Author: Mick Hartley

  • Refuting their Jewishness

    ewish people and the defensive war that Israel is waging in response to the October 7th attacks carried out by Hamas.”

    It's so badly expressed. Whatever he was trying to say, "refute" doesn't work. "Refute their Jewishness"? What does that mean? Deny their Jewishness? Withdraw their Jewishness? I suppose it's something like: object (in strong terms) to the support their Jewishness implies to the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation etc. etc… But then, what occupation? Gaza, now? Or the whole Israel project? And in what way is the Holocaust being hijacked? By whom? Again it's unclear, but the implication has to be: Israel – the state of Israel. Whereas from any sane perspective, surely, the only way the Holocaust is being hijacked at the moment is the constant obscene Free Palestine insistence that Israel is now carrying out its own Holocaust, its own genocide, against the Palestinians.

    But Glazer chose not to go that way.

    It's hard to disagree with Nicole Lampert: he couldn't resist playing the good Jew in front of the Hollywood crowd:

    I understand why he would want to perhaps use this moment of success to talk about war. I empathise with why he would want to point out how each side in every war dehumanises the other. But by linking the Holocaust and Gaza he has trampled on the six million dead and the particular pernicious way in which they were slaughtered.

    And by doing it As A Jew he wins double plaudits from Jew haters while leaving the rest of us – already labouring under a tsunami of antisemitism – feeling like we have been punched in the stomach. Betrayal is so much harder when it is one of your own. It really hurts.

  • London 1970-1973

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    [Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Sean Plunkett]

    Sean Plunkett, previously, in Hull.

  • Angered by the grandiose, narcissistic overreach of academics

    “colonialism and empire”; they spread “baseless fears” about vulnerable transwomen; and so on.

    Her evidence is carefully cherry-picked and often from partisan sources. There is no real attempt to take seriously the mounting evidence from hospitals and whistle-blowers of medical malpractice against children and teens in the name of “affirmation”; the rising numbers of assaults against women and girls as a result of self-ID; the demoralisation of displaced women athletes; or the physical and psychological pain of detransitioners. (On the latter, she claims that “the regret rates for people of all ages is very small”, based on a single 2021 study that has been heavily criticised since.) Also familiar from arguments with anime avatars on Twitter, we find fatuous whatabouttery: you say you are interested in stopping violence against female prisoners, but why don’t you care about male prison guards raping them? (Er… we do?) As usual, the message seems to be that these things aren’t really happening; and even if they were, they wouldn’t really matter….

    Still, there is something correct in Butler’s observation that critics of transactivism are getting increasingly intolerant and illiberal. The dominant emotion she attributes to them is fear, but a more accurate description would be fury. It is obvious that many across the world have become angered by the grandiose, narcissistic overreach of academics like her: thinkers indifferent to the real-world havoc wrought by their barmy ideas and impenetrable speech codes, and who pillory all objectors as badly intentioned or deeply confused, no matter what the background reasoning. Butler is right to fear increasing threats towards LGBT people and women across the globe but fails to notice her own significant responsibility in the aetiology of the problem. Speaking personally, I’m not remotely afraid of gender, understood blandly as sexual and bodily expression; but I am very afraid of what Judith Butler has done with it.

    Reading the book so we don't have to.

  • At the coaling station

    More Chicago streamliner locomotives from Jack Delano. "December 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Chicago & North Western Railroad switching and classification freight yards. Locomotives at the coaling station."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

  • Labour in thrall to authoritarian zealots

    traditionally the party that advanced women’s rights. Not anymore. Now it’s seen, even by loyal supporters, as in thrall to authoritarian zealots who promote gender ideology. The Labour front bench is promising frankly alarming “reforms”, including making it easier to change legal gender, when the party comes to power.

    Few of us on the Left want the former prime minister as an ally. Yet Truss’s proposals, which include a change in the law to make it clear that “sex” means biological sex, are welcome at a moment when language in long-established legislation is being manipulated to mean something that was never intended.

    No one believed, when the Equality Act was passed in 2010, that sex referred to anything other than observable physical characteristics. But trans activists have deliberately confused sex and gender, pushing the idea that women have to give up essential protections to placate men who think they were “born in the wrong body”. And leading Labour figures have gone along with it.

    We now live in a world where traditional dividing lines between the two main parties, such as levels of tax and public spending, have been blurred. Where there is a clear distinction, however, is on the question of biology. Shadow ministers, Labour MPs and an alarming number of parliamentary candidates spout gibberish about sex being “assigned” at birth.

    If a prominent Labour figure proposed similar legislation to Truss, thousands of women would be cheering. And it’s a measure of how the Labour Party has let us down, remaining silent as MPs like Rosie Duffield are smeared with accusations of transphobia, that even sensible proposals are dismissed as “Right-wing”….

    Truss may well be freelancing, seeking to retrieve her reputation, but this is Sir Keir Starmer’s weak spot. Voters say they don’t know what he stands for, but we know exactly what he thinks on this issue. And for many women on the Left, he’s firmly on the wrong side.

  • Medically “fixing” gay people

    natural, dangerous and ought to be corrected. Present-day gender identity ideology perceives homosexuality as evidence of misalignment between soul and body. In other words, it seeks to “fix” gay people so that they fit into a heterosexual framework. It is no coincidence that so many detransitioners are gay people who were simply struggling with their sexuality. Gender identity ideology is the true successor to Section 28.

    The proponents of this revamped gay conversion therapy dismiss our concerns as “transphobia” and “bigotry”, or as part of a manufactured “culture war”. Worse still, the new homophobia is being cheered on by those it will hurt most. While prominent gay figures continue to feed the beast that wishes to devour them, we are unlikely to see this dire situation improve any time soon. It was bad enough in the Eighties, when gay people were demonised and harassed by the establishment. Who thought we would have to fight these battles all over again?

    Along with Stonewall let's not forget Mermaids as the other major trans campaign group, and let's not forget how Mermaids former CEO Susie Green dragged her son off to Thailand on his sixteenth birthday to be surgically remodelled as a "girl" (she noted jokingly that penile inversion had been difficult because “there wasn’t much there to work with” as her child’s genitals had never developed due to puberty blocking medication) because his father thought he was too effeminate for a boy.

  • Amsterdam’s shame

    Some three-quarters of Dutch Jews were killed in the Holocaust:

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  • Streamliner diesel electric

    Jack Delano, December 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. One of the Chicago and North Western Railroad streamliner diesel electric locomotives. These trains are operated jointly with the Union Pacific Railroad to the West Coast."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Jack Delano, Office of War Information]

  • Holding off a genocide

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