 March 2012 - 13:28 |
What worries me is Melanie’s article can appear in the Daily Mail- one of the least biased, most balanced pillars of the liberal establishment
By George, on 02 March 2012 - 17:02 |
James - you beat me to it. I can no longer tell what the words “left”, “right”, “socialist”, “liberal”, etc. are supposed to mean in the context of the various articles I read. Are these articles sarcastic, satirical, sincere, mock sincere, exaggeratedly super (in)sincere? Is this all part of some cultural self defence system whereby everything is being turned into a massive soup of no-longer-meaningful verbiage?
By James, on 02 March 2012 - 17:07 |
Sorry George - I just deleted my comment (hoping no one had read it) as I realised Christian was joking.
By George, on 02 March 2012 - 17:26 |
Well – I figured he was joking and I know how easy it is to feel so angry at the utter ridiculousness of all this propaganda that you resort to irony and sarcasm. The trouble is that the ones you are reacting to can then take your words at face value and, so to speak, turn you against yourself. And those who haven’t been paying attention are utterly bemused when they wander into it all. If I visit, say, Lenin’s Tomb and they’re talking about some issue that I don’t know about I sometimes get discouraged by what is (probably) sarcasm. This doesn’t help.
Then again, paying any attention at all to Melanie Philips gives me a headache. Trying to assemble some guide to the various techniques of propagandists is a risky business. The most effective of these propagandists just seem to improvise on the hoof. No matter how emphatically you point out their distorting devices, they always surprise you by sinking even lower. And then there is the most devastating device of all: sheer repetition. You always end up back at the start.