Guy Debord’s Cat on the Deceptive Charm of Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Fascist Entryism in the Tory Party

The current popularity amongst the Tories and their lackeys for Jacob Rees-Mogg is a particular concern of mine. Mogg is the highly privileged son of William Rees-Mogg, a titled member of the aristocracy, who wrote at various times for the Times and Independent. Rees-Mogg senior lived in one of the villages around Bath, if I recall correctly. His son is the Tory MP for north Somerset, just south of where I live in Bristol.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has somehow endeared himself to the Tories and part of the British public through his polite, aristocratic and anachronistic demeanour. He’s been called ‘the minister for the 18th century’. He now has a fan club, Moggmentum, in imitation of Corbyn’s support group of Momentum. He also has 25,000 followers on Twitter. One fan of his in Somerset is such a mad fan of his, that he had Mogg’s face tattooed on him, which became one of the evening’s news stories for the local news programme, Points West here in Bristol a few weeks ago. He’s so popular indeed, that he’s being touted as a possible successor to Theresa May.

This should terrify anyone, with any real idea of politics and the true state of this country. For his smooth, cultured and quiet-spoken politesse, Mogg’s own views are highly reactionary, and frankly horrific. He began his career as a politician campaign in Fife, where the major platform of his campaign was trying to convince impoverished fisherfolk that retaining an hereditary House of Lords was supremely important and beneficial. And as a blue-blooded aristo, he is convinced that the poor should be kept firmly in their place, serving and transferring whatever wealth they have to the rich and powerful. A little while ago Mike did a feature on him on his blog. He discussed the numerous instances in which Mogg had consistently voted down bills, which would improve conditions for the poor and disabled, and voted instead for cutting benefits and privatizing what’s left of the welfare state.

It probably isn’t too much to say that many of those, who vote for him either believe themselves to be of the same class as him, and so will also benefit by his efforts to restore aristocratic privilege. Or else they’re members of the lower classes, who have been convinced through repetition of the same claims down the generations that the aristocracy are the country’s natural rulers, and working people should know their place. Like the various servants Mum met while working in that part of Somerset, who voted Tory because that’s the way Master voted.

Guy Debord’s Cat has written a very good piece over on his site, describing just how vile Mogg and what he represents actually are. He writes

It’s a sure sign of the Conservative Party’s dearth of talent that Jacob Rees Mogg should be talked up as a possible successor to the hapless and utterly useless Theresa May. Many people find Moggy endearing. They love his plummy RP accent. They love his double-breasted suit jackets. They love his fustiness. They love his toffee-nosed demeanour and they love his apparently Waugh-esque wit. At Nowhere Towers we take a different view: we find him tiresome and representative of an ages old problem with Britain. Namely, he reeks of privilege and his accent and ‘eccentric’ charm masks a ruthlessness and cruelty that is common to many members of his class.

When it comes to loving one’s oppressor, the Brits have both rationalized and elevated their oppression a fine art. We love our posh bastards. Don’t we? Remember how people fawned over Bozza? I haven’t forgotten. Both of them went to Eton and Oxford. Both of them are seen as rather buffoonish, though for very different reasons. And both are seen as thoroughly British eccentrics. But that’s the problem: many people refuse to see through their media-constructed façades and choose to see oh-so-disarming posh twits instead. Please, wake up!

That Moggy should be touted by some Tories as a counterweight to Jeremy Corbyn’s soaring popularity speaks volumes about the parlous condition of his party and the dire health of our media.

He goes on to mention three articles taking apart Mogg, his highly deceptive appeal, exposing what he really represents, from Skwawkbox, the New Statesman and Victor Lewis-Smith. But he goes on to discuss an event the other articles don’t. This is the time in 2013 when Mogg went off to a formal, black tie dinner with the Traditional Britain Group. His article includes a photo from the evening, showing Mogg seated next to two truly horrific fixtures of the British Far Right, Jack Buckby of the Cultural Nationalists and the BNP, and Gregory Lauder-Frost.

