It's obvious that whether a man is a a self-entitled sex pest or not has pretty much nothing to do with his professed political orientation, but the way the political left and the political right deal with accusations of sexual misconduct differ wildly.
The most obvious high profile examples to chose from are the different fates of the liberal film producer Harvey Weinstein who is being shunned and ostracised by the liberal-left after the torrent of allegations about his appalling behaviour towards women, and Donald Trump who was actually elected President with the support of right-wingers and even evangelical Christians, despite numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him and an actual recording of him bragging about how he feels entitled to grope and molest women.
The contrast between the American liberal-left's rejection of Weinstein and the conservative right's continued embrace of Trump, even after his taped confession became public, couldn't be starker.
In Britain a very similar scenario has played out with two journalists who have been outed as creepy sex pests, one from the left and one from the right.
Admittedly Sam Kriss and Rupert Myers are hardly household names, but the very different reactions to their behaviour are very telling indeed.
Both men have been accused of sexual misconduct, both issued cringeworthy apologies for their completely inappropriate behaviour, and both have been dropped by at least one of their employers (Kriss was dropped by Vice and Myers by GQ magazine).
There is very little sympathy for Sam Kriss from the left, with several high profile members of the trendy lefty set condemning his behaviour and expressing solidarity with the victim of his inappropriate sexual conduct, but the reaction on the right towards Rupert Myers has been an absolutely bizarre propaganda effort to reinvent Myers as a lefty!
Make no mistake about it, Rupert Myers is a right-winger. Not only has he written for numerous intensely right-wing publications (Daily Mail, Telegraph, Spectator), he's also served as the Deputy Chairman of the Bermondsey & Old Southwark Conservative Association and written numerous blog posts for the Tory party website Conservative Home.
Yet now that he's been outed as a creepy sex pest the Internet is suddenly crawling with right-wingers attempting to pretend that Myers is some kind of extreme-left Corbynist social justice warrior!
Instead of accepting that the problem of sexual harassment isn't actually a left/right issue at all, many on the political right are determined to weaponise the issue as an attack on the political left, even if that means redefining an actual Tory party activist as some kind of hard-left militant in order to spew their partisan venom.
I'm not aware of anyone at all on the left who has tried to suddenly disown Sam Kriss and pretend that he was always some kind of raving hard-right Ukipper because his creepy behaviour has been made public, but a lot of people on the right have no such willingness to accept the fact that one of theirs is a sex pest too.
Just look at these ridiculous examples of right-wing revisionists (James Delingpole and Breitbart) suddenly trying to pretend that the active Tory party member Rupert Myers was on the far-left of the political spectrum just because he's been publicly accused of being a sex pest.
But to get an idea of how many right-wingers are actively spreading the ludicrous lie that Rupert Myers is some kind of spokesperson for the far-left, take a look at the comments beneath the execrable Spiked article about the pair entitled "The Twittermob just went from irritating to dangerous" by the victim-blaming Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill. Here's a selection:
So according to the kind of furious right-wing blowhard male who hangs about in Spiked comments threads, we're all supposed to believe that an active member of the Tory party and former Daily Mail columnist is actually a "puritainical left-wing", "social justice warrior", "middle-class lefty", "Corbynist blowhard" just because he got caught out being a sex pest!
I would never use the sexual misconduct of a creep like Myers to attack the political right because they give us plenty of real ammunition with stuff like their obsession with socially and economically ruinous austerity dogma, their systematic abuse of disabled people, and their zeal for flogging off public assets to their mega-rich mates.
However the reality-reversing propaganda that right-wingers are spewing all over the Internet about how Tory-boy Myers is some kind of extreme-left Corbynist just because he got outed as a creepy sex pest illustrates the frankly delusional lengths these right-wing revisionists will go to in order to maintain their childishly absolutist fantasy that absolutely everything nasty is by definition left-wing, even if the nasty thing is clearly, obviously and demonstrably one of their own.
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On June 14th 2017 at least 80 people were killed in the horrifying Grenfell tower fire.
The disaster generated a huge emotional response because it was such a visual demonstration of the huge inequality in austerity Britain. Of course we all knew how bad it was before the fire.
You'd have to be criminally ignorant to not know that tens of thousands of sick and disabled people have died within weeks of being declared "fit for work" in corporate disability denial factories.
You'd have to have been living in a bubble to not know that tens of thousands of vulnerable people have died as a consequence of savage Tory cuts to the social care system.
You'd have to be profoundly ignorant of the way the world works to imagine that the increased emergency service response times, and increased NHS waiting times due to Tory austerity cuts haven't been paid for in human lives.
