Frankie goes to Brussels
A loyal reader points us to an intriguing snippet, which appeared in Private Eye recently. The reader writes:
“An arm of the pro Viktor Orban thinktank, ‘Mathias Corvinius Collegium’ has been set up in Brussels. According to Private Eye the director is none other than the ‘Lenin de nos jours‘, Frank Furedi.”
PE no 1589, 6-19 Jan 2023, page 15
There’s further information on the MCC Brussels website at https://brussels.mcc.hu/person/professor-frank-furedi with a hagiographic bio of Uncle Frank and an unflattering photo[1].
Uncle Frank cheerleading for the Right isn’t news – he’ll do anything for money – but Viktor Orbán is pretty much beyond the pale even for the European Right, and is not a natural bedfellow, as an authoritarian champion of “illiberal democracy”, of a supposedly “libertarian” movement like the RCP/LM, which (to its credit) still maintains a steadfast support for free movement across borders. Still, his cult has moved a long way Right in the last decade, following currently fashionable trends, and as importantly the money. Orbán is very much the leader of the Right in Europe [2] and it looks like Uncle Frank is keen to ride on his coattails, plus Hungary gets billions of euros a year from the EU so Frankie will be eager to get his hands on some of that largesse.
It won’t hurt that Furedi is Hungarian by birth [3], though left the country, aged 9, in 1956 after the failed uprising, and has lived abroad since.
Our reader also adds:
“Looking at the ‘Our Team‘ section [of the MCC site] one finds that the Head of Policy is one Jacob Reynolds who is also Partnerships Manager at Duchess (or whatever she is) Fox’s Academy of Ideas.”
To which we add that Bill Durodié, a ‘visiting professor’, has been associated with the RCP/LM for some 30 years as their ‘consultant’ on all things GM and plastic.
References
[1] He looks seriously wasted and wizened in the photo (compare to his youthful features on Wikipedia), and is clearly ill. We wonder if his acolytes and protegées, such as O’Neill and Fox, are manoeuvering for the cult leadership. James Heartfield might also be in the runners, though he seems to prefer his position as consigliere to the Dear Leader, out of the limelight.
[2] Curiously, Orbán was a big cheese in the Fidesz party after the Soviet Union collapsed, and a fervently pro-Western liberal. His rapid turn to the Right and adoption of ‘culture wars’ looks to be pretty opportunistic. Have a listen to the Hardtalk interview of an ex-colleague of his, now opposition activist, Zsuzsanna Szelényi, on the BBC World Service on 6/2/23, which is very enlightening.
[3]. Wikipedia bio of Furedi (accessed 6/2/23)
The RCP brings down the PM?
In today’s news it’s announced that the RCP’s agent in 10 Downing Street, Munira Murza, has quit, the media describing this is a major blow to the Prime Minister seeing as she’d worked with Boris Johnson (aka Bozo) for donkey’s years. Ostensibly she’s quit in a dudgeon of high-mindedness over Bozo’s slur against the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, but this just isn’t credible to RCP Watch or, indeed, to anyone familiar with the RCP and its ‘robust’ methods. Imagine if, say, an aide to Starmer had packed it in for similar reasons, you can just imagine the RCP rottweiler Brendan O’Neill mocking them for being a ‘snowflake’.
It seems pretty likely that Mirza knows a sinking ship when she’s on one, and has decided to jump before the waters reach the gunwales, and to put the boot into Bozo as she leaps for safety. There’s little point in remaining an aide to a clearly lame duck PM, and plenty point in positioning yourself, and by association your sect, as a must-have adviser for the next PM. That Mirza’s public quitting will likely bring down the Bozo regime is a real feather in the cap for the RCP and shows how close to the levers of power it’s reached. Uncle Frank will be quietly proud.
Boris Johnson’s policy chief Munira Mirza resigns over PM’s Savile remarks. BBC News, 3/2/22
Why Boris Johnson’s Tories fell for a tiny sect of libertarian provocateurs. Andy Beckett, the Guardian, 1/8/20
The RCP writes the Tory manifesto. This blog passim, 1/11/19, outlining Mirza’s history and positions, particularly over racism (spoiler: it no longer exists).
