It was the fuckaroundest of times and the findoutest of times.
Saying goodbye to 2022; scams, books, nonces and what happens next.
Howzit okes.
Firstly and most importantly, thank you to all subscribers. I haven’t had the chance to post as much as I’d like as 2022 has been particularly busy - but I hope you’ve been to Biznews.com to see the 5th annual awards, my final column of 2022 for Alec and the Biznews family.
The year ends on one note I’d rather it didn’t. My favourite broadcaster and the man who comes closest to turning political writing into art, Mark Steyn, suffered a near fatal heart attack in France two weeks ago.
The last man in the world for sympathy, when I bumped into him on St. James Street on the evening of Monday 21st of November he appeared exhausted.
The reason for his exhaustion is courtesy of a repulsive BBC chronic masturbator called Dr. Matthew Sweet - and others of the Sweet profile.
Steyn is the subject of an Ofcom investigation. Ofcom is the UK’s communication regulator; in the early stages of coof, this highly-politicised (and since weaponised) institution consciously overstepped long-adhered - even respected - boundaries to mandate that no information contradicting the WHO narrative would be permitted for publication. Steyn rightfully dismissed this irrational bullshit. In 2022, Steyn was asked to fill-in for an absent presenter at GB News - and ended up annihilating opposing presenters during the same time slot, including the hopeless Piers Morgan. Because, unlike so many of his peers, he (religiously) abides diversity of opinion, he invited the American author and feminist Dr. Naomi Wolf onto his show to discuss experimental therapeutics and their consequences.
This proved too much for the bed-wetting ponce Sweet who was probably stuffing his face with seitan in front of the television when the interview aired. Not only did he instigate a complaint to Ofcom, but he sounded the Twitter call to dogpile Steyn, then other guests who frequent Steyn’s show. I cannot see Steyn escaping an adverse finding by Ofcom - its too captured.
State capture by criminal money-launderers and fraudsters is physical, and thus relatively easy (theoretically) to resolve through the criminal justice apparatus. Ideological capture is completely different. Many of England’s present and future problems, particularly as they relate to institutions like Ofcom, can be located in a phrase attributed to the late Andrew Breitbart and beloved by Steyn: culture is upstream of politics. Britain’s institutions went woke then septic through cultural shifts at society’s top; as Mike Campbell lamented bankruptcy in “The Sun Also Rises” - gradually, then suddenly.
I’m particularly angry about Steyn because I’ve seen this happen before. In April 2019, a hideous shithead spunkbubble untalented amateur social justice poesface media non-entity identity called George Eaton from the New Statesman led a dogpile on Sir Roger Scruton. Eaton interviewed Scruton, then hyped a series of lies - all of which were quickly exposed. But the pressure Sir Roger was subjected to and his treatment at the hands of the cowardly conservative government metastasised a tumour, and invariably led to the end of the great man in January 2020. Jason Cowley, the well-meaning but ultimately abortive editor of the New Statesman, was furious when he discovered Eaton had lied and wanted the evil little bastard fired, but Eaton proved too effective a manipulator and kettled Cowley into a mere demotion.
The Sweet-Steyn/Eaton-Scruton-Cowley paradigm refers across the world yesterday, today and tomorrow - from America eastward to England, then down to South Africa: unless you’re as good at being good as your enemies are at being bad - you’re fucked.
Not for the first time this year have I suspected we’re living in something of a simulated scam, but let’s take the most prominent of 2022 starting with Scam Bankrun-Fraud, the insufferable vegan GEN Z-er who has since decided not to appeal extradition to the US presumably on account of a few days in a Bahamian jail. Those places are jammed with hardened drug and people trafficker kingpins who would naturally have enormous fun hanging out the back of Scam’s chubby bottom. Scam’s theft of over $2b is one problem; the other, just as troubling is the comment he made to a VOX reporter (he lavished cash on VOX and other regime-narrative media shithouses). “Ethics is a dumb game we woke westerners play”, he remarked. Hear that? He knows that the theory of social justice as it is presented is radioactive halitosis. He knows - but he continues to believe. This is neither cultish nor hypocritical - its way, way beyond: Scam Bankrun-Fried is an examination in contemporary liberalism, or current thing-ism - whatever you want to call it - being actual mental impairment. A generation lost inside things they can’t understand, admitting to being lost inside things they can’t understand - then choosing to get more lost.
The other scam was pre-Musk Twitter and its reprehensibly corrupt former head of Trust, Safety and Legal, Vijaya Gadde. Gadde was a deep state / civil service sleeper positioned inside Twitter; upon acquiring the platform, she was Musk’s second casualty. It is now reported that Gadde has been picked up by one of these shadowy panels handled by the Department of Homeland Security (in 2021 she was also appointed to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency). Wherever she’s gone, it is almost certainly worse.
