Was the USSR the real unsung hero of WWII? Ummm… no
I’ve been seeing on Twitter and the blogosphere some recent claims that the USSR was the real unsung hero of World War II, because they did the most damage to the Nazis, and suffered the most losses, and we would have lost without them, and this achievement goes mostly unrecognised, so we should be more appreciative of what they did.
To which I just say: are you having a fucking laugh? They were on the Nazis’ side for the first two years of the war. They only joined our side because the Nazis attacked them. They only fought the Germans because they had to, because the Germans were trying to take over their country. They didn’t make the sacrifices the British did, fighting a war to protect Europe. They didn’t make the sacrifices the Australians and New Zealanders did, coming half away across the world to do what was right. They were helping the Nazis, and carving up Eastern Europe for themselves like rapacious vultures. They were evil fucking bastards. We’re talking Stalin and his cronies, remember? Some of the worst people who have ever lived. They would have lined millions of Brits and Aussies and Kiwis in front of brick walls and shot them if they could have done. So I say fuck the USSR.
But yes, Russia did suffer enormously, and horrifically. Or rather, the Russian people did. Because Stalin was happy to sacrifice tens of millions of his own people to beat the Germans. None of whom he cared about in anything other than an abstract sense. In fact, not even in that sense. And the Russian people did show incredible courage in fighting the Nazis, that’s all true. (Just as many of them did in fighting Stalin.) So actually, yes, let’s honour them. Honour the Russian people for their big contribution to defeating the Germans. But I’ll be buggered if I’ll honour the USS fucking R for it.
Angry old men with pink cheeks
Leftist reasoning in action:
Political journalist, Adam Bienkov, fired back saying there was no “disadvantage to being an angry old man with pink cheeks”.
He tweeted: “No ‘gammon’ is not a racial slur.
“Nobody has ever been abused in the street, denied service or threatened with deportation because they’re an angry old white man with cheeks like two slices of Wiltshire.”
According to the logic of this twerp, if someone, for example, says to a white man, ‘You’re white meat, fit for nothing but slaughter because you’re a filthy white pig, and I hate all you big-nosed white devils’ — something along those lines — that wouldn’t be a racial slur because there’s no disadvantage to being a white man. Nobody has ever been abused in the street or denied service because they’re a filthy white pig, so it can’t be a racial slur.
Not even if the abuser — sorry, commentator — adds, ‘Whites are subhuman trash, and all whites should be killed just because they are whites and a different race than us’. That’s still not racist, because nobody’s ever been threatened with deportation because they’re a filthy white pig.
This is a mirror. Get a good look at yourself, you white pink-cheeked bastard.
Clearly, on this way of thinking no white man or woman can ever be racially abused, no matter what is said. It’s just not possible. So stop complaining or we’ll lock you up, deny you service and deport you, you filthy white pig.
Screw the Tories, or take them over
The Conservatives, as they are now, are finished. Sure, they’re ahead in the polls, but they’re only just ahead of perhaps the worst people to ever be in charge of Labour, so that’s not saying much. What support they do have is mainly due to the fact that they are, however unwillingly, the party of Brexit, and also because they’re the only thing stopping a bunch of deranged Communists getting into power.
Brexit will happen in some form or other next year. Even if it goes well, once it’s done there will be less incentive for Brexiteers to keep voting Tory. And if it goes badly, if we’re sold out, then there will be even less reason for Brexiteers to stick with the Tories. And the continued left-wing nature of the current Tory party is turning off the right in droves, and many are just not going to vote for them ever again. So the medium-term prospects of this left-leaning incarnation of the Tory party do not look good.
The current leader of the UK Conservative Party
Some people have long wished for the death of the Conservative party (such as Peter Hitchens), in order that a true conservative force can arise to replace it. While I have great sympathy for this view, what worries me is that if the Conservative party dies, what guarantee do we have that a new ‘real’ conservative party will replace it, rather than a bunch of smaller, squabbling parties all with somewhat different agendas? The party that Peter Hitchens hopes will spring up is going to be very different to the party that James Delingpole hopes will spring up. The right-wing vote may just end up being hopelessly split.
After all, there are no alternative rising conservative parties waiting in the wings to leap onto stage once the Conservatives stumble. UKIP is virtually dead, For Britain is tiny… and that’s it. There’ll be other parties out there that I can find if I google, but the fact that I have to google them tells you a lot about their public visibility, and their medium-term hopes.
