Queasy Kwarteng – Not a Diversity Hire, But a Member of the Tory Hard Right

I’ve got a few interesting remarks from some of the great commenters on this blog about a piece a put up about a video by Simon Webb of History Debunked about Kwarteng. Webb wondered if the man now doing his best to trash our economy was a diversity hire, whose sole qualification for the job was his skin colour. Mark Pattie and Jim Round have pointed out that he isn’t. He was appointed because he was another Old Etonian willing to implement the programme of the Tory hard right.

Mark wrote

‘Kamikaze Kwarteng was *not* a diversity hire. He may be of Ghanaian descent, but he was Eton educated (hence probably why he got the Chancellor job). Suella Charlatan got the Home Sec job because she was more right-wing than Patel, and James Cleverley got his role because of his many years in the Army. Unlike the rest, he seems to be one of the very few (ten or so) genuinely decent Tories I’ve any respect for. It’s a damn shame he didn’t run for the leadership.’

And Jim commented

‘As with quite a lot of Simon Webb’s videos, it is what isn’t said rather than what is.
It isn’t mentioned that groups like The Taxpayers Alliance and The Institute of Economic Affairs had a major influence on this “budget” (Tim over at Zelo Street has covered this)
Also remember that The New Culture Forum, who Webb has been a guest of are based there.
They think that this is a “Conservative” budget but it is unknown whether they thought that the markets would react so badly.
Also not mentioned is the fact that Kwarteng is highly likely to be a millionaire, as well as attending Eton.
But no, let’s feed the narrative that he is only there because of the colour of his skin.’

The Taxpayers’ Alliance tends to turn up on BBC News programmes to give their views on economic policies. They are always presented as if they are a politically independent organisation, but their leaders are all members of the Tories. The Institute of Economic Affairs have been demanding hard-right economic policies since before Thatcher. I don’t think Kwarteng’s a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but this shows that the people at the Arise Zoom meeting on the Tory minibudget were absolutely right: he’s a Thatcherite true-believer, working for arch-Thatcherite think tanks, and so shares the same grotty mediocre views as his leader, Liz Truss. I should say that I haven’t watched Webb’s wretched video, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a section of the Tories is now trying to make him a scapegoat for Truss’ abject economic failure.

Jim Round on New Labour’s Prosecution of the Grooming Gangs, and Mahyar Tousi’s Bias

Jim Round, one of the many great commenters on this blog, posted this remark adding more evidence to refute the right’s accusations that Labour was complacent about the Pakistani grooming gangs. The latest person to repeat the allegation is Mahyar Tousi, a right-wing Brexiteer Tory, in a video attacking Jess Philips. She had raised his ire by asking how many of the current Tory leadership candidates were aware of Johnson breaking the lockdown, but said nothing.

Jim writes

‘I was certainly no fan of “New Labour” but I read somewhere that under Labour, convictions of grooming gangs were far higher under them than under The Tories.
Let’s also not forget Johnson’s “staffing” comments and the alleged closeness of Jimmy Savile to Margaret Thatcher.
Also worth remembering that it was a Muslim, Nazir Afzal, who convicted many gang members.
As for Tousi, well, for someone who regularly gets his “news” from the Guido Fawkes blog, he has a cheek to call any other news outlets for bias and fake news.
He is also another one who deletes reasonable comments that disagree with him or correct his “news stories” an example being the young man who allegedly was kicked off his college course, in Burnley I think. There were, of course, two sides to this story and Tousi deleted or ignored comments putting across the other side.
Free speech but only if you agree with me again.’

Genevieve Gluck’s Long Video about the Origins of the Trans Flag and Its Similarity to Paedophile Symbols

A few days ago I put up a very short – 1m 30s – video from the feminist activist Genevieve Gluck about the trans flag and how it shares the same colours as the symbols used by paedophile organisations, put up by Women’s Declaration International. The video was an extract from this much longer piece, which lasts just over 35 minutes. The video explains how the flag was invented by Monica Helms, a transwoman, formerly Richard Hogge, who had been in the American navy. Interestingly, Helms seems to regard herself as both male and female, and that she can flip between those genders at will, rather than strictly trans female. Helms had been married when a man, but this broke up as he began to transition.