This scenario reminded me of when I was defrauded having just arrived in London in 2015. The scam I fell for didn’t involve meeting sketchy dudes behind the back of Killarney Mall who place balls of glassy tar in your hands and call them Tanzanite - or falling victim to a shakedown engineered by a revolting piece of trash like Peet Viljoen. London’s scams are polished and erudite; the conspirator behind mine had attended public school, was immaculately dressed and spoke several languages. Like Gadde, he was picked up by a bigger, organised crime syndicate who had found his skills useful. In February 2016, whilst jogging on the Sea Point promenade, I received a sinister email from a man in Cyprus warning me not to pursue any claims against my fraudster: “he’s now with us”. That right there is caution to anyone angered enough to object to Yoel Roth’s (formerly head of Twitter “site integrity”) casual pederasty by composing a stinking email to the address the degenerate publishes on his own website: don’t. Just don’t.
2022 started with some horrendous writing, most notably the conservative creep’s Alan Duncan’s diaries (“In the Thick of It”) and Max Chavkin’s “The Contrarian” (about Peter Thiel). Douglas Murray’s “The War on the West” proved a massive disappointment, as did Ben Mezrich’s “The Antisocial Network”. Both Murray and Mezrich appear not to have noticed the great re-alignment we’ve endured. Andrew Doyle’s “The New Puritans” was okay-ish. To avoid further disappointment, I turned to 1944, Paris, and Duff Cooper’s term as Ambassador to France (“The Duff Cooper Diaries”). Melvyn Bragg’s memoir “Back in the Day” was sensational; Gyles Brandreth’s “Philip: The Final Portrait” documents the monumental energy and achievements of the late Duke of Edinburgh. Buzz Bissinger’s “The Mosquito Bowl”, the actor Paul Newman’s “The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man”, Simon Elmer’s “The Road to Fascism: For a Critique of the Global Biosecurity State” and Beth Macy’s “Raising Lazarus” were all sound. Misha Glenny’s best book yet, (although not new) “Nemesis”, is the story of the drug kingpin of Rio de Janeiro’s largest slum. I shut this book with a curious feeling; under the great re-alignment, I am more compelled to the soul and beliefs of an impoverished young man who appears to have no option than to peddle drugs in the favelas than I am to some one nation conservative politician spiking the drinks of young catamites in the Carlton Club before buggering them in the service elevator (Yes, I’m talking about you, filthy young Tom Hedley Fairfax Harwood, the catamitest of all catamites. On my transatlantic flight two days ago, bored out of my skull, I decided to throw some enemies into ChatGPT and see what was vomited up…)
One of the best things I read featured in the National Review, about a friend, James Delingpole. Since 2019 the London Calling podcast, featuring James and Toby Young discussing British, European and American politics and culture has steadily ascended up the charts. For those familiar with James’ work, you’ll have noticed a distinctive shift in perspective in 2020: whereas Toby errs on calamity and incompetence as explanation for current events (coof, Ukraine), James has gone nuclear rabbit hole. The writer of the article, Michael Brendan Dougherty, describes the correspondence as “possibly the most important discussion in the world”. What he means: there was a time when the healthy exploration of alternatives did not result in the end of friendships or the beginning of perpetual hostility. Here it might be again.
Dougherty is a good writer and I couldn’t recommend his own memoir more. But his sentiments are late; I - and here I humbly assume perhaps we - did not invite the things that end relationships, or delight in cancelation and ridicule, or see presentism as a reasonable or just way to navigate the world. They were imposed upon us.
Which brings us to Musk’s (possibly) final act of 2022: a poll to determine his future as CEO of the world’s de-facto town square. Here in California I’ve listened to a number of people articulating their disappointment, questioning why he’d do this on a platform still so obviously infested with state bots and disgusting pedos. They might have it wrong.
Musk’s Jimmy Carter-ish political acuity is the weakest component of his intellect; by his own admission, he is to the left of the Republican Party, which is pretty much the Conservatives and pretty much Keir Starmer’s Labour. People like this don’t want to make enemies but worse - they actually can’t see them. I suspect he’s learned this real quick, and thus needs to do something spectacular.
So here is a reluctant prediction to conclude 2022: Musk will leave Twitter to do what he does best - and appoint Blake Masters as CEO. Masters is smart and understands how to make things profitable. From the little I know and have heard, he’s also as hard as they come. Were this to happen, I can only wish the likes of Ben Collins, Princess Harry and his husband Megan, Big Mike Obama and his wife Barack, Yoel Roth and his gang of tranny groomers, Drs Sweet and McFuckface, George Eaton, Taylor Lorenz, Oliver Darcy, Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann et al - all bursting with neck-beard pus and fake chicken nuggets and seed oils reeking of cystitis and cat ejaculi - the very best of luck. They are not going to enjoy it.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas. We’ll meet again in 2023.
It was the fuckaroundest of times and the findoutest of times.
Merry Christmas Simon and thank you for writing the most thigh-slapping commentary of the year.