Alleged thinker and philosopher Roger Scruton, whose tenure as a Government advisor was terminated after remarks he made in a Staggers interview came to light, is clearly feeling sore about the whole business. As a result, he has enlisted the services of the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine to get his apologia out there.
He's so desperate that his new friend ...
And when it comes to sneering disdain, Sir Prof does not disappoint. “I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings”. Young leftists? Oh, how GHASTLY!
He goes on “Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission recently entrusted to me”. Merely words. And it’s all about FREEZE PEACH!
... is HIM. No, don't laugh
As if. He does, though, admit saying “Many of the Budapest intelligentsia are Jewish, and form part of the extensive networks around the Soros Empire”, but his excuse, “In retrospect I could have chosen the words more carefully”, is not good enough. Why that should he has been laid out by Eaton in rather fewer words than Scruton needs.
“On Roger Scruton and his defenders … There is no context in which it is ok to refer to a ‘Soros empire’ (an anti-semitic trope) … Or to refer to Chinese people as replicas of each other (a racist trope) … Or to refer to Islamophobia as a ‘propaganda word’ + Muslim ‘tribes’”. Quite. Hence his conclusion “Entirely appropriate that Roger Scruton was sacked as a government adviser less than four hours after I tweeted my interview with him”.
This is, let us not drive this one around the houses for too long, an open and shut case of Scruton being caught dealing in forthright bigotry. Yet on he drones “We are being cowed into abject conformity around a dubious set of official doctrines and told to adopt a world view that we cannot examine for fear of being publicly humiliated by the censors”.
FREEZE PEACH! FREEZE PEACH! But it isn’t about his freedom to speak, or indeed to discuss whatever he chooses. It is his abject tone-deafness to being called out for views which place him outside the mainstream of polite society.
Nor is it going to help him that his cause has now been taken up by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, who are demanding that Eaton and his Staggers colleagues pony up the interview tapes. Sadly, what little credibility Staines and his gofers had has long gone, and the only people still believing they have any influence are a dwindling band of mainly Tory MPs, and a few out-of-touch hacks.
Roger Scruton opened his mouth, inserted boot, and experienced the consequences. Nobody is censoring him. It is most revealing, though, that in seeking to excuse himself, he aligns his cause with that of the far-right. And that his most vocal apologists are Muslim hater Doug Murray The K and Brendan O’Neill. Oh what a giveaway.
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2 comments:
God I love Zelo Street when it's on form.
Got this one wrong Tim, perhaps it is time to revisit it seeing that he has been offered his old job back after everyone apologized for denouncing him without checking the facts.
And credit to him for not running to the lawyers but allowing The New Statesman to correct their errors.
Thankfully merely bring conservative is not yet a sackable offence!
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