Ms Barlow describes herself as “a green and leftwing schoolteacher.”
In the comments Karen adds:
My grandfather would be surprised to hear that WWII was the Allies’ war against “the blood lust of unfettered capitalism.”
Quite. Though I suppose it pays to remember just how intellectually degraded teacher training can be. It’s progress, people.
Via Christopher Snowdon.
*Sigh*
It’s a doublefacepalm moment.
If stupidity could be weaponised this comment would level a city.
It’s a doublefacepalm moment.
But not, I think, unheard of.
Oh dear.
Does she teach one of the comedy subjects, like drama, geography, or R.E.?
Most of my teachers, if they let slip any political leanings at all, were what would now be called Old Labour. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, they were also fiercely dedicated to maintaining the highest standards possible, sharpening our childish minds so we could think for ourselves. You were often encouraged to express an opinion, but they’d make you back it up with facts and logic or suffer withering mockery. Trying to tell Sir what you thought he wanted to hear was a bad idea, they hated suck-ups.
Another thing the older chaps who taught me hated was Communism. They might have been solid Labour and Trades Union supporters, but they were also patriotic Britons who were under no illusions about how lucky we were to live in a free country. They made no excuses for the Soviet monstrosity that we all half-expected to launch its nukes against us one day. The crimes of Stalin weren’t glossed over as an abberation in History class.
As a child, I didn’t understand why Communism, that had promised so much, quickly progressed to gulags and ethnic cleansing and mass starvation. My teacher told me flatly it was because Communism is incompatible with human nature.
Looking at this sad crop of modern teachers, who I suspect are better paid and more cosseted than the cantankerous old coves who dragged me into the light of knowledge, I can’t help but think Pink Floyd were surprisingly prescient.
I bet Miss Barlow poses as a “friend” to her pupils. The crap ones usually do.
Oooh, stupidity on Twitter? Here’s a classic: https://twitter.com/thetwerkinggirl/status/463671169330470913
Islam isn’t a race, and simultaneously Islamophobia is racism. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
It’s why I never shorten “National Socialism” to Nazi.
Given her claim to be Green as well as left I wonder if her depressing historical ignorance extends to the history of the Green movement ? I expect so, it usually does or is brushed aside in much the same way as the Socialist part of National Socialism is disregarded by the left. Is she aware for instance of the direct links between Fascist agrarian thinking and Green philosophy ? To take an example from the period in question, there is Jorian Jenks, a leading member of the BUF, interred during the war and subsequently a key player in the establishment of the Soil Association.
Then: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
Now: “Those who do not remember the past just make crap up.”
Those lucky Australian schoolkids.
So the socialism (collectivism), fascism (collectivism) and racism (collectivism) were all just a front for “the blood lust of unfettered capitalism”?
FB was one of the rusted-on commenters at the late Lavartus Prodeo blog (or “Lavatory Pronto” to others). I’m surprised she can limit herself to 140 characters. If she limited her life’s output to 140 characters everyone would be better off. Nothing would make me work harder to pay private school fees than the thought of a Fran teaching at my local government high school.
Scroll through the posts/comments to see, until last year, state of the art left-wing intellect in Australia. Sad, innit? Oh so pedestrian, and so easily led by the focus-tested, ideological PR du jour (“misogyny” anyone?).
In particular, watch the pretzel-twisting post-facto justifications whenever each Labor prime minister’s incompetence got too much even for the party. Messiahs right up until the moment they’re deposed, then they’re anti-christs. Orwell couldn’t dream of better proles. These are the exact people who considered we had a great government these last six years.
Fortunately for the country’s sake, they’re fucking miserable now.
Talking of Green stupidity, I am reminded of this gem – ‘Of necessity, industrialism begets belligerence’ – which is a quote taken from Jonathan Porritt, ‘Seeing green: the politics of ecology explained’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 160–1.
That’s right, Jonathan. Because we all know that the pre-industrial era of human history was a peaceful one. You cock.
Please, people, have some sympathy for Fran because it’s quite hard to find things out about Nazi Germany, Hitler and World War II. There really is scant historical study of this relatively minor regional conflict in the mid-twentieth century. There’s not a lot to be found in libraries or on the Internet that could help answer questions about the politics of the key nations or German industrial policy from 1933-45.
