A pulchritudinous TV celebrity called Rachel Riley is under attack on Twitter from the Social Justice hate mob but I for one am not going to lift a finger to defend her.
Normally I would. She’s very pretty, I’m jolly impressed with how good she is at adding up numbers on the TV show Countdown, and also she is completely innocent of the ludicrous charges being laid against her.
Here is the Tweet that got Riley into trouble:
The loony left angry brigade has decided that this is racist. No, it’s not. It’s just a harmless piece of banter about someone’s choice of football team. But many of the 1,500 or more replies are determined to find Riley guilty of crimes ranging from insensitivity, poor taste, and disappointingness to xenophobia and outright racism.
We are, of course, talking about some of the very worst people in the world here: Riley’s critics include people who put their pronouns unironically in their bios, people sporting rainbow symbols, socialists, feminists, Corbynistas (and other commies), “anti-fascists” (and other fascists), vegans, blue ticks.
The vast majority of them are self-hating middle-class white kids and, in most cases, would have had what little was left of their intelligence educated out of them at “uni”. Normally it would be a pleasure and a privilege to take up arms against these writhing nematodes on lovely Rachel’s behalf. But as I say, I’m not going to because she just doesn’t deserve it.
I feel the same way about comedy writer Graham Linehan and fat comedy woman Jo Brand and, if I’m really honest, about author JK Rowling too.
They have all, in the last year or so, come under mob attack from the Social Justice Avengers — Linehan and Rowling because they stood up for real women (ones with breasts, vaginas, and XX chromosomes) against the militant trans lobby; Jo Brand because she made a nasty joke about Nigel Farage for which some people said she should be cancelled.
Riley, too, has experienced mass social media hatred — far worse than she got for that football tweet — because she stood up for Jews against the anti-Semitism of the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was still a thing.
These are all causes I believe in myself: I’m philosemitic (and pro-Israel); I’m anti-militant-trans; I’m pro the rights of comics to make whatever sick, tasteless jokes they like. But still, I’m not going into the lists to defend the freedoms of Linehan, Brand, Rowling, or even lovely Rachel Riley. Not any more. And here’s why:
One of the fundamental differences between people on the right and people on the left — we really are from different planets — is our attitude towards principles.
For the left, principles are dispensable: for them the end always justifies the means and therefore it doesn’t matter how many eggs get broken or lives ruined or causes betrayed just so long as their intentions (socialism for all) are good.
For the right, principles are everything: so important that they can transcend even your own cause. You see this in the way righties like myself will often go into battle on behalf of their enemies if they feel their enemies have been wronged.
I’ve done it many times myself. On one occasion I wrote a piece beginning “God I feel sorry for George Monbiot…” — and meant it. I forget now what the Guardian‘s chief anti-capitalist hair shirt rewilding ecoloon had done to deserve my sympathy, but I can tell you one thing for absolute certain: never in a gazillion years would a doctrinaire leftist like George return the compliment. Nor would Riley, nor Linehan, nor Jo Brand, nor anyone else of a leftist persuasion. This is partly because leftists don’t really think of anyone on the right as a viable human being. And partly it’s because moral principles just don’t excite them enough.
Lots of us righties were eager to defend Jo Brand not because we like her or find her remotely funny but because what really rocks our boat are first principles. We love re-rehearsing all the familiar arguments about the vital importance of free speech partly as a form of territory-marking — like beating the bounds of a church parish — but mainly because, clearly, if you believe in this stuff then it’s essential that is applied without fear or favour to everyone, left or right, not just those who share your politics.
To a leftist that kind of attitude would be anathema because leftists are tribal: sticking it to a rightie, however cruelly or unfairly, will always take precedence over standing up for moral principle.
Which is why, of course, the left continues to win.
If Rachel Riley had the merest scintilla of self-knowledge, if she were capable of using that Oxford-educated brain as God (a natural conservative, obvs) had intended, then her experiences during the antisemitism row with the Corbynistas and now with this fake “racism” nonsense on Twitter would have led her to a very obvious conclusion: the modern left is insane, dangerous, and wrong.
We’re not talking the old fashioned left just trying to get an honest deal for the workers. We’re talking the modern-day equivalent of Mao’s Red Guard or the Jacobins at the height of the Terror during the French Revolution.
But still leftists like Riley, Linehan, Brand, Rowling and co want to have their cake and eat it. Sure they’ll stand up for one cherry-picked anti-leftist cause or other — and take the credit for their bravery. They’ll never go all the way, though, and stand-up for the full gamut of anti-leftist causes because then their careers might be in trouble.
I note, for example, that Riley remains a patron of the hard-left, anti-free-speech Center for Countering Digital Hate — precisely the kind of organisation which all those rabid leftists who have been attacking her on Twitter all day absolutely adore because what it mainly does is censor, close down, and cancel non-leftists. It’s the kind of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance that really need to be a leftist to understand.
Still, there’s a tragic coda to all this: despite all I’ve said, and even though I know it’s a recipe for disaster, the truth is that I’m going to go on standing up for my political enemies like Rachel Riley when they fall foul of the SJW evil brigade. That’s because I just can’t help it. We on the right are much better, nicer, more honourable people than those on the left. It’s just an unfortunate fact of life.
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