The Traditional Britain Group itself, from what I’ve seen of it, is another xenophobic, anti-immigrant, racist group, which particularly despises Islam. They also want to restore the old class system and privatize the NHS. Gerry Gable of the anti-Nazi organization, Searchlight, warned Mogg not to attend. But he did. When he was exposed by the press, he made a gushing Mea Culpa condemning racism, distancing himself from them, and claimed he had been misinformed and acted in ignorance.

To me, this is less than convincing. As the French philosophical feline points out, most people if invited to attend a function by a group they know nothing about would try to know what it stood for first.

The article then goes on to discuss just how unpleasant Buckby and Lauder-Frost are. As well as founding the National Culturalists, which was banned on campus as a racist, Fascist organization by the Students’ Guild at Liverpool University, Buckby was also a member of the BNP. He was their candidate for the Batley and Spen bye-election, caused by the assassination of Jo Cox. Which shows this character’s complete lack of class. He was also press officer for Liberty GB. The Cat’s article states that it is anti-immigration. That’s true, but it’s also specifically against one ethnic group of immigrants: Muslims. It was founded as part of the Islamophobic ‘counter-jihad’ movement by many of the same people involved in the EDL.

Demonstrating Buckby’s personal nastiness, the Cat’s article has a clip of him being interviewed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News, along with an Irish expert on White supremacist and Fascist movements and a young Black woman from Black students’ group. Guru-Murthy makes it very clearly that he despises Buckby’s views, but has to interview him as part of the programme’s mission to investigate minority opinions. Buckby spends much of the interview vehemently denying that he is at all racist, while loudly declaring that we shouldn’t allow more Muslim immigrants into the country because of their inherently violent, criminal nature. When one of the two women argues against him, he replies by saying ‘I hope you don’t get raped.’ Because all Muslims are rapists, right?

Lauder-Frost, it seems, is a former member of the Monday Club, who used to chair their Foreign Affairs Committee, and is the Traditional Britain Group’s vice-president and treasurer. Before joining them, he was one of the steering committee of the Conservative Democratic Alliance, formed by disaffected members of the Monday Club. There’s also a clip of him being interviewed on Vanessa Feltz’s radio show. Lauder-Frost spends much of the interview sneering at Doreen Lawrence, whom he feels should not have been elevated to the House of Lords. Because she’s ‘a nothing’, who he claims hasn’t done anything for this country and despises it. It’s not hard to see behind his attitude a mixture of racism and sheer class snobbery. Doreen Lawrence is a Black woman, and not a member of the British aristocracy. Hence Lauder-Frost is utterly horrified at her taking a seat in the upper house.

Now it’s true that Doreen Lawrence has made statements where she has said she doesn’t have any love for this country. Or that’s how it’s been reported. It grates, but she has every right. Her son, Stephen, was murdered by a gang of racist thugs, who got off scot-free. The Met investigating his murder was corrupt and riddled with racism, and the thugs were the sons of notorious gang bosses. See the press coverage at the time, and also Private Eye passim ad nauseam. She then dedicated her life to trying to obtain justice for her murdered child. This is a far better reasons for being given an honour than simply being Dave Cameron’s hairdresser.

Lauder-Frost also waffles on about how immigrant groups don’t support this country at sports matches, which recalls Norman Tebbitt’s infamous comment about coloured immigrants not supporting Britain at cricket. He also recommends that we should go back to the Tory party’s 1970s promise for ‘assisted repatriation’ for coloured immigrants to go back to their countries of origin. Feltz is definitely not impressed, and pointedly asks him where she should go, as she’s Jewish, and one set of her grandparents came from Poland, while another of her antecedents was also not British. Lauder-Frost simply says that if he was a Zionist, he would say she should go to Israel. To cap it all, Lauder-Frost is also a massive fan of the Nazis. No wonder Feltz was unimpressed. As were no doubt every other decent person listening to the programme, regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs.

The TBG was also invited to a dinner by the Bow Group, another outfit like the Monday Club on the extreme right of the Tories. The Cat cites Louise Haigh, the Labour politico, who managed to get the Nazi youth group, Britain First, banned, who states very clearly that Lauder-Frost’s comments about Doreen Laurence and assisted repatriation are racist, and that the Bow Group should not invited them to their functions.

