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I was the target of Guardian misinformation It has abandoned the battlefield of ideas

(Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

(Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)


November 18, 2024   6 mins

It was quite the flounce. “This is something we have been considering for a while,” The Guardian intoned with the gravity of an Old Testament prophet as it declared in an editorial that the organisation would no longer be posting on X. “The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse”.

Other users have followed suit, with an exodus of accounts from X to Bluesky, a social media platform that resembles in style the pre-Musk Twitter. Taylor Swift fans are flocking in their thousands and former CNN anchor Don Lemon posted a lengthy statement outlining his own reasons for relocating. The official account of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and Museum posted a similar statement, which has led to candlelit vigils and a mass outpouring of public grief.

After the Guardian’s announcement, many users were quick to point out that misinformation, far from being the publication’s chief concern, appears to be its speciality. Since Musk has introduced “community notes” to X, journalists who post falsehoods or misleading articles have quickly been corrected. Inevitably, the Guardian has been slapped with community notes on numerous occasions, which might help explain its decision to withdraw. On its website, the Guardian proudly boasts that it “delivers fearless, investigative journalism — giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account”. But whether its executives admit it or not, the publication has developed a reputation for extreme ideological bias.

The frequent “community-noting” on X suggests that this reputation is not unfounded. For instance, when the Guardian posted a piece entitled “England riots: how has ‘two-tier policing’ myth become widespread?”, notes were quickly added to provide links to the various articles in which the Guardian has asserted that “two-tier policing” based on race and sexuality is rife. When it published an article entitled “How many more children like Sara Sharif will be killed before smacking is banned?”, the community notes quickly explained that the victim had not merely been smacked, but had suffered extreme beatings and multiple forms of torture. All such hideous acts are, of course, already illegal.

The political theorist Patrick J. Deneen has argued that ideology always fails because once its inherent “falsehoods become more evident, the gap grows between what the ideology claims and the lived experience of human beings under its domain”. Those currently scurrying away from X are effectively retreating from the battlefield of ideas envisaged by John Milton in his Areopagitica (1644) in which Truth and Falsehood are seen as antagonists. “Let her and Falsehood grapple,” he wrote, “who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

I was the subject of the Guardian’s misinformation tactics only the other week. Reporting on a short course on the “woke” movement that I will soon be teaching at the New College of Florida, the Guardian described me as a “controversial British media personality and culture warrior”. It is of course entirely predictable that culture warriors would brand their critics as “culture warriors”, but quite how my consistent defence of liberal values is “controversial” is anyone’s guess.

The article’s author, Jason Wilson, went on to claim that I am guilty of “courting rightwing opinion” because I have been interviewed by Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson. I have also appeared on shows hosted by Left-wing commentators such as Hugo Rifkind and George Galloway, but thus far I have not been accused of “courting leftwing opinion”. Perhaps Wilson is simply unfamiliar with the concept of engaging in dialogue with people of opposing views?

“Now we have the digital milk and cookies of Bluesky.”

Wilson further claimed that the course at the New College of Florida had been “reinstated”, which is odd given that it had never been cancelled in the first place. But the most egregious factual inaccuracy came when Wilson, in pointing out that I have written for Spiked, described the magazine as “hard-right”. Spiked began its existence as Living Marxism, and has consistently supported free speech, the values of democracy and liberal immigration policies, while vehemently opposing all forms of racism and white nationalism. Mislabelling Spiked as “hard-right” is either outright dishonesty or staggering ignorance. It’s what happens when journalistic standards are subordinated to propaganda.

The crowning moment of Wilson’s inadvertent self-satire was when he admitted, in light of my forthcoming course on the “woke movement”, that he had been actively searching for non-profit organisations which might qualify as members. He writes — and I am not making this up — “The Guardian’s search of IRS non-profit records indicate that while there are some 20 nonprofits with the word ‘woke’ in their names, none have reported any income in their most recent filings, and most appear to be inactive.” Wilson genuinely seems to believe that one can only subscribe to an ideology if it is registered with the government and has applied for tax exemptions. This is a species of literal-mindedness so colossal that it must surely be eligible for some kind of award.

On reflection, I got off lightly. A far more egregious example of the Guardian’s mendacity was the controversy over the Wi Spa in Los Angeles in 2021. A video of a woman who calls herself “CubanaAngel” on Instagram was posted online, in which she could be seen complaining to the staff about a naked man in the women’s jacuzzi area. The man in question, Darren Agee Merager, was a registered sex offender with previous convictions for indecent exposure, and it was alleged that the complainant at the Wi Spa had seen him semi-erect. “So it’s okay for a man to go into the women’s section and show his penis around the other women, young little girls — underage — in your spa?” she had said to staff, who defended his right to be there on the grounds of self-identification.

