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Mhmm. (Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I stood up to Susan Cuthbert. She ran our school playground and, yes, that is her actual name. (So sue me, Susan.) Every lunchtime, Susan assigned us a role to play. I was way down in the hierarchy, so I would spend that time pretending to be a tree in The Sound of Music or, when I crossed her, an actual rail track. I would have to lie down on the tarmac for an hour: “Please walk on me.”
By the age of ten, though, I had the measure of her and spent a lot of time persuading my classmates not to be bit parts in Susan Cuthbert’s mundane re-enactments, but to be stars in my special fantasy games. You could be in Dr Who, Star Trek, or T Rex. You can be heroes. Just for one lunchtime. We froze her out.
But guess what? It turns out there are lots of Susans out there. And there is one Susan in particular who frequently uses his platform to demean women. Social media bullying is still something that no one knows quite how to deal with. It’s virtual until it isn’t, and all I can say is this man’s tweets bring violence and hatred to my door, including rape and death threats. It’s all especially horrible because he’s been to my house more than once for lunches and parties, only to later reveal himself to be a misogynist pest.
Owen Jones has long been very angry with me, and it’s not really to do with trans people at all. (There were trans people at many of those parties he attended — that’s how Terfy I am.) Trans people are merely pawns in his proxy war, and they deserve far better representatives. His real problem with me was that I did not support Corbyn or those who surrounded him. I didn’t feel it was my duty to get this deluded old fool elected. But Owen, with his zillions of Twitter followers, thought otherwise and became increasingly hostile to me.
I may have been rude in my responses, but my animus against that part of the media isn’t personal: it’s about class. Owen went to Oxford and was a bag carrier in Westminster before being handed a national newspaper column. So many of these hard-Left types have no life experience and it shows.
I was reminded of that recently when Jones went on some mad rant, posting 33 tweets about me. Way to go, mate, if you don’t want to look obsessive and harassing. He wanted to rebut the idea that he had anything to do with me leaving the Guardian. The boring details are this: I chose to leave. I was not fired, but I found it intolerable to be censored for relatively mild views. I have never claimed to be cancelled or silenced. Do I think Owen was responsible for getting my “colleagues” to gang up and write a letter denouncing me? I can’t say. I certainly think he was responsible for creating the toxic atmosphere in which it happened. But he denies it and claims the letter was never about me, even though it was leaked to his mate Patrick Strudwick at Buzzfeed, who strangely seemed to think it was.
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SubscribeI have complicated feelings reading this article. On the one hand Miss Moore has my sympathies for the way Owen Jones has treated her.
On the other hand I feel, to an extent, that this is a bed of her own making. She was quite happy to write for the Guardian when it waged a war to divide humanity into a vast array of competing groups, directly at odds with the very conception of the nation state, thereby undermining the very fabric of society that allows her to live the life she does.
In short, she has supported a belief system which is inherently divisive and for which violence is an obvious end point.
It is therefore not surprising that the fire she helped light and thereafter stoke, has eventually burned her. At which point she is now prompted, for the first time, to consider the downside of her belief system.
Owen Jones is far from unusual. He is, in many respects, a bog-standard Guardian leftie – self satisfied, arrogant, incapable of originality and prone to repackaging his various hatreds of those more successful than him, as compassion for [insert favoured victim group].
It is amazing to me that of all the original thinkers I have met coming from Oxford, that the Guardian should choose someone as remarkable for his lack of talent and imagination as Owen Jones. He invariably regurgitates failed slogans from the 1970s and presents them as though they are the magical outcome of his own brilliance. It takes a special kind of narcissism and lack of self awareness to do that.
The unpleasantness of Owen Jones aside, I think it is a testament to the open mindedness of UnHerd to open its arms to so many exiled Guardianistas, none of whom would dream of extending the same invitation to exiled UnHerd commentators.
Edit: On reflection it is also amazing to me that Miss Moore has only now discovered that there is a difference between those who profess their virtue and those who are actually virtuous.
I hope she is now aware that people who spend their time going on about how amazingly moral they are are usually the very opposite of what they claim. The behaviour of the Guardian in this way is entirely predictable – they claim to be anti-hate, while being full of hate, claim to be anti-racist while being racists, and claim to love women while hating them. Why is this only coming to her attention now?
Very well said and right on all counts, particularly the one regarding Unherd’ welcoming writers of all political persuasions and viewpoints. Although hopefully such an offer will never be extended to Owen Jones.
Spot on. As Weller once sang, “Yer made yer bed, you’d better lie in it”
The Guardian itself is hypocritical, after all, the paper was founded (as the Manchester Guardian) by John Edward Taylor using profits from his cotton plantation which used slaves, also the paper supported the Confederacy during the US civil war. Should the paper not be cancelled?
The squalid slums of the workers in the cotton mills was ignored by the Manchester Guardian. It was Lord Shaftesbury( 7th Earl and Tory ) who stated that after slavery was abolished the conditions of the industrial workers should be improved, not the Manchester Guardian. 150 years after Lord Shaftesbury, the Guardian ignored the grooming of working class mainly white but also some Sikh girls by those of mainly Pakistani Muslim heritage. When woman Labour MPs such as Anne Cryer and Sarah Champion raised the issue of grooming, they were verbally attacked.
Has the Guardian ever improved the lives of the manual working classes or just been a pleasant sinecure for some of the upper middle classes?
“the Guardian ignored the grooming of working class mainly white but also some Sikh girls by those of mainly Pakistani Muslim heritage.”
*the Guardian ignored the abuse of tens of thousands of working class mainly white but also some Sikh girls by Pakistani paedophile grooming gangs.