But people being burned alive in a tower with inadequate safety features and covered with highly flammable cladding is obviously more immediate and more visual, and as a consequence the anger is more visceral, especially given the aloof response of the Tory government, the shocking ineptitude of the local Tory council, and the absolute barrage of lies and excuses from the Tories and their attack dogs in the right-wing media.
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy the extreme-right Breitbart London editor and former UKIP adviser Raheem Kassam tried to paint the Tory party as the true victims of the Grenfell fire by spreading a load of absolute lies that the Labour Party were responsible, including the easily disprovable assertion that the Local council was Labour controlled (unsurprisingly in actual reality the local council in the richest area of London has been permanently ruled by the Tory party).
Kassam's lies were so sickeningly obvious that only the most freakishly fact-averse extreme-right fanatics could possibly have fallen for them, but his central narrative that the establishment are the true victims of the fire was obviously considered useful by the right-wing media, and hence, within a month of dozens of neglected and ignored poor people burning alive in the richest borough of one of the richest cities in the world, we have Clare Foges of the Times using the same disgusting argument that the true Grenfell victims are the poor establishment class.
In her abomination of an article Foges tries to portray anyone who considers the political ramifications of the fire for themselves as engaging a circus of "blame-mongering" and "mob-rousing".
Thus anyone who draws their own political conclusions about the fire and the hopelessly inadequate local government response is an unreasonable "blame-monger", and anyone who actively engages in protest isn't an angry citizen utilising their right to peaceful protest, but a member of a scary and detestable "mob".
Foges also gets the excuses in early by predicting that the Grenfell investigation (cover up?) may find that nobody was to blame with a claim that "we should be wary of attributing to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by cock-up; that there were simple failures of foresight, questions unasked that should have been asked".
So the essential themes of what Foges is arguing are:
Don't think for yourself. Don't question the establishment line. It was probably all just an unfortunate mistake for which the establishment elitists are absolutely not to blame. Anger is unreasonable. You should hate anyone who is angry about Grenfell. They're a dangerous mob. They're the true villains.
The conclusion of Foges article plays a very cynical trick by conflating criticism of the establishment class with criticism of Britain.
Foges criticises the concept that Britain is "a country rigged by an unfeeling elite that cares nothing for people because they are poor" with the absolute non sequitur that Britain is "a nation that is compassionate, generous and decent".
It's profoundly dishonest to argue that it's shameful to accuse the elitist establishment class of callous and uncaring elitism because British society as a whole still retains elements of compassion, generosity and decency. But that's exactly the cynical and manipulative trick that Foges plays on the reader.
The obvious bad faith conflation of the establishment class with Britain as a whole in order to use faux patriotism to attack "the left" is such a sickening display of contempt for the reader it's extraordinary that people buy into this kind of insulting propaganda crap.
But unfortunately we know that millions of people do willingly buy into this kind of intellectually dishonest rubbish because we spent six infuriating years listening to David Cameron spout this kind of logically incoherent, bad faith, fallacy-riddled propaganda gibberish, which brings us neatly to the fundamental thing that Foges "forgot" to mention in her impassioned defence of the establishment class ...
What Foges "forgot" to mention that she was employed as a special adviser and speechwriter for David Cameron for seven years, and that Cameron including one of her jokes in a speech is what she considers the absolute highlight of her career so far!
Is it any wonder that a woman who helped David Cameron by scripting his intellectually dishonest pro-austerity speeches would come out swinging wildly against anyone making the argument that mindless adherence to ruinous austerity dogma could have played a crucial role in the Grenfell tower tragedy?
Is it any wonder that a journalist with such an intimate relationship with the Tory party would seek to manipulate the minds of middle England by deliberately recasting the all the players in the Grenfell tower tragedy into different roles?
Is it any wonder that an establishment insider would seek to portray the callous and uncaring political elitists who allowed it to happen, and responded so inadequately, as the poor innocent victims, write the poor women who tragically burned to death after having had their fire safety complaints repeatedly ignored out of the script entirely, and merge the angry local residents and "the left" together into a single character to play the role of the detestable villain for middle England to hate and pour scorn upon?
This attempt to rewrite the establishment class as the poor innocent victims of the Grenfell fire would be sick enough in its own right, but that it's coming from a very recent member of the most powerful Tory inner circle of all reveals another revolting aspect.
The fact that someone with such close links to the Tory party can pose as some kind of objective journalist in order to spread such intellectually dishonest Tory propaganda reveals the ongoing collusion between the Tory party and the mainstream media.
Is it any wonder that huge numbers of people have completely lost faith with the mainstream media when the architect of ruinous austerity dogma George Osborne can walk straight out of parliament and into the offices of the Evening Standard as their editor; when employees of the supposedly impartial BBC politics department can walk straight into 10 Downing Street to write biased political propaganda for the Tory Prime Minister; and former Tory propagandists like Clare Foges can continue writing the exact same intellectually dishonest Tory propaganda in the pages of Rupert Murdoch's Times?