Josephine Bartosch outlined the sequence of events in an article for The Critic. After the video went viral, protests outside the spa were organised by women’s rights campaigners. These were quickly smeared as “far right” and mobbed by so-called “anti-fascist” protesters. The Guardian, having spent years promoting the notion that womanhood is an identity category rather than a biological reality, and having faced allegations of driving female journalists from its staff for their gender-critical views, then produced two articles in quick succession that implied CubanaAngel’s complaints were a hoax. The writers claimed that the incident “provided clear evidence of the links between anti-trans and far-right movements”, while Guardian columnist Owen Jones called the entire incident a “campaign of lies”.

Even when it emerged that Merager had been charged for indecent exposure at the Wi Spa, the Guardian continued to conflate the female protesters with the far-Right agitators who had turned up to exploit the situation. As Bartosch puts it, “For all the Guardian’s handwringing about #metoo, when it comes to believing the women who complained about Merager’s crime, rather than ‘giving a voice to the powerless’ they pretended his victims didn’t exist. Women like CubanaAngel are ideological inconveniences.”

The combination of Musk’s successful Twitter bid and a forthcoming second term for Donald Trump has curdled many once sensible minds. Those who were comfortable with the echo chamber that Twitter had formerly established, where users were routinely banned for pointing out that no human being has ever changed sex, are now looking for an alternative. It is the psychological equivalent of the “safe space” mentality, one which led Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy to establish a “Self-Care Suite” after Trump’s victory. Here students could isolate themselves and process their trauma by playing with Lego, drawing with crayons, and bingeing on milk and cookies.

And now we have the digital milk and cookies of Bluesky, where users can be shielded from the disorientation that occurs where plurality of opinion is permitted. Such online echo chambers are of course largely to blame for the escalation of political tribalism that we have seen in recent years, and also for the sense of shock that many experience when elections don’t go their way. While it is true that Musk has reinstated accounts on X that post some genuinely objectionable material, this is the price one pays for an open marketplace of ideas.

This desire to avoid any challenges to one’s ideological certainties is becoming more widespread, and there is a sense in which we are entering a new phase in the culture war. I am not celebrating the departure of activists to Bluesky, because I would rather hear their views and see them participate in these important debates. By insulating themselves from criticism, and seeking platforms where their misrepresentations will not be flagged, the Guardian and its ilk are doing themselves no favours. If they are serious about their goals, they should reconsider their resolution to speak only to those who will unquestioningly cheer them on. Those who withdraw from the debate stand no chance of winning it.


Andrew Doyle is a comedian and creator of the Twitter persona Titania McGrath

andrewdoyle_com

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Jack Robertson
Jack Robertson
18 days ago

It’s a comfort that the further these well-heeled posturing twits retreat into their echo chambers, the more (and more quickly) they will turn on each other and devour their own. The nature of the ideologue is that it is in material political terms a literally reactionary creature: it defines itself only by opposition to ‘something’, preferrably a specific target. I give Teh G about two weeks on BlueSlop before it picks a fight with some other preciously mushy X-runaway, and they end up beating each other into mental exhaustion with wilting intellectual asparagus stalks. Then the shattered loser will flounce further afield in search of a ‘truly inclusive and kindly’ platform, until the next slight-n-fight over zealous purity. And on and on, and etc and etc, and so it will wokily-dokily go..until eventually ‘The Progressive Left’ will consist solely of a single Black-Latino trans woman in a wheelchair and a psychosocially-disabled Asian-Inuit unpenised lesbian paralysed in a silent stare-off, each waiting for the other to transgress Teh Last Remaining Woke Taboo first, so leaving the path clear to Ultimate Moral Victory.
Then, having successfully become the Only Truly Righteous Human Who Ever Lived, the victor will go insane and eat their own face off for want of anyone left to cancel.
The Guardian is, like all platitudinous bullsh*t, best mostly ignored, with only occasional lunch break visits – as to a small metropolitican zoo, say – to check for any new and interesting exhibits, and smile fondly at the furry little oddities picking their bums, chucking pellets of poo about and clumsily trying to mate.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

What a lovely piece of writing. You have captured the far left perfectly, and with a great sense of humour, too. I definitely see your point, but I simply cannot immerse myself in this loathsome swamp that the Guardian has become. It’s not good for my sanity, and although I love furry and feathery creatures, I fear that their tossing of poo is not limited to targeting each other.

