Friday 10 January 2020

Peter Tatchell- What's Wrong with the Left?

Although I've never met him, Peter Tatchell could be considered a former colleague of mine on The People's Voice, a now defunct internet TV service. Tatchell is originally from Australia, but rose to prominence in 1960's Britain when he was part of the Gay Liberation Front, an organization campaigning for the civil rights of homosexuals. He has also become renowned as an activist for many other causes; most notably, to his immense credit, he arrested Robert Mugabe. I have had major problems with some of the things Tatchell has come out with in the past, especially his worrying fixation on sex around the borders of the age of consent. I denounced him at the time for such disgusting statements; however in recent years he has changed his attitude. He has developed a more libertarian outlook. He refused to condemn Ashers Bakery, the Belfast company who declined to make a cake for a gay wedding and as a result he was "cancelled". I suspect it was this experience that inspired him to give a lecture at the Institute of Art and Ideas called "What's Wrong with the Left?" He makes the point that the Left defines itself more by what it is against than what it is for. Just think how many organizations there are that are called "so-and-so against such-and-such". Therefore the Left is essentially negative, identified purely by what it opposes. It seems undecided or even unaware of what it is in favour of. It is beset by infighting (as if the Right is not!?). Momentum activists turned viciously against Owen Jones when he came out and said he did not support Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoQon8_gE98. Tatchell complains that the Left cannot perceive a good intentions. They have this "one strike and you're out" rule in which a single deviation from orthodoxy results in total and permanent excommunication. He wants to see the Left become more forgiving and embrace a wider range of opinions. He decries complete state ownership of industry and calls for that ultimate expression of capitalism: employee cooperatives. He stresses the need for free speech in the same kinds of words Dr Jordan Peterson or Sargon of Akkad would use. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c-lInHKUEU.

The Left criticizing itself from within is not a new thing, in fact George Orwell did this a lot in the 1930's, see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30553.The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier. Oddly enough some of the stereotypes he runs through are recognizable to somebody living in the modern world, almost ninety years later; the "fruit juice drinking, sandal wearing, nudist, sex maniac, pistachio-coloured shirt wearing crank!" The thing which both Orwell and Peter Tatchell do not understand is that the Left doesn't have a problem, the Left is the problem. It cannot be reformed or healed because it is fundamentally pathological. It is a mind virus created by the New World Order to imprison human beings on a deep psychological and cultural level. (And I'm not just condemning the Left; the same can be said for most of the Right, but that's a topic for a separate article.) It is revealing to see the acerbic fury which the Left descends into over its own internal conflicts, for example the TERF's versus intersectional feminists, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2019/10/buying-douglas-murrays-book.html. The anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party is another example. The reason Labour is not tackling their anti-Semitism problem is because it is coming almost exclusively from the radical Islamist tendency who have infiltrated the party. Labour have painted themselves into a corner. Not to tackle the issue is "anti-Semitic!", but to tackle the issue would be "Islamophobic!" It's easier just to run away and turn Jeremy Corbyn into a scapegoat. It's interesting and encouraging that Peter Tatchell now has viewpoints that are very much in flux. This is the only response any intellectually honest thinking person can have when confronted with the cultic brutality and logical contradictions of the leftist milieu. I hope he continues on his journey much further and I wish him luck.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ben you are way off on this one, I mean the latter part of your article. The reason that Labour is not tackling the anti-semitism within the party is because it is all but non-existent. I dare say there is anti-Zionism prompted by principled individuals who feel they must speak out about the slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people. Such people are being smeared as anti-Semitic, and the entirety of the 'anti-Semetism' smear campaign against labour was an orchestrated one - an unholy alliance of pro-Israeli pressure groups and an opportunistic Conservative party & right wing press. I am surprised by your lack of insight into this matter especially saying that labour has been infiltrated by Islamists! Presumably your research into the NWO and its false-flag terrorism suggests to you that 'radical Islam' is not a real threat to the world but has been made a bogey-man (or that what exists of it - ISIS for example - is funded and controlled by Western backed interests...). Regards, Barry

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi Barry. I don't think I'm way off at all. Yes, I'm well aware that radical Islam is not the source of our problems, it is simply to weapon being used by that source. I've said this many times, such as in my review of Tommy Robinson's documentary. Unfortunately Labour is very accommodating to radical Islamists and does not act against them; hence many of them have joined the party and support the party. It is not non-existent. However, I should have repeated the point in this article about the Israel lobby and their influence too. I have mentioned it in other publications and will try to find one of them to add as background to correct my oversight. I have seen the documentary by Al-Jazeera about the pro-Israeli Labour activists attacking Corbyn and the others in the party who are members of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. I think both of these tendencies are practicing entrism in Labour right now. The two are not mutually exclusive.