[Pil-pc-oceania] far-left, far-right, & the Great Global Warming Swindle..far out?

[Deb Guildner]

Hi all,
For those who haven't had the dubious pleasure of political involvement over 
the years, (and I do not sing it's praises!)
it's a well known fact that far left parties (aka the dinosaur 'loony left') 
had long since ideologically placed we environmentalists into the
"it's just another capitalist/imperialist plot to destroy....... communism 
(or whatever)" category.
This was the case till the mid 1980's, when leftists and others began to 
look to Green politics to provide the answers to the continuing crisis of 
environmental mayhem strangling the planet..................but there were 
some unreconstructed/ persistent/ recalcitrant/hardliners who tried to 
persist....the story goes, "the feminists and greenies left the communisty 
party....leaving a handful of hardliners"..
The drift of former Communist and Trotskyists into the evolving Green 
parties has not always been a smooth and level path.
It stuffed up the Nuclear Disarmament Party immediately after the 1985 
election, as they stacked the fledgling party.
It has led to quite a few problems along the way, and been the source of 
many articles written aka the lines of "Are the Greens really red?".
It wasn't much of a leap for the lefties, the few visionaries among them 
realisied the writing was on the wall..."for the times they were 
a'changing!"  . They were always a minority party anyway, and their heydays 
in the west consisted of supporting the (out-of) workers in the Great 
Depression, through to defending workers via unionism in the boom era 1950's 
and 60's.  The Communist invasion if Czechoslovakia in 1968 began the slow 
exodus of former party faithful who had taken efuge there during the long 
conservative Menzies era.  In pragmatic terms, the left had worked off the 
power base of the ALP (and giving their preferences to them), which was what 
they later perceived the Greens were doing.
Some former hard lefties have not fully embraced or understood green 
ideology (or even the Green Party constitution). Particularly in city based 
Green parties, it has been difficult to balance out social activism with 
environmental activism.  Eg, there was much more effort going into the 
Iraq/Hicks etc debate than the water debate, than on saving the 
Murray-Darling.  Thus the onus had always gone back onto green groups ie 
environment NGO/organisations to draw attention to the wider world on the 
doorstep, while city based Green parties concentrated on solving transport 
and energy issues. (Hopefully that has changed).
Overseas, the 1989(?) demolition of the Berlin Wall/Iron Curtain delivered 
the coup de grace to Communism (except in China).  The movement in the east 
had consisted of about 20% Green pushpower, largely unrecognised in 
subsequent elections in former Communist controlled countries. Old habits 
die hard.  The re-unification of Germany followed the demise of the Iron 
Curtain. The next election of the greater Germany resulted in the almost 
total collapse of the German Green Party, which had held about 24 seats in 
the West German Bundestag (Parliament) prior to this.  After the 
post-re-unification election, the number of MPs fell dramatically to just a 
handful.  The German Greens Party then began a slow recovery, and has in 
recent times regrown and formed a coalition with Social Democrats(?) to 
jointly govern.  (A Greens MP was Defence Minister in 2003, and Germany 
refused to go to Iraq.)
If you think Europe has had a turbulent political history Tasmania has one 
to rival it!   It is deeply rooted in capital interests, however.
Amazingly, it is a former member of the old extreme left who has been at the 
root of the recently screened shock-umentary "Great Global Warming Swindle". 
Michael Durkin fairly was recently a member of a UK "Revolutionary Communist 
Party".  No real surprises there, hard left sees their role as to fight to 
protect those factory workers/coal miners whatever jobs: China party 
officials grow fat and rich on the backs of the enslaved majority.
For those who do not read science journals or follow the trail of articles 
on scientific reports in the daily printmedia etc, the debate can be 
somewhat confusing, and idiotic efforts like "The Swindle" are not helping.
The following e-bulletins of Crikey.com and Greenleap lift the lid on the 
origins of the film biography of The Swindler Michael Durkin.
Cheers
Deb
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Dear Squatters,
Can the debate about the so-called global warming "swindle" ever be 
resolved? Of course not. It's far too scientific for most of us to 
understand and it's far too controversial to achieve a consensus.
Which is why the goalposts in this debate should be permanently shifted. Let's 
stop debating whether climate change is induced by humans and replace it 
with a far more important -- and resolvable - question: can we afford not to 
act?
This should be a debate about insurance, not about climate. There's now 
enough evidence to raise sufficient doubts that the planet could be at risk 
from greenhouse-induced climate change. Even if the actuarial risk is as low 
as 10% (and it's probably more like 50% or more) then surely every 
individual, government and company would be crazy to do nothing.
The only "swindle" now would be if we didn't take out an insurance policy 
against the possibility of permanent damage to the environment, and we don't 
need scientific consensus for that - we just need 10% of scientists to 
confirm it.
After all, even Rupert Murdoch - arch conservative and arch pragmatist -- is 
arguing that we should give the planet the benefit of the doubt.
2. The Swindle: Just where did the ABC get its rent-a-crowd?
Anti-hate campaigner Cam Smith writes:



