[RedSparrows]

Evidence? Nuance? Subtlety? Compassion? Authority? Integrity? Honour? Fairness? Justice? A sense of possibility in human affairs to go beyond the same fucking stories we've heard for decades, that are clung to for the sake of the unimaginative, the terminally dense, the cruel?

nah mate, just bitch about the weirdos, it's all so unfair, right on

[Yug]

It's not just "bitching about the weirdos" though. This is starting to sound like the shit Hitler and his cronies were coming out with in the 1920s.

[MisterMuncher]

Even if one were to accept that Goodwin's new elite actually exists, and is displacing there prior elite, it simply does not work as a scare story without having within it some horrifically bigoted assumptions. Otherwise it's just Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

[Tubby Isaacs]

Matt's evidence is his book's listing on Amazon.

The people he's hanging about with at the conference don't exactly give the appearance of being intellectually open minded, do they? And being unfriended (heck, that's terrible) could mean you're a racist bore.

[Yug]

God! I couldn't stomach that Alastair Campbell. Always shrieking like a fucking child.

Goodwin is a fucking twat. I wonder what he wants to be when he grows up?

[mattomac]

They have all the power, they’ve been able to elect two PMs without an election, one who was only taken on after losing his first election.

The only people who bang on about subversives in history are those that cause damage, and the end of the day people want things that run and services to be there. There is no election to be won these mad fantasies of the far right and I don’t debate with people who think eugenics is something to discuss openly and see it’s merits which is where Godwin has been this past month.

[Spoonman]

Matt's evidence is his book's listing on Amazon.

The people he's hanging about with at the conference don't exactly give the appearance of being intellectually open minded, do they? And being unfriended (heck, that's terrible) could mean you're a racist bore.

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As I've said before, freedom of speech has never meant having the right to an audience.

[Youngian]

They have all the power, they’ve been able to elect two PMs without an election, one who was only taken on after losing his first election.

And they still think they’re the protester as they have no vocabulary beyond heckling. Feel sure Mr and Mrs Starmer who would have told their son that empty tins rattle the most.

[Andy McDandy]

...and I don’t debate with people who think eugenics is something to discuss openly...

Eugenics- the rich kid claiming he's fucking incredible because his dad's got a Porsche.

[Youngian]

You need to create laboratory conditions in society that would make studying genetic differences valid; economic and social equality.

Matt’s having another hissy fit, he seems to have a bit of a thing for Emily M. Was she the sort of smart fit bird in the student union bar that ignored his advances?

[RedSparrows]

Can someone please point out how and where 'identifying different genders and sexual proclivities, and destigmatising them', is in any way 'sexualising' (particularly as the silence about advertising, porn, et al is deafening)?

They keep saying it (or Yanks keep saying it, and now Goodwin, in his fearless independence, apes it), but it seems to me it's simply the fact the very existence of said people is a thing that irks them. It's not consistent, nor is it sensible. This repeated cowardice is valorised as strength, by these clowns - a different flavour of the classic reactionary 'we're so strong/we're so oppressed' paradox.

[Yug]

It boils down to the classic stupid person's view of the world. Anything different from mainstream'normal', that they don't understand, is to be feared. They don't like this feeling of fear. Instead of finding out about the different and gaining a little understanding, it's much easier to just hate. They know it's considered wrong to just hate, so they wrap up their hate in (what they think are) reasonable-sounding reasons why the different should not be normalised. In short, "I don't like it so it must be stopped". The mantra of the ignorant everywhere. There is no rational reason for it. Just laziness, ignorance, and stupidity.

[Youngian]

Lewis Goodall described NatCon as a fantasy alliance and asks if you can see nationalists and moral majority conservatives in bed together? It works in the US but I get what Goodall is saying: can you see Tommeh and his boozed up mates off to a Billy Graham meeting with Cliff Richard as guest star.

[Andy McDandy]

At every stage of sexual liberation, be it votes for women or legalising same sex relationships, the right has opposed it, swore blind it will cause the downfall of society, and then quietly moved on when that didn't come to pass. Same on race issues, from abolition of slavery to ending discrimination in the workplace. All these things that the likes of Littlejohn say "nobody wants to go back to" were at one stage the line in the sand which they said progressive thought must not be allowed to cross.

And they were crossed, and the line got re-drawn a little further backward. Eventually all that's left are the absolute worst case scenarios - any more sexual equality and we'll be shagging cats and pimping out the kids. Any more racial equality and we won't get a shag*. Unless it's a cat.

Tied into it all is a sense that while obviously gay, black and female people exist, they are sadly not capable of reaching the standard of being a straight white man with an acceptable accent. For this they must be pitied, and must spend their lives acknowledging their inferiority, in return for our compassion and the occasional handout (and slap, to remind them of their place). Yet they revel in it, their lives of otherness! Any more of that and the kids might start thinking it's OK.

*Back in the 8th and 9th centuries, one of the common complaints about Vikings was that they had good hygiene and treated women with respect, suggesting it was not so much rape and pillage as fill me thrill me you big Swedish stud. Seriously, the sexual inadequacy of Anglo-Saxon men has a lot to answer for.

[Tubby Isaacs]

What aspects of modern Britain do you like?
Our history.

[Yug]

I'm with Matt there. I don't like what's happening to the people who dominate our society. We *really* don't need Nazis here.

Oh. Is that not what he meant?

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Civic culture" is what? Just something he's stuck in to sound old fashioned and clever? What's his pal Bozo done to civic culture?

"Countryside". Where real people live, no doubt.

[Youngian]

"Civic culture" is what?

Etc, etc?
Are manners British? Johnny Foreigner just won’t queue.

[Andy McDandy]

The Great British eccentric, ever ready to pop up in papers showing who knows best - faceless bureaucracy or the plucky little guy. Ready with a football for the motorway traffic jam in a heatwave, just as he's ready with his canoe for when it floods. And when a camera crew's passing.

This is just "spirited amateur" crap that was being spewed out in WW2 (and yes, the irony being that if anyone was the apogee of state planning and bureaucracy winning wars, it was the Allies over the chaos that was Axis planning).

[Tubby Isaacs]

They don't have "characters" in other countries.