Thread by @docrussjackson

“It’s just a horse, a dumb, unfeeling creature, unaware of pain, unaware even of its own existence... When you whip a horse it doesn’t think “This is so painful & humiliating” because it is incapable of thought" - Brendan O'Neill writing about Grand National horse deaths in 2013.

He wrote this crap in a Telegraph article: "So what if a few horses die in the Grand National? It is our pleasure, not their wellbeing, that is important".
Shamefully, he's rarely off national broadcast news & politics shows, & often appears in the Press. brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/what-is-bren…

Brendan O'Neill has made a career out of championing 'free speech' while abusing it to demonize anyone he disagrees with.

People should know what he is: a divisive contrarian who takes money from billionaires to help keep ordinary people angry & divided.

leftfootforward.org/2013/05/dont-f…

"Anti-Grand National campaigners, like all warriors for animal rights, imagine they are elevating animals, raising them up to a new level of respect. In truth, they are denigrating human beings. The refusal to say that a horse’s life is vastly inferior to a human being’s life,...

...which means that the death of a horse in a race is actually not that much of a big deal, is really a refusal to accept the specialness of humankind among living creatures. Indeed, pro-animal activism is often fueled more by disgust with humans than by love for animals".

While you're here, here's some more of the useful idiot #Spiked Editor's grotesque & divisive views, which he pukes out in order to keep the culture war burning & to keep the money coming in from US libertarian billionaires who want to jettison democracy & introduce kleptocracy:

On Northern Ireland:

O'Neill was critical of the Good Friday Agreement. In 1988 he wrote: "The new peace deal is a disgrace... The biggest losers in all this are the republican movement... [W]hat exactly will the republican communities gain at the end of their 25-year struggle?"

"Sinn Fein and the IRA have not just agreed to down arms. They have effectively signed away everything they once stood for, accepting that there will not be a united Ireland."

web.archive.org/web/2000030801…

On Sexual abuse

In a 2012, writing in the Huffington Post, O'Neill again caused outrage by arguing AGAINST victims of sexual abuse (by high-profile individuals like Sir Jimmy Savile) coming forward publicly, stating:

"I think there is more virtue in keeping the abuse as a firm part of your past, rather than offering it up to a scandal-hungry media and abuse-obsessed society that are desperate for more episodes of perversion to pore over".

Grotesquely offensive idiocy.
cherwell.org/2018/05/09/stu…

On Homosexuality:

He has characterized the increasing acceptance of homosexuality as “queer imperialism" in terms of LGBT rights being promoted to Russia by western activists.

spiked-online.com/2014/02/10/gay…

He also claims homophobes are now treated the same way homosexuals used to be, & criticized the legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia, arguing that it has been "attended by authoritarianism wherever it’s been introduced".

leftfootforward.org/2020/07/spiked…

On Racism:

He has pathetically & childishly claimed that efforts to combat racism in football are no more than "a class war" driven by "elites' utter incomprehension of the mass passions that get aired at football matches".

Moronic.

web.archive.org/web/2013110900…

Referring to high-profile & alleged cases of racial abuse: "these incidents & alleged incidents are not racism at all, in the true meaning of the word", due to the levels of passion, describing anti-racism efforts as "a pretty poisonous desire to police the... working classes".

In 2020, when football fans booed players taking a knee to protest racism, he predictably & patronisingly blamed the "divisive cult of identity politics" & a working class reaction against the "virtue-signalling nonsense of #BlackLivesMatter" - even though it happened just once.

He also divisively claims that "Islamophobia is a myth... the idea that there is a climate of Islamophobia, a culture of hot-headed, violent-minded hatred for Muslims, that could be awoken & unleashed by the next terror attack, is an invention."

middleeasteye.net/opinion/after-…

Environmentalism

O'Neill is connected to the 'LM network' - a superficially loose & informal network of individuals & organisations sharing a libertarian & anti-environmentalist ideology, & has opposed efforts to combat climate change through reductions in carbon emissions.

He has said that the environmental movement - fighting to prevent a climate & environmental catastrophe - has become a "religious cult" “waging war on the working class”.

And he's been particularly vicious in attacking & demonizing Greta Thunberg...

scramnews.com/right-wing-hys…

In his 2019 article "The Cult of Greta Thunberg", he pathetically describes her as a "millenarian weirdo", criticising what he describes as her "monotone voice" & the "look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes", saying there's something "chilling" about her.

teenvogue.com/story/attacks-…

In 2018 George Monbiot exposed #Spiked magazine’s US funding arm for receiving $300,000 from the sinister Charles Koch Foundation, which threatens democracy by enabling extremely rich people & corporations to influence politics without showing their hands.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In September 2019, O'Neill said on the @BBC's Politics Live that British people should be rioting about #Brexit delays: "I'm amazed that there haven't been riots yet." When asked "Do you think there will be riots?", he responded: "I think there should be."
pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-dismisses-…

On #COVID19, O'Neill entirely predictably argued that that “this pandemic has shown us what life would be like if environmentalists got their way” & condemned the “chilling” & “dangerous” “witch-hunting of those who criticise the response to coronavirus”.

bylinetimes.com/2020/04/01/the…

Just last year, in order to further fuel the fake culture war, he defended Julie Burchill's grotesquely insulting Islamophobic & defamatory remarks made against @AyoCaesar, for which she was forced to issue a full public apology & pay significant costs.

He's utterly shameless.

He can say whatever he likes - no matter how absurd or misleading.

He's simply part of a mass global industry dedicated to demonizing the Left & keeping them out of power by fueling a divisive fake culture war in order to protect the interests of the grotesquely rich & powerful.