The video also discusses how Helms/Hogge had been a member of a transvestite organisation, Tri-Sigma, or the Society for the Second Self. Sigma is the Greek letter representing the ‘S’ sound. It deliberately sported a classical abbreviation in order to sound like the American college fraternities and sororities. It defined itself as ‘a sorority without women’. It was anti-gay, and part of its campaign was to make more women supportive of their husbands’ cross-dressing. She shows a number of cartoons from the pages of its magazine, whose jokes seem to be about the husband lying back in female attire while his wife does all the housework. One of the creepier shows a husband and son together, both in drag. The magazine also published advice about how its readers could become more feminine, such as by reading women’s magazines, choosing a female hobby and so on. With the exception of the sexism in the cartoons and the one with the father and son, which looks very much like grooming, this seems harmless enough. Where it becomes sinister is in the colours of the trans flag, baby blue and pink, which are the same as those used in their symbols and logos by real paedophile organisations. These predate the trans flag, but Helms says he wasn’t aware of them.

Helms has also written a book of his fiction exploring his sexuality. Some of his stories are about women, who die and whose identifies are taken over by their widowed husbands. They also include magical little girls who mysteriously don’t age.

Where this becomes sinister is when the same kind of fantasy and pornography is published on the web by organisations that include truly vile and horrific material. Gluck discusses one such organisation and website, which includes not only the transvestite porn, but also paedophilia, bestiality and castration fantasies. It’s able to do this quite legally after the judge ruled in a court case brought by a group for the porn industry that it could be published as long as it was all text without images.

Gluck, like many gender critical feminists and other critics of the trans ideology, is afraid of the links between parts of the trans movement and the paedophile fringe. She notes the way there was also a move to legalise paedophilia in the 1970s along with gay rights and those of other sexualities. In Germany the only people that opposed this was the feminist group Emma. The video clearly expresses the fear that pro-paedophile activists are trying to do the same through their connections to part of the trans movement.

I do not support the persecution, abuse, physical assault or discrimination of anybody because of their gender presentation or sexual orientation. I also certainly don’t believe that transpeople are paedophiles, nor wish to promote that idea.

Following my earlier video, Jim Round, one of the great commenters on this blog, remarked that he had worked with a transwoman, who quietly got on with her job and got married. He believes that most transpeople, at least 80 per cent, are like that, and is suspicious of the culture war against them by right-wing organisations like GB News. He is particularly afraid that they are trying to whip up hatred against all transpeople. I agree with him on much of this. I believe most transpeople probably do just want to get on with their lives as quietly as possible as ordinary citizens. I doubt very many trans people are aware of these links. And while some of the right-wing activists and spokespeople criticising the trans ideology are, I believe, sincere, I also think there’s more than an element of propaganda there as well. The horrors and idiocies committed by part of the trans movement is a convenient stick for the right, with which they can beat the left. And Graham Linehan has talked to gays and transpeople, who are afraid that they will suffer as a community for the ideas and actions of the extremists. What gender critical activists like Graham Linehan wish to do is take the situation back to c. 2010, when there were only three or four cases a year being treated and before the massive explosion in transgender activism, which seems to have encouraged tens of thousands of mentally and emotionally vulnerable people to see themselves mistakenly as trans.

Trans people should not be persecuted, but there are deeply sinister people and organisations on the fringes, who do need to be exposed and purged.

Alex Belfield’s Suspension from YouTube: Update

Andy the Gabby Cabby posted another video yesterday discussing mad right-winger Alex Belfield’s suspension from YouTube. The Cabby didn’t appear himself, but gave the video over to Belfield to say what had happened. According to Belfield, he’d been suspended for several reasons. One was the factcheckers complaining against his remarks about Covid. The second was because he’d been contacted by a journalist for the Times, who wanted to ask him about the smears against Keir Stalin that appeared on one his videos and accused him of making them. Belfield states that he doesn’t even appear in the video and that it’s just Boris Johnson speaking. He therefore called the hack a ‘farthead’, and so got himself banned on that account. And the remarks left by his commenters suggest that it was also because of his personal comments about Carol Vorderman. Not that he seems dismayed by the ban. He talks about having expected it 1 1/2 years ago, and is proud of all the support he’s had from his fans, who he regards as a real family., He’s going to set up his private VOR club, charging a pound a week, which’ll be set up in March.

