Jack Munroe discusses the departure of Katie Hopkins for the Mail.
Unless you have been on a series of long-haul flights recently, or don’t use social media, you will have heard by now that erstwhile darling of the alleged unheard underdog, purveyor of perversions of truth and justice, and dog-whistle dogmatic, Katie Hopkins, has left Mail Online, apparently by “mutual consent”. Following a series of carefully manufactured outrage-generating “articles”, I suspect Hopkins has been deemed too much for even a publication whose print sibling metaphorically dug up Ed Miliband’s dead father, and dedicated a whole page of fury to same-sex traffic lights in Trafalgar Square (after they had been up for months, I might add). “What would Nelson say?” the headline exclaimed, clutching its black and white pearls. “Kiss me Hardy, I presume,” I mumbled as I turned the page.
Munroe argues that Hopkins won’t actually go away, rather that she will find another outlet and be “less regulated”.
But her sacking is nothing to celebrate. She will not lose fans, nor followers, by being driven underground. She will be welcomed with open arms by even more extreme platforms, with just as many devoted fans, but fewer editors, fewer checks, fewer balances. Mail Online may be one of the widest read news publications in the UK, but sneer at Breitbart at your peril; it was one of the major cogs in the machine that has walked the new fascists into the White House.
Munroe understands what many of her (his?) fellow travellers fail to do; that voices of dissent will not be silenced, they merely go underground where the bleach of sunlight will not expose their flaws for all to see. While I often find myself agreeing with Hopkins’ take on such matters as Islam and the faux outrage of the left, I am also aware that she tends to shoot from the hip and getting successfully sued for libel (twice!!) demonstrates a remarkable lack of due diligence and a tendency for carelessness that cost the Mail dear. So I can well understand why they decided that enough was enough. But Munroe is right here, we haven’t seen the last of her by a long chalk.
And, no, the current incumbent of the White House are not fascists. Munroe needs to do some historical research and find out what a fascist actually is. And disagreeing with lefties ain’t it.
That Hopkins has been sued for libel shows what a soft touch the libel system in the UK is for people with the money to persue a claim. In a sane (just?) world a judge would just say “Diddums!” to most of these cases and dismiss them. Meanwhile serious and life-changing libels against ‘ordinary’ people are made feely and unchallenged.
The international socialists, (communists), were lucky to be on the winning side of WW2 against the national socialists so they got to write the history. Unfortunately that allowed the international socialists to take the label ‘left wing’ and paint everyone else as ‘fascists’ or ‘right-wing’ (and idiots like Mrs May cosy up to them rather standing up for non-socialism, individualism, personal responsibility and enterprise).
Katie Hopkins is a reaction to our ‘PPE’ class of politicians that believe in nothing and who dare not say anything that hasn’t been cleared by a ‘focus group’.
The reason Hopkins was successfully sued was because she made claims that were factually untrue. That was downright stupid.