Orwell couldn’t dream of better proles I’ll be using that!
Fran Barlow is, as we speak, slowly being dismantled on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/fran_b__/status/463779595825598464
It’s somewhat encouraging that the general consensus in the follow up tweets is that she doesn’t have the first clue of what she is talking about.
Of course it’s equally discouraging people like this are teaching in schools.
And yes, she’s actually calling on Michael Moore for backup.
I heartily join Ms. Barlow’s watermelon revolution to overthrow the capitalist pig-dog Hitler.
Red & Green
Stop & Go
What can it all mean
Ms. Barlow?
Does she think WW2 only involved Russia and Germany? I had thought a few of the countries that pitched in to help were also capitalist. Also, thank God Germany is no longer capitalist. Otherwise, who knows what evil they’d get up to!
Fran could take a guess at who said this:
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
Was it –
a) Karl Marx
b) Neil Kinnock
c) Adolf Hitler
Naturally, well informed readers of Davids esteemed organ will probably guess, correctly, that it was c) Adolf Hitler. Ah well, I suppose ignorance of the facts is pretty much par for the course on the left.
Sackcloth and ashes – you mean, The Hon. Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE?
I wonder how many serfs and peasants he envisages toiling on his estates and fearfully doffing their ragged caps as his coach rattles by if it weren’t for the blasted industrial revolution.
Craig Mc – National stereotypes die hard.
Many people still think of Australia as a terrifying wasteland full of muscular, drunk guys called Bruce with corks dangling from their hats, Max Rockatansky, Aborigines chucking boomerangs at feral kangaroos, giant spiders, convicts, and Mrs Mangel.
And yes, there’s that. But there’s also confused urban trendies, confused eco-warriors, confused lefties who think Australia should be more like Vietnam, confused righties who think Australia is a giant playschool that needs its internet access censored, and confused white people who think they’re aborigines.
I’m not judging our alcoholic colonial convict cousins. I’d be confused too if my toilet flushed the wrong way and there was a chance of being mauled by a gang of vicious, man-eating koalas every time I stepped outside my shack.
Paul – “And yes, she’s actually calling on Michael Moore for backup.”
To the food truck!
I just had a nice long chat with her. Atlee and Orwell were both right wing. She talks of the ‘democratic socialist right’, putting the ‘moron’ into ‘oxymoron.
I just had a nice long chat with her. Attlee and Orwell were both right wing.
Yes, but Peter, “as an opponent of equitable collaboration, your pleading is tainted.” I really should follow your Twitter spats more often.
Yes, wasn’t that glorious? I might adopt it as my strapline.
I can’t help wondering what the parents whose children Ms Barlow is paid to educate would make of her timeline and comments elsewhere. On one blog she objects to being described as “far left” while saying she prefers outright communists – would-be totalitarians – to elected mainstream conservatives. Though amid the mental car crash there is some inadvertent comedy, as when she says, rather loftily, “I’m a teacher and I correct people when they are wrong.”
She’s fabulous, in a rather unpleasant way. The guy joining in the conversation is a very nice bloke who as a leftist finds her completely absurd. Green politics seem to be a way of making crazily extreme totalitarians feel wholesome.
“Naturally, well informed readers of Davids esteemed organ will probably guess, correctly, that it was c) Adolf Hitler.”
Ah, yes, but he was lying to cover up his true far-right ambitions. Or something.
Heads I win, tails you’re evil.
equitable collaboration,
Because the word ‘totalitarianism’ usually puts people off.
Green politics seem to be a way of making crazily extreme totalitarians feel wholesome.
Exactly the people you want educating young kids.
Messiahs right up until the moment they’re deposed, then they’re anti-christs. Orwell couldn’t dream of better proles.
and
Orwell couldn’t dream of better proles I’ll be using that!
Careful, there . . speaking of accuracy, that’s not the proles, that’s the party members.
From a fast wiki quote; In Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, proles (collective noun) refers to the working class of Oceania (i.e. the proletariat).
Oceania’s society is divided into three distinct classes: Inner Party, Outer Party and proles
. . . . where it’s definitely the party members who do the instant 180, with the scene of the changeover occurring right in mid rally . . .
“Naturally, well informed readers of Davids esteemed organ will probably guess, correctly, that it was c) Adolf Hitler.”
