Read this utter bollocks from his Mail on Sunday (ugh) blog. If it doesn't sound like something a political prisoner would write, having been convicted for burning down a synagogue or something (and no I haven't accused him of doing so), I don't know what does. This is the sort of inflammatory screed you would expect to find in the writings of Anders Breivik or the Christchurch shooter. In fact the former did quote the equally vile Melanie Philips. Is Peter that different? I dn't think so. Both are toxic doom merchants intent on little more than peddling hysteria while refusing to engag with the consequences of their provocative utterances.
"As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than Regime Change
What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction"
What part of this is true? Why use such incendiary language: "regime change"? Yes, every political group wants to govern. He makes it sound, intentionally fo course, as a military coup in a banana republic. He wants you to associate 'the left' (whatever that is) to the likes of Castro because...communism! Yet he doesn't ever explain what he means when he uses this language. The left is far from an amorphous blob, faceless and powerful. Like a mob. Any fool knows this. He certainly does. His initial claim is so obviously bollocks it's not worth discussing but the implication is that, were it the case, it would be bad. To him anything less than, for example, locking up a kid who smoked a spliff once for a thousand years in a dank dungeon, is 'the left' or hard-line Marxism.
As for strange crowds. They're people. Individuals that share the quite reasonable view we should stop using statues to obfuscate the historical record. Bristolians have been trying to get rid of the legacy of Colston, including the statue, for years. They have been ignored. This apparently is a 'strange crows'. The monument in question was not forgotten (nor ancient). Why should it not be removed? In doing so the legacy and history of Edward Colston has been laid bare. People now know, if they didn't (I didn't until even relatively recently and I've heard the name for years and years), that Edward Colson wasn't a philanthropist. A facade constructed in the form of a statue; to whitewash a legacy of profiting from human misery. It is an utter lie to claim that pulling down or smashing a statue devalues or erases history. Quite the opposite. That is just the voice of the status quo crying,
"They do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying. But that no longer matters. They think their moment has come, and they may well be right.
This is why the memorial to Winston Churchill, and the Cenotaph itself, were shamefully boarded up on Thursday night – an act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.
That is why police chiefs kneel like conquered slaves to the new gods of woke, and the leaders of the Labour Party do likewise. I have seen it happen before, but only when things were moving in the opposite direction. "
"Shamefully boarded up". Why is it shameful? But not the monument itself? Why is it right to immortalise these people? Al it does is reduce them to simple tropes. Churchill the war hero. How? He gave orders from the relative comfort of a downing street/MOD bunker? He didn't scale Omaha beach, or brave the Nazi occupation as a resistance courier? Even so, this trope blithely ignores the rest of him. The more relevant aspects as a racist lever of imperialist ruling power. The famine in India, calling soldiers against striking miners. The legacy of the Black and Tans. No, war hero because he has a statue. Again history is eluded. That is the only thing shamefully boarded up here. Of course Hitchens isn't interested in nuance or depth. Only the fascist rhetoric he uses to make a living.
Who or what are the "new gods of woke"? I don't even really know what half of these stupid phrases mean, though of course on a visceral level I understand and that's the point. Each of these statements is meant as a gut punch. To make you feel something; to get angry about something. That's what the Daily Mail does. Look at your neighbour, he's got an Xbox but his curtains are drawn. He's probably one of them coloureds as well, right?Bloody gypsies! Right?
It's an appeal to the tired old cliche of "political correctness gone mad". The idea that conceding part of the social space to those historically marginalised is to be diminished. It is, of course, nonsense. The people who argue "All lives matter" think they are being inclusive when all they are really doing is crying at the perceived loss of unearned privilege. All lives should matter. But they don't, that's amply demonstrated by cases of police racial brutality. Black Lives Matter does not, and explicitly never was intended to, mean that only black people matter, but that black lives currently don't matter. Not as much as white lives. We lose nothing and gain everything when we accept this and share our lot in life. This is the birthing pains of social change on a level more profound than these fusty old anachronisms are comfortable with. One ought be sad for them, but reading the likes of Hitchens robs me of any sympathy. He has a lot of followers and his provocative screeds are the sort that inspire dangerous behaviour.
The comment about kneeling like slaves is just stupid and offensive. In truth most of these cops taking a knee are engaging in a tactical decision. Some may have gotten caught up in the movement (for which I'm sure they received a dressing down in the locker room later). But it's a ploy: these people are not our friends. The uniform prevents that.
Peter then launches into a paragraph of bullshit about the Soviet Union. Of course he has to get a few licks in by drawing or implying a connection. It's communism/Marxism. It's reds under the bed. His entire shtick would make Joe McCarthy blush. Do we really want society to go back to that kind of paranoia and bigotry?
"This time, as ignorant armies seek the final abolition of Britain, it is very frightening. I would not like to say where it will end. I cannot claim to have known this would happen but I will say that I had an instinctive fear of very bad things to come when the country began its mad, wild shutdown in March"
The use of military language is yet more fuel for the fire. What army? The protesters? How are they an army? Were they carrying guns or weapons? Was anyone hurt or anything else damaged when Colston got dunked? I don't believe so. That is literally non violent protest!
Peter is frightened though, and that's the nub of it. Were I a compassionate soul I'd feel sorry for him. A dying breed; his time and his generation are passed. That is how things should be. It shouldn't be frightening, but ultimate this is an existential terror. Sad.
But to call this the "abolition of Britain"? Here we go again; when you get to the bottom you go back to top of the ride. (That was either Charles Manson or the Beatles or U2.) How is Britain being abolished? Who is doing it and how do they have the power? It's nonsnese? What does it even mean: well what you're meant to think is that all the things you enjoy about traditional Britain are being brutally massacred by the "woke gods". Those who want change and change is bad. Tolerance is bad. Tolerance is political correctness. Political correctness is bad.
This is unreason. It is devoid of explanation, accompanied by no evidence, and entirely vapid. Circular reasoning intent only on provoking a reaction. What even is Britain in this context? Is the land going to be smashed up to make way for a galactic hyperspace bypass by the Vogons? Are the borders being redrawn?
Hitchens will never explain nor answer. In fact to invite him to do so is to find yourself proving, to him, his very point. Of course he's right, so much so that to even question it is to demonstrate your own dishonesty. It reveals to him your ideological position: only a leftist/Marxist would call him out. Except no, this is how critical thinking works and to traduce that is to play a very dangerous game. This is the essence of why I liken his egregious hyperbole, his deliberate attempt to appeal to some primal ideological fight or flight, as fascist. He will be listened to not be a few statue dunking protesters who cause no damage or harm, but by the sort who kill children on behalf of crazed Christianity (it's no coincidence Peter is also a god believer), who murder abortion doctors. Yes that's a strong statement, perhaps a slippery slope. But I deny accusations of fallacy: we've seen it happen. Breivik, as I said, quoted Melanie Philips. I ask again: is he so different?
TBC
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