Melanie Phillips and the hearts of darkness

The conservative journalist and author Melanie Phillips's latest appearance on Question Time in February this year provoked an outpouring of abuse against her on Twitter that was so vile and unrestrained it may well have eclipsed the repellent attacks made against Andrew Breitbart earlier in the year in the immediate aftermath of his death. The YouTube contributor MuggedVideos2 posted Phillips's QT appearance on YouTube (see above) and also took the trouble to list in the comments section the tweets he had himself witnessed made against Phillips concerning her appearance. I am reproducing them here in full, and am grateful to user MuggedVideos2 for compiling the list, which perhaps more than anything else brought home to me the extent of the nastiness and sickness that exists on the internet these days against conservative figures (the words in brackets after each tweet refer to the tweeter's twitter name):

An unutterable cunt (@richlieu_uk)
she's a mad cunt (@eds209)
such a condescending bitch. She's probably a dyke too (@AR4_NUFC)
Every time I see her I can't help shouting CUNT! (@bbbtmboy)
gobshite cunt (@sophiabotha)
senile cunt (@Millhaven_Curse)
the worst kind of cunt (@robloder)
she has done nothing to dissuade me from thinking her a cunt!! In fact she's cemented my hatred of her (@markandthezebra)
Melanie you're s bit of a cunt (@amina_yusuf)
Wannabe Zionist fascist (@olliewm)
Mad fascist harpy (@edmiller73)
horrible, fascist, ignorant worm (@74ndy)
She's defending bankers. Fuck off. #bbcqt
she is a JEW (@MattyNemesis)
horrendous white/Jewish extremist (@poorbastardmarv)
she's vile. However, I rather suspect that as a Jew, its unlikely she would have supported the Nazis in the 30's (@SGT_Arsehole)
she is a swivel eyed lunatic mad bitch. (@Lewisno1fan)
one ugly bitch (@Jewtree)
Chief Fascist Melanie Phillips will be spewing hot vitriol on #bbcqt tonight (@JohnEdginton) Fucking Melanie Phillips, Im going to want to kill in cold blood very soon...(@_fiaz)

So there we have it. I'm sure you get the picture. A little snapshot of how cool-and-edgy modern-day liberals like to describe people who hold differing (though well argued – but watch the clip above to judge for yourself) views to themselves. And the fact that the target of the abuse is a woman is irrelevant; in fact, in Phillips's case, it very disturbingly, seems to have fuelled an exceptionally acerbic level of invective towards her. One four-letter word in particular – c*** – kept making an appearance in the defamations. I was genuinely taken aback by this; after all, this is the most offensive word in the English language (at least to a British ear) and, what's more, in my experience it is reserved only for issuing the worst possible insult against a male individual who has done something particularly egregiously offensive; it simply would be unthinkable to use it against a woman, since this would constitute plumbing the depths of immorality and dishonour, comparable to stealing from your grandmother's purse or bullying a handicapped person – something heinous, which scrapes the barrel of undignified and shameful behaviour. I decided to pull the first tweeter (@richlieu_uk ) from the list above and have a look at his Twitter profile (see here). The description he offers of himself is as follows: "father husband writer thinker". Sounds like quite a deep and caring chap, doesn't he? He also on his twitter page links to a blog which he runs (see here). It turns out he is some kind of former respectable journalist. He got into journalism, he claims, in order to showcase a natural talent for writing and "to bring down the corrupt and venal, challenge vested interest and champion the weak against the powerful". However, things didn't work out for him in the profession. Despite apparently getting to interview prime ministers, he "worked for 13 years, watching as the drive for profit and profit and more and more profit drove it from much-respected to a tawdry rag".

This seems to be a carefully contrived image, clearly designed to create the impression of a sophisticated, talented, and cool-and-edgy radical, defending, through his brilliant writing, the interests of the downtrodden and wronged in an unjust and corrupt world. And a quick glance through a few of @richlieu_uk's random tweets removes any doubt (if there ever were any) that he is avowedly of a radical, liberal-left (possibly far-left) political persuasion – here are a few penetrating and cool-and-edgy tweets he posted yesterday (30 March): "don't think any self respecting Marxist would defend the Labour Party. Not since 1945, anyway"; "She's a government minister? Fucking hell. Democracy sucks";  "Synchronicity. Jung was right".

