FRANK FUREDI'S JOURNEY FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Frank is an Australian psychologist and ex-Marxist who has now long been a British resident

"Furedi found himself feeling 'ever-more estranged' from the conventional left. He recalls three incidents in particular that suggested the left was moving in a troublesome direction. 'The first time I felt it was when there were all these demands for "No Platform" for fascists, that fascists should be censored. I have always been, and continue to be, vehemently anti-fascist, but I felt that was just a cop-out, a very anti-democratic way of avoiding debate. I argued that rather than saying "No Platform" we should take up the fascists' views and undermine them, instead of opting for this very authoritarian, censorious approach.'

The second event was the miners' strike of 1984. A key issue in the strike was whether there should be a national ballot, which would allow all miners to vote on whether the strike should continue. In places like Yorkshire miners were striking hard, while other miners, in particular in Nottinghamshire, refused to strike on the grounds that there had not been a national ballot. The RCP campaigned for a ballot; just about everybody else on the left disagreed and the ballot was vetoed by Arthur Scargill, head of the National Union of Miners. 'I fully supported the strike', says Furedi. 'But I also called for a ballot, with a rank-and-file campaign to win the vote, for a strike that could be supported by everybody.' Thatcher supported a national ballot because she thought it would break the strike; the RCP supported a campaign for a ballot as a way of strengthening the miners. 'But others on the left wanted to prevent a ballot in case the vote went the wrong way. I thought this qualified approach to democracy on the left was a very big problem.'

The third event that further estranged Furedi from the left was the Cleveland child abuse scandal of 1987, when a number of families in the industrial region in the north-east of England were falsely accused of abusing their kids - often by health and social workers who considered themselves part of the left. 'I felt very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed', says Furedi. 'People who I had known on the left were going around saying that loads of working-class men are child abusers. This very negative view of human beings took me aback. The kind of panic about working-class behaviour that would traditionally have been triggered by the right was starting to become a fixture of the left.'"

More here.

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ELSEWHERE

What pathetic little sulkers the Germans have become! They cancelled their participation in an American Army display because one of the Americans present had once criticized Germany. How dare he! Germans can say anything they like about the USA -- even call the American President a Nazi -- but Americans cannot return the criticism. They can dish criticism out but can't take it in reply. Pathetic. What a waste it was for America to defend such mush for so long. Most of the Germans with guts must have died in Hitler's wars -- leaving mainly shirkers behind. (Via Davids Medienkritik).

Good man: "The British Prime Minister has appealed to Britons to back his stance against "terror and chaos" in Iraq and compared the situation in the country to the darkest days of World War II".

Prominent peacenik Senator Mark Hatfield is voting for Bush! "My support is based on the fact that our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, a day on which we lost more American lives than we did in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power".

I am glad that I have no need to use Paypal or any similar service. They have just cut off service from longtime blogger Bill Quick because they find his site objectionable for some unspecified reason. Some bloggers are closing their PayPal accounts in retaliation so I hope lots of bloggers do so. PayPal seem to be a real Leftist outfit. One of Bill's commenters reported: "I complained to Paypal when the two "soldiers" who went AWOL to Canada set up accounts with Paypal to receive donations. I pointed out that Paypal was facilitating criminal activity, as these men would be arrested should they return to the States. The people I spoke to on the telephone were indifferent to hostile, and Paypal refused to shut down the donation link. Says a lot about Paypal, I think" and another reported: "My guess is PayPal objects to the Cheaper Than Dirt Ammo ad at the top of your page. I have read that they are extremely anti-gun and have cut off businesses that sell ammunition and gun accessories".

John Kerry has been caught in another psychopathic (stupid and pointless) lie -- saying he was in Iraq when he was not.

Child abusing "justice". There is a dreadful story here of how fanatical do-gooders pressured kids into making accusations of sexual abuse against innocent men. It not only got the men falsely convicted and jailed but it also had a devastating impact on the children concerned.

Hollywood whitewashes a disgusting pervert: "A forthcoming Hollywood biopic of Alfred Kinsey, the "father of the sexual revolution", has been denounced as a whitewash by pro-family campaigners who are calling on the public to boycott the film".

Hmmm... Tim Lambert is accusing others of not having the full background on the "Leftist bookstore" issue in the USA when he does not seem to have the full background himself. He seems to think that only Glenn Reynolds and some troll think that U.S. bookstores have a Leftist bias. He needs to read this. And the whole thing is NOT an example of market failure. The only failure is in the brains of the Leftist proprietors and employees who are sending so much of what could be their own business to Amazon.

Chris Brand has just had a big burst of new posts so I have tranferred them here for convenience. Interesting that a very prominent South African black has now proclaimed that Africa was better off under the colonialists. Certainly by any objective standard (crime-rate, average income etc.) that is true.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and big egos who will say anything to win applause

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