Category Archives: The Regressive Left

Livingstone: The Police Spy Who Loved Me

By Effendi | Published: November 3, 2011

Martin Bright has an amusing piece on Ken Livingstone’s new auto-hagiography, Ken thinks he was never wrong. I beg to differ. Livingstone unkindly calls Bright a “minor intellectual”, an appellation Bright reclaims.

This is Bright on Livingstone’s favourite Islamist copper, Bob Lambert:

Bob Lambert, the Islamist copper, completed his doctorate on his own police work when he left the force but soon established himself as a regular Guardian commentator. He also set up the European Muslim Centre at Exeter University, with money from the Islamist Cordoba Foundation and Islam Expo, although he had to issue an apology for the first piece of work there after complaints from councillors in east London and local MP Jim Fitzpatrick who were wrongly described as Islamphobic.

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Also posted in Islamism | 1 Comment

Radicalisation from the Left and Right

By Guest | Published: September 2, 2011

This is a guest post by Amjad Khan

From a leftist point of view, western capitalism is deeply flawed; everything that is wrong with the world today is down the western capitalism and the greed it promotes. The world is in need of revolutionary change and therefore foreign leaders and developing world revolutionaries who stand up to the west are heroes. This perspective is also underpinned by a soft racism of lower expectation; they don’t view developing world revolutionaries as being capable of formulating complex political ideology, rather they construe their actions as entirely defensive.

The right, in contrast, views the western enlightenment as being the ultimate high point in human civilisation. Therefore, all attempts to create orderly societies should be rooted in enlightenment principles and there is very little to be learnt from others. The developing world is viewed as an exotic place that one must understood and navigated through whilst holding onto and preaching western enlightenment values.

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Also posted in Far Right Extremism | 7 Comments

The Lefty Tribalism of Mehdi Hasan

By Guest | Published: September 1, 2011

This is a guest post by Amjad Khan

It’s not unusual to see political commentators from across the spectrum using high profile events to score cheap points and take a pop at the opposition. But the frequency and manner in which New Statesman’s political editor, Mehdi Hassan, does it is both shocking and appalling. Mehdi seems to use almost every single opportunity he ever gets to bash the right’s policies without really offered alternatives. Whether it is an appearance on Question Time or an article in a paper, as sure as night follows day, Mehdi will be on the attack.

Shortly after the riots, Mehdi interviewed the father of one of the victims of the riots in Birmingham, a brave and outspoken man called Tariq Jahan. One would think that the interview was an opportunity to explore the tensions in the city, the impact of Tariq’s brave intervention, the grief of his family, the future for his community. But no, in characteristic fashion Mehdi Hasan used the opportunity to, yes you’ve guessed it, bash the right and little esle. Mehdi spends the first half of the interview using quotes from Tariq to justify his attack on the PMs proposed tougher sentencing for rioters and statement about ‘broken society’. The pathetic wasted opportunity of an interview can be seen in full here.

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Posted in The Regressive Left | 1 Comment

apparently we’re all robert spencer now, according to the weasels at “spinwatch”

By bananabrain | Published: August 24, 2011

we at the spittoon have for some time been a target for the not-very-impressive “spinwatch” site, which appears to be the hobby-horse of strathclyde university’s answer to bob pitt, dr david miller. dr miller, we hardly need remind you, appears to think that spittoon authors are without exception rabid “neo-cons”, by which he appears to mean some sort of catch-all imperialism of liberal democracy imposed by force of arms on the bucolic, picaresque and entirely pacifist natives of the middle-east and south asia. as if this wasn’t bad (or inaccurate) enough, we are also supposed to be apostles of islamophobia; apparently it isn’t clear enough to someone who is supposed to be an academic that what we oppose is the virulent political ideology known as islamism – as well as other forms of religious and political extremism; jewish, christian, atheist, muslim, ethnicity-based – we are equal-opportunity anti-extremists, or we certainly try to be.

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Also posted in Activism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Blogosphere, Dodgy Policy Wonks, Education, European Fascism, Far Right Extremism, Homophobia, Identity Politics, Islamism, Moral relativism, Nutters, Racism, The Far Left, The Left | 20 Comments

David Miller and the case of the missing comment on CiF

By avicenna | Published: August 24, 2011

David Miller of the University of Strathclyde is a man of dubious intention and reprehensible politics. Miller has a piece up on CiF which reflect his entire thesis. It shows the Guardian once again using its formidable powers of influence to celebrate his kind of politics.