Excellent. The Guardian must be cancelled to atone for its involvement in the wicked slave trade. Hoist and petard come to mind.
Is this satire?
a war to divide humanity into a vast array of competing groups,
James Lindsay has a very insightful analysis of this phenomenon. He calls it ‘X marxism’ where X is what is the identity considered at the margins of what the marxists call ‘normalcy’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNW79czfibw&t=5s
Captured my feelings perfectly – well said.
Your comment made my attempt at commenting unnecessary. I agree 100%.
Much like you did when reading the article, I had complicated feelings when reading your repsonse. I agree with the bulk of what you say, however, it is, in my opinion, difficult to think of anything that divides humanity into a vast array of competing groups more so than the conception of the nation-state.
Please explain. I’m just not seeing how this works. Are you suggesting that nation states create competing groups internally, externally or both ?
In any case, it’s hard to see whatever faults the nation state may have as ever really competing with the narcissism of small differences that the left specialiases in. This article does tend to trigger thoughts of the Peoples Front for Judea/Judean Peoples Front and he said/she said bickering. Ms. Moore couldn’t help herself saying that her problem with Owen Jones was about “class” (whatever she meant by this – the left can never define their terms – can’t even agree what a woman is these days).
I’ll try my best! The world is divided into 200 or so nation-states. These have clearly defined boundaries (creating 200 types of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the process), work largely in their own self interests, and are sometimes at war with each other (of the real kind not the virtual keyboard warrior variety). So, much as I also dislike Owen Jones and his ilk, I cannot see the nation-state as a solution to divisiveness. They just offer a different type of divisiveness, based on nationality rather than religion, sexuality or some other variable (and division of a kind we are more familiar with).
Thanks. Appreciate the reply.
Realistically, I think we cannot eliminate war – only minimise it.
I would also suggest that not all nation states are the same. Some have clearly defined, stable boundaries. Others do not. Some have a stable ethic and/or religious mix. Others do not. Some are relatively tolerant and flexible (I suggest that England is one example here) and others far more tribal (Afghanistan, many African states, to a limited extent Scotland).
I would go further and suggest that the ones without stable, agreed boundaries, a stable ethnic mix and lacking tolerance are the ones we need to be worrying about and that the others are fairly harmless and there simply isn’t a problem that needs fixing for these.
The real problem states are those that were poorly designed.
I do not – yet – see that nation states are inherently “divisive”, nor that any alternative would be better.
Few would claim that the UK and France are natural allies. Yet we have been actual allies for nearly 200 years. The tensions and conflicts here are contained. It’s quite possible.
Human existence would be far, far worse without nation states.
How do we know this? Stating it does not make it so, and given that virtually every inch of inhabitable territory on the planet is claimed by some nation-state or other, we currently have nothing else to compare them with.
We do Andrew – look at regions of Somaliland that are not governable. They are ruled by warlords. That is the realistic choice – do you want a territory governed by an elected body that can impose force with the mandate of those it governs, or do you want a despot king? There are few examples of history where there are alternatives to this, in my observation (unless of course the places have very low population densities, which is not the case in the modern world anywhere outside of the poles).
How would we deal with the effects of mass migration? Who would build roads and pay for their upkeep? Who would pay for the training of neurosurgeons? Who would investigate murder and rape and theft? Who would pay for social security? Who would ensure decent safety standards for food and for air travel and for exhaust emissions?
Your experiment in my view has been tried – it’s what Europe was like in the middle ages – hundreds of peoples’ divided into groups along the lines which you appear to advocate. But that caused more, rather than less, war. The whole reason nation states came into being was to get human beings to leave their tribes behind and amalgamate into larger groups which would facilitate efficient distribution of resources and allow for central control (ie the rule of law). The social and legal contracts that make this have allowed unprecedented peace in the modern world.
You can rightly argue that nation states also cause war. However, my counter argument is that they cause less war than the alternative.
The logical conclusion to your line of reasoning here would be that one global government under central control would eliminate war entirely, although I doubt you would advocate that, and neither would I as it happens. However, I think your stance is based too much on stable nation-states such as those in Western Europe. Those in other parts of the world are no less nation-states but may lack the social contracts you refer to. Ironically enough, some of the least stable states in the world were established, rather irresponsibly to my mind, by some of the most stable.
Fair point re global government. My sense is there is an optimal size of land mass that can be practically governed to minimise the forces between the various competing groups. Too big and you tend to end up with a state that is too weak to perform its duties (such as the Congo).Too small and you end up with a land mass in which enemy groups are in too close a proximity or which is too small to practically govern.
It’s also important to draw lines where there is some hope that the people inside it can get along. This is possible in some but not all cases.
In Zimbabwe (where I live) the nation state exists more in form than substance. It often fails in its duties because people, in my observation, do not fully buy into the idea of the construct and are, therefore, more prone to being governed by kinship and tribal allegiances. But what is the alternative? Dividing it into hundreds of small territories? Would that work? What about those tribal groups which ended up on diamonds, chrome or natural gas? Would that set up really lead to peace, as you suggest? I doubt it personally. In fact, weak governance, leads to war lords who then control such resources for their private benefit. It is the nation state which offers the best (albeit flawed) means of dividing these resources.
In Zimbabwe I suspect that the current nation state, while flawed, corrupt and inefficient, is, with 16 million people, a better alternative to hundreds of warlords battling it out for resources, with the populace paying the price.
“Difficult to think of anything..” Geography?
Superb. You should be writing these articles and not Ms Moore !
