Kellie Jay Keen

I believe that left right is a mainly economic thing. The other main political spectrums are conservative to progressive (and then full circle onto the bigotry of "woke") and authoritarian to liberal.

Some can be authoritarian on the left or the right, and they can have conservative social values on the left or the right. Saying that it is hard to pro-communism without being somewhat authoritarian, and it is hard to be very socially conservative without also being anti freedom in some ways. Likewise you need to be pretty authoritarian to enforce woke.

My issue with the left is primarily that it has woke and authoritarian tendencies, whilst actually just advocating the same neo-liberal economics as conservative parties do, albeit a slight more centre right, not right or hard right, version of neo-liberal capitalism.

TLDR - the left do not listen, have some stupid ideas, and they're not even left wing.

This podcast is interesting in relation to this discussion.

open.spotify.com/episode/567UQeXCVaThsIdrFwenG0?si=D-4vBqrhTXihDmagRHdwfQ

Meghan Murphy and Louise Perry discuss how they became disillusioned with the left starting with the trans issue but then seeing how ideologically wrong they were across issues.

Meghan Murphy makes the point that people criticise her and others for voting for Trump just because they happen to align on one issue. She says she in fact supports many of his/ the right positions: free speech, controlling immigration and knowing what women are.

I see this all the time on here: the justification that of course we all hate Trump/ The Right but we just happen to agree on one issue, and wonder how people manage to not see the elitist ideology behind many of The lefts positions. It seems like you'd have to do some significant cognitive protectionism to believe the lefts adoption of the trans issue is a lone unconnected abberation and not part of a wider flawed ideology.

It's relevant here because I suspect KJK has been on a similar trajectory to Meghan, Louise, and me and this is then branded far right.

On Mumsnet you "can be banned for reporting something you believe in good faith is against the law or Mumsnet guidelines because you haven't made a post on that thread"?

Is this correct? I'm having doubts.

Great post.

KJK really does let women speak - ALL women. I've been to her events.

Clearly there are some people who speak that she does not agree with, but she lets them speak anyway - this is what true grass roots activism is. I've been to events where women have spoken and the crowd has politely disagreed. For example, there was one woman who was trying to argue to let the men have the word 'woman' and we can keep the word 'female' to which she got lots of 'it'll never be enough' pushback from those who've been in this fight for longer.

An awful lot of women in society are truly silenced. And never get to speak. So this is a huge achievement for which KJK should be given some benefit of the doubt but of course she never is somehow.

Class and wealth and income and education are the big dividers... though, strangely, one can be rich working class uneducated, or upper middle class, educated and poor.

All politicians should combine their own vision, their own belief system, with a genuine desire to listen to "the masses" and take on board what they say.

New labour (and it is still new labour) believe themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to the masses, and love telling the masses this.

KJK is the sort of person who could make labour much more electable.

This with bells on

There is nothing stopping any person on this thread from asking any poster for more details and they should. Ask posters whatever questions you want.

However, why should posters expect accusations such as vague ‘aligned with quite far right religious groups’, and ‘relating to allegations of racism, white supremacy, and ties to far-right anti-LGBT groups’ which are fucking serious accusations with no details given, to stand . They are vague and have been endlessly discussed and pointed out where double standards have been applied.

Not only that but let’s not forget a judge reviewed a dossier of false accusations complied from Wikipedia with a few from posts from feminist group’s who use bad faith interpretations of her words to spread misinformation about her, and found them to be false. Those accusations were along the same lines.

So, if someone is going to make accusations, make them and back them up with solid evidence. Not Wikipedia, not just a link to a sin page, not just a youtube video that has been clipped to miss the context. Solid evidence.

Which far right groups? Are they really ‘far right’ or have they just been labelled ‘far right’ in this day of everything is far right? What white supremacy allegations?

Or are they just accusations meant to bully and denounce someone without merit once you look at the details? And do the people making them then apply the same level of standard to other women’s rights campaigners?

