After alleged Home Secretary Priti Patel was upbraided by the host on The Andy Marr Show™ for smirking at the concerns of several industry groups at the prospects for disruption as a result of Brexit, there had to be pushback from her allies out there on the right. The intervention from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog was clearly insufficient. Who else would step up to the plate?
Ah, but you all knew the answer to that one. Brendan O’Neill, who was only recently defending faithful Murdoch retainer Trevor Kavanagh’s viciously racist “What will we do about The Muslim Problem?”, is now prepared to call out anyone who thinks the Home Secretary is making light of industry concerns over the economy as racist.
“The media-class loathing for the home secretary has a nasty racist undertone” he declares. Hello Bren! You ARE the media class, remember? Then he sneeringly dismisses Marr’s rebuke. “It felt rude and paternalistic and more than a little sexist … a snooty BBC man needlessly reprimanding a female politician … Marr’s insulting of Patel”.
Andrew Marr “snooty”? Just fuck off, Bren. Reducing the argument to name-calling is what you’re accusing him of doing, remember? But he’s off and running, telling of “The middle-class, largely white Remainers who have a particular loathing for Patel”. How does he know they are “middle-class, largely white Remainers”? He doesn’t. He’s making it up.
Then comes the selling of the pass. "Doesn’t she know that immigrants are not meant to believe or say right-leaning things, and certainly not while wearing a smirk? Perhaps she needs some lessons on how to be a good immigrant in 21st-century Britain”. Priti Patel, as O’Neill concedes, is not an immigrant. She was, whisper it quietly, born in Islington.
That does not stop the most blatant deflection: accusing that “media class” of which he is not a member, honestly, of being IDENTITARIANS. That’s right: Brendan O’Neill is smearing those with whom he disagrees as actual Nazis, without actually using the N-Word. You think I jest? Here he is warming up: “the woke, identitarian lobby”.
Yes, for Bren, the left is now the far-right. Shazam! Just like that. And there is more. “The identitarian set’s reduction of people to mere representatives of groups, to little more than racial and cultural creatures … That’s a more racist idea than anything I have ever heard from Priti Patel or the rest of Boris’s cabinet”. That is purest bullshit.
Brendan O’Neill was prepared to excuse Bozo The Clown’s racism, as well as that of Kavanagh. He attacked Diane Abbott after she called foul on her treatment on BBC Question Time. He backed racist bigot Morrissey over his attack on the shadow home secretary. He attacked David Lammy, calling the MP “hateful” and “mad”.
But now he’s attacking those who don’t like the Home Secretary smirking at the idea of horrendous economic disruption, effectively calling them Nazis. Just so he can score a few more paycheques from the Murdoch press, and get invited on Politics Live.
Brendan O’Neill’s punditry is the lowest of the low. But you knew that already.
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That should be enough "controversy" to get O'Neill on to a TV "press review".
ReplyDeleteSuch programmes specialise in liars and hypocrites like him.
Well, Tim, that makes YOU, er, a Nazi.
ReplyDeleteGosh. Who'da thought it?