This doesn’t mean that some such party cannot suddenly leap to prominence. But I’m not getting my hopes up. The rise of outsider parties has been predicted by the commentariat, and the blogosphere, for many years now, and while it may be happening on the Continent, it’s not happening in the UK. The Conservatives and Labour are as big as ever. And maybe I’m wrong when I say that the current Conservatives are finished. Maybe they’ll limp on like this for years and years.
So there is another option for the right. Orchestrate a Momentum-style takeover of the Conservative party. Join the party on-masse and force out the wets and the Remoaners and the disguised — these days, not so disguised — lefties. Get in Rees-Mogg as leader and promote those with sound views. Ditch the political correctness and drain the swamp. A Thatcherite re-revolution from the inside. If you do that then you can use the existing organisation, which is considerable, rather than starting from nothing, and use the existing ‘brand cachet’, just as the SJW-types have done with Labour, after they realised that that was a better idea than sitting in the back room of a pub with three men and a dog at local Socialist Worker Party meetings.
Of course the snag with this is that whereas Momentum has endless numbers of SJWs whose life is all about politics, conservatives and libertarians have lives and they don’t have the time to become political animals, plotting and scheming all day long. Moreover the existing Conservative members are not going to be the limp noodles that the Labour centrists were; they may not take kindly to being ‘taken over’. Politically pathetic they may be, but they like their comfortable position within the party.
So maybe it won’t work. In that case, let’s go and have a look at For Britain’s policy page and wonder how long they’ll survive the media smear campaign that will come their way once they get some votes.
The Conservative Retrogression conference
Terribly disappointed to learn that we’ve all just missed an amazing conference called Conservative Renaissance, run by an optimistic group called Conservative Progress.
There were ten speakers featured, and guess how many were Conservative politicians? Two? Three? Don’t tell me four? No! Ten! All ten were Tory politicians. All speaking on the record. Can you imagine the excitement levels?
They’re actually advertising this as an attraction.
What would you say to any of these pollies if you had the chance at break time? Here’s what I would say: “You have until Brexit day to get in Rees-Mogg and totally change direction, because after that you are totally finished. Much of the right will never vote for you again. They’d rather shoot you than vote for you. You will soon be ancient history. Got it?”
(Via Samizdata.)
The left-wing media is desperately latching onto incels
If there is one thing that seems to unite the most extreme political reactionaries throughout the world, it is their gender. Whether it’s alt-right white supremacists marching in Charlottesville with their tiki torches, misogynist “incels” and men’s rights activists who believe feminism is the root of all their problems, or Islamic extremists who aim to restore the caliphate, one thing is constant: they are overwhelmingly male.
You mean those incels that no-one had heard of until a few weeks ago? The leftie media is almost pathetically grateful that they turned up. Even though their threat level is almost zero. It turns out that Alek Minassian, the Toronto ‘incel’ killer, had special needs, and it looks like he had Asperger syndrome.
Also Conor, I noticed you left out tankies. Or is that because there are female tankies? (But if that’s true wouldn’t it kind of blow your theory?)
The article’s hardly worth bothering with, except to notice that Conor’s academic expert is Dr Michael Kimmel, described by Wikipedia as “a spokesperson of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) and a longtime feminist”, and on his own website as
one of the world’s leading experts on men and masculinities. He is the SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University… A tireless advocate of engaging men to support gender equality… He has delivered the International Women’s Day annual lecture at the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Europe, and has worked with the Ministers for Gender Equality of Norway, Denmark and Sweden in developing programs for boys and men. He consults widely with corporations, NGOs and public sector organizations on gender equity issues. He was recently called “the world’s most prominent male feminist” in The Guardian newspaper in London.
None of this is exactly a surprise, is it? The expert quoted turns out to be an activist, and possibly the world’s biggest cuck.
The song of the RNLI boatmen
Discrimination against the products of privilege
The government, the quangoes, the Guardianistas, and so on, are telling Universities and employers that they should avoid the products of privilege and look for people with lesser qualifications who have not had the benefits of ‘privilege’. In other words, don’t take in the kid from Eton with the shining CV, take in the kid from Bog End state school with Bs and Cs, because he or she did well to even get that, so they may have lots of untapped potential.
Occasionally that may be true. But it’s like saying to a football manager, don’t buy striker A who scored fifty goals in the league below last year because he had the advantage of going to a football academy. Buy striker B who scored fifteen goals in the same league, because he didn’t go to any academy, so he did well to even get fifteen, so he probably has a lot of untapped potential.