Those viewing the post-Swindle discussion with Tony Jones would have noticed 
that things got a little bit fruity when it came time to throw to the 
audience.

One audience member went the climate change believers for relying on 
methodology "disproved 400 years ago" while three others accused them of 
running a secret Eugenics agenda. "This is Hitler's Nazi race science!" 
yelled one.

Somehow, the audience seemed to be chock-a-block with members of the 
Citizens Electoral Council (CEC).

The CEC was originally an electoral front for the Australian League of 
Rights (increasingly elderly "patriots" largely concerned with Holocaust 
denial and Jewish conspiracies), until it was stacked by local followers of 
Lyndon Larouche and disagreements over the status of the Queen (ALOR loved 
her, the Larouchites reckon she runs an international drug empire) forced a 
split.

Since then, the CEC has spent most of their time losing elections (badly) 
and raising money (and lots of it).

The CEC is especially dark on the idea of man-made climate change. It is, 
they say, a fraud perpetrated by agents of the British Crown who wish to 
kill off billions of people. Why? Because they're the British, you fool! 
They're evil -- it's what they do!

The Larouchites much prefer the theories put forward by Swindle, because it 
shifts the danger from the consequences of man-made global warming, which 
are difficult to fight, to the dangers of genocidal global warming 
proponents, who can be defeated with the stroke of a pen.

So why did it seem like the audience was loaded with Larouchites?

The ABC told Crikey that viewers who contacted the station to congratulate 
or complain in the lead-up to the airing of the documentary were invited to 
apply to participate in the studio audience. A balanced mix of believers and 
sceptics were then selected. The ABC estimates there were around five 
members of the CEC in the audience of 80.

According to the Larouchites, there were 18 -- three of whom were kicked out 
prior to the show for being "potentially disruptive". Four of the remaining 
members asked questions.

As an anti-hate campaigner, I should probably be critical of the ABC for 
giving a platform to a group which is considered by many to be a fascistic, 
anti-Semitic cult. As a viewer, I was grateful for anything which spiced up 
the proceedings.

Click here for Part One of audience question time.

Click here for Part Two of audience question time.

3.
The politics behind Director of the Climate Swindle
Posted by: "David Spratt" dspratt at bigpond.net.au   dspratt0709
Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:57 pm (PST)
The politics of Martin Durkin

I wonder how enthusiastically the Australian right's climate deniers
would be embracing their now love-child, Martin Durkin, if there had
been more public discussion about Durkin's sectarian left history,
and his role in producing other fraudulent "documentaries".

Its been very convenient keeping the politics out of this one!

Below, some past commentaries form George Monbiot on Durkin

David
-----------
David Spratt
dspratt at bigpond.net.au
0417070099

QUOTE: "Line by line, point by point, Against Nature follows the
agenda laid down by the [cranky sect called the Revolutionary
Communist Party] RCP..... The assistant producer of Against Nature,
Eve Kaye, was one of the principal coordinators of the RCP/LM. [LM = journal 
"Living Maxism"] The
director, Martin Durkin, describes himself as a Marxist, denies any
link with LM, but precisely follows its line in argument. The series
starred Frank Furedi, previously known as Frank Richards, LM's
regular columnist and most influential thinker, and John Gillott,
LM's science correspondent, both billed as independent experts. Line
by line, point by point, Against Nature followed the agenda laid down
by LM: that greens are not radicals, but doom-mongering imperialists;
that global warming is nothing to worry about; that "sustainable
development" is a conspiracy against people; while germline gene
therapy and human cloning will liberate humanity from nature. The
Independent Television Commission, reviewing Against Nature in
response to hundreds of complaints, handed down one of the most
damning rulings it has ever made: the programme makers "distorted by
selective editing" the views of the environmentalists they
interviewed and "misled" them about the "content and purpose of the
programmes when they agreed to take part." Channel 4 was forced to
make a humiliating prime time apology.