Not sure I entirely agree. Yes, feminism was divisive, but I don’t recall death threats from feminists. What’s happening now with trans activism is on an entirely different scale and order than what even the most radical feminists were talking about. In fact, the only threats I can recall were made against feminists. Nor do I recall feminists going on about how moral they are, even if they did claim the moral high ground. What’s going on now bears little resemblance to the cultural skimishes of the 80s and 90s. I thought radical feminism was ridiculous and didn’t buy its tenets, but blaming it for how trans activists and little dweebs like Owen Jones behave is, in my view, unfair.
A few feminists (such as Valerie Solanas) have made death threats. But most feminists feel no need to do that, much less to fight in the streets. In democracies, they can achieve their revolutionary goals–and have done so–much more easily and much more effectively by changing public opinion and therefore gathering votes. Moreover, they can infiltrate bureaucracies and countless institutions–and have done so–in order to change policies in behind closed doors. Consider how much they have changed in only a few decades (which might seem like a long time but is actually almost immediate by the historical standards of other social and cultural revolutions). By now, feminism is the de facto ideology, sometimes the de jure ideology, of many nations. The problem is that, instead of guns, they have wielded contempt, even hatred, toward men (misandry, the sexist counterpart of misogyny) and passed that strategy on to the wokers. Never mind what this zero-sum game has meant to boys and men.
My impression was that Unherd includes the likes of Suzanne Moore and Julie Blindel (?) just to wind people up and provoke furious discussion in the comments – or more commonly polite bafflement. The Times also appears to do this by throwing in the odd gender wars commenter or pro-immigration article.
I’d hoped avoidance of the echo chamber of uniform opinion by including viewpoint diversity is the reason Unherd includes different perspectives.
Come on Barry, admit it, you know you just can’t wait to lay into the writers of articles like this – especially Suzanne Moore and probably Julie Bindle too.
Couldn’t agree more, Andy. The diversity of viewpoints and avoidance of echo chambers is exactly why I’m here. I enjoy the articles, and find *some* comments thought-provoking and informative. Often, however, reading the comment sections makes me feel I’ve strayed on to the Daily Fail/ Torygraph websites.
Can you substantiate any of your accusations about Suzanne Moore? You almost seem to be implying that people should only have one set of political views? I used to read her columns, and I can’t recall she was ever any kind of ideological sectarian.
I’m not sure why, fellow Unherders, someone asking for evidence for a point of view should warrant downvotes?
@Andrew: My accusations are by virtue mostly of her silence on key matters. She was, for example, silent about Rotherham and the child grooming scandals and, when she finally commented on them, did not hold radical islam to account, instead blaming men in general and Western society, which I thought was cowardly. Her ideology, in this regard, is clear and shows an indifference to brutality and genuine concern for women when it matters. It is, in this light, unsurprising that she was cancelled, eventually, since the people she has supported are obsessed with ideology and indifferent to people.
A very well written comment.
Spot on….the Guardian was always capable of a weird kind of smugness way back when I had to deal with it..but in recent years that smugness seems to have curdled into a click driven desperation in which anyone who can provide *interactions* can say whatever they want…and nobody does that more than Owen Jones.
He’s almost identical in his ranty shouteness to any of the absurd American hee-haw commentators on the far edges of the political spectrum.
But as you say there are many about who were OK with it when it wasn’t directed at them.
The Guardian is a paper written by twerps like Owen Jones for twerps like Owen Jones. Why do we need another article giving them attention and rehashing another ridiculous Twitter spat? The response will be the ejaculation of another 57 tweets into the online cesspit of that blight on humanity. Get off social media and let the rest of the losers on there choke on the rancid fumes of their own echo chambers. Life is going on somewhere else.
Nicely put Katherine 🙂
Exactly this – it’s all so utterly tedious and self important
I agree. Unheard is a great morning read, but it lends too much space to these personal feuds. Also, this author seems to think the Left doesn’t (!) “punch down” at women. Newsflash, apparently: the Left punches everyone, hard, then kicks, then destroys. It always has.
The Left was nurtured on grievance, resentment and envy masquerading as compassion and ‘fairness’. It still lives up to its heritage.
I see him too often on television, which makes me think there are too many twerps like Owen Jones employed by other twerps like Owen Jones to run the media, and much else.
control the air waves.
The short answer to your question is this: Some centrist/liberal naifs still have no knowledge of Owen Jones and are open to his persuasion. I only myself learned about him last year through an UnHerd article (probably the one referenced by Ms Moore above) and would have been enamored with his arguments in years past.
Yes, it’s largely he said/she said and I can’t resist thinking “why can’t they both lose”.
She appears to be holding on to grudges.
Well I like writing really nasty poetry about him.
Owen Jones is a long standing bête noir of my own, too – though happily, I never actually met him. I say “happily”, because his output is so distasteful that I don’t expect that a meeting would end well. So, kudos for getting in a few good and well-deserved kicks in this piece.
Do please let up on the carpet bombing of the male sex, though: we’re all aware that the editor of the Graun is a (biological) woman, after all. And yes, some men are oxygen thieves as well. There are members of both camps who could do better.
I’ve long said this. He’s the one person whom if I randomly saw in the street in London..
Say no more.
Diplomatically and well put.
Jones certainly seems to be a bit of a “thing that biological men have” but I’m not sure it’s right to label him simply as a “women hater”.
He seems to also do a lot of man-hating, frequently supported by women.
“He seems to also do a lot of man-hating,….”
Only straight men.
Owen Jones, the ludicrous Marxist 3rd-former, is just as awful as you describe – but worse still is his (and your former) employer, The Guardian.
