Sketch of Children’s TV Star Basil Brush

We’re now entering the world of children’s TV puppet characters. These have existed since before television. As some of the great commenters on this blog recall, there was Archie Andrews on the radio way back in the 1940s/50s. Andrews was a ventriloquist’s dummy and had his own series, Educating Archie. Following him there was Muffin the Mule and a plethora of other puppet series and characters, including the might Magic Roundabout. But Basil Brush was one of the towering figures of children’s entertainment. I’m sure there are theses to be written about him and his relation to the British class system. Brush appeared, nattily attired, in aristocratic tweeds, but was mischievously anarchistic towards his co-presenters. His shows were co-hosted by another human, such as Rodney Bewes of Likely Lads fame, who would then have to endure Brush’s jokes and wisecracking. The co-host would be formally addressed as Mr, so that Rodney Bewes was called by Brush ‘Mr Rodney’. At one point, the unfortunate person would have to read a story, during which Brush would interrupt with more jokes and wisecracks. They would then struggle to continue, with Brush urging them with cries of ‘Yes, yes, Mr Rodney’ or whoever, but still interrupt. This carried on until the poor soul was almost reduced to a wreck. I remember a sequence in which Bewes was supposed to be reading a science fiction story. One of the characters was called Zip Fastener, whose name was answered by Brush saying, ‘There are no flies on him.’ I think there may also have been a puppet dog. When this creature tried to get its voice heard, it was often answered by Brush telling it to shut its bone chute. After making a particularly good joke, Brush would cry, ‘Boom! Boom!’ and bang his head against his human co-host’s stomach. I’ve no doubt that a quick search on Google will turn up the name of Brush’s creator and puppeteer, but for a very long time he refused to be credited. This is because he wanted Brush to be character in his own right. He succeeded splendidly. And when Brush was travelling, such as for a stage appearance, he was carried in his own special box.

His creator died a few decades ago, and Brush had been retired like the other puppet characters before him. But his popularity was so great that he was revived for a new generation of children. This time his companions included a repentant fox hound. I think he’s still going. Quickly looking through YouTube I found he’s done music videos, as well as appeared on the satirical comedy, The Last Leg, commenting on the election of Donald Trump. And there certainly have been DVDs of the new series.

Here’s the video of his jokes about Trump from The Last Leg’s channel on YouTube.

Fan of Rachel Riley Starts Troll Campaign against Owen Jones

More trolling from the darker parts of the internet. Mike reported on Saturday that a hashtag campaign had been started against left-wing journalist and author Owen Jones. The hashtag declared in crude language that Jones practiced the kind of solitary behaviour that tradition has it makes you grow hair on the palms of your hands and ruins your eyesight. It started after a group of Alt Right thugs shouted ‘Oi, you w*nker’ at him live on British TV. Jones himself said of the incident that if he could survive fascists chasing him on the street, then he could survive a hashtag campaign set up by people who need their hard drives checking.

Laura Murray told him that the person – and I use that term loosely – responsible for the troll campaign against him is the same individual, who posts pictures of her in a bikini in various positions in order to degrade and humiliate her. This person is one ‘Basil Brush/Bruscetta’, who is a massive fan of Rachel Riley. He endorsed a thread from Riley in which she attacked a certain 16 year old girl as an anti-Semite. Bruscetta’s website didn’t last, and was taken down. So his supporters linked it to one attacking their idol. Which apparently was done by members of the GnasherJew troll farm, David Collier and another odious jerk, Jack Silver. Collier was moaning that Twitter’s removal of the hashtag against Jones showed it to be a fake news site, as Jones is an anti-Semite and therefore akin to a Nazi!

Saaaaaay whaaaaat!

In what parallel world are this idiots living? Jones is no kind of Nazi. Indeed, he’s been criticised by Tony Greenstein – also definitely not a Nazi – for being too accommodating to the anti-Semitism smear campaign of which Riley, Collier and co. are a part against critics of Israel and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party.