From climate change denial to ‘inactivism’
Spiked got a dishonourable mention in a ‘long read’ [1] in the Guardian a few days ago, describing how climate change denial is morphing into “inactivism”. With the evidence overwhelmingly supporting the hypothesis that climate change is real and human-made, those who outright deny its existence have become akin to Flat Earthers. That’s particularly the case for major fossil fuel corporations, and their front organisations (step forward Spiked, funded by Koch Industries [2]), who cannot deny climate change without serious damage to their ‘corporate credibility’ (trans: they’ll look very silly). The trend now, according to the Long Read, is for denialism to be succeeded by “inactivism”:
an epic struggle to convince you not so much to doubt the reality of climate crisis, but rather to dampen your enthusiasm for any attempts at dealing with it.
Michael Mann, cited in the long read, The Guardian, 11/11/21
Characteristic of inactivism is not just an encouraged apathy towards climate change, a sort of ‘WTF, what can you do?’ attitude, but a witch hunt against “Green elites” engaged in “misanthropy” [3], aggressively expressed by Spiked’s rottweiler, the far Right wannabe cult leader Brendan O’Neill, in typically purple prose
The hostility to fossil fuels seems increasingly to be driven by misanthropy rather than reason; by an elitist feeling of revulsion for the gains of modernity rather than by a rational assessment of the undoubted problems humankind still faces.
Brendan O’Neill, Spiked Online, 12/11/21
This is now the party line of the cult. No longer outright denial of climate change (though plenty of scepticism on Spiked and other fronts [4], including the Climate Resistance blog run by the pugilistic Ben Pile), but rather a hostility to ‘net zero’ and any measures to cut CO2 emissions.
References
- “Meet the inactivists“, The Guardian,
- Koch Industries has funded Spiked, at the last count, to the tune of £300k (see this blog passim). Koch Industries is notorious as the arch corporate climate change denier which has funded scores of denialist bodies – see this Greenpeace article, another by the Campaign against Climate Change, and this NY Times opinion piece on the history of the Koch empire. See also the DeSmog page on Spiked and Koch Industries.
- “Keep burning those fossil fuels“, Brendan O’Neill, Spiked Online, 12/11/21
- Tellingly, the RCP/LM front organisation Sense About Science, is silent on anything to do with climate. Seriously. A search for ‘climate’ on its website brings up nothing, despite COP having been in the news for months.
Matthew Goodwin
Twitter has been afire with condemnation from liberals and anti-fascists for Prof Matthew Goodwin, senior academic at the University of Kent, for his declaration to a parliament select committee that he’d invite fascists to speak at the institution (see video on Twitter) as a believer in ‘free speech’. This robust libertarian position made RCP Watch’s antennae twitch, as did his host institution where Uncle Frank Furedi is long established, and it didn’t take much digging to find that he writes for Spiked, and has appeared at Battle of Ideas events organised by the Institute of Ideas (prop: Claire Fox). He follows, maybe even helps to write, the party line on racism, which is that structural and institutional racism doesn’t exist, and interpersonal racism isn’t a patch on the that of the 70s and 80s, back when the RCP were fighting nazis on the streets. Racism ain’t what it used to be, according to the RCP, a position now carried into Downing Street by Uncle Frank’s highest-placed protegée, Munira Mirza (see this blog passim).
Goodwin is telegenic, provocative, self-promoting, and not lacking in self-belief, so it’s likely that Uncle Frank cast his beady eyes on him when he arrived in 2015 at the University of Kent (at Canterbury, as was), and he’s clearly, as with other Kent academics, fallen under Furedi’s baleful spell. He know his stuff on the far Right, for sure, not least through his association with the pro-Brexit Legatum Institute, and being mates with barking Right Tories, in particular James Delingpole and the eugenicist Toby Young.
He has an impressive publication record, but clearly he writes from a Right perspective, trying to diminish and define away racism, and to “normalise and detoxify the new right“.
References
University of Kent page on Goodwin
The Problem with Matthew Goodwin. A detailed critical article on the blog ‘Guy Debord’s Cat‘.
Questions raised about the Battle of Ideas. An ‘event report’ on the 2018 Battle of Ideas event, on the popular blog Bella Caledonia, at which Goodwin appeared.
I’m not racist, but.. Daniel Trilling. Critical review of “National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy”, by Goodwin and Roger Eatwell.
Going native: Populist academics normalise the anti-immigrant right. Martin Shaw. Critical review of the Goodwin & Eatwell book.