Jack Robertson
Jack Robertson
18 days ago
Reply to  Katja Sipple

Perhaps. But one can duck poo easily enough, especially with robust good humour and undimmed cheer, which has the added bonus of sending the flinger truly bonkers. Sh*t only sticks if you bother to try to catch it, really.
Thank you for your very kind words about mine, Katja, a lovely way to start the day down here.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

What will eventually defeat the current woke ideology of these “posturing twits” is that its ideas are manifestly contradictory. To fully support one facet of woke-dom puts you on the wrong side of another facet. If you stand up to support feminist rights you fall foul of trans-rights etc etc
Given the propensity of id-pol echo-chamber dwellers to try and cancel any who dare to challenge their precepts, the whole movement becomes an Ouroboros – the mythical serpent that eats its own tail – though in the case of Guardianistas it would possibly be better to describe a variant on the Ouroboros – as a monster that disappears up its own backside.
It cannot come soon enough.

Jack Robertson
Jack Robertson
18 days ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Yes, that is a satisfyingly and suitably scatalogical tweak, PT: I think the original Ouroboros is supposed to represent eternal procreation, birth/rebirth, fertility manifest, the unstoppably joyous fecundity of the cycle of life, all that. The G’s prissy house style and its editorial flair for gender disorientation of course lends itself to missing the point of fabulous sex existence entirely.
It reads like an organ permanently sheathed in sterilising disapproval of pretty much everything that makes life human, one that…well, cannot come at all.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
18 days ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

You don’t quite have that right. Their ideas are not manifestly contradictory — they are sequentially contradictory. Feminist rights are yesterday. Trans rights are today. Tomorrow something else will trump them both.
Those outside the charmed circle are always wrong, without hope of redemption. Those who excuse themselves briefly to take a wee and miss the last shift are also wrong, but have the possibility of redeeming themselves by a suitable public display of self-abnegation. Eventually this becomes exhausting (and hard on the bladder) and even the most enthusiastic flag in their devotion to the cause.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

You seem unimpressed by Ms Viner’s little menagerie.

Jack Robertson
Jack Robertson
18 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Oh, I absolutely adore house-trained intellectual progressives, Hugh. I think every truly civilised home should own one or two.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

Does “house-trained” mean “not poo-flinging?”

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
17 days ago
Reply to  Thomas Wagner

No. Woke functions in linguistics as a semantic contradictifier, turning the meanings of words into their opposites.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

Bravo, sir! A tour de force of language! May I never get on your wrong side.

Niall Roche
Niall Roche
18 days ago
Reply to  Jack Robertson

What a beautiful description of the Guardian. I usually settle for ‘the worst newspaper in the world’ but your piece is worthy of Flann O’Brien. I too am still in the habit of ‘occasional lunch break visits’ although post the US election I’ve stayed all day more than once.

Kevin McCann
Kevin McCann
18 days ago

I’ve been reading the free online Guardian for some years now (I will never contribute a single penny to this rag) and collected so many examples of its mendacity mendacity that I’ve lost count. A gem from today’s edition is an opinion piece by Nesrine Malik that claims “And so the rest of the work of political stabilisation has to happen through populism – the creation of a threatening other (the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt..” In other words ‘populists’ have operated by “othering” organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation what sits at the core of Islamic extremism and has provided the ideological core of all Islamic terrorist organisations responsible for the deaths on many innocent Muslim and non-Muslim civilians.
The Guardian is the modern equivalent of the old Soviet era Pravda newspaper – but without the moral clarity, journalistic integrity or commitment to accuracy and the truth of that particular organ.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
18 days ago
Reply to  Kevin McCann

I remember the first column Nesrine Malik wrote in the Grauniad, describing her privileged life in a marble-floored mansion, with a black servant who slaved 12 hours a day, and lived in a shack on the roof with the chickens. The only racism she encountered, having attended 3 elite universities, was in Saudi Arabia where she wasn’t as pale skinned as the high-born Arabs. Her editor immediately realised that if you sought to make a career as a race grifter and professional hypocrite you couldn’t reveal it at the start, so pulled the column. and replaced it with a sanitised version; ‘Marco’ definitely, absolutely, in no way was a slave, and ‘had been allocated a room on the top floor of the house’. OK, so her dear Daddy had his police mates throw him in jail on trumped-up charges when the family had to give him his freedom, but so what? And racism? She suddenly remembered that she’d felt a bit of an outsider at Cambridge, which made her enough of a victim to trade on ever since.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
18 days ago
Reply to  Gordon Arta

Please can you signpost us towards that article?

