Remember when Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil had Alex Jones on his programme years ago? This resulted in farce when Neil asked the right-wing, Libertarian Jones about guns and the high rate of shootings in America. I think it came in the wake of yet another crazed gunman going into a school, shopping mall, church, synagogue or mosque or somewhere and shooting innocents. The right to bear arms is sacrosanct to Republicans and Libertarians, and so Jones responded with a long rant about how Americans will never give their firearms up and that there’d be another 1776 if anyone like Britain tried. He then started screaming nonsense, including ‘metal shark!’ at one point. The camera pulled away from Jones to show Brillo making the ‘nutter’ sign behind his head.
It’s a debatable but fair question whether Jones is mad. He’s promoted some immensely stupid theories, like the Democrat Party operating a paedophile ring out of a Boston pizza parlour, that Obama was the Antichrist, Hillary Clinton a Satanist cyborg, and that the world is being run by ‘the Globalists’ intent on enslaving humanity and turning us all into dehumanised cyborgs to serve demons or malevolent aliens. He is most notorious for ranting about how ‘they’ were putting chemicals in the water ‘to turn the frickin’ frogs gay’. He’s been widely ridiculed for that, but as Blissex, one of the great commenters on this blog reminded me on another post about Jones, he does have a point. Frogs and other amphibians are suffering from industrial pollutants that mimic female hormones and so cause reproductive abnormalities in males. Jones pushes all manner of outlandish theories, but some people have said that off-air he’s calm and rational, and his bizarre antics on camera may just be to garner viewers.
Whatever the real state of Jones’ mind, Brillo is now no longer in a position to sneer at Jones for pushing whacky and dangerous conspiracy theories. Because now he’s done it himself. Yesterday Zelo Street reported that Neil had taken exception to criticism of his comments on a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Colorado, and retweeted the bonkers comments by Spectator USA contributor Andy Ngo. Nadine Batchelor-Hunt had responded to his approving comments about the demonstration in Colorado by telling him that as a White guy, he shouldn’t be telling Black people how to protest. This is essentially the same point some Black Civil rights leaders in America in the 1960s told their White supporters when they said they should ‘be in their own space’. The result was the formation of a radical, White, working-class identity movement, which was crucially anti-racist as some of the White poor turned to their own situation and demanded change. I can’t see Brillo, former editor of the Sunday Times, the Economist and head of the Spectator board, wanting to see that develop. He replied “Looks like most of the folks protesting are white. I’m not telling anybody what they should do; just approving of a particular form of protest. Why make an issue of my colour. I don’t take kindly to what people tell me I should or should not do”.
Zelo Street commented that this was a remark from his privileged perspective. I think however, that Neil has the right to make whatever comment he likes about the protest. It might seem condescending, but people have the right to their own opinions whatever colour they are. But then the great newsman went overboard, and retweeted this from the Speccie’s sister paper.
“‘We are witnessing glimmers of the full insurrection the far-left has been working toward for decades. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis was merely a pre-text for radicals to push their ambitious insurgency,’ writes [Andy Ngo]”.
Ngo is a member of the American far right, despite being Asian. He wrote a farcical piece about Islam in Britain, ‘A Visit to Islamic Britain’ for Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, and has hosted the infamous Carl Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP, on his podcast. Zelo Street commented that it was shameful for the Speccie to give Ngo a platform, and even more so for Brillo to retweet him. They also wondered if BBC News and Current Affairs would take a dim view of being linked with Ngo through Neil. And this is apart from some of the deeply unpleasant characters who write for the British Spectator, like the anti-Semitic supporter of the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, Taki.
See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/brillo-boosts-far-right.html
The American far right is riddled with bizarre conspiracy theories. When Obama was ensconced in the Oval Office there were any number of loons proclaiming that he was an anti-White racist who would immediately launch a genocide of Whites. Or that he was closet Muslim, who would impose the Shariah. Or a Nazi, Communist or militant atheist. Jones ranted that Obama would become absolute dictator by declaring a state of emergency, suspending the rule of law and forcing Americans into FEMA camps. It didn’t happen. There are also loony conspiracy theories going around the American and British right about ‘cultural Marxists’ trying to create a new Communist dictatorship through destroying traditional, Christian morality and replacing it with multiculturalism and gay and trans rights. It’s a garbled misreading of Gramsci’s theories of hegemony, and ultimately has its roots in the Nazis’ denunciation of ‘cultural Bolshevism’.