---------

The revolution has been televised

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1997/12/18/the-revolution-has-been-
televised/

Channel 4's Against Nature series turns out to have been made by an
obscure and cranky sect

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 18th December 1997.

There has never been a series on British television like Channel 4's
Against Nature, which ended with a debate on Tuesday night. The
environmentalists it interviewed were lied to about the contents of
the programmes. They were given no chance to respond to the
accusations the series made. They were misrepresentated to the extent
of falsification. One couldn't help suspecting that Against Nature
was driven not by healthy scepticism but by shrill ideology.

If this were so, where might it have come from? At first we thought
the Far Right might have been involved. But, over the last three
weeks, another picture has begun to form. Against Nature IS the
product of an extreme political ideology, but it comes from a rather
different quarter: an obscure and cranky sect called the
Revolutionary Communist Party.

Frank Furedi, the series' key interviewee and a protagonist in
Tuesday's debate, has been described as the father of the modern RCP.
He is a regular contributer to the RCP's journal, Living Marxism. Of
the two main contributers to the third programme, one, John Gillott,
is Living Marxism's science correspondent. The other, Robert Plomin,
though not RCP, has recently been interviewed sympathetically by the
magazine. Martin Durkin, the director of the three programmes,
describes himself as a Marxist: the only brand of Marxism which
follows the line the series takes is the RCP's. The husband of his
deputy, Against Nature's assistant producer, is the co-author of the
RCP's manifesto and Books Editor of Living Marxism.

Line by line, point by point, Against Nature follows the agenda laid
down by the RCP. Greens, both the series and Living Marxism maintain,
present themselves as radicals, but are really doom-mongering
imperialists, engaged in the deification of Nature and the rejection
of human progress. Global warming is nothing to worry about, while
sustainable development is a conspiracy against people. Greens have
plotted with the film industry to make science terrifying. Genetic
engineering and human cloning are not to be feared but cherished, as
they will liberate humanity from nature.

The ideologues in the series have some strange bedfellows, but the
RCP has always been good at making selective alliances, whether it is
promoting anti-environmental ideas, or campaigning against a ban on
landmines and in favour of the Bosnian Serb forces and the Hutu
militias. Its members are controversialists, but more than just that:
the principle targets for their attacks are alternative outlets for
radical action.

I had scarcely broached this subject on Tuesday night's debate when
Martin Durkin began - and I do not exaggerate - screaming. I was a
McCarthyite and a despicable conspiracist. What on earth did his
personal political views have to do with this series?

Well, rather too much. The RCP and its associates can make as many
programmes as they like as long as they do so openly and honestly.
Indeed, among its perversities and cheap controversialism, the RCP
has some interesting and provocative views, which are worth hearing
and debating. But Martin Durkin and his commissioning editor, Sara
Ramsden, maintain that Against Nature is not a polemic, but a well-
balanced documentary series. There was no presenter; instead we were
instructed, in true documentary style, by an authoritative voice-
over. The RCP/Living Marxism interviewees were not captioned as such,
but presented as independent experts.

It's an extraordinary coup for a tiny group of cranks: three hours of
prime time propaganda. But how on earth did they pull it off? It is
inconceivable that Channel 4's top decision-makers also belong to the
party. But many television executives hate environmentalism. They see
it as a grim memento mori at the bottom of the picture, spoiling the
good news about cars, clothes and consumerism. So when the film-
makers suggested an all-out assault on environmentalists, their
proposal fell on fertile ground. The revolution, as the RCP sees it,
has been televised.

--------

Modified truth

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/03/16/modified-truth/

Channel 4 has hired a charlatan to make its science programmes

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 16th March 2000

In October 1998 a television producer named Martin Durkin took a
proposal to the BBC's science series, Horizon. Silicone breast
implants, he claimed, far from harming women, were in fact
beneficial, reducing the risk of breast cancer. Horizon commissioned
a researcher to find out whether or not his assertion was true. After
a thorough review, the researcher reported that Mr Durkin had ignored
a powerful body of evidence contradicting his claims. Martin Durkin
withdrew his proposal. Instead of dropping it, however, he took it to
Channel 4 and, astonishingly, sold it to their science series, Equinox.