@richlieu_uk reminds me very much of an individual taken to task by the greatest living essayist in the English language, Theodore Dalrymple, who in an essay about the Sachsgate affair (made available for free by the author here) examined a blogpost made by an individual shortly after the scandal broke:

"The whole thing is ridiculous, and has brought all kinds of unpleasant people out of the woodwork. Essentially it is a fuss about someone making a joke about fucking someone, you know – that thing lots of adults do for fun – but has played as if Jonathan Ross has somehow tarred Manuel’s adult granddaughter by outing the fact that Russell Brand shagged her at one of his hot tub parties. As if sex is somehow dirty and taboo. The headline should be “Man shags woman, tells grumpy elderly relative, incensed newspaper readers foam at the mouth. Be sure to check out all of the comments from the new puritans, rabid anti-BBC types, armchair moralists, old people of questionable intelligence, and general fuckwits… It wasn’t that funny to begin with but the shitstorm of indignation from the illiterate opinionated twats of Great Britain has made it lolworthy (laughable)… All of those people that are morally outraged have been trolled hard (have been duped into overreaction by a deliberate provocation), and can go fuck themselves. If that’s the kind of people Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have offended – good. Well done BBC – but it's stupid to suspend people for pissing off an elderly guest of the show". 

On this, Dalrymple commented:

The problem here is not lack of intelligence; I should guess that the writer is of above average intelligence, and probably has attended university. The problem is crudity, intellectual, moral, psychological and cultural.

Dalrymple (as his his wont) hits the nail on the head in his analysis: what we are dealing with here is ersatz sophistication; a new form of modern-day yobbishness, which, narcissistic-like, seems to imagine itself to be terribly important and having the right to make definitive judgements on any issue that crosses its path, while all the time being actually very basically crude. I would also add that individuals like the above commentator and @richlieu_uk, while loving to profess moral indignation at the drop of a hat and at every turn, are actually utterly unconcerned about issues of morality, or the plight or welfare of their fellow citizens. The apparent concern and apparent moralising is a self-righteous mask, a front, hiding an immature, embittered, malicious, envious, egotistical narcissist / misanthropist beneath. And sometimes, as with poor Melanie Philips above, we catch a glimpse of the real individual lurking underneath, heart of darkness and all.

This "Dorian-Gray syndrome" has already been touched on in a previous blog post. But to really get to the bottom of what is going on, and in an effort to give a full rational explanation for the hideous instances of nastiness that we see being posted every day on the Internet by liberal-leftists, we must turn to John Cleese's former shrink, and a book he wrote almost thirty years ago...

Cohen bashing: malice and denial

Nick Cohen
 – has the temerity to call a spade a spade

There is a corresponding corollary to liberal leftists’ disturbing brooding tendency to cast foul invective against people who disagree with them: an inability to look in the mirror. This has been abundantly demonstrated by leftist reactions to the contemporary left-wing writer Nick Cohen, who in 2007 had the courage, honour, and integrity to write a book entitled What’s Left, which listed in a pretty straightforward, non-controversial and objective fashion the obvious shortcomings and contradictions inherent within modern liberal leftist movements. The Guardian reviewed the book as follows: "A roaring polemic of outrage against the moral and political crisis of the liberal tradition. It is already one of the most discussed current affairs books of the New Year – at the very least, it forces anyone on the left to think carefully about where their movement has ended up in the modern world". Well, judging by how Guardian readers react to and comment on anything that Cohen writes in their newspaper these days, not a lot of careful thinking and soul-searching has taken place; in fact, it seems a substantial portion of those on the left are indulging in real wilful ignorance and are in a state of full-blown denial about the manifest failings of leftist ideology and the terrible (tragic? – no, pitiful would be more accurate) mess they find themselves in. This malice-mixed-with-ignorance-and-denial stance is plain for all to see: witness the following comments to an article Cohen wrote at the beginning of March documenting how Ken Livingstone had been engaging in certain tax avoidance practices that might be deemed a tad hypocritical (note: The Guardian removed dozens of vile slurs and attacks against Cohen):

agreewith
4 March 2012 12:13AM
It's time that pretend journalists were held to account for their spurious correlations.

lonelysoul72
4 March 2012 12:37AM
Been a long time since i read such utter shite. A long , long time. Mind you that idea that Nick Cohen speaks for the "left" is laughable in itself.

TimMiddleton
4 March 2012 12:21AM
You're not very happy about the fact that Ken has sought to forge links with muslims, are you?

FidelCastro1
4 March 2012 12:22AM
At least he doesn't support illegal imperialist wars though, eh Nick?

Mendocino
4 March 2012 12:37AM
Oh Nick.
Where did it all go wrong?

WatTylersSister
4 March 2012 7:30AM
Nick Cohen - from the Andrew Gilligan School of Journalism

BettyWindsor
4 March 2012 7:51AM
Nick Cohen
Surely this article was intended for publication in the Daily Telegraph?

