Cowards and Conspiracy Theories

Has anyone ever handed you a pin and then tried to beat you over the head with a large balloon? Me neither, but I know exactly what it must feel like. Last November I wrote an article called “Frank’n’Steyn’s Monsters” about the Jewish sociologist Frank Furedi and his disciples in the Revolutionary Communist Party, a now-disbanded Trotskyist cult. These days they’re all over the mainstream media in newspapers like The Times, arguing for unlimited immigration and other insanities, and I analyzed how Furedi was using them to attack the British mainstream.

“Poisonous drivel!” spluttered one of Furedi’s disciples, Brendan O’Neill, in February 2006. “Racist!” “Get a life!” What exactly provoked this outburst? Well, among other things, I suggested that racial and cultural background can be strong influences on political behavior. Brendan took great exception to this:

It is as nonsensical to claim that Furedi, [Mick] Hume and [Claire] Fox are motivated by their racial make-up as it is to say they are driven by behind-the-scenes businessmen. (“Gossip dressed up as investigative journalism”, Spiked, 23rd February 2006)

But hold on: what’s this the Furedi disciple Michael Fitzgerald wrote back in August 2005?

In the past, second-generation immigrants often found new sources of identity through the trade unions, socialist and communist movements (which would have scarcely existed in Britain without Irish, Jewish and other immigrants). (“The price of multiculturalism”, Spiked, 5th August 2005)

Exactly. And when you look at the history of mass-murdering communism in Russia and Ukraine, you’ll find that the mass murder was generally committed not by Russians or Ukrainians but by outsiders like the Jew Leon Trotsky and the Georgian Josef Stalin. If communism had taken over in western Europe and America, the same rule would have applied. The mass murder would have committed by outsiders – Jews like Frank “Humans have to play for high stakes” Furedi and Irish Catholics like Claire “Beat the shit out of them” Fox.

But Brendan O’Neill got very upset when I said certain groups are wildly over-represented in the Spiked collective. To him it made me like a man he calls the “maddest of conspiracy theorists.” Stop for a moment and ask yourself who that man might be. Maybe Stalin or Mao, who had millions of innocent people murdered or worked to death as alleged “class-enemies” and “saboteurs”? Not quite:

Attempting to discredit or incriminate an individual by exposing who is in his circle of friends and acquaintances was also a preferred tactic of that maddest of conspiracy theorists, Joseph McCarthy.

Tell me, Brendan: how many people did Joseph McCarthy have murdered or sent to concentration camps? And are you seriously suggesting that no-one was working for the triumph of Stalinism in 1950s America? In fact, Brendan O’Neill’s choice of McCarthy as the “maddest of conspiracy theorists” is more evidence that he is a Jewish puppet dancing to a Jewish tune. Stalin’s and Mao’s genuinely mad conspiracy theories resulted in the deaths of millions; McCarthy’s entirely rational conspiracy theory resulted in disruption to a few dozen careers, mostly those of Stalin-loving Jews. But what’s the death of millions of goys at the hands of Stalin, Mao and other communist dictators compared to the disruption of a few Jewish careers at the hands of Joseph McCarthy?

Obviously the answer is: Nothing. So Jews have spun McCarthy as a swivel-eyed monster ever since, and Brendan “I Think for Myself” O’Neill has faithfully followed their line. But he has other complaints about my “racist article”:

[It] quotes extensively (and favourably) from a Guardian piece on the alleged “Furedi cult” and from the website of Lobbywatch, a leftish group opposed to GM technology. Here, an old-style anti-Semitic conspiracy theory meets the new-fangled liberal conspiracy-mongering, and they make spookily comfortable bedfellows.

Brendan’s using a strange definition of “extensively” here: I quoted seventy words from The Guardian and twenty from LobbyWatch. But if quoting extensively (and favourably) from an article makes me a spookily comfortable bedfellow with the author, here I go putting on a white sheet and hopping into bed with... Brendan O’Neill:

Freedom of speech, as its name suggests, does not mean freedom for views that go down well in polite society but not for views that stink: it means freedom for all speech, the freedom to think, say and write what we please and the freedom of everyone else to challenge or ridicule our arguments. The fact that [Orhan] Pamuk’s and [David] Irving’s trials have occurred around the same time provided a tough test of Europeans’ commitment to free speech. The fact that many rushed to defend Pamuk while ignoring – or giving the nod to – the imprisonment of Irving means Europe failed that test.