Jonathan, this may well be the true reason why Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is nearly totally banned in Germany. The fact, that his party called herself National Socialists, may be simply too uncomfortable to the powers that be (or want to be). Exposing someone to that rhethoric will produce another firmly convinced believer in the Totalitarism Theory, which hardly knows a difference between the so called extremities of the political spectrum.
Never mind Nazism, which was sui generis. Better to ask the provenance of fascism qua fascism, which was much more orthodox in Mussolini’s Italy (of course) and in, say, Hungary under Horthy. Was this odious system of government an efflorescence of socialism? Why yes, yes it was. Mussolini, ridiculous little popinjay though he may seen to modern eyes, was a very serious scholar of socialism and heaped with garlands for his grasp of the subject in the earliest parts of the 20th C.. As fascism struck off on a slightly different path it naturally provoked hostility from those it had left behind, but fascism and Internationalist socialism were more like estranged siblings than cousins even. Of course if Fran Barlow thought to read around the subject rather than reflexively spouting off doctrinaire inanities she might find this out for herself.
It’s an interesting phenomenon that countries based on free enterprize, individual liberty, and democracy almost never go to war with each other.
You would think that progressives would celebrate what appears to be a solution to international conflict.
Would’t you?
Fascism was a splinter of the “revolutionary” movement. It was not much influenced by the economic ideas which were central to socialism, but it was driven by the same messianic tear-the-world-down-and-rebuild-it impulse as socialism and anarchism.
Socialism and fascism both attracted and justified extreme authoritarians. Fascism did not dismantle capitalism as socialism did, but it certainly fettered it.
Steve 2: Steveageddon | May 07, 2014 at 11:39: Another thing the older chaps who taught me hated was Communism. They might have been solid Labour and Trades Union supporters, but… The crimes of Stalin weren’t glossed over…
When was this? Because Arthur Scargill, one of the most important traditional British trades union figures, was and remains to this day an open admirer of Stalin.
When was this? Because Arthur Scargill,. . . .
Weeeellll . . . While I’m recognizing the name even from this side of the pond, the description of . . . Another thing the older chaps who taught me hated was Communism. They might have been solid Labour and Trades Union supporters, but… . . I’m tending to rather suspect that comrade Scargill may have been a bit rabid, but some number of the union members may not have automatically been that way . . .
Thanks for the comment, Rich, but you might be missing something that is important to the discussion. Hayek’s description of a free economy, and his emphasis on liberty, was, in large part, a reaction to fascism and socialism, which he believed would always end up as a dictatorship, regardless of it’s original intentions. We see that sometimes, eg, Cuba and now Venezuela. But not elsewhere, eg, the more socialistic countries of Western Europe. Regardless, what makes fascism fascism is the lack of a free market.
“You would think that progressives would celebrate what appears to be a solution to international conflict.”
Not if it doesn’t give them license.
“But not elsewhere, eg, the more socialistic countries of Western Europe.”
Yet.
describes herself as a “green and left wing school teacher”. Maybe she means “green” as in young and naive?
It’s somewhat encouraging that the general consensus in the follow up tweets is that she doesn’t have the first clue of what she is talking about.
And yet faced with repeated correction from across the political spectrum, Ms Barlow doubled down on her error and dismissed her critics as (among other things) “opponents of equitable collaboration.” Say, Maoism and such. This went on for some time, several hours. Now she’s retweeting Tanya Gold’s latest article – unironically – which doesn’t exactly demonstrate great critical wherewithal.
Though I was cheered up immensely by someone’s use of the word dolt, as in “you fucking dolt.” Good word, that, and much underused.
That woman is willing to jump through flaming hoops isn’t she? It would almost admirably if she wasn’t so damned repugnant.
“Now she’s retweeting Tanya Gold’s latest article – unironically – which doesn’t exactly demonstrate great critical wherewithal.”
Needless to say, she’s also a Laurie Penny fan.
Let me get this straight. Clement Attlee was actually right wing not socialist at all, National Socialism was actually ‘unfettered capitalism’, America is worse than communism, and this woman says she’s *not* a far left nutter? Wow.
My grandfather would be surprised to hear that WWII was the Allies’ war against ‘the blood lust of unfettered capitalism’. I pity the kids she teaches.
My grandfather would be surprised to hear that WWII was the Allies’ war against ‘the blood lust of unfettered capitalism’.
