Secretly funded right-wing political lobby group Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) invented another subset of itself called 1828.
1828 is another platform for anti-society anti-human pro-exploitation reckless philosophy of extreme free-marketeers. Another platform means another opportunity to grab airtime from complicit broadcasters who pretend they are giving a voice to a different perspective when it’s the same gang of charlatans from the likes of IEA, Tax-Payers’ Alliance (TPA), Adam Smith Institute (ASI), etc.
The articles published by 1828 are typical and predictable. Misdirection, distraction, confidence tricks, illusion and delusion are their building blocks and snide and sneers are the glue.
In Liberating Policy Agenda “policy analyst” at TPA Ben Ramanauskas claimed the “housing crisis” was not the consequence of no social housing being built or property developers dodging the law on affordable housing or exploitative landlords taking advantage of insufficient laws to protect tenants.
“Our housing crisis is largely due to stamp duty, coupled with a very restrictive planning system. The next prime minister needs to abolish stamp duty and liberalise the planning system. This is the only way that we will end the housing crisis and make renting and home ownership affordable again.”
In the same article he said “corporation tax needs to be slashed and stamp duty on shares, capital gains tax, and dividends tax should be abolished entirely” followed by a restatement of the disreputable trickle-down theory.
In Extinction Rebellion: A Climate of Violence Director of ASI Eamonn Butler declared
“These activities are acts of violence. They should be resisted and punished like any other act of violence, no matter how virtuous those doing the violence claim their motives to be. As the police finally moved in to make arrests, individuals and news agencies published pictures of protesters being forcibly handcuffed and carried into police vans, and there were the usual complaints about police brutality and the state using violence against peaceful individuals. But that puts things completely backwards.”
He elucidated the con trick of capitalist democracies that people can object to something providing their objections have no effect. Referring to someone he claimed was a relative, a suffragette who took part in direct action to promote the right to vote for women, Butler defecated in the faces of all the great campaigners for universal suffrage.
“It wasn’t such actions that led to women getting the vote. Rather, it was the realisation, with so many men away in the first world war, that women had a legitimate voice in politics.”
Butler’s bizarre confidence trick of faux pomposity continued with a sermon from the pulpit.
“The whole history of democratic representative government has been the effort to reduce and remove coercive force from the debate on public policy. We rightly see violence, force, and coercion as evils. Instead, our ambition is to decide things by discussion, not by the obstructive force of unlawful protest.”
But, he concluded by supporting violence by the state.
“The only recourse is to meet violence with violence. In modern democracies, that means the power of the state, because, in the attempt to extinguish coercion in general, we give the state a monopoly of force.”
In Why zero-hours contracts are a force for good Oliver Stanley said “banning them is a restriction on economic liberty with no benefit.” His argument ignored the exploitative intent of their use by employers and he spouted the usual libertarian nonsense about spurious benefits of zero-hours contracts for employees.
Harry Eastley-Jones’ article on Venezuela included a deluge of abuse at the Venezuelan government and at Jeremy Corbyn and some of his Labour colleagues.
“Jeremy Corbyn and his cronies come from a Marxist tradition that despises the west and are only too happy to embrace any of our adversaries.”
Eastley-Jones noted problems in Venezuela but he failed to mention extreme economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by USA and others and he failed to mention the theft of Venezuelan oil revenue by various governments around the world. He bemoaned the fact that Corbyn and others have not “apologised” for supporting Venezuela given the state of the economy in the country. He called analysis of the clear and deliberate external causes of Venezuela’s economic problems “bizarre conspiracy theories.”
Max Young’s argument against Water unprivatisation was extremely deceptive. He noted some improvements to water supply over the last three decades but he implied that privatisation was the specific cause of the improvements and that unprivatised water supply would not have had such changes. He described general maintenance of the water supply as “investment” and he ignored huge profits siphoned off by racketeers.
Joshua Taggart is a student affiliate of Heterodox Academy that requires its members to “embrace a particular set of norms and values” – The hxA Way – including ‘Be Constructive’ that states “[the] guidance is to avoid sarcasm, contempt, hostility, and snark,” ‘Make Your Case With Evidence’ that asks members to “link to evidence whenever possible or describe it when you can’t,” and ‘Be Intellectually Charitable’ by looking “for reasons why the beliefs others hold may be compelling, under the assumption that others are roughly as reasonable, informed, and intelligent as oneself.”
In Starmer isn’t the problem – it’s socialism Taggart wrote a diatribe against socialists in UK that was bereft of evidence to support his opinions, that did not offer any arguments against the views of socialists, that denigrated haughtily the opinions of socialists and that attacked the personality, intelligence and knowledge of people, including some he mentioned by name, with liberal use of sarcasm, contempt, hostility and snark.
“[Socialists] have little understanding of the electorate, the economy, or their own beliefs, and therefore their opinions don’t really matter much.”
“Soundbites which appeal to the collectivist sentiment of sunshine, rainbows and happy families may occasionally break through and appeal to voters, but an entire political manifesto based on widespread nationalisation of industry will not work.”
“Immature, reckless and adversarial modus operandi of the Corbynistas.”
“This is just childish nonsense.”
Taggart’s failure to abide by any of Heterodox’s guidance was unsurprising because it was impossible for him to approach a dismissal of socialism via informed discussion, logical arguments and didactic reasoning with examples and evidence to support his view. He couldn’t do that because his stance as a promoter of free-racketeering libertarianism designed to enhance wealth concentration requires him to subdue concepts of honesty, integrity and reason. Sarcasm, contempt, hostility and snark are all he has left.
Priti Patel contributed a few articles to 1828. Dan Hannan is on the Board Of Advisers.
Links to brief descriptions of other lobby groups and think-tanks: UK right-wing con-tanks
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