I’m not surprised that Belfield got a strike against him because of his attitude to the Coronavirus. He’s one of a number of right-wingers, who don’t believe that the disease is all that bad and urge the lockdown to be lifted. He does, however, urge everyone to take the vaccine and has been very careful about what he says about it. But clearly, not careful enough. This comes after 157 medical professionals wrote to YouTube urging that it ban Joe Rogan because one of his guests was sceptical about the efficacy of the lockdown. This was followed by Neil Young taking his videos off the platform, or threatening to.

I can sort of sympathise with him to a certain extent with the Times journo after the way its sister paper smeared Mike as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Nevertheless, even if Belfield didn’t speak on the video and it was all Johnson, the video repeated a terrible, dangerous smear that Belfield didn’t correct. A smear that has resulted in the Labour leader being mobbed, vilified and receiving death threats. And no, I don’t have much sympathy for him, not when he and the other Blairites were all too keen to smear decent , anti-racist women and men as anti-Semites. This was even when they’d opposed real Fascism and anti-Semitism all their lives, like Mark Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and so many others, and were themselves Jewish, like Walker and Greenstein. Because of those smears, these people have been viciously abused and received death threats. Jackie Walker talks about some of the horrendous messages she’s had in one of her videos. She’s been told she should be lynched – an especially horrible comment as her mother was a southern American Black civil rights activist – and she should be cut up, set on fire and her body dumped in bin bags. One entirely blameless Jewish lady in Devon had her car firebombed after the Campaign for Anti-Semitism declared that she was an anti-Semite. These smears are all because these people supported Jeremy Corbyn and/or opposed the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Or else like Mike they dared to correct the fake history pushed by the Labour apparat to show that those accused were innocent.

As for Belfield vanishing behind a paywall, this may well be the end of his popularity. He may retain his fandom, but I can’t see it growing again without the massive public exposure through YouTube. Even if it’s only a pound, people don’t like paywalls, as some of the newspapers have found with their online content. Besides this, there are still unanswered questions about his legal entanglements. Jim Round, one of the great commenters on this blog, has remarked

‘This was predicted by some as the July court case gets closer, he has still not admitted that he is the defendant, and refused to answer questions about donations.
It is not a “ban” as such, as he is still deleting a lot of his content, Playboard is your friend here.
With regards to free speech, as said before, Belfield is quite hypocritical here as if you disagree with him, you get cut off, abused and/or harrassed by him.
I know what you are getting at with over zealous T&C’s but human nature will always unfortunately bring out the bullies who think they can say what they like with no right to reply.’

I’ve seen some of that bullying attitude myself in a video Belfield put up several weeks ago., accusing a caller of wanting to let in 100 million immigrants. The caller, a polite young chap, had called in to challenge him on his opposition to asylum seekers. Belfield responded by saying that there were millions of starving people who’d like to come to Britain. There were 100 million such people in Nigeria, so should we let them all it? Should we round them up and take them here? The lad didn’t know how to respond, so eventually Belfield cut him off. He then sneered and joked with the next caller, who did agree with him, how the poor fellow wanted to allow in 100 million immigrants. But while the lad hadn’t handled the question well, he hadn’t said anything about letting in 100 million people. It was Belfield misrepresenting him, and by extension everyone else who doesn’t share his opposition to ‘dinghy divers’. And Belfield’s remarks about BBC personnel being ‘Guardian-reading, champagne-sipping, oyster-eating, uni-educated Naga Manchushi types’, or alternatively saying they’re lesbian, Celie Imrie-types with clipboards, really is just abuse.

But it does show the poisonous hatred of some parts of the right towards the left, articulated on behalf of working class Whites, who have been left behind by the middle classes and affirmative action.