The TBG’s other vice-president is Professor John Kersey, a traditionalist Roman Catholic clergyman, a professor at a right-wing university with branches in the Caribbean and West Africa, who is nostalgic for the old days of feudalism. If you follow the link on the Cat’s blog, you come to a site for the British followers of the Austrian Libertarian, Von Mises. Kersey is also the Director of Cultural Affairs of the Libertarian Alliance.

Other members of the Traditional Britain Group are Stuart Millson and Jonathan Bowden. Together these two charmers founded the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus. Millson was also a former member of the BNP and an officer in Western Goals, which the Cat describes as ‘semi-Fascist’. He’s not alone in this assessment. Western Goals also got into the pages of Lobster as a Far Right organization. Also in the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus was Mark Cotterill a former member of the NF. The Cat then describes how Millson joined the Tories despite being a member of the BNP and having had dinner with Jean-Marie Le Pen. The Tories refused to throw him out, and Millson only resigned after this was exposed by the Mirror.

The Cat’s article concludes

The Tories may deny it, but many of their members are sympathetic to groups like the TBG. Indeed, in the 1970s NF members joined local Conservative Clubs and were members of the Monday Club. Others are members of The Freedom Association, the faux libertarian pressure group that talks warmly about their idea of ‘freedom’, while working hard to deny it to others. Tories may complain about ‘entryism’ in the Labour Party, but for decades extreme-right entryists joined the party and they’re still joining.

Moggy’s antiquated views are only matched by his sartorial style. If you find him amusing or endearing, you might want to ask yourself this: what kind of friends are the TBG? Rees Mogg only apologised when he got caught by Liberal Conspiracy. If that had never happened, Moggy would have got away with it. Makes you wonder…

The Cat’s article also has a link to the original piece by the Liberal Conspiracy website.

For more information, see: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/friends-like-these/

The Cat certainly ain’t wrong about Fascist infiltration of the Tory party. Lobster a few decades ago devoted several pieces to exposing this. And it’s something else you won’t see being reported by the Beeb. Way back in the 1980s the BBC was due to screen a Panorama expose, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, on the Far Right’s infiltration of the Tory. Maggie and the Tories, however, threw a strop and the BBC was forced to spike the programme.

As for the Libertarians, their definition of liberty is definitely reserved only for the upper classes. They hate socialism, trade unions and organized labour. I can’t remember which one of the libertarian organisations actually did it, but one of them invited the head of a central American death squad to their annual dinner. As for Kersey being a fan of feudalism, this adds a new dimension to Von Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom. Von Hayek thought it was socialism, but as subsequent events show, it’s really the far right-wing economics he advocated.

Libertarians have always denied being Fascists, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that’s exactly what they are. I’ve put up several pieces from the American YouTuber, Reichwing Watch, on how Libertarian not only shares many of the same tenets and attitudes of Fascism and Nazism, but that its adherents are beginning to admit this quite openly. One Black YouTuber, ‘That Guy T’, discusses and advocates ‘anarcho-Fascism’ on his vlog.

As for Mogg, while he denies sharing the Traditional Britain Group’s racism, he certainly shares their attitude towards aristocratic privilege, and keeping the poor and marginalized so. It shows how corrupt and class-ridden this country is that this man is at all popular, let alone an MP and possible successor to May.

Corbyn Storms It, While ‘Strong and Stable’ May Collapses

Okay, it wasn’t an outright victory for Jeremy Corbyn. But it wasn’t a defeat either.

Like many people, I was surprised and delighted by last week’s election result. I’d gone to bed early Thursday night, as I couldn’t bear to watch the election coverage. I was afraid that, despite the polls showing that Labour had cut the Tory lead down to only one per cent, there would still be a Tory landslide, or at least a workable majority.

I was, therefore, highly delighted to wake up to find that May had lost her overall majority, and was therefore looking around for anyone or anything that would shore up her government by going into coalition with her.

