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Just yesterday, the proprietor of Novara media, Aaron Bastani, made his views clear about the Poppy Appeal and Remembrance. It was“racist”, “white supremacist”, “a joke for people on the left” and “grotesque”. Just for good measure, he declared “Fuck the Invictus games.” Today, his fellow Corbynista media outrider Owen Jones joined in the ‘fun’ with his supportive tweet (see below) of Bastani by taking the piss. And what does the Magic Grandpa himself, Jeremy Corbyn, say about it? Absolutely nothing.
Far be it from me to use bad language on this family friendly website, but fuck it: Bastani and Jones are taking the piss.
Bastani, predictably yet another grammar school Corbynista, has a PhD from the New Political Communication Unit, whatever that is, from University of London. He’s another middle class posh boy who knows what’s good for the working classes. Or rather, thinks he does. And Owen Jones went from humble beginnings to Cambridge University where he studied Sneering Superiority at Seriously Smug level. These days they exist in the chattering classes of trendy London with all the other sneering superior millionaires like Momentum owner Jon Lansman and the official leader of the Labour Party, Seumas Milne, formerly of Winchester College and, obviously, Oxford University. These people have no idea how ordinary folk lead their lives.
People fought and died for our ever eroding freedoms and I believe we have a duty to remember them always. But whilst I am free to believe that, people have the right not to believe that. I have the right to be offended, the likes of Bastani have the right to offend me. It’s a price we pay for free speech, no matter how disgusted they make me feel. I rather think, anyway, that their motives were not quite as they seem.
There is no doubt that there is an element in the hard left which regards Remembrance with contempt. I would think that Bastani and Jones fall well within that category. However, it is entirely possible that Bastani is employing the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, so acting as an agent provocateur might bump up the number of hits on his website and earn him more money in traditional socialist fashion and it’s entirely possible that Jones thinks it’s all a bit of a laugh. In which case, I feel very sorry for them. They have all year to question the Royal British Legion, yet they choose to shoot from the hip at the time of year when the rest of us remember and pay tribute to our fallen.
Remember that Labour is, or rather was, the party of Clement Atlee, Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson and John Smith. Now it is a ragbag coalition of the hard left masquerading under Labour’s flag. Where two of Jeremy Corbyn’s most loyal and trusted lieutenants ride roughshod over the memories of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we would be free, something isn’t right.
Yes, Bastani and Jones are free to take the piss out of Remembrance, regardless of how much it offends many millions of us. I am also free to not vote for a Labour Party that not so much tolerates but encourages the likes of them and that’s a freedom I shall exercise until the party is in the hands of decent, responsible people. Failing that, I’ll stay politically homeless. I could no more stand alongside the comrades than I could Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg. Shysters and chancers all.