There Are Big Unanswered Questions about Alex Belfield, His Court Cases and the Donations from His Supporters

Okay, I admit it: I’ve put up any number of posts about mad right-wing internet radio host, Alex Belfield. So many, in fact, that one of the great commenters here described him as ‘my favourite right-winger’. Well, something like that. Belfield is interesting in that he says openly what the Tories think in private but deny in public. He’d like the NHS privatised, because somehow handing it over to private healthcare companies will reverse the lethal chaos and deprivation that four decades of Thatcherite privatisation and three decades of Tory cuts have done. Much of his views are bog-standard Daily Mail bigotry. He rants about the Channel Migrants – ‘the dinghy divers’ – as he calls them – landing here and being put in 5 star hotels. But I’m pretty sure the migrants and asylum seekers aren’t getting five star service. They’re there because there seems to be nowhere else to house them. And while I’ve no doubt some of them are economic migrants, others are equally doubtless genuine asylum-seekers fleeting some horrific regimes. He also hates British benefit recipients. There was a story in the mainstream news a few months ago that there were a couple of million jobs going unfilled. So Belfield put up a video about that, demanding all benefits be stopped so that people should be forced to apply for them. Never mind the fact that a large proportion of the benefits being claimed are by people in work, who can’t support themselves on the paltry wages the Tories and British capitalism have decided are enough to keep them alive.

He also hates the BBC, left-wing media and students and universities. He has a feud going with the Beeb. He claims he was forced out of a career in local radio because of jealousy from the other broadcasters. He, a working class lad from a pit village, who had never gone to uni, had more viewers than they, who were ‘Guardian-reading, middle-class, champagne-sipping, oyster-eating Naga Manchushy – for some reason he has an especial hatred of Naga Manchetty – twirlies. He’s been the subject of a series of raids and prosecutions, including a court action involving Jeremy Vine. He’s appealed and received donations from his viewers to help him fight these cases, all the while protesting his innocence and claiming that the courts have found him innocent, at least in the specific cases he’s put up videos about. However, the truth seems to be rather different and somewhat murkier. Jim Round, one of the great commenters on this blog, has pointed out that Belfield has not disclosed what he’s done with the money. Which contrasts very strongly with his loud denunciation of the BBC for allegedly spending half of the donations to Children In Need on the charity’s directors and staff and refusing to reveal what it has done with the donated money. Last Friday Jim made this comment about Belfield’s court cases.

‘As pointed out previously, Belfield is the defendant in all of the cases, the main one now a six week jury trial at crown court next July, something he fails to mention to is supporters.
The other is the now public Jeremy Vine defamation case. A video he posted shows Belfield waving only the letterhead of an FOI request (again, freely available) to his followers (who uncannily like Farage followers, never research anything he tells them)
There is a lot more to it if you are prepared to waste an hour of your life searching Twitter.
He has now deleted the above video, something he does regularly if his followers pass negative comments or he gets a bit to close to the line.
On a side note, the Liverpool taxi driver has been quoted as saying that the bomber asked specifically for the hospital, and the mosque story seems to come from a Daily Mail “source” make of that what you will.’

And today Jim posted this comment and link to a Twitter post about the Belfield vs. Vine case.

‘Some light reading for you, have a look at the link in this tweet (apologies for it being Twitter)
https://mobile.twitter.com/The_Mumpsimus/status/1464564826731122689?cxt=HHwWgsC4_ej8ltMoAAAA
I am (not) surprised your comments on those YouTube videos get deleted, shocking behaviour from so called bastions of free speech isn’t it?’

If you follow the link, you get to a Tweet from ‘Outing the Snallygasters’, who says of the Vine case:

‘FACT CHECK: 5th Oct’21 the High Court defamation case, brought against Alex Belfield @celebrityradio, commenced. His defence was poor & the Judge made him pay the claimants costs (£25k). He posted a number of deflection tweets/video. Here’s the truth

https://bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/3068.html’

The email address is that of the official court records. The Tweet’s also worth looking at for the three pictures of the thumbnails from Belfield’s videos with ‘False’ stamped across them.

The statement that the judge ordered Belfield to pay Vine’s costs appears to contradict Belfield’s own statements that he’s a pure as the driven snow and the court hasn’t been able to find anything against him.

Belfield is doing well at the moment. He says he has over 300,000 supporters, which is quite possible. It’s a respectable number, but I get the impression that it’s dwarfed by the really popular YouTube creators, like Zoella and the beauty vloggers.

But apart from his appalling right-wing views, there are serious questions to be asked about his own conduct and what he has done with the money given to him through the kindness of his own supporters.