To help him make the programme, Durkin hired Najma Kazi, a highly
respected TV researcher and producer who was previously a research
biochemist. After two weeks she walked out. "It's not a joke to walk
away from four or five month's work," she told me, "but my research
was being ignored. The published research had been construed to give
an impression that's not the case. I don't know how that programme
got passed. The only consolation for me was that I'm really glad I
didn't put my name to it."

But the programme was broadcast, in May last year. Silicone implants,
it insisted, appeared to reduce the incidence of breast cancer. Women
claiming that their operations had caused severe health problems were
dismissed as cranks, malingerers and compensation chasers. The
researchers who believed that there was a problem were accused of
practising "junk science".

Mr Durkin has often been accused of taking liberties with the facts.
In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called "Against Nature", which
compared environmentalists with Nazis, conspiring against the world's
poor. No one would suggest that green claims should not be subjected
to critical examination, but the people he interviewed were lied to
about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond
to the accusations the series made.

The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most
damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers "distorted
by selective editing" the views of the interviewees and "misled" them
about the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to
take part." Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time
apology. After the series was broadcast, I discovered that the
assistant producer and several of its interviewees worked for the
right-wing libertarian magazine masquerading as "Living Marxism",
which has just been successfully sued by ITN. All the arguments
Against Nature made had been rehearsed in LM.

So what do you do with a director with a record like this, who has
brought your channel into disrepute, who has misled both his
contributors and his audience? If you are Michael Jackson, the head
of Channel 4, you commission him to make more programmes.

On Monday, Channel 4 will broadcast a 90-minute Equinox programme
about genetic engineering, made by Martin Durkin and called,
appropriately enough, "Modified Truth". Already it appears that the
programme-making has suffered from Mr Durkin's characteristic
approach. "I feel completely betrayed and misled", reports Dr Mae-Wan
Ho, a geneticist Durkin interviewed. "They did not tell me it was
going to be an attack on my position."

Neither Martin Durkin nor, extraordinarily, Charles Furneaux, the
commissioning editor of the science series Equinox, has a science
background. They don't need one, for science on Channel 4 has been
reduced to a crude manifesto for corporate libertarianism.

When Michael Jackson arrived at Channel 4, he cancelled a series
called Global Raiders, on which a quarter of a million pounds had
already been spent. It would have examined the adverse impacts of big
business around the world. Since 1989, according to the research
group 3WE, Channel 4 has reduced its international factual output by
56 per cent. Holiday programmes have boomed, but "ecological
programming now appears to be virtually extinct".

The station, in other words, is censoring not just a few ideas, but
entire subject areas. Serious coverage of science, the environment,
the developing world and, above all, abuses of corporate power, has
been all but stamped out. The Mark Thomas Comedy Product is a glowing
exception, but I suspect it is allowed on air only because it makes
people laugh.

Perhaps intellectual honesty is too fusty, too boring, for the chic,
post-modern Channel 4. But perhaps there is something else at work,
perhaps we should question whether senior staff have come to identify
themselves with the companies providing their revenues, and are, as a
result, seeking to modify the truth. If so, then it is hardly
surprising that they have handed so much work to a charlatan.

--------

Living Marxism's interesting allegiances

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1998/11/01/far-left-or-far-right/

By George Monbiot. Published in Prospect Magazine, November 1998

There's no question that Britain's libel laws are unfair. Intended to
protect the individual, they are routinely used by large corporations
to discourage their critics. Confronted with almost limitless
resources, the best QCs money can buy and the prospect of ruinous
costs and damages, the defendants almost always back down, whether or
not they believe their cause to be just. The result is that a
significant arena of public life has been, in large part, placed
beyond the bounds of free speech.

A few courageous souls with little to lose and a point to prove have
withstood the corporate assault, and allowed the case to proceed to
court. Today the undisputed heroes of free speech are the "McLibel
Two", the unemployed people who defended themselves against McDonalds
and won a famous partial victory. But they could soon be joined by
another plucky crusader for human freedom, a small but tenacious
magazine called Living Marxism, or LM.