ERIC PERBET
ERIC PERBET
18 days ago
Reply to  Kevin McCann

The big difference with “The Pravda” being that there was virtually no other newspaper to read in the former USSR and more importantly that every Russian knew it was only propaganda!

Jonathan Nash
Jonathan Nash
18 days ago
Reply to  ERIC PERBET

Yes indeed – the old Soviet joke: there’s no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestya.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
13 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Nash

And the other one: we know they’re lying, they know we know, but they go on lying anyway.

William Davies
William Davies
18 days ago

The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian and assorted other rags, has net assets of over £1.2Bn. That doesn’t stop it from holding out the begging bowl to its credulous and wealthy left-wing simpletons. It still plans to be on X, because its lazy churnalists want to scrape that platform for “news”. I’ve yet to discover how the Guardian can be seen as “better” than the other tabloid pamphlets available on our newsstands. Given the wealth behind the Guardian, perhaps the Government should think of taxing it? 150% should do it.

Dylan B
Dylan B
18 days ago

The Guardian is in a mess. And it’s a shame.

The need for its journalists to adhere to every progressive idea has made it a joke. I gave up reading a long time ago. The article proclaiming ‘streetwear’ as a racist term was the final nail in the coffin for me. Beyond stupid.

A daft paper. Looking for racist, misogynists and fascists everywhere. And finding them in a word or the countryside. While simply ignoring the racist with a banner for a cause they agree with.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
18 days ago
Reply to  Dylan B

But nevertheless representative of the people who have taken over this country and turned it into the most draconian illiberal country in Europe: let us not forget ( as detailed in Colonel Sir David Stirlings autobiography) that Heath was, although totally unknown at the time, days away from an actual revolution, post to a secret meeting that was held by certain people of power and influence in a cellar under St James’s street.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
18 days ago
Reply to  Francis Turner

ps including members of The Royal Family

David Webb
David Webb
18 days ago

As always, Andrew is right on the money.
The idea that Twitter was some haven of politeness before Elon Musk bought it is absurd – it always did host toxic comments. The problem in its latter (pre-Musk) days was that it blocked perfectly reasonable views that didn’t conform with its own ideological preferences.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
18 days ago
Reply to  David Webb

And gave in to pressure from Democrats, eg the famous denial that Hunter’s laptop existed.

Terry M
Terry M
18 days ago

Mislabelling Spiked as “hard-right” is either outright dishonesty or staggering ignorance.
Or both.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
18 days ago

A brief translation guide for if you happen to find yourself (despite all precautions) in a conversation with a Guardianista:
“Far-right” = anything outside of my very limited range of opinion
“Discussing X issue could be weaponised by the far-right” = We know there’s a problem with X issue and we suspect our completely unrealistic view of the world may be at least partly to blame for the mess, but we’re never going to own up to it because our entire belief system would come crashing down, so let’s move right along.
“Disinformation/misinformation” = see entry for “far-right”. Also: “anything I can’t be bothered to interrogate or verify because shouting people down and smearing them is just so much easier”

AC Harper
AC Harper
18 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Indeed. The Guardian so often rides the high horse of right-think that I don’t believe it could ever climb down. But it is so far from the ground of reality…

Evan Heneghan
Evan Heneghan
18 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Dog Whistle Politics: something that is so irrefutably true I can’t contradict it so I’ll insinuate the wrong type of people believe in it.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago
Reply to  Evan Heneghan

If you can hear the dog whistle, you’re the dog, as James Taranto, former editor of the WSJ’s Best of the Web Today column, pointed out.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
18 days ago

The Guardian IS misinformation.
In its current guise, I would contend that the Guardian is by far the most destructive publication in the UK. Its circulation is paltry, yet its influence is pervasive and pernicious. The Guardian has an “on-air” wing in the shape of the BBC. It is also 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.
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, climate-catastrophising, woke, pc leftist clap-trap that we all complain about, is in large part down to the Guardian dripping its poison every day, thirstily imbibed by readers who influence and skew the national discourse.
Over the last 25 years it has got markedly worse. It was always sanctimonious but in the past it at least aimed at basic factual reporting, it was only in its tone that the editors betrayed their political stance. It used 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 policy 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 G’s ongoing narrative is wholly at odds with reality – they have a dystopian worldview and narrative predicated on catastrophism – it seems almost as though they are willing such a future into existence.
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.