It may be true that striker B would be a much better player if he had gone to the academy. But he didn’t. So the result is that A is a much better player than B. B may still have some potential that has not been realised, and may yet be realised, but most of his opportunities for developing that potential are gone. It’s too late now. And you’re only guessing anyway that he has any room for development. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe that’s the best he can get. Or maybe he has so many ingrained bad habits from his poor development that he can’t get much better.
(I see this all the time with kids’ cricket. So many kids develop bad techniques at a young age because they weren’t given proper coaching, or because they didn’t pay enough attention to getting their game right, and before long it’s almost impossible to fix them.)
Of course employing graduates is not just a matter of looking at their school or University results, which may have little correlation with their ability to do the job in question. But the general principle still applies. Whatever your criteria in an employee are, you want someone who actually fits those criteria, not someone who may possibly have fitted them if they had had the opportunities the other applicants had.
[This was initially going to be the last part of my Kids and Screentime posts, but when I read back over it I realised that it no longer had much to do with screen time, so I re-titled it.]
Expanding the ‘approved beliefs’ sphere a tiny bit
There’s a New York Times article by Bari Weiss about the so-called ‘intellectual dark web’ — ie. intellectuals saying perfectly reasonable things that would have been regarded as normal ten years ago, before the screaming campus garbage babies took over — that’s got a lot of attention recently (attention meaning the left having another ‘fainting fit’).
I suppose it’s good that the NYT is giving some serious treatment to people like Ben Shapiro, Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson, but there’s still some stupidity in there. For example:
But is a statement of principles necessary to make a judgment call about people like Mr. Cernovich, Mr. Molyneux and Mr. Yiannopoulos? Mr. Rubin has hosted all three on his show. And he appeared on a typically unhinged episode of Mr. Jones’s radio show, “Infowars.” Mr. Rogan regularly lets Abby Martin — a former 9/11 Truther who is strangely sympathetic to the regimes in Syria and Venezuela — rant on his podcast. He also encouraged Mr. Jones to spout off about the moon landing being fake during Mr. Jones’s nearly four-hour appearance on his show.
Even Bari Weiss, who isn’t a leftist, seems to think that there’s something wrong with letting just anyone have their say. I don’t myself like 9/11 truthers or moon-landing hoaxers, I think they’re idiots, but I don’t want them muzzled from speaking. How can you say you’re in favour of free speech if you’re still wedded to the idea that the progressive elite needs to approve a view before it’s allowed to be publicly expressed?
And everyone seems to think it’s normal that leftists are given platform after platform. The BBC constantly has leftists on. So does Channel 4. Even ITV and Sky do these days. Owen Jones goes on ITV’s Breakfast TV show to rabble-rouse about Trump, and no-one says this is ‘deeply worrying’, or suggests that ITV should be targeted for it. So be under no illusion, there are still ‘approved opinions’, and ‘non-approved opinions’, and the latter is still tightly controlled.
Kids and screen time 2
Following on from my post about kids and screen time earlier in the week, another issue is this. We often hear about discrimination in the arts and other areas against the working class. Posh kids are no better, it is said, but you don’t get hired if you have a working-class accent. But we also hear that it’s unfair the middle-class kids, and private school kids, are better at the arts and academia and so on because they’ve had loads of lessons and opportunities that the working-class kids haven’t had. So which is it? I suspect that the truth these days lies more towards the second explanation than the first (although I don’t doubt that sometimes people don’t get hired because they sound working-class). But if middle-class people are on average better at areas like the arts because they’ve put more work into those areas, then that’s entirely down to people choosing their own lives.
If you want to play a lot of video games, that’s your decision (and don’t get me wrong, I like video games.). Choosing your own lifestyle is what you get to do in a free society. But you don’t get to choose the lifestyle you want and the outcomes you want. If you never practised the guitar much because you wanted to do Minecraft all the time, then you’re not going to get chosen for that amazing band you want to be in who are definitely, like, all going to be stars. If you want to be able to do a skill, then practise it. I know you don’t want to do the hard work when you’re a kid, or even a teenager. Nobody does. But if you don’t, you don’t get the rewards.