I suppose you have to bear in mind just how politically conformist and intellectually degraded teacher training can be. If the gateway to teaching is controlled by dogmatic idiots who like their questions begged, she’s the kind of end product you’d pretty much expect.
Dom,
Hayek also noted, with some amusement, how interchangeable the membership of the Austrian Nazi and Communist parties were. Here’s what he thought of National Socialism in 1933:
http://carrefoursagesse.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/friedrich-von-hayek-nazism-is-socialism/
Rich – what Hal said.
It was in the 80’s. Yes, Scargill was a household name at the time, but I think over the years as the miners strike has faded from recent memory we tend to recall it as more of a simplistic Thatcher v Scargill/The Unions fight than it actually was. A lot of lefties hated Thatcher but still weren’t impressed with Scargill and his tactics.
People tend to forget that Scargill was considered extreme by a lot of trade unionists outside the NUM, and even by a not insignificant proportion of miners.
You may recall that Neil Kinnock wasn’t a Scargill fan, and he also suffered from the shenanigans of militant Trots and other weird and wacky sects of Leninists, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, John Lennonists, the Raving Monster Leninists, and I Can’t Believe They’re Not Leninists.
The Left has never been monolithic, it’s more an ideological potpourri of competing and sometimes hilarious value systems. There’s no particular reason why a middle aged physics teacher would necessarily agree with a police-baiting communist trade unionist or the race-obsessed intersectional narcissists on Twitter.
She is very very pretty though.
Does that mitigate the stupidity?
Jonathan, thanks for the article. I never saw it before.
Does that mitigate the stupidity?
Not in this parish.
It just goes to show that being good looking is no guarantee of being a good person. We’ll just have to hope that she doesn’t push any of her idiotic ideology in the classroom.
This, um, incident may amuse. Sound essential. Via Kate.
Jones – All women are beautiful, in every single way. Words can’t bring them down.
Except Christina Aguilera. She looks like she’d kill passing butterflies with the noxious strength of her perfume, and leave a sticky flesh-melting residue of foundation and bronzer on you if you touched her. She makes Medusa seem like a nice girl you’d be happy to snog at the disco while her snakes were momentarily pacified by Babycham and the music of Five Star.
So all women are beautiful, unless they’re Christina Aguilera or have sideburns or are Myra Hindley. Or are those fake women who used to be men. They don’t all have big Adam’s Apples you know. I’ve been fooled before. 🙁
Intelligence is vastly overrated. How many smart people do you know who are truly happy? To be clever is to be cursed with knowing how awful things are, and being unable to find true solace in the 30 year old VHS clips of fat people falling into swimming pools on You’ve Been Framed.
Worse, being somewhat clever lulls you into a false sense of your own cleverness. Which means clever people often do more stupid things than stupid people would ever contemplate.
Take eating afterbirths for example. Do you think your average slack-jawed Charlie Beerfanny, on seeing his red-faced and screaming wife expel a quivering mass of bloody human flesh from her poor aching lady place, would pick up a knife and fork and say “yum!”?
NO! It takes a special type of educated idiocy to fall for postnatal nom noms. You have to be smart enough to fall for art criticism to pay good money to see a Damian Hirst or Tracy Emin work. You need to be reasonably literate before you make an awful soul-crushing mistake like buying the Guardian or enrolling in a Womens Studies degree.
To my simple mind, two of the most unassumingly intelligent people around are David Beckham and Posh Spice. A lot of people mock them, but those people are jealous idiots, and here’s why:
David Beckham’s only marketable skills involve kicking a football and looking good in his pants. Posh Spice can’t sing and wasn’t even the best looking one in the Spice Girls, and they were a rough looking bunch you wouldn’t have spared more than a passing glance if you saw them drunkenly being ejected from a Wetherspoons on a hen night.
The Beckhams have taken their modest abilities and parlayed them into global fame and vast fortune. They have four beautiful children who want for nothing. They get to meet queens and presidents and movie stars and have their own charity.
In the parable of the talents, the Beckhams are winning. I bet that guy in the bible didn’t launch his own brand of aftershave.
The lesson is clear: intellect is the funkiller.
So Miss Barlow is probably very happy. She looks like the sort of carefree girl who farts in the bath and giggles at her own bubbly wit. I envy her.