The Guardian is probably the most pernicious mainstream publication in the UK. Its circulation is paltry, yet its influence is wide-reaching and insidious. It is required reading for the legions of metropolitan fauxialists who manage practically every quango and institution in the country. Not to mention that it is the go-to news source for the vast majority of the teaching profession. The Guardian has an “on-air” wing in the shape of the BBC, that faithfully follows the G’s output in a daily round of mutual reinforcement.
So although circulation figures are ever dwindling, it informs the worldview of a great many people who influence the agenda and shape the country’s -and our children’s – future. The Britain hating, race-baiting, class-envy, history-revisionist, woke, pc leftist clap-trap that we all complain about across these pages, is down to the Guardian dripping its poison every day, thirstily imbibed by readers who influence and skew the national discourse.
It was always sanctimonious but 20 years ago it at least tried to incorporate a broader spectrum of ideas and didn’t wrap itself in the flag of liberal victimhood. (I even remember when it occasionally published ‘positive’ stories – which seems a very long time ago now). Any objectivity has vanished. Any hope has been dashed that a Guardian editorial might ever assess a situation on its merits, and stop judging a policy, an action, a statement based solely on who has espoused it and what tribe they belong to. Whether that be a political tribe or any of the other boxes into which “Liberals” seek to place us in their ‘hierarchy of victim-status’.
The Guardian – in fact, the Left generally – has a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence. (Presumably to then be able to console themselves in a circlejerk of “I told you so”). The Liberal Left media routinely paints this country as intolerant and xenophobic – whilst the reality is that this country is probably the most tolerant and the least xenophobic in the world – certainly in Europe. They endlessly promote the idea that “vicious” austerity measures were a distinct and deliberate Tory policy. Yet if they were honest they’d admit that pre-Corbyn Labour had actually promised to cut harder and deeper than the Tories. And that our EU “friends and partners” instituted far tougher austerity in many member states. Again and again we are sold a narrative that is simply not an honest reflection of reality. They point to social issues, financial concerns, climate concerns, and ratchet up the hyperbole at every turn – all of it negative.
The Guardian proudly trumpets “Comment is free… but facts are sacred”. Yet facts are so routinely ignored in favour of their preferred narrative that I wonder how the Editors still put out CP Scott’s dictum every day with a straight face.
They seem determined to prove we are mean and uncaring as a nation – though by every sensible metric we are nothing of the sort. They demonstrate an almost gleeful wish to convince everyone that the “country has gone to the dogs” – in a manner more akin to a 1980s right wing cabbie than a supposedly quality newspaper.
They rail against the bigoted and the intolerant yet which tribe is it that reveals itself to be the most intolerant? – why, the “Liberal” Left.
How many times a day do we see someone who is arguing against the Guardian polemic du jour being told to “Go back to the Daily Mail”? Xenophobes and racists feel they have a right to tell people they consider “Outsiders” to “Go back where you came from”. The reaction to Trump saying something similar was almost universal condemnation. Most people would, I hope, think that intolerant and morally unjustified. But the more intellectually insecure Guardian readers calling for anyone who thinks differently to “Go back to the Mail” seems a reaction that comes from a similar place. Fear of the ‘other’ and a wish to see the ‘purity’ of their territory unsullied by people who look and think differently.
I think this is where the current progressive left seems to come unstuck, simply down to their absolute belief that their point of view is intrinsically virtuous, thus everyone who thinks differently to them must be wrong. And not merely wrong, but somehow “Evil”. It seems to blind them to the possibility that other, perfectly decent and thoughtful people might, quite justifiably, think differently to them. I think this is the fundamental cause of the pessimism that permeates almost all left-leaning discourse.
You were happy to work for this divisive rag for many years – so before you criticise Owen J (as much as he deserves it) you might want to own up to your own part in it.
I can’t stand the little pipsqueak myself, but I’m far enough past my youthful (and, I’m ashamed to say, middle-aged) socialism to recognise the inconsistency of leftist tears. For the record, virulent criticism of one particular woman does not constitute hatred for all women, any more than criticism of Jones constitutes “homophobia”. But by all means, carry on. There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching lefties ripping into each other. Makes me feel like a Roman at the games.
But without the lions. Just various duels between weak, sh*tty gladiators
Pleased to see you are turning on your own – even if there is inconsistency. Hmmm.
Really, I think on scrolling back up I have been too kind. Please don’t come looking for sympathy here when you were previously peddling socialism.
Well, we can’t all be born with a perfect knowledge of good and evil, Lesley. Some of us have to learn it the hard way, and we pick up some trail dust along the road.
Well I agree and that is my point. You cannot have it both ways. If you are allowed to change your mind, then so is Moore. Why am I having to spell this out?
But she hasn’t changed her mind, has she? She’s still a leftist, just not pure and virtuous enough for Jones.
I would say that there are aspects of her ‘leftism’ that she is definitely reconsidering, such as her position on trans rights. I don’t know any leftists who were originally anti-trans rights – until they went too far. Also are all leftists socialists? I don’t think so. It is a very big basket of people.
“Also are all leftists socialists?”
To me there are two kinds of left-wing, which I divide into ‘socialists’ and ‘leftists’. The former are mainly lower-class, concerned with ‘daily’ economics and ‘solidarity’ among people they think are ‘oppressed’. Class is a big issue.
The latter are aristocratic totalitarians, who are far less concenred with ‘democracy’ and the quotidian, and who have vast, global, ideological ambitions (about which ‘the people’ are never really consulted).