There are valid concerns to be made about some things KJK says. I notice that some points on this thread have been made and no pushed back on. The issue is when the debunked accusations keep coming. With some of them very vague but very serious. And we have already had completely made up accusations on this thread too. And the accusers then double down still without producing evidence that fully supports their point.

The thing to me is that there are actually very few people who are monsters.

Most people are complicated, and human beings can be a real combination of viewpoints, attitudes, blind spots, selfishness, and heroism.

I watched an older show about two years ago, a family drama, and one of the things I found so differernt from current dramas was how mixed the charachters were. And not in some kind of redemtion arc way. One in particular struck me as having, in a totally realistic package, some very opposing qualities. Both a real affection and liking of women while also capable of terrible deception and disregard. Brave and capable of facing danger for the greater good, and weak and selfish. And a lot of real people are like that.

I suspect the reason some people struggle to see their supposed enemies that way is that it would tend to require accepting the possibility that they themselves might be similarly mixed. And I don't think many modern atheistic political progressives are capable of dealing with the personal implications of that idea.

@SpidersAreShitheads
There are conversations to be had about how different people want to deal with the situation of agreeing on one topic or part of a topic with groups that may differ greatly on another topic. I just am a bit wary of 'aligned' 'associated with' and 'her views' because having watched the Deeming case and others, those somewhat vague terms are often used to imply something defamatory. For example, many in the Victorian Liberal party would refer to "her views"[Deeming's] without ever being willing to explain which views and what they thought her views were and what their issue was with her views, they were just treated as something concerning and controversial. I think it's fine to name something specific someone has done or said and why you think it's bad strategy or offensive, but the above terms are often used in ways that encourage people to read in lot of negative connotations beyond the actual accusation. If someone said "she uses the same language as x group, for example the phrase..." or "she is willing to go on platforms with this person" the conversation is more accurate and productive.

There's a small left wing activist group I'm familiar with who were very proud of having a female majority on their steering committee, thus proving their commitment to diversity. (And although they're a TWAW group, they really did have a female majority on the committee.)

Yeah, about that diversity...

Every single one of those women was an Oxford graduate.

This is like saying vegans and those who love dogs are like Hitler! Dear god!

Yep.
And virtue being imposed from on high either leads to abuses, or to rebellion.

You'd think they'd know that.

So, so many members of the commentariat (including the ones I agree with) live in various bubbles. I think it was Hadley Freeman (whose work I love) who said that her friends were all university-educated women in their late 30s/40s, living in London, working in the civil service, the arts or the law, she might even have said all centre/left - and I thought, bloody hell, how astoundingly narrow is that.

It just blew my brains.

It also explained a lot.

In Northern Ireland, at the start of the Troubles, the Catholic bishops encouraged responsible people in the community to get involved in the SDLP, to stop extremist republicans taking the lead. At one point Gerry Fitt, the then party leader, bumped into an old friend who asked him how he was getting on with his new colleagues. Fitt replied, "I'm up to me arse in fucking teachers."

For decades now, the standard SDLP election candidate has been a head teacher, a lawyer or a doctor. There's always been a strong element of expecting the community to vote for their betters. Then Sinn Fein put up some single mum in a shellsuit and they all scratch their heads wondering how she won.

(Relevant to this: the SDLP's elected reps at Stormont and Westminster are all in on genderwoo. The SDLP's actual voters tend to be elderly, rural, Catholic and quite conservative.)

That just brings me back to KJK. It's easy to find her audience if you look on X. It's ordinary women with small accounts. Often they live in unfashionable places and don't work prestigious jobs. They don't see themselves being represented by elite feminists. But KJK, this mouthy little woman with the bleached hair who shoots from the hip and doesn't care about offending anyone - they know she doesn't look down on them, and she gives them courage.

She's got an audience that the socialists of WPUK could never reach, and probably wouldn't have wanted to reach even if they knew how. That's her big virtue for me. Even if she makes you cringe sometimes, it's about giving a megaphone to the unrepresented.

I think when there's someone who's particularly bigoted/intolerant and they share your views, it's fairly normal to have an inward groan. Because it makes the other side - and those in the middle who are currently trying to make up their mind - lump you all together and automatically dismiss your argument.