In 1997, LM published an article claiming that the broadcasting
company ITN had fabricated its dramatic discovery in 1992 of
prisoners held by the Bosnian Serbs. "The picture that fooled the
world" argued that ITN's footage, in which emaciated Bosnian Muslim
men clung to barbed wire, showed not a detention centre, as ITN
maintained, but a safe haven for refugees. The Bosnian Serb soldiers
at the camp were not detaining the Muslims but defending them.

ITN instituted proceedings for libel. The corporation insisted that
it had no choice but to defend its journalists' reputations. LM
argued that ITN had plenty of opportunities to defend itself, without
resorting to the courts. Some of the world's leading liberals leapt
to the magazine's defence: Harold Evans, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux,
Fay Weldon and many others condemned ITN's "deplorable attack on
press freedom". The Institute of Contemporary Arts, bulwark of
progressive liberalism, enhanced LM's heroic profile by co-hosting a
three-day conference with the magazine, called "Free Speech Wars".
With the blessing of the liberal world, this puny iconoclastic David
will go to war with the clanking orthodoxies of the multinational
Goliath.

This, at least, is how LM would like its struggle to be seen. But
there is more to this David than first meets the eye. His may be less
of the great liberal cause that his supporters would like to believe.
For the closer one looks at LM, the weaker its link to the oppressed
appears, and the stronger its links to the oppressor. It has, in
other words, less in common with the left than with the fanatical right.

The magazine was launched in 1988 as an outlet for the Revolutionary
Communist Party, a bizarre controversialist sect which split from the
"International Socialists" in the 1970s. Soon the RCP was collapsed
into Living Marxism, which, hovering between three different parent
companies, later changed its name to LM. Its mission, the editors
announced, was to promote human freedom based on a "confident
individualism". There should be no limits to human action, least of
all those imposed by "official and semi-official agencies . from the
police and the courts to social services, counsellors and censors."

LM would not hesitate to present uncomfortable truths to power,
whatever the cost might be. In this spirit, or so it would have us
believe, in February 1997 it recruited the fearless investigative
journalist Thomas Deichmann to tell the real story behind the Bosnian
enclosures. Only it wasn't quite like that. Deichmann was an engineer
by training, not a journalist. His writing was largely confined to an
obscure German magazine called Novo, which he used repeatedly to
defend the Bosnian Serb leadership against charges of murder,
torture, rape and ethnic cleansing. He presented himself as a witness
for the defence at the trial of the Serbian war criminal Dusko Tadic.

LM's contributers do seem to have the most extraordinary contacts.
Late last year, Channel 4 devoted its Sunday night peak slot to a
three-hour series called Against Nature. By seeking to impose limits
on progress, the series alleged, environmentalists are the true heirs
of the Nazis.

The assistant producer of Against Nature, Eve Kaye, was one of the
principal coordinators of the RCP/LM. The director, Martin Durkin,
describes himself as a Marxist, denies any link with LM, but
precisely follows its line in argument. The series starred Frank
Furedi, previously known as Frank Richards, LM's regular columnist
and most influential thinker, and John Gillott, LM's science
correspondent, both billed as independent experts. Line by line,
point by point, Against Nature followed the agenda laid down by LM:
that greens are not radicals, but doom-mongering imperialists; that
global warming is nothing to worry about; that "sustainable
development" is a conspiracy against people; while germline gene
therapy and human cloning will liberate humanity from nature. The
Independent Television Commission, reviewing Against Nature in
response to hundreds of complaints, handed down one of the most
damning rulings it has ever made: the programme makers "distorted by
selective editing" the views of the environmentalists they
interviewed and "misled" them about the "content and purpose of the
programmes when they agreed to take part." Channel 4 was forced to
make a humiliating prime time apology.

Channel 4 is by no means the only mouthpiece of counter-revolutionary
Capital of which LM contributers seek to make good use. Joan
Phillips, who is director of LM's sister organisation, the London
International Research Exchange, and helps Deichmann to explain away
Serb atrocities in the pages of LM, works under the name of Joan Hoey
as the Economist Intelligence Unit's Balkans analyst. Frank Furedi
has recently been offering his services to the major superstores and
the Food and Drink Federation, proposing to "educate" consumers
towards a "less emotive" consideration of food safety. Strange
Marxists these, who offer such solace to Capital.