Kevin McCann
Kevin McCann
18 days ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Absolutely spot-on! My sincere hope is that the Guardian will soon be put behind a paywall and by so doing, effectively denying me the utter masochism of reading it every day. I would miss the laughs though.

David Yetter
David Yetter
15 days ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

“… facts are sacred” So that’s why they hide them behind veils. I guess a high priest (the editor in chief?) visits facts annually, but otherwise folks at the Grauniad keep far away from them.

Max Price
Max Price
18 days ago

It’s because their positions don’t cut the mustard, don’t pass the pub test. They are like rickety tables that constantly need to be propped up by filler. Of course they don’t want a battle of ideas. They want to indoctrinate as many people as possible. Being on a platform that allows criticism of their articles complicates everything.

Victor James
Victor James
18 days ago
Reply to  Max Price

The far-left oppressor class always seeks to insulate itself from the ‘mob’ with a spider’s web of hate-speech laws. Even the slightest criticism sends their little fascist minds spiralling into panic and ‘end is nigh’-style hysterics. Of course, by ‘end is nigh,’ what they mean is the end of their far-left dictatorship of the institutions.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
18 days ago
Reply to  Victor James

Succinct and accurate.

John Riordan
John Riordan
18 days ago
Reply to  Victor James

I agree that this is where Fascism now lives in the 21st century.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
18 days ago
Reply to  Max Price

The highly centralised authoritarian state that is the end point of Blairism and which the Guardian exists to promote has clearly failed to make life better for anyone, and so, inevitably, the revolt against it has begun. It’s slowly dawning on the paper’s readership that, despite the temporary respite of the hopeless Starmer government, their days of lording it over the rest of us are coming to an end. That’s what prompts the tantrums and hysteria. It’s quite entertaining really,

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
18 days ago
Reply to  Max Price

dont worry hardly anyone read the Guardian anyway. The Guardian’s daily print circulation was circa 110,000 in July 2024, with 53k sold on newsstands and 45k as subscriptions. This was a significant drop from the 248,775 copies sold per day ten years earlier. 

jules Ritchie
jules Ritchie
17 days ago
Reply to  Alan Lambert

To be fair you don’t mention the online digital sales. These will outnumber paper sales by multiples.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
18 days ago

Here is a recent Guardian headline “People around the world are appalled by Trump’s win, but women have been gripped by a visceral horror.” “This misogynist administration’s hatred has been written on women’s bodies…”.
Just hyperbolic garbage. Frankly I am more viscerally horrified by ‘Biden’s’ actions on Ukraine yesterday where he is flirting with WW3.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
18 days ago

‘Hyperbolic garbage’ – now that I can agree with. Actually I think that that headline is sexist. Trump’s win gripped me by visceral horror too – why is it only the feelings of women that matter 😉 .

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
18 days ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
18 days ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Did you have a tantrum and break things?

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
18 days ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

There are cookies in the safe room.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
9 days ago
Reply to  Bret Larson

Does anyone here know what 😉 means?

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
18 days ago

Not to think of the Guardian’s 100% approval of pervy blokes pretending to be women so that they can enter female dressing rooms and loos…

Victor James
Victor James
18 days ago

It is the paper of the informed, the centrist, the modern person. We walk proudly with it tucked under arm pit for all to see. Displays of status and educated opinion exude from arm pit when that paper is tucked under it.
— Pravda reader 1920

Pequay
Pequay
18 days ago

A fine article by Andrew Doyle, and one which highlights the importance of community notes, and that of diversity of views. Put the ideas out there, discuss in a ( hopefully) civilised fashion, and may the best ones win!

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
18 days ago
Reply to  Pequay

Or, at least agree not to end up throwing meaningless insults.

Richard Littlewood
Richard Littlewood
18 days ago

One of the small pleasures in life is watching the propaganda sheet aka the Guardian making a loss and eating away at the Trust Fund which pays for it.

J Dunne
J Dunne
18 days ago

All those who click on Guardian articles online just for the entertainment, remember that you are contributing to their advertising revenue by giving them clicks. Which is why I never knowingly click on a Guardian link, along with the fact it makes me feel slightly violated and dirty.

There is nothing good that can come from viewing a Guardian article.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
18 days ago

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. That’s why The Guardian and the other usual suspects are fleeing away from Twitter/X.

If you can’t defend a position with a cogent argument and have to resort to fiction and ad hominem vitriol (you know who I’m talking about, Jones O.)then the last thing you want is an open, uncensored debate.

