A delicious bit of godwhining (genuinely comparing something to Nazis cos you’re in a snit with it) in the Spectator, which continues to carry the ageless, deathless ramblings of Taki Theodoracopulos, Greek playboy, accidental drug smuggler, occasional writer of racist rants and “soi-disante anti-semite”. He has made a career of “didn’t have a column and wrote one anyway”:

I’m back in New York and digesting the five glorious days spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about, you may ask: was it about freedom, equality, cultural diversity, man’s dignity — all liberal catchphrases these days?

Liberty and freedom are also big words nowadays, but all I see are massive central governments with arbitrary powers à la Brussels and Washington DC. Normandy promised us a lot but, as far as I’m concerned, delivered little. If freedom of speech was non-existent in Germany in 1940, political correctness makes it just as rare in London and New York in 2018.

There’s a lot in there. WWII was won by Allied governments with dictatorial powers established as soon as war began; the Greek upper class from which Taki originates had already backed a fascist dictator and fell over themselves to invite the Germans in and aid them against the Allies, and, yes, New York is like Dachau now.

What’s amazing is, that’s the free first eight lines before you hit the Spectator’s subscribe button. Which would get you another 60 lines of it. The whole magazine is like this.

Mind you, there’s always the Oz to compete with. Yesterday Maaaaauuuuuurice Newman was back with a piece combining the Oz’s favourite op-ed genres: a down-the-phone ramble structure, combined with an ABC attack, a letter from a farmer about something, and a plug for Sky News:

With Sky News set to become regionally available on free-to-air television, a major justification for public broadcasting (perhaps the last big reason) will cease to apply.

Yeah that’d work. After all, News Corp’s TV propaganda arm averaged 18,000 viewers in primetime in 2016.

Finally, in the Hun, there’s Terry McCrann, a man who for decades had the paradoxical job of published stock-picker: someone making recommendations which, had he been any good at it, would mean he was retired and not doing it any more. He has a free ad for Ross Gittins. Gittins argues that vested fossil-fuel interests are holding back innovation in renewables; Terry thinks the existence of windmills and erm sunshine shows we already had renewables and they weren’t enough. It includes this head-spinner:

But it was [Gittins’] — at least, what he thought was his — killer analogy that so perfectly captured his totally inanity … ‘Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry,’ he plaintively asked? Er, no Ross, because the motor car — and the truck and all the modes of modern transport — worked infinitely better than the horse and buggy.

Got that? Gittins is pointing out the car developed because the horse and buggy trade didn’t stop it (as fossil fuels now stymie renewables), and McCrann has exactly misunderstood the argument. He’s made the point to Gittins that Gittins is making (Crann relies on the idea that renewables aren’t approaching price-crossover with fossil, fast: here’s greeny-hippy Forbes magazine explaining they are).

My favourite bit is McCrann getting all literary, pointing out that “idiots” like Gittins “want to pointlessly take Australia and the world back to an 18th century future of lives rendered ‘nasty, brutish and short’.”

Well, the phrase is from Thomas Hobbes, writing in the 1500s and comparing (wrongly) his world to native tribes encountered in America. The 18th century was considerably more advanced. Still, nice to see a book get a mention in the Hun, even if incorrectly and in an absurd rant.  

What’s really very odd is that all three of these pieces felt like they were being shouted at you in a stalled lift, by “angry of Boronia”. And the right’s media is all like this. Even as circulations plummet, editors simply redouble with more drivel best described as, well, “nasty, brutish and short”. As are many of the authors.