It's arguable, of course, that, pending the revolution, even Marxists
have to engage with global capital to make a living, but this doesn't
explain the next mystery: LM's association with overtly rightwing
organisations. The March 1998 edition ran a substantial article by
Ron Arnold, claiming that the Unabomber is an environmentalist, ergo
all environmentalists are terrorists. Ron Arnold is Executive Vice
President of the Centre for the Defense of Free Enterprise, one of
the wackiest far-right campaigns in the United States, established to
promote "individual rights, free markets, private property and
limited government". Simultaneously, the CFDE used Channel 4's
publicity briefing for Against Nature as the "guest editorial" on its
website.

This year, the avowedly anti-imperialist LM began running articles by
Roger Bate of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which advocates,
among other interesting ideas, that African countries should be sold
to multinational corporations in order to bring "good government" to
the continent. In the Against Nature series, LM's contributers rubbed
shoulders with Larry Craig, a far right Republican senator and
fundraiser for the raving "Alliance for America"; Julian Simon, who
was Ronald Reagan's favourite economist, and Michael Gough, who, like
Simon, belongs to a hard-right libertarian think-tank called the Cato
Institute. All maintained an identical political position, lining up
to identify the liberals and lefties of the environmental movement as
covert Nazi sympathisers.

As you wade through back issues of Living Marxism, you can't help but
conclude that the magazine's title is a poor guide to its contents.
LM contains little that would be recognised by other Marxists or, for
that matter, by leftists of any description. On one issue after
another, there's a staggering congruence between LM's agenda and that
of the far-right Libertarian Alliance. The two organisations take
identical positions, for example, on gun control (it is a
misconceived attack on human liberty), child pornography (legal
restraint is simply a Trojan horse for the wider censorship of the
Internet), alcohol (its dangers have been exaggerated by a new breed
of "puritan"), the British National Party (it's unfair to associate
it with the murder of Stephen Lawrence; its activities and
publications should not be restricted), the Anti-Nazi League (it is
undemocratic and irrelevant), tribal people (celebrating their lives
offends humanity's potential to better itself; the Yanomami Indians
are not to be envied but pitied) animal rights (they don't have any),
and global warming (it's a good thing).

The two organizations share a strangely one-sided conception of
freedom, celebrating and defending the "freedom to" of those with the
power to act, while dismissing threats to the "freedom from" of those
who might be affected. So, limiting the scope of racist publications
insults our humanity, even though they might incite racists to beat
up black people, while restricting car use is a fundamental assault
on liberty, even though being hit by cars is now the commonest cause
of death for children between the ages of one and fourteen. "It is
those who have suffered the most," LM tells us, "who should be
listened to the least."

Both organizations also appear to believe that the weak and
vulnerable are best served by being allowed to fend for themselves,
without interference from "do-gooders" and "puritans". Left to their
own devices, both adults and children are capable of resisting
tobacco advertising, alcopops, paedophiles and pornographers,
whatever the imbalance of power between perpetrator and victim may
be. Indeed corporations, LM appears to suggest, should be free to do
whatever they want, except sueing LM for libel.

But the similarities end with the ideology. While the Libertarian
Alliance is a shabby, disaggregated outfit, LM is professional and
well-organized. Glossy, well-written and cleverly edited, distributed
largely for free, supported by its own research organization and an
excellent website, the magazine seems to have no shortage of money,
yet no obvious sources of major funding.

So who is this strangely armoured David? Where do his politics come
from? Can LM's editors really be such deranged Marxist
fundamentalists that they are seeking to hasten the triumph of
capitalism, the better to speed its downfall? Or are they trying to
destroy alternative outlets for radical action, in the hope that the
revolution, when it comes, will be untainted by heresy? Whatever the
explanation may be, LM, with its extreme right-wing allies and
extreme right-wing views dressed in left-wing clothes, is doing more
to confuse and destabilise the left than any overtly right-wing
organisation.

Had the magazine been named "Living Libertarianism" or "Living
Reaganism", one wonders how willing the liberal establishment would
have been to leap to its defence. Oppressive as ITN's suit might be,
LM's survival is no great liberal cause. For its new-found champions
on the liberal left can be assured of just one thing: that of all
political classes, LM hates them the most.