Knowing sex exists and being gender critical are two different things. The lazy purity spirallers never acknowledge that.

Donald Trump doesn't 'share my views', the only things we agree on are self evident facts like water being wet, the earth being a sphere, and biological sex existing. If a person is willing to say that the earth is flat, purely because Trump/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon/Hezbollah say it's a sphere, then that person needs to grow up.

Yes, I agree that was a bit daft if she intended that comment to be a direct response to the question posed by OP (and I assume it was).

It still doesn't warrant an absolute torrent of shitty comments towards her. I think we've all said stupid things sometimes and had the piss taken a bit. And that's fine. I don't think that describes what's been said on this thread. Some of the comments have been confrontational and nasty.

Some of the posters didn't even read what she said properly. She never said KJK was a far right Christian, just that her views aligned with them and presumably that makes that poster uncomfortable? I'm not really sure of the point she was trying to make in its entirety because everyone just jumped on her (some fair comments, many less so).

Also, she "offered up her CV" because another poster suggested she stop getting political information from Wikipedia. I think it's entirely understandable she felt the need to defend herself.

In between the snark, there's been some useful comments on this thread. One PP (sorry, forgot the name!) said that when your side of the argument is the clear and obvious truth it's perhaps inevitable that some people you don't like will share your views. I think that's a really good way to think about it.

I think when there's someone who's particularly bigoted/intolerant and they share your views, it's fairly normal to have an inward groan. Because it makes the other side - and those in the middle who are currently trying to make up their mind - lump you all together and automatically dismiss your argument.

So the whole alignment conversation is an interesting one. Absolutely we shouldn't be judged on who we happen to share some views with. Especially when those views are common, true, and real. But the unfortunate reality is that the forced tag-teaming with deeply unpleasant individuals (Trump/Putin etc) means we're often judged as being the same as them. Very frustrating indeed.

I think some of the PP instantly scoffing at the mere mention of alignment is unfair. Perhaps the subject wasn't raised especially eloquently but we're all at different points in our journey in figuring this shit out.

I don't know really. I just normally like spending time on this board but this whole thread started to feel very much like the poster being hung out to dry for wrongthink.

Oh and also the LibDems have had big donations from Fering Pharmaceuticals, who make puberty blockers. That's probably a total coincidence though.

Because the righteous believe there are right, and therefore need to impose rightness on the population from the top down. The people who don't agree with them are just wrong, and probably stupid, so don't need to be listened to. The people who don't agree with them are proving their stupidity by not agreeing. It's a neat circle.

So they never, ever consider that the wrong people might be right, and are they are therefore shocked when they don't fall into line. That's exactly what happened to the democrats in the US. They were so busy being righteous and saying how right they were, they completely failed to notice that they weren't convincing anyone, because they forgot they needed to.

It used to be a thing in Labour that you couldn't be an AEU sponsored MP unless you were a time served engineer. Other unions had similar arrangements. And that kept the PLP more white and male than it should have been for a long time, but it did ground the party in the working class it was supposed to represent.

It seems to me the PLP these days has a very big contingent of Owen Jones types who have wanted to be MPs since they were kids, picked the university with the well connected Labour club that could get them noticed, did a non-job in the third sector for a few years, then into Parliament with little experience of the outside world.

It's gentrification. Plus a huge dollop of nepotism. So it's no wonder they don't understand their own voters and work on theories about the electorate that are often wrong.

The Conservatives recruit their MPs through very opaque social networks where it's all about knowing two or three key people. So they're also out of touch with their base.

God knows Reform have their issues, but they seem to be going for candidates who are small business owners, retired coppers etc, people who can be sold as having common sense. Of course they haven't run anything before, but the people who have been running things forever (eg Birmingham City Council) don't seem to be doing a good job of it.

I agree, it's a golden opportunity for the LibDems, if they could grasp it. Ed Davey currently seems to be reinventing himself as the new Screaming Lord Sutch, which is entertaining but isn't getting the party where it could be.

