Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The “far right” narrative

    It’s hard enough trying to imagine the hell that these grooming gang victims, like Fiona Goddard, went through. The fact that, after speaking out, she’s still going through this, though….

    Full text:

    I am not far right. Yet I got raped for over 5 years by the grooming gangs and there most definatly were racial elements and they hid behind islam to abuse children. They tried getting me to fast, convert and wear muslim clothes, aswell as using racial slurs to me. Yet everytime i speak about the abuse i recieved, and i only speak about it factually and in a way so we can identify the issues to make changes to better protect children going forward, i get dozens of messages from the pakistani or muslin communities threatening my life, telling me i loved being raped or shagging grandads when i was a kid, telling me im doing everything for money, telling me im a white piece of trash that was begging for it. Telling me they are going to do the same to my kids. Threats that my house is going to get set on fire with me and my kids in and an attempt to actually do that by putting my bins under my windows and setting them on fire and sooooo much more. Rather than calling people far right for speaking about it, why does the pakistani/muslim community not rise up and help tackle the problem? Ive tried to speak to imam’s about teaching them what happened and how they can help tackle the problem and theyve told me to go away said they dont want to know and that its all made up and doesnt exist. We all need to accept the issues that are going on talk openly and honestly about things and work together to tackle it for the sake of the future children. But that isnt happening. And its sad and frustrating. And it will just lead to more problems.

  • Starmer in Beijing

    Jung Chang, the Wild Swans author, on Sir Keir’s sad humiliation:

    Speaking just days after the Prime Minister’s return from Beijing, the 73-year-old – who fled China for London in 1978 – is unable to hide her disdain for the visit. “What makes me feel both sad and angry is watching Britain’s Prime Minister go to Beijing and be openly humiliated. The Chinese authorities went out of their way to do it.

    “Instead of being received by Xi Jinping himself, he was sent around the Forbidden City by a tour guide. That is not accidental.

    “When Donald Trump visited Beijing, Xi personally accompanied him through the Forbidden City. When Emmanuel Macron visited recently, crowds were carefully organised to welcome him, to flatter him, to make him feel admired. With Britain, the opposite message was sent.”

    Pointing out that “hospitality and protocol are central in China”, the softly-spoken dissident tells me and my Daily T co-host Tim Stanley: “These signals are deliberate. Britain invented modern diplomacy – this was not a misunderstanding.”

    The picture says it all, really.

    She is similarly unequivocal on the Chinese “super” embassy that has just been given the go-ahead on the site of the old Royal Mint in central London, amid mounting fears it will be used for spying. “Anything that poses even a remote risk to Britain’s national security should not be permitted,” she insists. Chang herself is no stranger to surveillance, with intruders once scaling the balcony of her London home and methodically destroying all her plants and flowers with a serrated knife.

  • Miss Tasmania 2026

    Hot favourite. He was runner-up last year.

    Story here.

    Taking the Tas out of Tasmania.

  • The “progressive left”

    ….specifically anti-US (and by extension anti-Israel), they will have the unquestioning support of the majority of the liberal left and the entertainment world.

    The same “progressive left” who happily live in the west, profit from its relative freedoms, yet turn their activism on and off like a switch, or in some cases, even make a living out of it.

    It is disappointing and exhausting.

    But grateful to all those who have spoken out. Especially in the comedy community. It takes a lot of guts to do so when everyone around you is looking the other way.

  • That Super Bowl ad

    The point of modern Jew hatred is not to sound like the 1930s. It is to sound like politics.

    Today the slur is semantic. “Zio.” “Zionazi.” “Genocide apologist.” “Baby killer.” The move is to take the oldest accusation in the book, that Jews are uniquely malignant, and dress it up as political critique or commentary. Then you insist it is “just anti-Zionism,” and anyone who hears the continuity is accused of bad faith.

    That is why antizionism so often functions like a permission structure. It authorizes institutional and social exclusion and reputational violence while preserving the speaker’s self-image as righteous. You can target Jews as Jews, as long as you use the approved vocabulary.

    This is also why I reject the marketing instinct to portray Jews as fragile, trembling, pleading to be seen as human. It misreads the moment and it misstates the reality. Jews are not powerless objects of pity. We are organized, legally literate, institutionally engaged, and increasingly unwilling to accept the demand that we must translate ourselves into someone else’s moral language or political discourse to earn safety.

    Call it what it is. Antizionism, as a movement in practice, is a contemporary vehicle for Jew hatred. And the sooner institutions stop romanticizing, for lack of a better term, yesterday’s antisemitism while ignoring or normalizing today’s, the better.

    Ad here.

  • Beating women

    The debate, on Saudi TV, does not go well: “A woman like this one, who interrupts men while they are talking, should be beaten right from the start.”

  • Humanity has a common enemy in Israel

    The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories drops the mask. Yes, that’s the problem with the world today: the Jews.

  • Challenging stereotypical gender roles

    “They’re tightly embracing each other, hair blowing in the wind, almost merging with the clouds behind them, and as a viewer we really get to become part of this intimate celebration both of their freedom to embrace out in the open and to challenge stereotypical gender roles.”

    What we have here, I believe, is a male gay couple, with one dressed as/identifying as a woman. In the bad old days they’d have been happy to celebrate their sexuality by presenting as two men, but in these new progressive times one pretends to be a woman.

    So…not challenging gender norms at all, but reinforcing gender norms. They already have a freedom to embrace out in the open thanks to gay lib, but they’re rejecting all that by presenting that most stereotypical of photos, a happy couple embracing on the beach, as a subversive act against “gender roles”.

    Against being gay, in fact. That’s what this is about. Back into the closet.

    Regressive, not progressive. Welcome to the art world.

    For more challenging of gender norms by art photographers, see my visit to the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery last month.

  • Kholodomor

    Under Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one of the defining acts of genocide is: “Deliberately inflicting on a group of people conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

    Many Ukrainian cities – Kyiv foremost among them – have been without electricity, heating, and water for the second week in a row, amid severe frosts. What does this mean? It means people are being condemned to death by russia.

    This is what is happening:.

    Elderly people cannot leave their apartments to buy food or water because elevators do not work – or because they are physically unable to walk down the stairs;

    No communication: mobile phones are dead, there is no way to call for help or an ambulance;

    Sick people cannot use life-sustaining medical equipment because there is no electricity at home;

    Mothers of small kids carry their children and strollers up staircases in high-rise buildings – along with water and food;

    No hot meals and no possibility to cook food at home;….

  • Meetings with the gender cult

    A tale for our times, from Mr Menno.