As Mike explains, the clip used to troll Jones was of the abuse screamed at him from right-wing pro-Brexit campaigners when he was being interviewed outside parliament in January. Riley also tried to attack Jones with smears and shockingly inaccurate comments about his coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Mike concludes his article about this

She protested at the time that she is not a supporter of the far right. Maybe that’s true; I don’t propose to comment on it, one way or the other.

But questions need to be asked about why supporters of the far right seem so keen to link themselves with her.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/12/21/was-twitter-campaign-against-owen-jones-organised-by-supporters-of-rachel-riley-or-of-something-more-sinister/

There’s more that could be said about this. Much more. Alongside the comments about Jones’ supposed solitary practices was another line calling him a ‘Stalinist’. This obviously comes from the far right. In some ways it’s ironic. Stalin was a brutal dictator with a venomous hatred of the Jews. After the Nazis broke the pact they’d made for the occupation of eastern Europe with the former Soviet Union, Stalin lamented what the Soviet and Nazis could have achieved together. And one of the major figures in post-War American Nazism, Francis Parker Yockey – a bizarre figure who was very much like the Nazi playwright in Mel Brookes’ The Producers – was a supporter of the Soviet Union because he saw it as a bulwark of civilisation against the decadence caused by democracy. The real Alt Right have more in common with Stalin than they’d like to admit.

The hashtag campaign against Jones was also supported by Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP. I think Sargon’s Jewish, and he has argued online with the Alt Right. But despite describing himself as a ‘classical Liberal’ – for which read ‘Libertarian’ – Sargon’s own politics are so close to that of the Alt Right that some have commented that he is a gateway to them. A soft introduction leading to the harder, more racist stuff further away from the mainstream.

Despite Collier and co.’s claim that they’re fighting anti-Semitism, they’re doing no such thing. Like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, they’re almost completely uninterested in real, right-wing anti-Semitism. They’re against anti-Zionism or simply criticism of Israel, which they deliberately conflate with anti-Semitism. And they attack it on the left for two reasons.

At the most superficial level, they do it because they’re bullies.

The people they attack, people like Mike, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Sally Eason and so on are decent people. They aren’t trolls, and so don’t response with the high level of abuse the real anti-Semites would. GnasherJew and Riley’s fan are not going to attack the trolls that post real anti-Semitic material, like those who consider the Holocaust a great joke, because their campaign of hate wouldn’t touch them. The trolls would just start making coarse comments on their sexuality, which would probably be homophobic and accuse them of being paedophiles. Further attacks on them by Riley’s fans and Collier and his fellow scumbags would just be treated with amusement, and provide them with further ammunition for trolling them. But the people on the Labour left GnasherJew and Riley attack instead aren’t like that. They can be bullied and cowed. And so they do.

And there’s no great mystery why racists like the Alt Right support Riley.

Tony Greenstein has observed that historically, Zionism’s allies have always been the Far Right. The Islamophobic right in Britain – Britain First and the English Defence League strongly support Israel because they hate Muslims. Tommy Robinson even boasted that if there was a war with the Palestinians, he’d fight for Israel. They also admire Israel because it’s the kind of ‘ethnostate’ they’d like to create in the West. Richard Spencer, the founder of the Alt Right, appeared on Israeli TV, where he declared himself to be a White Zionist. Just as Israel is a racial state in which the only true citizens are Jews, so Spencer and co. wish to create a White ethnostate in America, where only Whites will enjoy full civil rights and Blacks, Asians and Hispanics will have been ‘peacefully’ cleansed.

And the Alt Right also have an enemy in common with Israel’s supporters, at least on the Right.

They hate and fear genuine left-wingers. Which is why they were both determined to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. He was both a critic of Israel and determined to bring back the welfare state, strong trade unions and a mixed economy. All of which are abhorrent to those on the Far Right, like Spencer and Sargon, and the Blairites in the Labour party. Which is why you had the Blairites in the Labour party, like Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel, sneering at Corbyn’s supporters in Labour as ‘Stalinists’, ‘Trotskyites’ and Communists.

I am not accusing Riley of being a Fascist or a member of the Alt Right. But she needs to think very clearly about the way she is supported by them, and do what she can to discourage it.

Otherwise some would be justified in calling her a hypocrite. If not worse.