Key words of the latter: ‘brotherhood’, ‘peace’, ‘universal’, ‘competence’, ‘world x’, ‘future’, ‘togetherness’, ‘administration’, ‘harmonisation’ etc. etc. This, while not being a religion, is heavily indebted to religion and millennialism for its dominant ‘atmosphere’.
Being lower-class, or even slightly poorer, is a bar to participation at the level of policy. The EU is full of them. Ditto the UN.
There’s an old saying that goes something like this: If you’re not a socialist at age 20, you have no heart. If you haven’t turned your back on it at 40, you’ve got no brains. Think about this before you make such a comment.
I made the comment to provoke thought. Thinking was central to the comment.
A Conservative is Liberal who has been mugged. I think it is more about personal experience. If one goes back a few hundred years a midshipmen went to sea at 12 to 14 years of age. If these years were during the French wars by the time one was 21 years of age one had spent time in combat, at sea and experienced the the docks where the lowest from of human life can be found: one was worldly wise.
If one was an engineer and worked in heavy industry and /or factories, one was involved with tough people, men and women. Drinking in the pubs, where fights were common place, in the docks and areas of heavy industry with men and women from the mine, shipyard, steel works, cotton and woollen mill, trawlers, consruction sites, etc one saw the rough, tough and sometimes kind hearted aspects of people. No Owen Jones type man would be allowed to speak to a woman working in a pub or site canteen. He would recive a verbal warning from a foreman, particularly Irish, told to apologise and if he did not, taken outside and taught some manners.
The days when the Labour Party were run by tough practical patriotic Methodists such as Welsh rugby playing hymn singing miners, many with military experience, is long gone; it is run by effete spiteful ineffectual upper middle class office workers such as Owen Jones and has been for decades. When the hate was directed at others, Moore and Stark did not mind. Sussex University was hardly welcoming to Conservatives. Orwell said hate is like a blow torch, once lit, it can always be re-directed.
Absolutely spot on! Very elegantly put.
But they’re not even office workers ! None of these people have ever done a job that real …
Absolutely spot on about how the Labour party has changed. It now has little to do with the hopes and ambitions of the working classes. They have been a mere vehicle on the back of which the limp left ride to power in order to trash the very values of who traditionally voted Labour.
The party is run by the over-educated dim.
I would say that education has lost it’s rigour. Pre 1920 one had to pass papers in Greek to matriculate to Oxford University. The PPE degree was introduced in 1922 for people who lacked the Greek to undertake the Greats degree. The PPE degree has been a favourite of socialists. It is difficult to come across any Socialists with a degree in Classcis or Engineering who has played for their university at sport, especially rugby, hockey and boxing.
The great statesmen like Gladstone and Peel had double firsts in Greats and Maths; lesser minds just had the former. Two hundred years ago any at public or grammar school boy could translate the Latin of Caesar and the Greek of Xenophon into English by the age of thirteen years.Most graduates whether arts, science ort engineering would have a good knowledge of French and Latin up to 1960. Those reading engineering, physics and chemistry would know German to be able to read the technical papers.
What has happened is that people today spend longer in education but learn less. A First in Greats from Oxford or a distinction in The Part III of the Cambridge Maths Tripos was adequate for a career in academia and these exams only required four years of study. The reason was early and rigourous tempering of the mind. French started at 6 to 7 years of age, Latin at 7- 8 years of age and Greek at 8-9 years of age. If you doubt me just look at at the scholarship papers for Oxford and Cambridge pre 1980 for Greats and Maths.
Middle class socialists appear to lack the fortitude to accept the body, mind and spirit must be tempered in the furnace of adversity in order for humans to flourish and be useful. Does anyone know of the classicist, engineer doctor or vet who played rugby, boxed or if a women hockey for their university and is a socialist? Historically, many labour members from industrial areas played rugby union or league: can anyone imagine middle class socialists doing that today ?
“Two hundred years ago any at public or grammar school boy could translate the Latin of Caesar and the Greek of Xenophon into English by the age of thirteen years.”
Ten years of Latin in my case, but only half a term of Greek at prep school when I was 13, after I did well enough in the public school scholarship exam to get an entrance exam waiver (albeit without winning a scholarship).
Isn’t it: a Liberal is a Conservative who hasn’t been mugged?
The mugging is contacrt with a brutal reality.
Your last sentence is a gem. Thank you.
She does list several other instances of attacks on women who aren’t her.
, “Hello Editor types. Jordan Peterson holed up in rehab in Russia. F*** me gently with a chainsaw… let me do that story. Come on!’”
Suzzane Moore commenting on Jordan Peterson’s illness.
Very unpleasant thing to say. Quite misogynist to boot. Find it hard to take her seriously about bullying.
I couldn’t agree more Richard. I will never forgive her for that. That statement speaks volumes about her character, as far as I am concerned.
She’s a nasty piece of work who’s been platformed by UnHerd to attack another nasty piece of work.
Dogs eat each other.
Dogs dogs dog dog dogs dogs dogs dog dog.
I’m not familiar with her work, but am reminded that in Russia in 1917, many socialists achieved power, but were eventually liquidated – by other socialists.
Given that The Guardian’s former senior journalists have been exposed as paid KGB agents and undercover IRA sympathisers, this chap Jones seems to fit the profile.
None of which triggered Moore to flounce out denouncing her former employer as a fellow traveller of totalitarians and torturers.
Well said Suzanne. I’m a big fan of your writing and cancelled my subscription to The Guardian when you left. Jones is an odious little twerp who seems to hate almost everyone, but particularly women with opinions that don’t chime with his own. I’m disgusted that The Guardian continues to defend OJ when he’s such a source of toxicity and hate. I notice you use the word narcissist in relation to him and I suspect you’re right on the money.