Miller writes:

In our report we examine two of the most prominent British thinktanks engaged in work on the role of Islam in UK politics. The Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) is the smaller of the two, focusing mainly on Islam, while Policy Exchange has a wider remit. Nevertheless, their work has followed quite similar lines. They have both rejected counter-terrorism policies based on public safety and have instead sought to revive discredited counter-subversion policies from the cold war era – policies that targeted a generation of trade union leaders and peace activists, including future Labour ministers.

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Also posted in Conspiracy Theory Madness | 1 Comment

the big society, riots and “spiral dynamics”

By bananabrain | Published: August 15, 2011

obviously, a great deal has been written about the riots to date and a great deal of predictable outpouring has also taken place. what i wanted to offer to this debate is, however, along more behavioural lines.

i have for some time been aware of the powerful analytical frameworks for bio-psycho-social systems developed by the american psychologist dr clare graves and systematised for practical application by don beck and chris cowan in the excellent book “spiral dynamics” (i’m not affiliated with anyone concerned, incidentally). at the risk of sounding like somewhat of a “fanboy”, as i believe it is called on teh interwebs, i am convinced it constitutes an important piece of intellectual real estate for the understanding of complex socio-political systems, particularly in behavioural terms.

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Also posted in Activism, Blogosphere, Civil Rights, Communalism, Crime, Democracy, Education, Ethics, Exegesis, Human Rights, Identity Politics, Media, Misc, Moral relativism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctnes gone mad!, Politics, The Far Left, The Left, UK Politics | Leave a comment

Hugo Schmidt pwns Germaine Greer

By Effendi | Published: June 15, 2011

Hugo Schmidt writes about Germaine Greer’s recent ignorant and maniacal performance in inimitable style in Germaine Greer Strikes Again:

I have no idea whether Greer has ever met any British soldiers, or whether, as is usually the case, she cannot move a millimeter beyond the confines of her narrow skull, but this charge is simply insane. As a member of the Officer Training Corps, I have had the good fortune to meet soldiers from many branches, including the hyper-testosterone Royal Marine Commandos, and the idea of any of them going feral in such as way is simply nuts. Not to mention the fact, that were any single individual to go mad in such a way, he would be prosecuted by the full force of the entire armed forces.

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Posted in The Regressive Left | 48 Comments

Germaine Greer: How to leave your credibility in tatters on live television

By Effendi | Published: June 13, 2011

An appalling segment from last Thursday’s Question Time when “legendary left-wing feminist”, Germaine Greer, in a demented self-contradictory rant, stated that the rape of women in Bangladesh in 1971 “never stood up” and was “another urban myth” in order to justify another mass-rape of women, currently in perpetration by Gaddafi’s forces in Libya today.

So let’s follow her line of reasoning:

She starts off by asserting that “Rape is always present where you have slaughter and you don’t have to have a government fiat to do it”.

She then attempts to diminishes the severity of the Libyan rapes by Gaddafi’s soldiers with this shameful and appalling mock irony:

“What’s wrong with these Libyans. Everyone else did without [viagra], as far as I can see. Give them enough viagra and they’ll be raping each other”

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Also posted in War Crimes | 25 Comments

The Intellectual Breakdown of Noam Chomsky

By avicenna | Published: June 6, 2011

Poor old Noam Chomsky. It appears the scared old cow of the left wing is going through an intellectual breakdown of late. After condemning the the US for the death of Osama Bin Laden, in an acceptance speech for the Sydney Peace Prize, he has now praised the Pakistani military.

“The commandos who violated Pakistani sovereignty were given orders to fight their way out if necessary. They risked coming into confrontation with the Pakistani army.
”In a society barely hanging together, the military is very stable, very professional. They are dedicated to the defence of Pakistan, which is probably the fastest-growing nuclear power in the world. If confronted it will fight.”

Yes, you read that right. He priaised the Pakistani military and chose to ignore he plight of ordinary Pakistanis, who have borne the brunt of Islamic terrorism perpetrated by vicious extremists who regard Osama Bin Laden as their spiritual leader. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, there have been nearly 35,000 civilian fatalities in Pakistan caused by Islamic terrorism since 2003.

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Also posted in Terrorism | 3 Comments

“Islamophobe” is the new “Neocon”

By Guest | Published: February 21, 2011

This is a guest post by Mr Happy

One of my earliest memories of censorship occurred when I was in high school. I was debating the merits of military intervention in Iraq with a select group of friends. The first thing that struck me was how lonely my point of view was, I couldn’t, not for one second, understand how one could justify the continued existence of the Saddam regime.

“Even if there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction, Saddam had previously used such weapons, twice. He is uniquely evil to the region.” I remember stating, rather proudly.

And at that very moment, someone called me a neocon. I didn’t know what a neoconservative was (if I did, I would have perhaps defended the term better). It was clear it was meant to be a negative word.

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Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Islamism | 1 Comment

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