Anyway, the rewards for many of these skills, apart from the inherent satisfaction of being able to perform a skill well, are possible rewards only. Most musicians, actors, ballerinas, etc. don’t make much money, and get nowhere. Playing video games, on the other hand, develops a lot of cognitive skills that may see you end up in a high-paying job. (Watching endless stupid YouTube videos, on the other hand…)
The RNLI’s latest press release – a must-read
Kids and screen time 1
I think this is true:
Boarding school children dominate the world of work because they do not spend time in their bedrooms in front of screens, a leading headmaster has said.
Rather than spending hours “hunched” over a computer or television at home, boarding school pupils can spend their time pursuing their passions, according to Martin Reader, headmaster of the £37,000-a-year Cranleigh School in Surrey.
But it’s not so much to do with boarding schools per se. It’s just a matter of excess screen time. There are plenty of working class kids at my kids’ school, and most of them spend all their time playing Fortnite. (A few years ago it was Minecraft, or watching Minecraft YouTube videos). The only thing that working-class kids will do that isn’t computer games is football. Whereas the middle-class parents run around like crazy taking their children to endless classes in ballet, tennis, piano, cricket, gymnastics, violin, drama, ice-skating, etc. Plus extra tuition in maths and other school subjects.
So it’s hardly a surprise that middle-class kids turn out to dominate the worlds of ballet, tennis, piano, cricket, gymnastics, violin, drama, ice-skating, not to mention the academic world. And it’s not surprising that working-class kids dominate the football world. Nobody complains about that, but they complain when someone from a private school who’s been acting since he was five gets a role.
The reason for the disparity is mostly down to the parents. The middle-class parents don’t have any more spare time than the working-class parents. They just give up their spare time to do these things for their kids, and run around like headless chickens for them. The working-class parents don’t. The middle-class parents are, as a result, completely frazzled all the time, while the working-class parents have much more relaxed lives.
Some call that privilege. I call it hard-working kids, and hard-working parents. We don’t call it privilege when a working-class kid gets good at football because he and his parents have devoted a lot of time and energy to his development. So why is it privilege when a middle-class kid who’s practised the violin for years does well for the same reason?
I’m not saying that either lifestyle is the correct choice. Does letting your kids be on screens non-stop from 4pm to 10pm — working-class parents typically let their kids stay up much later than the middle-class parents — actively damage them? I’m not sure it does (other than the lack of sleep, which may do). But perhaps it does damage them in an opportunity-cost way. There’s six hours a day they could have spent learning some skills. Sure you get good at video games. But most people, when they grow up, wish they could do other things well, other than wandering around on-line corridors shooting aliens. That just will not happen if most of your spare time is spent playing games and watching stupid YouTube videos.
But as for government intervention on screen time, this is an insane idea, as I blogged about last week. A government that can’t even police burglary should not be let anywhere near our children. In fact, a government that can police burglary really well still shouldn’t be let anywhere near our children, because that would be an intolerable interference in private life, and our right to live our own lifestyles. So that’s not what I’m advocating. I just want to point out some of the realities of the situation, some more of which I’ll blog about this coming week.
The King Kept Setting the Prince Impossible Tasks. (Actually, they were easy tasks. But the fat bastard couldn’t do shite.)
Another Theresa May government minister starts preparing the way for more government intervention in the private sphere:
Highly-addictive video games risk having a “damaging” impact on children’s lives, the Culture Secretary has warned after parents raised concerns about a hugely popular multi-player “survival shooter”.
UK Culture Secretary Matt Hancock presents a bold front to the UK public. Who the hell does he think he is?
I propose the fairy tale response. You want to talk to us about regulating children’s access to video games? Okay, well, we’re the King, and you’re the Prince wanting our daughter’s hand in marriage. To get her you need to pass some tasks that we set to show that you’re worthy, and not just a nasty, useless chancer who wants access to power. First of all, let’s see the government get control of law and order. That’s one of your basic tasks. No more burglaries that don’t get investigated. No more convicted murderers walking the streets. No more arresting people for jokes on Twitter. You have five years to get that sorted. If you succeed, come back to us, and maybe then we’ll listen to your talk about video games.
Suddenly Prince Government isn’t so interested now that he realises he may have to do something he doesn’t want to.
But before then you’ll need to do a few more tasks to prove yourself worthy. We don’t just give away our daughter to someone who can perform one of his duties, but who neglects the rest. So the next task is to go to the highest tower and… No, here’s a better idea. Get control of the borders. No more letting in hairy grown men who pretend they’re children. No more letting millions of illegal immgrants stay. No more letting jihadists come back in. No more banning right-wing journalists from entry. You get another five years to do that. We can’t pretend that we have any great optimism that you’ll achieve this, but our daughter is a princess, and we can’t have her getting schtupped by an enemy agent in disguise, can we?