Completely agree. Stopped paying for The Guardian after Suzanne left. Do have a look though – yep not missing anything.
The left, publicly turning on and attacking each other
Popcorn stuff, wonderful entertainment
The right turn on each other too. I think this notion is being overused as it is critical that people don’t ascribe to identity politics. I am pleased that people from the left question what is passing as ‘leftist’ now. Certainly there have always been divisions in the left as there are in the right. Sometimes the person has not changed, but the notion of what ‘left’ is has changed.
The right generally don’t react to criticism with the violent personal animus of lefties. Maybe because on the right, few people start from the proposition that their opinions automatically constitute”the right side of history”, that it is vital for “the people” that they be advanced by any means necessary, and that any opposition to them is some kind of dangerous subversion.
“People on the right” generally start from the proposition that they want government to build roads, collect rubbish etc and otherwise leave them TF alone.
The left desperately want to be the government, doing anything except building roads, collecting rubbish etc.
Your last paragraph describes the present government.
I think even with the political Overton Window shifting in recent times, Jones and Moore were and always will be lefties, to different extremes. Moore is just currently grifting for a wider, sympathetic audience on the trans issue, solely
I agree in principle but the sort of feminism espoused by Moore is every bit as much identity politics as that which is promoted by trans activists.
It’s much easier and more fun that fighting the Tories. But then socialists and revolutionaries always end up eating each other. Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, etc etc etc.
They eventually get to killing each other, but not, unfortunately, before killing a lot of others on the way (and if not, then impoverishing them).
OJ heads a group of Guardian employees who are unlikely to find work elsewhere because of their complicity in misrepresenting and lying about feminist opposition to insidious and dangerous gender ideology. Maybe they’ll try to enter politics?
They’ll have to learn to code, more likely.
They will certainly find work in woke media in the US.
I never understood what any Grauniad reader saw in that fetal alcohol looking individual. He’s been on the wrong side of history on every issue he’s ever been a part of.
That’s why he fits in so well at the Guardian.
As a waitress in Soho in the 80’s I was traumatised by an inexplicable verbal attack by a hitherto unknown species, the ‘vicious queen’. My lovely gay waiter friends reassured me it wasn’t personal; “a few gay men just really hate women”. Owen Jones is a basic ‘vicious queen’.
More than a few of them around.
I spent a few years working at a civil service regulatory body. Bullying of junior staff was common. On one occasion an ex-police officer – no shrinking violet – made a formal complaint against a senior staff member and refused to be placated. The matter was eventually referred to an external independent body, who found in favour of the complainant that bullying had occurred. However the organisation appointed a senior member of staff – a lawyer – as ‘decision maker’, who concluded that the finding of the independent body was not made out on the evidence. No further action would be taken. The ‘victim’ left the organisation.
This organisation prides itself on it’s inclusivity and diversity, it ticks every modern progressive box. It is however full of human beings like the Guardian, like the world of Twitter, like BLM, Brexiteers and Remainers, politicians, the media, the EU et al.
Some people are just looked after because they are popular with the those in power and expound the values they hold dear. This gives them a much enhanced degree of latitude of behaviour, that would not be afforded to others. Different standards apply depending upon the individuals ‘status’ in the eyes of those judging their conduct.
Human beings in all circumstances behave the same. They look after those who share their own values and condemn those who don’t. It is the who that matters, before the what have they done. From Presidents and Prime Ministers to the poorest and most disadvantaged.
What matters is who has the power, not who is right. It was ever thus.
Sad, but so true.
You can always hope that a Blessed One may blot their copybook when other Blessed ones conspire to eliminate the competition.
Birds of a feather………
A Guardian hackette attacks a Guardian hack
They’re basically the same
One contributed to the Guardian’s attempts to muddy the Rotherham waters, the other tried to stir up a mob to attack a peaceful pro-Brexit march
Why do you feel the need to write an article about someone who grinds your gears? Can’t you be a big girl and ignore him?
Yes. I’m empathic to the situation, but I’m tired of reading about journalist drama. I have no clue why British journalists think we want to hear their opinions on each other.
…but nowadays ‘drama’ is what journalists do. Some anyway.
How else would I have heard of Owen Jones?
I’ve nearly finished writing my heroic couplet satire, The Wokeiad by Richard Craven, in which the gentleman in question features prominently:-
……….
So finally he knows the game is up;
No last gasp intervention by Fred Krupp. 1550
When Domesday’s bank is calling in its loans
The U.S. Cavalry won’t rescue J____.
He finds his thoughts now dwelling at long last
On sepia-tinted recall of the past.
There was in some dank suburb once a room
All re-used teabags and low wattage gloom.
Here from the shelf the bust of Marx stared down
At cod Byronic prelapsarian clown
Slumped on his bed of antiracist books.
Fed by boiled kettle the pot noodle cooks. 1560
On radiators clothes heroic pose:
The rubber corset, pouch, and autre chose.
It had a certain dignity, you’d think,
The hard scrabble of fetish on the brink.
Oh for lost innocence, he pines and grieves,
Fond memories flutter like Autumn leaves.
Cursed be indeed that fickle false fraud Fame,
Midwife of calumny and lifelong shame.
Thrice cursed the baubles and the tasteless bling
That only squalid desolation bring. 1570
The deviation into present tense in lines 1560-61 is slightly disconcerting, but can probably be defended.
Excellent. Best yet.
Thanks very much indeed.
Am I really paying to read Guardianistas talking about each other?