Unfortunately, she has found one in the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Ian Paisley in 1986 to oppose the 1986 Anglo-Irish agreement. The DUP is socially Conservative and deeply sectarian. They back teaching Creationism in schools, denying climate change, keeping abortion banned in Ulster and violently denounce gay rights. This goes back to when Ian Paisley in the 1970s founded S.U.S. to oppose the legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults. The organisation’s name stood for ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’. This always struck me as an hysterical reaction. It’s as if he was afraid that Northern Irish people’s heterosexuality was so fragile, that the moment homosexuality was legalised every man and woman in the province would immediately turn gay. Or else he had some kind of nightmare that gays from across the world were massing at the Irish border or just across the Irish Sea, ready to charge in like an invading army.

Just as worrying is the party’s hatred of the Irish Republic and Roman Catholicism, and its links to a series of Loyalist paramilitary terrorist groups, most notably the UDA. It’s leaders have posed with Kalashnikovs in their mitts, and wearing the uniform of Loyalist terror groups. These links remain strong, despite the DUP’s official rhetoric condemning terrorism in Ulster.

In short, they’re the type of organisation, which several Protestant Ulster people I know came to Britain to get away from. Just as I know Irish Roman Catholics, who don’t want to go back to Ulster because of the same violent prejudice in their communities.

May hasn’t exactly gone into coalition with these clowns. She’s trying to hammer out a ‘supply and confidence’ agreement, in which the DUP will support the government on a bill-by-bill basis. And even that’s looking rocky, and she made the mistake of annoying her new partners in government by announcing the alliance before it was to be formally arrange on Tuesday.

May’s formation of government with these bigots is also something of a problem for many Conservative MPs. About 19, according to Mike, are openly gay, and so put in a very awkward position through this alliance with a rabidly homophobic party. Ruth Davidson, the gay head of the Conservative party, and who is going to marry an Irish Roman Catholic, has already Tweeted her displeasure. Not that this may make any difference. Despite Cameron’s attempts to make the Tories look nice and friendly to minorities – pro-gay, anti-racist, more women MPs – this alliance shows the real nature of much of the Tory party. They’re reverting to type. As for the 19 gay Tory MPs, given the entrenched hypocrisy of the Tories, where the say one thing and do another, it’s likely that they’ll swallow their principles and troop through the ‘Yes’ doors to support the government anyway.

Even with the DUP on board, the Tories only have a bare majority of two. That means that they’ll have to do as Labour did when they only had a majority of five in the mid-70s: cram every single one of their members into the chamber to support them. To the point where they sent the whips round to check no-one was in the toilets.

Far from being ‘strong and stable’, May’s position looks very, very precarious. The Bow group, a Tory think tank, are considering holding leadership elections and there are murmurings from the backbench 1922 Committee. Unfortunately for the Tories – but good for us – all the other contenders for the leadership are actually more unpopular than May. The leading figure is Boris Johnson, but while 23 per cent of people said that he was more likely to make them vote Tory, 33 per cent stated that he’d put them off.

People have started discussing the possibility that there might be another election in October. Mike has put this forward, and suggested that it could be as early as August. And May herself may not last the week.

As for Corbyn, he’s increasingly looking like a prime minister in waiting. This has been the biggest movement towards Labour for the past forty-five years. And it has roundly refuted the claims of his critics that he was ‘unelectable’. Instead, it has confirmed the worst nightmares of the neoliberal establishment – that he is only too electable. The Blairites now have absolutely no grounds for their intrigues against him. Indeed, if Corbyn can do so well despite their attempts to unseat him, it’s probably fair to say that if the Blairites had done the decent thing and supported their leader and the broad mass of the party’s members and supporters, he’d probably be in Number 10.

His success shows that a very large section of the British people are sick of austerity, sick of Thatcherism, sick of the privatisation of the NHS and private ownership of utilities, sick of exorbitant rents, the threat of homelessness, stagnant wagges and a harsh and callous attitude to the poor, the sick, disabled and the unemployed, which has seen them thrown off benefit, to die in misery and despair.

Tony Greenstein, one of the great people, who comments on Mike’s blog, has written on his own that the one thing that Corbyn should not do is water down his policies to make them more acceptable to those inclined to vote Tory. And he’s right. Not only would this leave some of the causes of Britain’s misery in place, it would weaken his own position electorally. People are heartily sick of a Labour party which does its best to emulate the Tories. This was the reason why New Labour lost five million of its supporters from 1997 to its fall, and why Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election.