So prove that you’re on our side before you get to carry her over the threshold and throw her on the bed. When you’ve succeeded — and we still have our doubts — then come back and we may start taking you more seriously. (Although she may kick you in the balls herself.)
“It’s not fair, you’re not letting me get my own way”, whines Prince Government. “I’m supposed to be the boss”.
Until then get your eyes off our daughter, and be off with you. Earn some respect with your actions, and enough of this endless prattling. You’re not the smooth talker you think you are. Begone. You have much work to do to prove your worth.
Court control
Following on from my post from yesterday, you may wonder why it is that right-wingers — whether UK Conservatives, US Republicans, or Australian Liberals — are so in thrall to the other side. Why do the Conservatives get bossed about more easily by The Guardian than the views of the shires? Why is it that when the Conservatives claim to endorse the views of their voters they’re really only paying lip-service to them, and in reality they’re doing almost exactly the same as what Labour would do?
One important reason has to be that they are steeped in the culture of the other side. Most people in politics went to University, and have worked in a field like journalism, the civil service, academia, the City, the charity sector, a union, teaching, etc. And those fields are all drenched in progressive leftism. Most people in those fields (even the City, although obviously to a lesser extent than a Union), are progressive leftists. The Guardian and the BBC are the reference points. So even if someone is an out-and-out Tory, they’re swimming in a progressive pool, and getting marinated in the stuff. It gets into parts of their philosophy without them realising it.
Going back to the religious analogy of yesterday’s post, it’s like most of the people of a country are one religion, and the rulers and the courtiers are another. Say the people are Catholic, and the country is Protestant. An ordinary person might start out as Catholic. Then he goes to University, which is strongly Protestant. Most of his Catholic friends renounce their Catholicism within a year or two, and become Protestants, but he stays true to his Catholic roots, or so he imagines. Then he joins the court, along with all his friends, old and new, from the University. Most of the people he works with are Protestant, and he is continually mocked for his Catholic views. Protestant writings are the reference point for most of the people he works with, and being caught with any strongly Catholic writings will make him a pariah.
He continues to maintain that he is a Catholic — perhaps he receives money from Catholic sources, which means he is minded to do this — and he claims to represent the Catholic views of the wider public. Moderate Catholicism, of course, but Catholicism all the same. But over time his views and behaviour become more and more Protestant, and without even realising it his behaviour becomes barely distinguishable from Protestant behaviour. And every time he puts forward some Catholic interpretation he is ridiculed and shamed, so every time he backs down and adapts his beliefs to something similar to what the Protestants at court think.
The people notice this, but they have no choice but to regard him as their representative at court because there is no alternative — the court will not accept anyone who has not come up through the system. The court tolerate him because they know that without some Catholic representatives at court the people will revolt, and they know they have him under control.
What usually happens in this sort of system? Eventually the people revolt. That’s what happens.*
*Especially if the court is clearly trying to turn the nation Protestant.
Don’t give leftists their bully pulpits
One of the reasons the left is currently spawning at a great rate is because because of all the platforms they’ve been given over the past few decades, allowing them to constantly preach their message.
Now, it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the progressive left is the modern equivalent of religion. And a religion spreads when that religion has its own professional class, who have the time and money to enable them to spread the word. And especially when that religion has numerous pulpits available to them. So this teaches us something. If the right ever wrests power away from the left, it must make sure that this is not allowed to happen again.
A nasty little leftist is treated as though he’s an oracle, rather than the toenail infection he really is.
Not that we can stop rich people funding their own pulpits, it’s a free country (or at least it used to be, and hopefully it will be again one day), but we can make damn well sure that the left don’t get to divert taxpayer’s money into funding their pulpits for them. The BBC, Channel 4, the advertising money given to The Guardian, all of those platforms must go. And all the public money that goes into the left’s professional class must be taken away from them, as well as the prestige they get from their powerful positions in Universities, quangos, the civil service, etc., which they also use a pulpit.
If they have to scramble to work for a living, like the rest of us, then that makes it harder for them to harangue us.
(This is not denying anyone their right to free speech, leftists will still have numerous opportunities to say their piece, it will just prevent them from being able to broadcast non-stop and to pose as the official voice of the country.
And if not getting your own TV show is being denied your right of free speech then I demand my own BBC show now.)