And then, amid all the bile and poison, the following extremely perceptive comment shone out (bold mine):

CyrusSpitama
4 March 2012 6:28AM
At university I used to wonder how so many lefty students could possibly be apologists for the brutal fascism of the Soviet regime.
More recently, I wondered why so many lefties seem to have become apologists for Islamists and even supporters of truly terrible and utterly fascist organisations such of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Speaking to them and reading their comments in places such as CiF, it’s plain to see that large sections of the British left are motivated not by honour, nor by any rational ideological viewpoint. They are motivated by hatred.The strongest of these hatreds is the hatred of the west and in particular, hatred of America.
Such people wilfully refuse to see evil where it exists and are even happy to support anything or anyone who is the enemy of America.


How those of us on the right long to see Nick Cohen go the extra mile and shuffle off his leftist chrysalis once and for all, to fully embrace conservativism in all its forms. He has the honour and guts to make the journey that Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips made before him. I feel like imploring Cohen in a similar way that Jack Nicholson implores the great Red Indian to "put the ball in the basket" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:

Go on, Nick, you can do it, you can do it! Go on mate, reach out, go for it, make the final step!

The joys of YouTube – Peter Hitchens versus Russell Brand

I'm sure I am not alone in being appalled at the number and viciousness of knuckle-scraping malcontents crowding the comments sections of YouTube videos. A sizeable chunk of these beyond-jaded misanthropes are made up, of course, by modern-day liberal commentators promoting their holier-than-thou and strangely desperate take on the modern world, while all too often at the same time passing vehement judgement on anything that opposes any aspect of their own worldview. A classic example of this occurred this month, during a debate in London on whether drugs should be legalised or not. In the 'against' camp was (predictably) the Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens; in the 'for' camp was (again, predictably) the comedian Russell Brand. They had a lively encounter that didn’t actually contain much debate. Hitchens rather memorably referred to Brand as "the alleged comedian in the hat"; Brand told Hitchens that the paper he wrote for was a "bigoted hate rag", while all the time dancing rather incoherently around the question from Hitchens as to whether personal responsibility came into it. The video of their exchange earned a few thousand hits on YouTube – nothing spectacular, but the liberal mob were out in force, and were not pulling any punches in their assessment of Mr. Hitchens. Some choice excerpts from the Comments section that have been posted in the last couple of days (not for the faint hearted).

Peter Hitchens is an insidious, vile, sub human waste of air.
TheMrmoss 21/03/2012

Peter Hitchens is like some stereotypical evil villain in a farfetched tragedy. What on earth possessed intelligence squared to bring him on?
gamegloss 21/03/2012

Hitchens is a tool who uses his radical stance on the war on drugs as a platform for his career. The man has no stake in this debate other than personal gain. A total slime-ball, a perfect example of everything the Daily Mail stands for.
KnuxVeeone 20/03/2012

Russell Brand articulated his words perfectly, but personally i call Peter Hitchens a top line cunt.
TheEliteMist 20/03/2012

in this debate hitchins later claims the war on drugs must continue because "drugs are just plain wrong and evil", such a fucking moron.
Rumbleman99 20/03/2012

Peter Hitchens: what a cunt.
alilw93 20/03/2012

Andrew Breitbart – shame and damnation

As good a place to start as any is with the tragically premature death of the maverick right-of-centre commentator Andrew Breitbart (pictured, right).  

Dorian Gray: the truth is out

The passing of a married father of four, in his early forties, attracted a level of opprobrium that took the breath away and shocked and alarmed in its scale and level of satanic-like nastiness. The abuse that spewed forth, literally hours after he had died, was so widespread and so intemperate that The Washington Post (see here) and TheBlaze.com (see here) compiled lists of tweets celebrating the commentator's death. I will confine myself in this post to reproducing only one comment (representative of dozens) that was recently posted on YouTube:

This drunken tub of shit died and there was a collective laughter heard around the world.. Good riddance to bad garbage, karma is a bitch (From here)

The modem-day liberal leftists who launch attacks of this sort seem to me to be just a load of identikit Dorian Grays: there is of course the outward veneer, carefully cultivated and obsessed over, all sophisticated and educated and witty; and then there is what is going on underneath, which is something altogether different: the constant bubbling fermenting of a twisted evil misanthropic bitterness. And when libtards let rip with attacks of the type that were seen in the wake of Breitbart's death, it is the equivalent of Gray getting his painting out in public, holding it aloft above his head for all to see, and shrieking at the top of his voice: this is me! this is what I really am!

It is ironic indeed that the left love to see themselves as tolerant and altruistic, while their conservative counterparts are portrayed as spiteful and misanthropic. I will be exploring this curious contradiction (I actually see it as being a truly fascinating psychological phenomenon) throughout the life of this blog.

Welcome

Well, we may have our work cut out. Today, as I write these words to you, a noticeable increase is being seen in vile and repugnant attacks on conservative and right-of-centre writers and commentators by people professing to be sophisticated, educated, and altruistic. Yes, the twisted and bitter hypocrisy of the modern day libtard is in plain view online for all to see, on a daily basis.

And we will be documenting it here.