I enjoyed the article. Please don’t speak for me.
I did say I and not us.
I know…
I was making a point.
You failed Lesley
I actually quite like the fact that UnHerd has a mix of Brexity, patriotic, conservative types (like me) and refugees from the Guardian fleeing the woke onslaught, with shades of people in between. I think it is an interesting group to read and to chat with.
This similarly Brexity, patriotic, conservative type agrees.
¬¬
Wonderful start to the Easter Bank Holiday. A nice cup of coffee and Suzanne Moore writing about Owen Jones.
In life, whether business or social, one often has to contend with spats, fights and an inability to get along. Sometimes a pattern emerges and you find that the same person is at the heart of a lot of flare ups, and, much as they protest their innocence, they are the instigators and not the victims. Owen Jones is that person. An opinionated victim/bully who hides behind whiny virtue and an over inflated opinion of himself. His cry baby storming off the Sky News couch after the homophobic Orlando night club attack was a classic example. Still available on YouTube.
His high profile campaigning in the last local elections in four constituencies targeted to turn Labour was a beautiful demonstration of the esteem in which he is generally held. Four failures.
On the other hand, Suzanne Moore is a fine and principled journalist. She writes compellingly and clearly, and argues her case. Can’t say I’d agree with her on some things, but on women’s rights in the trans debate, she is bang on the money and is in exalted company. That lunch! It really feels like the tide is turning.
Owen Jones is a cross to bear for a lot of people, not least you, Suzanne. Good luck and more power to your elbow.
I just looked up how old he is.
Crikey!
He must have a painting in his attic.
The headline clearly stated it was about Guardian so why all the complaints from all those that read it saying they didn’t want to read it if it was about The Guardian? Bonkers. I did and loved it.
Owen Jones has caused so much damage to the brand, though I must say that, though my local Waitrose gives it away free, The Guardian is now often the only paper left! (It used to be The Telegraph, Guardian used to be first to go). It’s not scientific but well, women know which side their bread is buttered.
The last real newspaper left is the Financial Times, but it will receive scant praise on Unherd because so many of your contributors support the awful self-indulgence that is Brexit. I have noticed that hysterical complaints about ‘remainiacs’ etc., have increased recently, presumably as an attempt to cover up the increasing body of evidence that Brexit has achieved almost nothing and lost a great deal. Judge the FT fairly by reviewing the competition and see the result.
You might try taking this approach yourself …
Thanks for dealing with his nonsense.
Judging by the typical standard of BTL comments on the FT online site, their readership now comprises of a bunch of overgrown schoolchildren and XR fantasists.
Depressing stuff.
The real benefit of Brexit is that it firewalls the UK from the financial disaster that is the EU and its sclerotic beuraucracy. Someone’s going to have to pay for the EU pensions time bomb – all that early retirement with no fundiong to back it up (only the Netherlands and the UK in has significant private pension funding). We were on the hook for bailing out the spendthrifts and the eventual “debt mutualisation” that is the end result of the Euro. Whatever it costs us short term to be shot of that is nothing compared to the collosal cost of bailing out the EU later. We will have enough trouble propping up our own oversized welfare state without underwriting the spendthrifts in the EU.
The EU also have slow and poor decision making. There hasn’t been a crisis in the past 20-30 years they haven’t flunked – Yugoslavia, Covid vaccines, Euro debt crisis, Ukraine sanctions and weapons response, Russian oil dependency, poor energy planning, decline in tech competitiveness, failure to reform welfare to compte vs Asian tigers … need I go on ? Rarely the right response and never fast enough.
If the vote in 2016 had been “do you want to join this organisation” (and we were not yet members), there is no chance we would have joined. Only inertia was keeping us in.
I don’t wish people ill because it is far more likely to hurt me than someone armoured in their own beliefs.
But I would smirk if karma visited them.
Is it possible to find one genuinely good quality that Master Jones has?
On the occasions when I see him on television (which I try to make as infrequently as possible), I’m impressed at how articulate he is, and how fast he speaks, cramming in dozens of points in a few minutes. The only rouble is that the points are always wholly predictable, and drip with hate.
In contrast, I find the majority of conservative supporters, including Boris, incapable of speaking eloquently. It’s not the same as being able to write, or using attention-catching metaphors. I suppose being 100% sure of the rightness of one’s opinion is one factor. Confidence in one’ job is perhaps another, so the approval of the Guardian editor must be comforting.
There is a video on Youtube where he boxes in Tom Walker (Jonathan Pie) by using that skillset. It’s not that Jones is right, it’s just that Walker has no time to unpick the virtue signalling verbal onslaught and its legion of marching strawmen and false equivalence.
The smug expression on Jones’ face when he ‘wins’ the ‘moral high-ground’ is enough to make anyone despise him.
I think the phrase you’re after may be “gish gallop”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Bullies, often try to hide extreem inferiority issues by blowing themselves up, rather like balloonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, or most aptly the toadfish. It is a pity that bullies do not blow themselves up in private and in a rather more literal manner.
I simply do not understand why nobodies slagging each other off on some ghastly social media platform constitutes ‘news’.
Deeply unpleasant individual works for deeply unpleasant newspaper. Voila tout!
Das ist die Wahrheit.
Paul Smithson writes below that Unherd welcomes writers of all political persuasions and viewpoints but reading through the comments, most readers seem to be on the right, which is fine, but deride the views of anyone who isn’t. Do people on the right think their opinions are facts?
Owen Jones and Suzanne Moore both sound as unpleasant as each other as reflected in this article; it is unusual for Unherd to publish such vitriol.
