Too Much Blarney – 5

Although his blog is still, as I write, hidden away from view, Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) chief executive Donal Blaney can still be read and appreciated over at the YBF website. Here, the true nature of this supposedly “non partisan” organisation is not hard to see.

For starters, check out Resources ... YBF suggests to see recommended reading familiar to anyone on the right. High priest of economic quack doctory Milton Friedman, the frankly disturbing advocate of schoolchildren carrying guns Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich, who wanted to be Bill Clinton’s nemesis (but wasn’t) all feature. There is also “The Case Against Barack Obama” a book which carries the baggage of one of the more ridiculous conspiracy theories – that the media, which the Neocon right in the USA for some reason believes is in thrall to the left, got Obama elected, rather than the more mundane reason, that the Republican challenge wasn’t good enough.

Down at the lower right of the page, a section helpfully titled “Know Your Enemy”, and written by Blaney himself, leaves the reader in no doubt that this organisation, far from being “non partisan”, is Conservative to the core. I particularly enjoyed his description of Liberal Conspiracy as “venal and unpleasant”: having just contributed a guest post to LibCon, I am honoured to find myself the target of such weapons grade drivel.

The assumption of left wing bias in media and education, transplanted directly from the Republican right, is presented in the About part of the website, though the idea is one that the right talks about rather more than it actually proves: the idea of schools and universities as leftist hotbeds might have gained some traction in the late 1960s, but not now. As for the media, with the Mirror the sole print cheerleader for the left, the idea of bias hinges on demonising the BBC – also talked about rather more than proved.

So what might the YBF’s disciples bring to politics? Well, there is the Summer Conference Programme to give you a hint: this tempting looking trip to the USA (with the possibility of meeting creepy Newt Gingrich and scary Ann Coulter) includes such destinations as the Nixon library, named for the last President to jump shortly before he would have been pushed. Moreover, the programme itself is named after Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: the President who oversaw the doubling of his nation’s indebtedness, and the Prime Minister who gave us well over three million unemployed.

All this and Donal Blaney too? I’ll pass on that one, thanks.