Sunday 15 November 2009

You Don't Have To Be a Muslim To Be Furiously Denounced, But It Helps

It seems like The Encyclopedia of Decency is in trouble with the chardonnay-swilling, braying, hooray Henry bien-pensant community again. Brie-scoffing, pony-trotting posho elitist Penny Laurie posts these words about us at The Samosa...

The Encyclopedia of Decency has pursued what has been seen as a "witch hunt" against any Muslim or Muslim-ally who does not fit the site editors' strict definition of "moderation"; to whit, near non-involvement in politics.

Oh dear, that old failure to distinguish between two entirely different, obviously unconnected things again. Laurie's unfounded accusation that we engage in politically-motivated smear campaigns and ad hominem attacks on dissenters is exactly what we'd expect from a painfully right-on upper middle class permastudent with a great, throbbing boner for Islamist fascism.

Let's get this clear. The Encylopedia is - inter alia - a website to which those individuals who hold deranged, belligerent hardline right wing views on a wide variety of national and international issues are welcome to contribute, provided they are willing to coat their wingnutty babble in a thick layer of faux-lefty bullshit about anti-racism.

We're against baleful theocratic conspiracies against democracy that threaten to hold the scimitar of head-chopping Islamic law to the neck of the human race, and we pull no punches in writing snotty blog posts about those who are in favour of such set ups, no matter how Muslim they are.

In short - you don't have to be a Muslim to be repeatedly and vociferously denounced as a brutal threat to peace and freedom in a frenzied circle-jerk of ever-increasing paranoia, but it helps.

I should clarify something else too. The Encyclopedia is not a racist hate site, although anyone who came here looking for endless, inflammatory booga-booga scaremongering about one particular minority religious group certainly wouldn't be disappointed.

The Encyclopedia is more of a voluntary police action aimed at a) defining our own fucknut, rah-rah pom-pom waving for one-sided violence as the outermost boundary of acceptable opinion and b) sending great snarling packs of feral right wing bigots snapping at the heels of those with the temerity to differ.

Nonetheless, it is far easier to portray these attacks on our race-fixated commentariat as the effete affectations of politically correct liberal woofters than it is to directly address the issue of our obvious witch hunting bastardry, so let us slyly gloss over the Samosa's entirely accurate accusations of McCarthyism.

So, in summary, Penny Laurie is - like most with the effrontery to criticise our monomaniacal zeal for partisan condemnation - very, very posh. Regular readers will know that the Encyclopedia is published straight from the Stygian blackness of our proletarian coal mine, and its hard-grafting, rough-handed writers do not take well to being ticked off by some tofu munching, proto-lesbian Jemima.

Let us then return to the good work of sniffing out vaguely suspicious opinion for political gain. We can do so secure in the knowledge that our relentless war upon reason, truth and basic human decency is the pinnacle of working class activism, rather than simply a bunch of illiberal, whining ex-Trots camouflaging their rocket propelled rightwards trajectory with a load of mealy mouthed and dishonest waffle about fascism.

Source: Never Mind The Legitimate Criticism - Here's The Bullshit, Marcus at Harry's Place.

6 comments:

Malky Muscular said...

Note also Laurie's belief that the Euston Manifesto itself was pro-Iraq war, now deleted. How ridiculous.

The Euston Manifesto is quite clear that horrible regimes should be militarily invaded; that Iraq was precisely the kind of state that required military invasion, and that nobody involved in the execution of that invasion should be investigated for their conduct.

Add to this the fact that all of the Manifesto's drafters have argued against withdrawing troops from Iraq, and you can see how foolish the idea that it is some kind of "pro-war" document truly is.

Honestly, some people.

Morgoth's mum said...

What I don't understand is that the people who post there seems so oblivious to the fact that almost everyone who comments on HP's posts are very right-wing. It's all gun-nuts from the States and rabid ex-pats.

And then that post about pirates ... just bizarre.

Spiritof1976 said...

I met David T from Harry's Place once. He's, just like Laurie Penny, Oxford-educated and A Bit Posh. If Marcus from HP wants to condemn intellectuals for being Oxford-educated posh kids, then he ought to look to some at his colleagues.

Anyway, it's this sort of slightly childish pissing contest that caused me stop reading HP somewhere around 2006. Along the way they've occasionally made some valid points about the state of the left, but all too often it's just functioned as a collective circle-jerk for Blairite hacks who don't want to admit they got it catastrophically wrong on Iraq.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but Mr T eats in Nando's, thus proving he can't be an elitist. And HP's resident intellectual Morality Blog has convincingly demonstrated that all critics of Decency are public school poshos. He has us nailed, as I was just saying to Seumas Milne over cocktails at White's.

Ms Penny, on the other hand, has made the outrageous suggestion that HP's comments box is full of racist wingnuts. If that doesn't mark her out as a latte-swilling elitist, I don't know what does.

Simon K said...

Reading HP is a bit like reading the New Musical Express in the 1990s. Lots of well educated middle class people accusing other well educated middle class people of being well educated and middle class. In HP's case it's presumably to draw a contrast with horny handed sons of toil who are just mad for promiscuous wars of aggression, despite all opinion polling evidence to the contrary.

"It's all gun-nuts from the States and rabid ex-pats."

Indeed, it's essentially these people who are keeping the Decent blogosphere going, now that they have lost all influence in the respective Defence and Foreign offices of the US and UK.

ejh said...

Surely an elitist would never swill anything?