Is it any wonder that ever more people are turning to independent media for their news because they can see that the establishment insiders club that the mainstream media are supposed to hold to account, and the mainstream media themselves are pretty much the same damned thing.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
If you ever wanted a concrete demonstration of the savage right-wing bias of the mainstream media consider the fact that the chief editor of Breitbart London has posted a brazen "fake news" Tweet about the Grenfell tower fire that's now been shared over 5,000 times, but instead of holding him to account, hacks at the Daily Telegraph somehow decided to falsely accuse named left-wing websites of spreading "fake news" on their front page instead.
The Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam has had it pointed out to him by hundreds of people that his Tweet begins with an outright lie and is nothing more than a pathetically tasteless bit of right-wing victim complex crying, but he's not taken it down nor apologised for outright lying to the public.
- The fact that the new Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad once had a powerless position on the Tory dominated Kensington and Chelsea council betrays a very weak understanding of how local government actually works.
- Ignoring the fact that Sadiq Khan was not even mayor of London when the decision to cover Grenfell tower in highly flammable plastic is obviously absurd, as is the ridiculous implication that the mayor of the biggest city in western Europe should micromanage every building renovation project in the city.
- Trying to pin responsibility on Labour because the original construction date for the tower coincided with a Labour government is absolutely pathetic grasping. The problem isn't that there are 4,000 odd tower blocks in the UK, it's that many of them are deadly firetraps thanks to seven years of abject Tory neglect of housing policy, and their refusal to listen to expert advice that flammable cladding should be banned.
- Describing a list that begins with an outright lie as "Grenfell tower facts" is absolutely outrageous stuff that even Kellyanne Conway of "alternative facts" fame would blush at.
- Making up lies and deliberately distorting and misrepresenting the facts in order to recast the Tory party as the true victims of the Grenfell tower fire is a disgusting new low, even for the editor of a despicable website like Breitbart.
Unsurprisingly there is no outrage in the mainstream media over this deliberate lying and sick emotional manipulation from the head of a right-wing news outlet.
Meta-fake news
Meanwhile hacks at the Daily Telegraph (a right-wing propaganda sheet operated by the tax-dodging billionaire Barclay brothers) lazily churnalised a post from the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog into a front page accusation that named left-wing websites are spreading "fake news".
The problem of course is that one of the websites they accuse of spreading "fake news" (Evolve Politics) never even mentioned the story in question, and another website (Novara Media) did mention it, but quickly put up a video post describing the story as "wildly unlikely".
The best way I can think of to describe this fake Guido/Telegraph claim that others are guilty of spreading "fake news" is Meta-fake news.
The Telegraph's reputation is completely shot
It may seem implausible to imagine it now, but once upon a time the Daily Telegraph was a reasonably reputable highbrow publication.
Yes they were always extremely right-wing, but they would never have lazily churnalised outright lies from a hard-right blog onto their front page.
Then there was the Telegraph journalist who called for a female politician to be executed for her political beliefs within a year of Jo Cox being murdered in the street for her political views by an extreme-right fanatic!
Then there was the fact that one of their most respected columnists (Peter Oborne) quit in disgust at the way they were letting major advertisers (like the Mexican drug cartel money launderers HSBC) influence their editorial policy.
The Telegraph used to be a reasonably respectable highbrow broadsheet, but standards have slipped so far now that they deserve the same level of outright derision as despicable gutter press outlets like The S*n, Daily Mail and Express.
Where to turn now
Lots of us like to get our news from a variety of news sources in order to get a more balanced view of what's going on, but the Telegraph have now clearly repositioned themselves as exactly the same kind of savagely dishonest hard-right attack rag as their tabloid bedfellows in the gutter press.
They're not only guilty of ignoring a highly influential right-wing news editor spreading outright Twitter lies about Grenfell tower, they also lazily churnalised an extreme-right blog post into front page news without even vaguely checking their facts first.
These hypocritical and outrageously lazy Daily Telegraph hacks have proven beyond doubt that they consider right-wing purveyors of fake news like Breitbart to be beyond reproach, and that they mindlessly accept "fake news" stories they've read on hard-right blogs like Guido Fawkes as so unquestionable they blast them onto their front page without even the most rudimentary of fact-checking.
Anyone who wants to occasionally check out a respectable and generally fact-based right-wing interpretation of the news should clearly abandon the Telegraph as a reliable source and look at the Financial Times, the Economist (the in-house magazine for neoliberals) or even Rupert Murdoch's Times (!!!) instead.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
