I didn't mean to spend an hour this morning listening to James Delingpole interviewing the maker of the hugely influential online film, The Brexit Movie. But I made the mistake of listening to the first few minutes of the podcast...
...and I was hooked. I've submitted myself to a sort of self-denying ordinance during the election campaign, under whose terms I am attempting to turn a blind eye to the fact that half of the things the Tories are coming up with are absolute pants: normalish service will be resumed as soon as Steptoe and his cabal of hard left wreckers have been definitively scraped off the boot-heels of history. This period of semi-purdah is proving somewhat frustrating, so it was a relief to guzzle down some of the intellectually-nourishing right-wing red meat provided by the ever-reliable Delingpole and Martin Durkin, the revolutionary film-maker responsible for the polemical television documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which blew an enormous raspberry at the powerful climate change lobby back in 2007.
I won't rehearse all the arguments in the podcast, but, in case you're wondering whether to spend an hour listening to a right-winger and a libertarian violently agreeing (mainly) on a host of fascinating topics, here's a partial list of subjects covered:
Immigration (former hardline leftist Durkin, who converted to libertarianism in his thirties, is for it, as long as we recognise that Islam is a problem, and as long as welfare is removed from the equation).
The Left-Liberal establishment's ongoing attempts to hold onto power "despite Brexit" - the political bureaucratic, administrative elite "will gouge out eyes to defend their livelihoods and their power."
Why the New Class, aka the Clerisy (i.e. the lecturers, civil servants, teachers, local government officers, the media, and people who work for companies which depend on government contracts for their survival - "workers by brain") is so opposed to the market. (The European Project is designed to give jobs to people "of that class who believe that they would not be recognised outside [EU] structures.")
How ignorant the young are about the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes.
The impossibility of getting "difficult" documentaries shown on TV (Channel 4 only does so now and then because Mrs. Thatcher made broadcasting alternative views part of the channel's remit.)
How many commercial companies wanted to be involved in British broadcasting before the government handed it to a state monopoly - and how Labour opposed commercial television in the '50s, preferring, you'll be surprised to hear, total state control.
As for the "experts" and "opinion-formers" who populate the airwaves: "These really polite people you hear on Radio 4, who are terribly sweet and so Bloomsbury and blue-stocking... they sound so charming... but these are the people we should really fear and despise and be rallying against." Quite.
How, online, it's the Right who are producing all the genuinely sharp, funny satire - and how extremely unfunny left-wing BBC comedians are.
If you have an hour to spare, please listen to it - it's enormously stimulating. If you don't want to watch it on YouTube, you can get it on iTunes by visiting this page - it's the second one down, obvs.
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