Corbyn now needs to keep the pressure up – to continue his attack on the Tories. According to Survation, he’s now several points above them in the polls. Let’s hope and do what we can to maintain and increase this lead, until the government falls and we can have a real, Socialist, Labour leader in Downing Street.

For further informed comment, see the following blogs and posts:

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/09/may-spoke-of-the-coalition-of-chaos-now-shes-going-to-form-one/

https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/oh-what-a-night/

https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/the-tory-dup-pact/

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/general-election-2017-7-weeks-ago-this.html

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/11/downing-street-mistaken-over-dup-deal-this-inspires-no-confidence-over-brexit/

And male feminist vlogger and general scourge of the far right, Kevin Logan, has produced this video showing precisely how deeply unpleasant the DUP are:

Private Eye on the Extreme Right-Wing Views of Tory MP Chris Philps

One of Private Eye’s regular columns is ‘The New Boys and Girls’, in which they run unflattering profiles of newly elected MPs. In this fortnight’s issue for 10-23 June 2016, the new bug selected for criticism and having their skeletons taken out of their closets is Tory MP Chris Philp. Philp is one of those, who used to boast thirty years ago about being ‘Thatcherite achievers’ – in other words, Yuppies. He comes from a working class background. His grandfather was a lorry driver in Peckham. He went to Oxford, and after graduating founded a series of companies. The Eye points out that in contrast to all his self-promotion and boasts of success, the reality was a series of bankruptcies and cheated creditors.

What I found interesting wasn’t so much about his repeated failures as a businessman, but his connections to the extreme Thatcherite right. The Eye claims that as well as being a member of the Tory party, Philp flirted with the Freedom Association and wrote a pamphlet praising workfare for the Taxpayers’ Alliance:

Chris Philp is one of the most ambitious Tory MPs of the 1015 intake and – as a millionaire tax-avoider – a politicians for our time.

After he narrowly lost to Glenda Jackson in Hampstead and Kilburn by 42 votes in 2010, the Camden councillor was parachuted into Croydon South, one of capital’s safest Conservative seats. He arrived for his selection meeting in south London as a generous party donor and a former member of the Bow Group who had dalliances with the far-right Freedom Association. He was the author of Work for the Dole, published by the Taxpayer’s Alliance, which advocates community work and training for the unemployed in return for benefits. (p. 13).

The Freedom Association is an extreme neo-liberal outfit, which first emerged in the 1970s as the National Association for Freedom (NAFF), before they found out what this word meant. They stand for privatising everything that ain’t nailed down, ending the welfare state and banning trade unions. They were involved in trying to break a number of strikes in the 1970s. Worse, they also gave their support to the various South and Central American Fascist dictators and their death squads in the 1980s, even inviting one of them to come to one of their dinners as a guest of honour. They also supported South African Conservatives, who defended Apartheid. Guy Debord’s Cat has run a series of articles on this organisation and its squalid history, if you want further information.

Workfare is another policy that first emerged in the 1980s under Thatcher. I can remember various Tory politicos enthusing about it on Breakfast Television when I was at school. It was an idea that they took over from the Republicans in America. It’s a nasty idea that I, and many other bloggers, including Mike, the Angry Yorkshireman, Johnny Void and Tom Pride, to name just a few, have attacked as little more than slavery, designed to provide cheap labour to big business, especially the supermarkets.

As for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, these pass themselves off as an independent organisation, and regularly interviewed as such by the Beeb. They’re nothing of the kind. They’re a Tory astroturf organisation. The Alliance isn’t affiliated to the Tory party, but its tax-dodging leadership are all members. When they aren’t being prosecuted for tax evasion, as several are.

This then, is the political background to Chris Philp, a fan of extreme right-wing politics, who wants to exploit the poor for as much as he can get out of them while dodging tax himself. Exactly the kind of person to expect promotion under tax-dodging, exploitative right-wing, Dave Cameron and his cabinet of unreformed Thatcherite thugs.