EU officials are really making a case for privileged speech, not free speech; they defend comments they agree with and authors they admire but are happy to see those they dislike banged up for expressing dodgy points of view. Pamuk’s case should be thrown out of court and he should be free to say or write what he wants. But if that happens and Irving remains in jail in Vienna then there isn’t free speech in Europe; if Pamuk is free to ask questions about Armenia but Irving is not free to say the Holocaust was exaggerated, then free speech does not exist. (“Free speech in Europe: it’s all or nothing”, Spiked, 21st February 2006)

And who’s this coming to join us in bed? Why, it’s Frank Furedi (nice pyjamas, Franky!):

Why I do I feel so uncomfortable with the institutionalisation of Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain? Is it because the Holocaust has been turned into a bite-size moral morsel to be hawked around by dodgy peddlers of virtue? Or because the Holocaust has become the most overused metaphor, adopted by moral entrepreneurs to promote a bewildering variety of causes? I suspect that it is because remembering the Holocaust has become an official ritual that allows every sanctimonious politician and public figure to put their superior moral virtues on public display. [...] The incessant demand that we “learn the lessons of the Holocaust” has little to do with a genuine act of grieving or remembering. Nor does it have much to do with encouraging people to scrutinise the past in order to learn from it. Usually, it means appropriating the label Holocaust to attack any target we choose. (“The Holocaust should not be for sale”, The Daily Telegraph, 23rd January 2006)

But let’s leave Brendan and Frank to enjoy each other’s company again and look at the rest of Furedi’s article on the Holocaust:

As someone whose family was virtually wiped out in Nazi concentration camps and forced labour battalions, I become furious when I read that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismisses the Holocaust as a myth. I cannot forget my mother’s heart-wrenching account of how she was compelled to leave her younger sister to die in a ditch as two SS camp guards forced her to march on during the last week of the war in Germany. Sometimes, it is the less tragic, almost banal, events that prey on the imagination. In late 1944, my elder sister was caught by a group of Nazis near the Budapest ghetto, who decided to have some fun with her by slapping her around, before finally kicking her in the backside. Perversely, my sister was most offended by the jeering remarks these thugs made about her “Jewish squint.” Her humiliation is something that I still feel with a surprising degree of intensity.

If Furedi finds the strength of his emotion “surprising”, more must be going on in his subconscious than he realizes. He and his disciples might claim that they’re motivated by pure reason to act in the best interests of everyone, but their own political history contradicts them. How did Furedi react to Nazi totalitarianism and the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews? By imitating the mass-murdering Trotsky and trying to create a communist revolution not just for Britain but for the entire world (Frank was nothing if not ambitious in those days). That would have resulted in totalitarianism, persecution and mass murder too, but Jews like Furedi would been in charge, not on the receiving end, so it would have been okay.

Furedi predictably failed in his megalomaniac ambitions – if you want a good laugh, read about the Revolutionary Communist Party’s attempts to win power back in the 1980s – and set off on a new course. He and his disciples have infiltrated the British media to promote insanities like unlimited immigration and abortion up to the moment of birth. When “conspiracy theorists” like me point out what they’re up to, they start complaining. Here’s Brendan O’Neill again:

This kind of conspiracy-mongering serves to close down debate. It is a way of discrediting individuals and their views without having to engage with the substance of their arguments. It is the last refuge of the coward.

I thought Brendan was claiming that it was the first refuge of his opponents, but let’s overlook that far-from-rare failure of logic and examine his accusation of cowardice. Simon Sheppard, the owner of the Heretical website, has been imprisoned for peacefully expressing his political opinions and is still being harassed by the police. If I were a coward I’d stay completely silent on these topics, and I’m far more likely to be harassed and imprisoned than Brendan O’Neill and the rest of the Furedi collective.

Note also Brendan’s hypocrisy about “debate” and “engaging with the substance” of your opponents’ arguments. Someone calmly and politely points out facts about the Furedi collective and draws logical conclusions. Brendan responds with terms like “poisonous drivel” and “racism” – and if that isn’t intended to close down the debate, what is? Nor does he link from Spiked to my article and let his readers see for themselves what he’s complaining about. Maybe he’s worried they’d draw their own conclusions. That would never do.

LUKE O’FARRELL

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• Gossip dressed up as investigative journalism, by Brendan O’Neill.

• The price of multiculturalism, by Michael Fitzpatrick.

• The Holocaust should not be for sale, by Frank Furedi.