Peter Stephenson
Peter Stephenson
13 days ago

Extreme statements which ignore intellectual scruples such as evidence are the medium of language used as pure force, in the style of military dominance. Politics is now a form of outright battle for dominance, irrespective of the intellectual scruples of the old scholar. Once our public organs of discussion, our community’s means of self-monitoring, are taken over by the military use of language we find ourselves in an inextricable difficulty. This is magnified many times by the intensification of extreme positions through the need to protect oneself from penalisation for not taking what others deem to be the correct positions. Once people can exercise power by bringing pressure of various kinds to bear upon those who do not take sufficiently strong positions along the correct axis, there is a race to the extreme of that axis, at which point all kinds of contradictions jostle for dominance in ways which are beyond regulation by reason or caution. Compare, the French Revolution. All sensible persons will, in this current situation, become committed followers of Burke.

Janet G
Janet G
18 days ago

I read the Guardian online but I don’t trust it.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
18 days ago
Reply to  Janet G

Yes, I give it an occasional scan in the spirit of “know thine enemy”.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
18 days ago

I am no longer able to do this because of its effect on my blood pressure, for which I am medicated – woke is genuinely bad for my health.

Sean Lothmore
Sean Lothmore
18 days ago
Reply to  Janet G

It has some nice recipes occasionally.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

You are so generous. The only use I can envision for this rag is to line my bird cages. The size is great, and the paper makes it easy to remove their droppings.My parents had a subscription ages ago, but the Grauniad drifted so far to the extreme left that they cancelled in the early 2000s. I have not bothered with it in at least a decade.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
18 days ago
Reply to  Katja Sipple

Probably good. By now, it’s probably toxic to bird life.

Jeffrey Mushens
Jeffrey Mushens
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

Absolutely! Its recipe for blondies is so good, that whenever I make them, I’m asked for the recipe – even by professional cake makers! Also Fitwaffle’s recipes are very good.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

Left Wing recipes, obviously.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
18 days ago

Starmerde on toast? Pastalin? pol pot noodles? Stollenin cake?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

The name says it all, no? The Guardian… infantalises.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

Do they contain strychnine? I do hope so

Jeffrey Mushens
Jeffrey Mushens
18 days ago
Reply to  Janet G

I do, too. Better reporting than the Beeb and I understand its prejudices. Just a shame I have to read the Telegraph to see the stories the Guardian doesn’t cover (Telegraph also guilty of this) and try to see what the facts actually are – it’s obvious that they both agree with Churchill, that the truth is so important it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies – that’s the gist.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago

It appears the new red badge of courage is the letter “C”, for “Cancelled”. Congratulations for the achievement. Best wishes with your new class.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
18 days ago

I really enjoyed this article – it is spot on. I follow The Guardian for some of the gut laughs it gives me.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
18 days ago

I still go on there occasionally. They have some interesting series, like the one about people who have started over with life after 60. I like that. Marina Hyde can occasionally be funny. And, if I’m feeling particularly sporty, then I’ll look at what Owen Jones is writing. I was recently shocked to find I agreed with him for about 2/3 of an article.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
18 days ago

The examples he gives are not ‘misinformation’, with a single possible exception. ‘Misinformation’ is when someone is pushing something as a known fact when there is no evidence for it, such as asylum applicants in Spingfield eating people’s cats, widespread election fraud costing Donald Trump the 2020 election, or the MMR vaccine causing autism. Whether someone is ‘far right’ or a ‘culture warrior’ or there is a movement that can be called ‘woke’ is just the Guardian pushing its ideological prejudices as if everybody ought to agree with them. It is tiresome, silly, bad for debate, and makes the paper rather useless for those who do not agreee; I skip or distrust a majority of the Guardian articles. But insisting on your opinions is not the same as misrepresenting facts. And, just in case it is relevant, the fact that others are biased does not mean that it is OK for your side to tell straight lies.

John Tyler
John Tyler
18 days ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

No! Misinformation is when somebody uses inaccurate information; the use of inaccurate information deliberately to mislead is disinformation.

michael harris
michael harris
16 days ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Until an agreed explanation for the steep rise in autism (or its reporting) is found the MMR vaccine theory should not be completely swept off the table.
Same applies to the 2020 election. Until a genuinely independent enquiry is established and reports (perhaps possible a century from now – see JFK assassination) Trump’s suspicions cannot be dismissed.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
18 days ago

Bravo!

