Neil Clark’s “Best UK Blog” award following a classic vote early vote often strategy has stirred up a bit of a hornets’ nest over at Comment is Free (yes. I did write that!). In the discussion following Clark’s two commenters stand out. The first is “antifaschismus”:
“‘The Exile’ and Neil Clark are both adherents of the Strasserite Third Position exemplified by the National Bolshevik Movement and to a lesser extent the National Front and BNP. Mr Clark an apologist for Serbian fascism and genocide is the prospective parliamentary political candidate for the third positionist British People’s Alliance in Wantage and ‘The Exile’ who was involved in an attempt to form a political alliance with the NF/BNP socialises with BNP Oldham organiser Mick Treacy when he’s in Britain. They no more represent the mainstream of working class opinion - or any current of European socialism - than does David Cameron.”
Nothing contentious there apart from the assumption that the “British People’s Alliance” is a substantive organisation but the Guardian moderators chose to delete the comment while at the same time giving free rein to the money-blogging fascist Ken Bell (’The Exile’).
Accusing the Grauniad of stooping to new lows has become a popular blog sport. The reality is that the publishing group is a consistent offender when it comes to giving space to anti-democratic political opinion. Such is the nature of left-liberalism. The Guardian newspaper and its online forums may have deteriorated markedly in recent times but so too has political discourse in general.
Does Neil Clark represent a sizeable political constituency within Britain? To me that sounds like the wishful thinking of modern day fascists and their paleo-leftist fellow travellers for whom the world is terrifying in its complexity. But the problem is not only with intellectually-challenged writers such as Neil Clark. Take Seumas Milne for example. In Milne we have the thinking person’s Neil Clark and as a senior columnist and editor he is untouchable.
Paleo-leftism is undoubtedly appealing to some. Karl Naylor a CiF commenter who writes as portrays Clark’s Strasserite ideology as a form of nostalgic fundamentalism. I am more sympathetic to antifaschismus’ succinct description of Neil Clark and the “British People’s Alliance” but Naylor makes a number of good points. For example he sees weird alliances and ideological schizophrenia everywhere from Respect to neoconservative cliques such as the Henry Jackson Society. Their mode of operation he says is to scramble as many facts as possible with which to bend reality to the ideological prescriptions of the creed.
We have no shortage of opinion journalists who make a living from writing “jeremiads against neoliberal economics and militarist neoconservatism” to use Naylor’s words from his blog and Neil Clark is arguably the least talented of them all. There is a market for this material and I’m therefore not surprised that Clark still enjoys the Guardian’s patronage.
Gans on a bit like - read about a third of then decided I’d be better off swotting up for my test as it’s vitally important for me to know what percentage of Britons own their own homes and when the Saints’ days are.
“there is a lot to say on the subject - of the idiosyncrasies of the hapless pro-Milosevic blogger Neil Clark. Mr Clark is a fanatic and anignoramus but (as you will now be aware) more distinctive even than the extent to which he exemplifies those qualities he’s a vulgar fraud.”
I don’t as a rule. This business kicked off when Liberal Conspiracy’s Aaron Heath congratulated Clark on his award. Heath had no idea about Clark. Then Clark attacked me on his blog. I don’t intend to keep this up for long. Clark is a worthless piece of shit but the affair has served to highlight a wider problem with the Guardian/CiF and is therefore good blog fodder.
As for CiF. I no longer write for it and only ever read articles published there in cases such as this. That means roughly one a fortnight or less.
It was a overlong and needed editing. There were just lots of thoughts I’d written spontaneously as a draft over a few weeks. I rarely get enough time to write in the way I’d like to. But then thought I just might as well put it out anyway.
Interested to see Ken Bell popping up again. Ken was a mate of mine back in the day and well worth having a pint and a rant with when Thatcher ruled supreme. But as a genuine working-class guy he took anti-Thatcherism to all sorts of extremes openly adhering to the wildest shores of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend. He opposed the Iraq war from an openly pro-Saddam position (and it would seem the Serbian war also) and went well over the border between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He is. I believe pro-Mugabe too. Still. I suppose he holds up one end of an important debate….
All revolutionaries have in their midst those who will institute a power structure in their interests.
The Manifesto suggested this would not happen in a proletarian revolution because the proletarians are the true revolutionary class. But we have seen in every instance of “proletarian” revolution so far a clique always forms in place of the overthrown power in a position of privilege. The Manifesto was wrong arseholism is classless.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2007/11/18/from-journalistic-jeremiads-to-strasserism/
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