Andrew Doyle
The Spiked writer, and comedian, Andrew Doyle, is riding high. He was the RCP/LM’s representative on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze in recent years, taking over from the now-ennobled Clare Fox who’s busy raising cash for cult coffers in the House of Lords these days, and put in doughty robust performances following faithfully the RCP/LM party line. He’s the writer behind the sweary cult comic character Jonathan Pie, as mentioned on this blog 3 years ago. Now he’s turned up as a presenter on GB News, the new right-wing TV channel run by Andrew “Brillo Pad” Neil, ex-editor of The Scotsman and then of The Spectator. Characterised as Fox News for the UK, GB News is an obvious channel for the RCP/LM to get its claws into, being pro-Brexit, anti-‘woke’, anti-Left, and funded by serious US and UAE corporate money. Expect to see more RCP/LM figures gravitating to GB News in the near future, and to see Doyle on mainstream media more often. It’ll be a good little earner for the cult, which is always on the lookout for new ‘revenue streams’.
References
The unsurprising reason Jonathan Pie rants sound straight out of Spiked. 6/2/18. The anarchist website libcom.org exposes Doyle as the voice behind the ‘outrageous’ sweary comedy character Jonathan Pie, and Spiked as Doyle’s direction. “Publications like Spiked, and sockpuppet comedy aliases like Jonathan Pie, provide left-liberal cover for far-right nationalists” – ooch! A pithy description of the ‘appeal’ and ‘mission’ of the cult.
Jonathan Pie. RCP/LM Watch, 8/5/18.
Lady Claire Fox
With the accession of Munira Mirza (see this blog passim) to the head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, the media has finally woken up to the RCP/LM/Spiked organisation, and many articles and opinion pieces have been written about herself, very few showing any understanding of the modus operandi of the LM Network. A recent article in the Guardian [1] showed some understanding of the cult, and how it has successfully worked its way into the media and thence into the heart of government. Better late than never, perhaps, for all that the Cassandra voices of this and other blogs, and of journalists like Nick Cohen and George Monbiot, have warned against the rise of Uncle Frank Furedi’s sect for many years.
What amused RCP Watch about the Guardian article was the reference to Claire “Rotweiler” Fox being proposed for the House of Lords:
“On Friday [31/7/20] another RCP veteran, Claire Fox, was nominated for a peerage by the government.”
This was well worth a chuckle for its sheer chutzpah. There have been many comments on antisocial media about how she could square her long-time opposition to the Lords with being made a Lady, but nearly all have been by posters who simply do not understand the nature of Leninist sects. The RCP/LM/Spiked, like all Trot sects, only cares about the Party’s survival and growth. The Party, and its Dear Leader, is always supreme and overrides any personal scruples. Personal morality is never important, and is usually seen as a petit-bourgeois affectation, a distracting luxury for liberals, not suitable for serious vanguardists. Fox is 30-year inner cadre going back to the RCP’s founding, and a loyal Leninist, and will do and say whatever serves the Party. Her peerage money will also boost Party coffers, together with the tithe (5% of gross, back in RCP days) on her Brexit MEP income.
Mirza herself was the subject of a mostly uncritical BBC Radio 4 programme [2] which didn’t add a lot to what we cognoscenti of the sect know, but it did wheel on Uncle Frank who spoke with glowing pride of his protegée, leaving RCP Watch in little doubt that he still controls Mirza. It’s worth a listen at just 15 minutes.
1. Why Johnson’s party has fallen for a tiny sect of provocateurs. Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 1/8/20.
2. Profile, Munira Mirza. BBC Radio 4, broadcast 28/6/20.
DeSmog on Spiked
The impressively diligent and comprehensive Green investigative journalism site DeSmog [1] has just published a primer and reference to Spiked which is worth bookmarking:
https://www.desmog.co.uk/spiked
It has a high signal/noise ratio, and is packed full of references and resources on the history and practice of Spiked, going back to the RCP years, with the emphasis on the sect’s virulent anti-environmentalism and its ‘scepticism’ over climate change. Many of the resources are new to RCP Watch, despite our stalking of the sect for many years.
Much more detail on the RCP/LM, and its close links with far Right and corporate anti-environmentalist organisations such as the infamous Institute for Economic Affairs and the Koch organisation, has been reported in this blog passim [2].
References
1. “DeSmog UK aims to investigate and analyse the undue influence of climate science denial and the fossil fuel industry on UK energy and climate policy.” ‘About us‘ on the DeSmog site.