Michael Walsh
Michael Walsh
18 days ago

Also The Guardian which is allegedly a newspaper should be attempting to reach as wide an audience as it can. It will soon be broke

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
18 days ago

Sadly, The Guardian is now a pale shadow of what it once was – the bastion of Liberalism and the nonconformist conscience, rooted in the North and free enterprise.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
18 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

what it once was
You mean in the days when it was promoting eugenics and sacking journalists for trying to tell the truth about Mussolini and Stalin? The Guardian has always been a cesspool.

Sean Lothmore
Sean Lothmore
18 days ago

“X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse”.

By the same token, Twitter was always a toxic media platform that the owners used to shape political discourse. It just suited the Guardian better.

I really hoped that Musk bought Twitter to destroy it. The internet, in fact the world, was better before it came along.

Terry M
Terry M
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

NO. The world is better with a platform where ideas and opinions can be hashed out, politely or at least honestly. X is better than ever, although I only visit when I see an interesting link. If X dies, free speech may follow.

J Dunne
J Dunne
18 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

This was my first thought too. It’s been proven that Twitter and Facebook deliberately sought to influence the last two US Presidential elections. It is only now that X is supporting the other side they see it as a problem.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
18 days ago

“The combination of Musk’s successful Twitter bid and a forthcoming second term for Donald Trump has curdled many once sensible minds.”
I beg to differ. No one who has ever written for or subscribed to the Guardian could ever be accused of something so prosaic as having a sensible mind.

William Cameron
William Cameron
18 days ago

Why do the left lie so much ?

John Tyler
John Tyler
18 days ago

The end justifies the means.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
18 days ago

Because if they told the truth they wouldn’t be the Left any more.

William Cameron
William Cameron
18 days ago

Biden tries to create WW3 . Trump offers to do a peace deal.
Guardian supports Biden – go figure.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
13 days ago

Sadly not just the Grauniad. Most of the MSM on both sides of the Atlantic support the (thankfully soon departed) Biden’s policy.

William Cameron
William Cameron
18 days ago

Viner has taken on the job of editor and driven it into financial obscurity. It will soon be subscription and then it will die.

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
18 days ago

Andrew I think your next step should be apply for your US citizenship like I did where my right to free speech is enshrined in the Bill Of Rights.

Brilliant article as always.

John Tyler
John Tyler
18 days ago

So… the correct interpretation of this article is that Anthony Broil’s universal course on ‘How to be a good fascist’ has been banned for being too woke. Have I got that right`?

Jeffrey Mushens
Jeffrey Mushens
18 days ago

People should follow Libs of Bluesky to see how deranged people can be.
Apparently there were 42,000 posts reported on Bluesky yesterday alone, which given it’s a self selected group of c15-16m (X has c600m) users is a bit shocking.
Me, I like competition, it’ll encourage X to up its game. I haven’t noticed much difference since Musk bought Twitter. I continue to be an old Blairite, and my feed doesn’t seem very different, but I’m not looking to be shocked or outraged.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
18 days ago

Go to Bluesky, and get cancelled again, just like you used to get cancelled on twitter. Why is that considered a good thing?

lena pace
lena pace
18 days ago

Everybody should join bleakly as well and spoil that for them too…..

lena pace
lena pace
18 days ago

Blue-sky…

Alan Melville
Alan Melville
18 days ago

“Mislabelling Spiked as “hard-right” is either outright dishonesty or staggering ignorance. ”
I suggest both.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
18 days ago

Another recent Guardian item, from Sunday, is an attempt to smear Christians for being opponents of assisted suicide. The Guardian reveals that some lobbyists are being supported financially by christian organisations. The timing was clever, in view of the bad publicity the C of E is getting presently. The pesky fascist christians are, of course, accused of trying to impose their entire ‘ideology’ on an unknowing public, never mind that those they are supporting may be objecting to the Leadbeater Bill for non-religious reasons. The Guardian, whose title is becoming a misnomer, seems inclined to stoop lower and lower to convince us of its own biases rather than deliver reasoned accounts of things. Its power of influence is certainly strong, too, as could be witnessed on the BBC’s Politics Live programme today, when it was quoted as truth by a participating doctor. I only hope that others, as I do, won’t believe everything they read in newspapers, The Guardian being no exception.

Addie Shog
Addie Shog
18 days ago

I was enjoying this article until Owen Jones was mentioned. Then I was sick.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
18 days ago

If they are serious about their goals, they should reconsider their resolution to speak only to those who will unquestioningly cheer them on. 
What if ‘their resolution’ IS a goal? Absent some evidence to the contrary, I must believe that it is.

