In this week’s Delingpole podcast, special guest Peter Hitchens talks about his dismay at the lie that New Labour was even remotely “conservative”, Tony Blair’s past as an “undeclared, former Marxist” and his own experience as a “revolutionary socialist.”
Hitchens recalled the mainstream outrage when he first asserted that the New Labour was a euro-communist project. In response, he mocked the mainstream’s conviction that Blair was “right-wing”, by bringing up “Blair’s own confession on Radio 4”, where he revealed that “he joined the Marxist organization when he was at university”.
Hitchens also added that “‘6 members of Blair’s cabinet, including Blair himself, were undeclared former Marxist Leninists, who never explained or regretted their previous positions”. Hitchens also revealed that he is puzzled by how Blair “ended up in the Labour Party because one thing” the Trotskyites had in common was that they “despised the Labour Party above all things”. In his assessment of the New Labour policies, Hitchens asserted that people:
…genuinely thought it was a moderate, restricted thing”, when in fact “it was a colossal cultural revolution.
Agreeing with Delingpole’s comment claiming that “Blairism is more dangerous than Corbynism”, Hitchens argued that slogans such as “tough on crime, tough on the causes on crime”, were “meaningless, and populist”, and in fact not “the real intentions of the government”. Hitches made a point that what New Labour really got on with was:
Abolishing heterosexual marriage, destroying what was left of rigor in the educational system, and engaging in utopian, idealistic foreign wars.
In his discussion about the collapsing world order under Blair, Hitchens made references to his own journey as a “socialist revolutionary”. He identified similarities between the disintegration of society today, and back in his youth. Hitchens recalled having “been brought up as a Christian, as a patriot” and seeing the society he has “been brought up in disintegrating in front” of his eyes. He added that “all authority began to leak out”. “They lost their confidence after Suez”, “they were dishonest, they were comical” and “probably the worst blow you can suffer as any kind of authority, as any figure or structure is to become funny”.
As a young man, he recalled wanting “to believe in something” and finding “that revolutionary socialism was a very appealing and enjoyable substitute”. Hitchens called it “as hard as nail”, “much like old-fashioned British patriotism” – “this is what we believe in, this is what we defend, and when it attacks we fight back”.
For the full interview visit here:
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