The main parties - or at least many politicians - strike me as isolated from many sections of society. This leads to some big assumptions and some profound errors. One of these is that a lot of people are stupid.

Quite a lot of people are not serious intellectuals, but they have good practical skills (and despise the desk-bound middle-class for lacking them) and they can think logically and smell bullshit. When their wages haven't gone up for 2 or 3 years and their DC are pushing 30, in half-decent jobs and still can't afford to buy houses, and their old Mum is waiting 48 hours on a trolley with a broken arm, they can see that whatever is happening on a national scale isn't good for them. Then they get told that immigration is a good thing for the country (housing supply be damned), that trans rights are one of the most pressing problems, etc etc, and they think, WTAF are you on about?

Up pops Reform, promising Reform's version of sunshine and lollipops, and Clacton votes for Farage.

I have the political instincts of a whelk, but even I can spot this. Why can't the LibDems?

I think one big issue is that we've got a political class, and Starmer is a classic example, that can only seem to govern by narrative control.

There was a lot of this under Biden in the US. Do you follow Trump and have border enforcement? Do you make a case for relaxing immigration controls? They seemed to settle on a centre ground of opening the borders while getting the NY Times to write about what a tough border hawk Biden was.

The trouble is, you can only lie to the voters for so long before they figure out you're lying.

I literally could not agree with you more.

All politicians say they have to appeal to the centre ground as a way of framing popular issues, that they havent a hope of solving, as extreme. They can acknowledge the issue but also say the centre ground people couldnt handle it yet.

Its why politicians acknowledge women needed ss spaces, but dont want to take away mens female id, and its why they say they understand immigration problems, then hand out visas.

The centre ground, apparently, arent ready for those issue to be solved.

@SidewaysOtter Very much the same, though I'll admit I used to be very left wing and these days I think of myself more as a moderate social democrat. But I just don't believe in a lot of the left's current totems.

Also, if you want to get anything done in politics, especially against an entrenched political class, you have to appeal to the median voter.

Weirdly enough, Reform are the only people who seem to get this. Gawain Towler has been explaining it on podcasts. They got 4 million votes last year with a ramshackle operation on the basis of alienation from the legacy parties. If you need 10 million to win an election, where are the extra 6 million coming from? Not from the far right. You have to appeal to the centre ground.

Hence the strategy they've been following since last year. Keep the Tommy Robinson fanboys out of the party; get rid of loose cannons; promote candidates who are more mainstream; champion popular causes like nationalising steel regardless of whether they fit in with right wing orthodoxy.

The left seems incapable of thinking like this. Instead they just double down on purity spirals and horribly unpopular policies, while calling everyone else a fascist.

I've believed for a long time that Labour hate and fear Labour voters. If they want to drive them all to Farage, they're going the right way about it.

@SidewaysOtter I'm in much the same situation. A while ago I found myself explaining to a very lovely LibDem why Reform was attracting voters. She'd had years as a local councillor, but the social shifts and changes since she gave it up 15-20 years ago seemed to have entirely passed her by.

I completely agree with this. And it's where my feeling of "I didn't leave the Left, the Left left me" comes from.

I believe in a society that protects its weaker and vulnerable members, that those who need help in whatever form is given it and can obtain it easily. A society in which everyone has access to good quality education, healthcare and housing, and there is equality of opportunity. A society where those who need help have a decent standard of living and are able to live with dignity, and that all of the above is paid for by those who can afford to contribute more to the societal pot. I temper all of that by saying with the right to expect help comes the responsibility to take responsibility for yourself as far as possible - the welfare safety net should be a trampoline not a hammock - but overall there should be a state that supports equality, fairness and a decent standard of living for all.

But I'm pro-women's rights, I don't feel colonialism is the root of all known evil, I'm really not sure net-zero is achieving anything other than making ordinary people's lives harder and more expensive, I can understand why some people feel disenfranchised/left behind enough to vote Trump/Reform in the hope of making their lives better, and I don't think the situation in Gaza is as simple as Hamas good/Israel bad. So why do certain factions of the political left think I'm practically - if not literally - a fascist?