Mark epperson
Mark epperson
18 days ago

The Guardian has become a piece of shit. I am really pleased that these clowns and their cult followers have left X. Hopefully, they won’t do a Jim Jones but come to their senses. At least they won’t spew their agendas and invective on X any longer.

Francis Turner
Francis Turner
18 days ago

Only a matter of time before Starmer re names my old Bretheren ” The Brigade of Guardians” and replaces all the officers with his own pooteresque petit bourgeois National Socialists and it’ll be his SS?

stefan filipkiewicz
stefan filipkiewicz
18 days ago

Interesting article but even more interesting are the responses.
All essentially the same. I’m a bit disappointed; I’d thought that Unherd was supposed to champion alternative viewpoints.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring, I’m a Guardian reader. But – to be clear – I’ve probably got similar opinions to yourselves re: wokeness,gender,etc. I’m as appalled by blokes – sex offenders – exposing themselves as any of you.
But, getting back to the article, I can see no sign that anyone commenting actually read it. I have. Andrew says his course was never cancelled – read the article, it never claimed it was; just that it was on the prospectus but then vanished in a later version. Having said that, I’m not sure there is an actual point to be made; it’s as likely to be incompetence as anything else.
However, the bit I liked the best was
“The Guardian contacted Doyle for comment on the developing controversy about his course but received no response.“. I don’t think Milton would have been impressed.

mike flynn
mike flynn
18 days ago

Recall 20 yrs ago, or so in USA, the left set up Air America (I think) as a radio space for the left to vent al’a Rush Limbaugh, and others. Recall it crashed and burned after several years; though it did spawn a senator from MN.

Bluesky may experience the same fate for lack of subscribers.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
18 days ago

Good piece, particularly on the trans abuse affair in the US.
I think the rest is mostly straight culture warring, noting that The Guardian has actually had to reign back on the labels, substituting Far Right for Hard Right. There, for purposes of comparison, they used to label British revolutionary socialists ‘Hard Left’ during the Corbyn years heading Labour.
The key story for me at the moment is the British justice cover-up on the Southport killer’s terror links which seem to be a copycat of the IS murders and attempted murders on London Bridge. That is penetrating deep to the partisanship of the British state on their key political question: persisting with mass immigration.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
18 days ago

What has happened to the Guardian is literally unbelievable.
But it only reflects what’s happened to what we used to call the small ‘l’ liberal left.
They seem to have had such a long run where a snobby belief that only people with a degree can have valid ideas or legitimate views that it has curdled into a kind of slightly better spoken version of the pig ignorant, fat necked, far right, gammon racists that they spend their entire lives looking for and never find.
Careless with facts and context, you read assertions about this or that, often couched with extreme vitriol and invariably aimed at simply besmirching the person putting the opposing view, which so offends them, but for which they rarely bother to waste time forming an intelligible rebuttal.
The lower echelons take their cue from the likes of AC Grayling, Alistair Campbell, James O’Brien et al who seem certifiable half the time.
What happened?

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
15 days ago

It would be great if the Guardian would disappear up itself.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
13 days ago

Anyone who has been on X recently knows that it is not a marketplace of ideas. There is no plurality of opinions; there is only Elon’s opinion, perhaps (?) manipulated by algorithms to rise to the top like sludge; or else the sludge is all that is left. The Community Notes feature is useless: the No Notes Needed nannies flag anyone who criticizes a clearly false/poorly sourced statement, and say that it is only the OP’s “opinion,” when it was clearly stated as “fact.” I left it a few weeks before the US elections. Haven’t missed it.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
18 days ago

Musk has turned Twitter into a right wing cesspool. A globally respected publication like the Guardian should not dignify it with their presence.
This writer seems to be triggered by being identified as what he clearly is – a far right grifter.

Brett H
Brett H
18 days ago

This writer seems to be triggered by being identified as what he clearly is
I’ve rarely seen anyone as triggered as you are.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
18 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

I think the term “unhinged” would be more appropriate.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
18 days ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Or perhaps hinged the wrong way. They are binding and squealing all the time.

ChilblainEdwardOlmos
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
18 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

He’s constantly popping his cork off, isn’t he?

Ian Wigg
Ian Wigg
18 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Perhaps he/she/they/whatever should change their handle to “Wonder Horse.”

Pequay
Pequay
18 days ago

Seriously CS, do you not see the extreme nature of your opinions? You are doubtless more intelligent, but in possession of a similarly ideological mindset as Titania McGrath herself.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
18 days ago

Why do the left resort to mu-slinging and ad hominem comments so quickly?

No prizes for guessing.