But I’ve got a feeling that the Spectator USA always was a haven for demented conspiracy theories. Way back in the 1990s a magazine with a very similar name, The American Spectator, and a group of Sunday Times journos, got it into their heads that Bill Clinton was at the heart of a vast criminal conspiracy. They believed that Slick Willy was importing drugs from Latin America through a secret airbase in Arizona. Anyone who crossed or otherwise displeased him was then executed by his gangsters. This theory was partly based on the real fact that about 19 of his aides had died, but investigations had shown that their demise had absolutely nothing to do with Clinton. The conspiracy theories were even later denounced and ridiculed by a former believer, one of the ‘Clinton Crazies’. Adam Curtis has discussed this bizarre affair in one of his excellent documentaries.
It looks to me that The American Spectator was a previous incarnation of The Spectator USA, and that, despite the Clinton Crazies having come and gone, there still is a paranoid mentality out there. And Brillo, as former editor of the Sunday Times, and head of the Spectator’s board, shares it.
You don’t have to invoke non-existent conspiracies to explain the protests and riots in America. They come from endemic racism, poverty and lack of opportunity, quite apart from the casual killing of Black Americans by the police. This has been simmering away for several years. Now it’s exploded again. What is needed is calm, rationality and justice.
What we don’t need is more stupid, inflammatory rhetoric by Trump, Ngo or Brillo.
Tags: 'Black Lives Matter', 'Spectator USA', Adam Curtis, Alex Jones, Aliens, American Spectator, Andrew Neil, Andy Ngo, anti-racism, anti-semitism, Antonio Gramsci, Arizona, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Blissex, Churches, Colorado, Cyborgs, Demonstrations, Donald Trump, Drugs, Gay Rights, Genocide, Golden Dawn, Gun Rights, Hillary Clinton, Killings, Mosques, Multiculturalism, Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, Police, Pollution, racism, Riots, Rupert Murdoch, Satanism, Schools, Shootings, Sunday Times, Synagogues, Taki, The Economist, the Poor, The Spectator, Transgendered, UKIP, Wall Street Journal, Whites, Working Class
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
June 3, 2020 at 4:06 pm |
I normally enjoy reading your blog. But with this one I couldn’t get beyond “ Ngo is a member of the American far right, despite being Asian.” What do you mean “despite being Asian”? It is racist to assume, presume or suggest that all Asians or any other ethnic group have a particular politics. Look at the Tory party- many Asians. Look at the politics of India or Myanmar. Seems like you have waded too far into identity politics. But I’ll stick with Martin Luther King “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.“
June 3, 2020 at 4:18 pm |
Thanks for the comment, ReallyOldHippy. It’s a fair point, and you’re right about politics not being defined by people’s ethnicity or skin colour. You can find Asians in the Tory party and over the other side of the Pond in the Republicans. But when I said ‘far right’, I was thinking of the Fascist fringe like the Alt-Right, which verges on and is often part of White identitarian politics. Which makes his political stance, as an Asian unusual as I would think that some of those, who share his views would also object to people belonging to his ethnic group, if they didn’t object to him personally. I hope this clarifies the comment.
June 3, 2020 at 5:58 pm |
I don’t think the riots/protests in America have anything to do with Far Left insurgency. I remember the riots in Bradford about 20 years ago, largely the result of bad Policing, which some then tried to blame on the Anti-Nazi League for over-reacting to threats by some National Front people.
June 3, 2020 at 8:04 pm |
That’s interesting, Trev. I remember the same thing being said about the riots in St Paul’s in Bristol c. 1979/80 or whenever it was. That was all about heavy-handed policing, and started after the cops raided the Black and White cafe, which had a reputation for drugs. There may be some malcontents from the extreme left urging the rioters on. I remember there was a White idiot with a megaphone outside our school as we went home, calling on the kids to come down to St Paul’s. I didn’t think so at the time, but everything about him makes me think he may have been from the Socialist Workers trying to stir things up, as that’s the kind of stunt they’ve got a reputation for pulling. But no, the riots in Bristol weren’t due to the far left, and I’m very certain indeed that those in America aren’t either.