If you have a good left-oriented case you wish to make, please make it and I think you will get a fair hearing.
You will, however, find a fairly low tolerance for BS on here. Which is what the subscribers presumably want in their community here.
Everyone thinks their opinions are facts, by definition.
I think that it was Francois Furet who wrote that if someone adopts an ideology and reveals a pathological hatred towards a group then that hatred was there prior to the ideology being adopted. The hatred is like the grit in an oyster: the ideology forms around it and harbours it.
Jones has had a classic career trajectory that reveals something of the religion he represents. I read his Chavs book when it came out and it was an interesting take on class and social hierarchy, brave in some ways for expressing sympathy for the most downtrodden – those who are ‘uneducated’ and thus at the bottom of the economic pecking order.
His transition to identity politics signaled, in my view, a career move. This is pretty much the template for today’s faux left, which now despises those they once represented.
We went from DMing on Twitter about the lunacy of hyper Remain Twitter to him blocking me, I presume for not avering that transwomen are women.
Has anyone else noticed that Jones looks completely stoned in the picture. I think that may explain his behaviour. There are an awful lot of people who should leave marijuana well alone and he is one of them.
My god, he really does doesn’t he!
I entirely sympathise with Suzanne Moore on this issue, used to read her columns, and don’t recall that she was at any stage an ideological sectarian herself, nor that she demonised groups of people who she disagreed with.
To be fair to Jones, before he became a full on Corbynista, he once write a good book – ‘Chavs’ -on precisely the acceptable social and economic denigration of white working class white people that many on here often comment on and that today’s Left doesn’t in any way prioritise. People on the Left – and indeed the Right – have always been liable internecine warfare.
I spend my days worrying over little else….
99% of the time I share the distaste for OJ that seems to be the general opinion here. However he is not always ghastly; he knows how to be better. There were some youtube interviews of Jacob Rees Mogg and Daniel Hannam that he conducted with great decorum.
Yes, and one with Peter Hitchens as well. Actually intelligent and well-mannered conversation on both sides. Perhaps there is a decent journalist in there somewhere, trapped in the carapace of a twitteratus.
Acording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones :
So maybe his antipathy to feminist women, if general, stems from deep-seated Mummy issues
This is becoming very tiresome and meta. A journalist whose journalism is about another journalist’s personality and bad behaviour.
Please, Suzanne, can you just break out of this cycle of writing about the same story? It’s about as interesting as having to listen to someone telling you about their really weird dream.
I have just looked at the picture. He is very dainty.
Thanks, Suzanne. To be honest I never read your columns but I just read the article about why you had to leave The Guardian and it was very moving, as well as beautifully written.
What is this “beautifully written” thing ? It’s an expression people use all the time in Guardian comments. Does it really mean something ?
Owen Jones no doubt finds all of this unsettling- but perhaps not quite as unsettling as if he were being shelled in Ukraine
Who is Owen Jones?
“What Owen doesn’t realise is that he’s harming the causes he claims to be fighting for.”
Sshhhhhh. Don;t give the game away !
I am glad you are here Ms Moore. Owen is a little sh**t.
I don’t think you are supposed to take Owned Jones seriously.
Ah, The Guardian. The Stalwart Bastion of Seething Resentment, Conceited Self-Righteousness & Sneering Condescension. The Go-To outlet of the Educated Idiot…
Yes, ‘contemptible’ is exactly the way to describe this loathsome individual.
“…What Owen doesn’t realise is that he’s harming the causes he claims to be fighting for. He claims to be Left-wing but punches down on women and loathes Keir Starmer…”
Well of course he does! This is exactly what all left wingers do. They hate women. They hate Jews. They hate people like Starmer – who they refer to as “torys”. They are violent racist bullying thuggish horrors.
The honourable hard-working Left mainly disappeared in the 1980s along with most of the jobs that they had been doing, while the rich-but-decent Left vanished in the 1990s.
The sheer bloody unpleasantness of the ghastly remaining rump of pig-ignorant ideological misfits that remains of the political Left nowadays is no secret – and yet Susan appears indignantly surprised. I think she needs to bring her thoughts up to date.
Grab some popcorn and watch the various factions of the Left knife each other.
I agree with every word Suzanne Moore says about Owen Jones and the Guardian which has evolved into an arrogant, self-regarding institution drunk on its own self-righteousness. She clearly was horribly bullied by Jones. He is a monstrous bully on twitter towards women. But Suzanne’s attacks on Jeremy Corbyn are pretty nasty and undeserved. She instances him in this article as if he belonged in the same category as Jones. You may not agree with Corbyn’s politicis but he is a decent and honest man – the politically motivated charges of anti-semitism against him are absolutely undeserved. Corbyn was bullied by the media himself – he and his family suffered horribly for it. SM played a part in that.
Not undeserved or largely undeserved but ‘Absolutely undeserved’?
Mmm. As far as I recall Keir Starmer said that the Labour Party had to face a “day of shame” after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found serious failings in how the party had dealt with allegations of anti-Semitism within its ranks during Corbyn’s leadership and that his tenure was marred by persistent complaints of anti-Semitism within the party to which he made an inadequate response. He was suspended after saying he did not accept the report’s findings.
To disregard these facts alone and maintain the charges are ‘Absolutely undeserved’ is an act of faith in the man, not a conclusion drawn from a disinterested assessment of the evidence.
Jeremy Jewbaiter is manifestly indecent.
Zzzz Zzzz Zzzz
No, we need more than this. Unless you are implying that she doesn’t have a point – which she does.
Agree. We do need articles like this – it needs saying.