2. “Revealed: US Oil Billionaire Charles Koch Funds UK Anti-Environment Spiked Network“. DeSmog, 7/12/18
Ella Whelan on the Moral Maze
For those eager listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze, who’ve been pining for the RCP/LM line on hot button topics with Claire Fox having apparently quit the programme, we present the new RCP panel member: Ella Whelan, writer at Spiked Online and, apparently, its assistant editor with Brendan O’Neill (aka Tommy Robinson for the middle classes). She obviously has the brief of (anti-) feminism correspondent, going by the voluminous list of articles written by her for Spiked. She’s on the Moral Maze tonight, on the subject of the morality of genetics, and was on the previous show.
There’s clearly a place saved at the MM panel for a RCP/LM staffer. Previously, her mucker Andrew Doyle, ‘comedian’ and creator of the libertarian alter ego Jonathan Pie (see this blog passim), occupied the seat for a number of shows. As we’ve written before, anyone in the broadcast media world knows the RCP/LM of old, and knows who its rent-a-gobs are as they guarantee good, contrarian copy, so it’s beyond credibility that the MM producers and its lugubrious presenter, Michael Buerk, don’t know that they’re putting sect members on air. Which is fair enough, maybe, but after the recent revelations of the sect being funded by the insanely rich Koch Bros (now just Bro, as one recently croaked) there’s a moral duty (sic) on the Beeb to announce the affiliations of RCP panellists, and occasionally witnesses, when they introduce them.
The RCP writes the Tory manifesto
That’s a sensational post title, but strangely true. Munira Mirza, ex-scion of the RCP going back to the early days, is now co-writing the Tory manifesto for the December 2019 general election. This was unearthed by Otto English, correspondent for the liberal monthly investigative journalism title Byline Times, and spread by Tweet on his feed at @Otto_English:
“The RCP/Spiked bunch shouldn’t be allowed near a hamster let alone government policy. But there you go – Mirza is writing the manifesto ” (tweet on 30/10/19)
He continued, in another tweet:
“Mirza became an adviser to Johnson in his Mayoral days she remains very tight with that libertarian and ex RCP mob even appearing very recently in one of their videos.”
So it’s not just that she was in the old RCP, but that she’s in with Spiked and LM and currently writing for Spiked. No ‘youthful dalliance’ this.
English’s tweets led to the writing of a sharp post on the Zelo Street blog which seriously puts the boot into the RCP/LM/Spiked:
“Ms Mirza has now moved with Bozo The Clown from City Hall to 10 Downing Street, where she is director of the Policy Unit. Some may find having one of the Spiked alumni in that role a frightening prospect, but now has come the news that will fall as manna from heaven for anyone opposed to the Tory Party: she is to co-author its election manifesto.“
Interestingly, her colleague and co-writer of the manifesto, Rachel Wolf, is a fracking lobbyist, which rather holes Bozo’s greenwash project below the waterline.
That’s the RCP now advising at the highest levels of the Tory Party, and if Bozo Johnson wins the election they’ll be in or around 10 Downing Street working on policy. Back in the 80s the RCP held summer ‘conferences’ entitled “Preparing for Power”. Oh, how we laughed at their pretentions, a cultlet of 150 members talking of power, but it looks like their strategy is paying off after all these decades. As written about here previously, the RCP is running many Brexit Party parliamentary candidates, and given the organisation and serious money behind Farrago’s project there’s a better than evens chance that there’ll be RCP MPs in the next Parliament. Uncle Frank must be very proud indeed.
Mirza and the ‘race report’
An interesting postscript is that Mirza was involved in the writing of the recent (31/3/21) ‘race report’ whitewashing the UK of racism, according to the BBC:
There was further unease among anti-racism groups at the reported involvement of Number 10 policy advisor Munira Mirza in setting up the commission, because she had previously written of how institutional racism was “a perception more than a reality”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56590791
If true, Uncle Frank’s protegée is doing very well indeed. The RCP has long been ‘sceptical’ of the existence of racism (see this blog passim, RCP/LM as a far Right group) at any level, societal or institutional. Brendan O’Neill of Spiked infamy has regularly claimed that the battles against racism have been done and dusted, not least by the RCP itself via its front organisation Workers Against Racism.
References
Spiked to write Tory manifesto. Zelo Street.
Fracking lobbyist to write Tory manifesto. The Guardian, 30/10/19
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