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Sunday 29 November 2015

Harry Cole - Bullying Personified

After the character of the 36th Vice President of the USA became more widely known, Democrat Presidential challenger Adlai Stevenson gave a warning that was heeded rather more in 1974 than 1956: “Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America”.
The bully may also be an unappealing slob

Today, out there on the right, there is a true heir to the Nixon tradition of low and nasty politics, who knows full well about the kind of bullying that went on when Mark Clarke was welcomed back into the Tory Party, because he has been a full participant in that kind of behaviour. Step forward Harry Cole, exponent extraordinaire of the loud and shouty.
The photo that launched an intemperate phone rant (the young woman at left is Carrie Symonds)

Cole perfected his act as a dishonest and unprincipled bully and smear artiste while at Edinburgh University, where he stood for the top post at the Students’ Association and asked his opponents to sign a “clean campaign” pledge, while also running an anonymous smear blog, which was duly rumbled. He lost. Sadly, the techniques honed there were seamlessly transferred to his time at the Guido Fawkes blog.
The bully need not vary his behaviour merely because he is attacking women

Here, the bullying element reached its zenith in January this year, when an inoffensive post on Zelo Street which said nothing other than that there might be a good reason Cole had wisely gone on a diet resulted in an intemperate, shouty phone call and a follow-up email, of which this is a typical sample: “Now, that picture is owned by David Bennett via Getty Images. It needs to go. You do not have permission to use it and you can take it down now or I will call him to make sure he pursues payment”.
All the unappealing bullies together. Cole is the last one to be untainted by scandal

He had no intention of ringing anyone. That was not the point; the point was to use bullying to bend others to his will. He would take the same approach whoever opposed him, as witness his dismissive and patronising tone to Naomi Colvin over the earlier behaviour of Mark Clarke, to whom his loyalty included turning up to see his newly-born child.

Behold another of the YBF's alumni

The bullying tone extends into Cole’s media appearances: any kind of intellectual process is eschewed in favour of loud proclamation of his case, and if he deems it necessary, even louder dismissal of dissent, or any attempt at argument. And now it extends into his reporting on his friend Clarke.
This is how close he is to Mark Clarke - something Sun readers are not told

Sun readers are not informed that Cole and Clarke are friends, nor that they go back a long way. Both were part of the now-moribund Trade Union Reform Campaign, along with disgraced ex-MP Aidan Burley and Clarke’s sidekick AndrĂ© Walker, where they dishonestly used the presence in the Commons of Darren Gough to promote themselves. But none of this is presented to Sun readers, despite the clear conflict of interest.

Harry Cole is the modern face of Nixonland. He is congenitally dishonest, utterly without either principle or shame, and quite prepared to verbally and physically bully anyone and everyone who opposes him. He and Mark Clarke are honoured and, indeed, decorated alumni of the Young Britons’ Foundation. He knows all about bullying in politics because he is one of its most able practitioners. 

And he will still not come clean with Sun readers. Bullies can also be cowards.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tim,

But was Stevenson's warning heeded?

Since then, this country has had Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron. The Americans have had Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama.

Both countries have suffered the corruption of extreme right wing politics that have brought us mass unemployment, mass poverty, war and international terrorism. Even worse misery is scheduled as every bit of humanist legislation is either eliminated or threatened. The Anglo American Establishment now run exactly the kind of society warned against in the late 1940s by George Orwell and Carroll Quigley.

The pathetic reactionary Henry Cole is merely another willing sock puppet looking to blame the victims of the immorality he represents. He's a logical product of a system that is rotting away before our eyes. So is mainstream media and its organised liars.

After Cole goes there will be others. Nobody should forget the words of one of the ancestors of his paymasters, J.P.Morgan: "The working class? I can always pay one half to kill the other half." Guess which half the Henry Coles of this world belong to.

So fasten your seat belt. It looks like an utterly corrupt parliament is about to launch yet another one of its regular mass murders of innocents. Cole and his disgusting ilk are the very least of it.

Andy McDonald said...

Nixon actually accomplished a few things in his time. Putting him in the same basket as Cole?

Anonymous said...

I once challenged the accuracy of a tweet by mr Cole
His reply was to question my name (I tweet under my own )
And then disappear leaving a bunch of sycophants to troll my account

Shortly after every time I posted a reply to either his or Guido's posts an almost immediate identical put down came from so called techno Guido ac

These people are not just intemperate liars they are a cancer on our democracy
No matter what you may believe in politically the first requirement of the 4th estate must be accuracy and honesty
If we have lost that then we have lost all that we profess too

J said...

Seems way back when... they were already worried about Mark Clarke.

So he was trouble, before he was recently trouble... ooops.

2008, from the Daily Hate Male.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1068756/Future-Tatler-Tory-candidate-doubt-party-expresses-grave-concerns-fit-MP.html

Squirrel Nutkin said...

Spot on! If you'll forgive me recycling my comment at Liberal England:


1) If this mess proves career-ending for them, it couldn't happen to a more deserving crew.

2) I can't help thinking that when they were young and impressionable they watched All The President's Men and decided that CREEP and the "ratfuckers" were the heroes and role-models.

3) Let's also spare a thought for Tim "Cassandra" Ireland who's been hammering away at the Tories' toleration (verging on sanctioning) of this kind of amoral campaigning since not long after I started reading political blogs over a decade ago.

Anonymous said...

After what he has taken part in let's order the Dove soaps for his jail time showers with armed robbers. Dirty Harry and his hate crime photographic collection. He can be Mark Clarke's prison bride and slop out their cells. Cold, lumpy porridge, exercise drills and turnips every day for three years should turn them into men.

Anonymous said...

There are rumours that Cole was using links with Crosby to savage anyone he pleased. Very nasty and there have been other suicide attempts. Another source places either him and a current UKIP press officer as a mole providing information, never minding whether that information was true or false, from Farage back to Crosby. Both Farage and Crosby were being played off and set up.