Establishment desperation in Stoke manifests as witch hunt
As the leader of UKIP, Paul Nuttall, attempts to get elected to represent the people of Stoke Central, the Establishment has once again shown how it can move various elements of its control structure in a coordinated operation to try to steal the success that he and the party deserve. While the LibLabCon Establishment banks on Tory dominance to steer Britain through “Fake Brexit” (see here for an explanation), the Labour Party is extremely vulnerable. And while Liverpool voted to remain in the EU, and so might well be a hot bed of Labourite obstinacy in a way that is pertinent to this story – as the reader shall see – Stoke has been called the Brexit capital of the country. The Stoke by-election threatens to prove predictions that, as Britons realise that they must hold Westminster’s feet to the fire to ensure an end to EU membership, places like Stoke that were once Labour strongholds will become tough for the party to retain in elections. And one thing is for sure, it does look like Labour and Establishment strategists know that UKIP cannot be denied in Stoke Central through ideas; this is evident by the way that the UKIP candidate has been subjected to an Alinsky-prescribed process of marginalisation, mud-slinging and ridicule. As we examine a small portion of this odious campaign, the author shouldn’t need to remind the reader that decent people cannot allow such methodology to succeed so that Establishment placemen are elevated to positions of office to maintain the vested interests of a very few.
First of all there was the dangerous piece of fake news non-journalism executed by Channel 4s Michael Crick and other corporate-media operatives. Crick and company basically gave the go-ahead for any mentally ill individual (or political activist) – and it turns out that there were two – to try and intimidate Paul Nuttall at his home in Stoke. Crick published images of the house on social media – the actual address also made it online (an example) – and at the same time accused Nuttall of fraud in relation to his attempt to become an MP in Stoke. It was tantamount to the following invitation: here’s the bad guy, go and exact justice.
There should not have been any fuss. Relying on the ignorance of corporate-media victims, Crick and many others gave the impression that, as Nuttall had not been living at the house while submitting the address on the by-election candidature application form as his residency, then he had done something illegal. The author has checked. The form for candidature asks for a home address. It doesn’t ask where the candidate is living. For many people, a home address is not the same as the place they are living. A whole sub-class of live-in landlords (Owner Occupiers) have home addresses at shared accommodation that they don’t actually reside in themselves; they live elsewhere. At the time UKIP made it clear that the party had acquired the property pre-application as a place for Nuttall to move to so that he could live in Stoke. If Nuttall’s name was on the paperwork, then it was an address associated with him; hence he was entitled to call it his home address. However, this issue was placed in the hands of the police, and it’s an old trick. It means that the corporate-media can refer to “an ongoing investigation” at every opportunity to give the impression that Nuttall is a wrong-doer.
That being said, the scheme has failed to disturb UKIP’s ascendency in Stoke, and so the Establishment has accelerated an issue with regards to Nuttall’s attendance at Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground in 1989 to see Liverpool Football Club in a FA Cup semi final. Of course, this was the occasion when 96 people were crushed to death in the crowd: the Hillsborough disaster.
We’re going to begin this component with some literary analysis. The following is from a Guardian article entitled “Ukip leader Paul Nuttall denies lying about being at Hillsborough disaster”.
Look at the first line, echoing almost exactly the title:
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, has denied that he has lied about being a Hillsborough survivor
Lie is a strong word: a deliberately untrue statement usually made for malicious purposes. So far, the Guardian article makes it look like there is a piece of evidence by which Nuttall has been discovered and has had to react to. But look at the opening sentence in its entirety:
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, has denied that he has lied about being a Hillsborough survivor after a number of people questioned his claim to have been present on the day of the disaster.
Let’s examine this. It says that Nuttall’s denial came after people questioned his claim. The Guardian article then presents this questioning in more detail, and while we examine it, the reader should notice a crucial thing: there is not one outright accusation in the whole litany. And so it appears that Nuttall couldn’t have denied lying, because no one has accused him of it. Instead, they have only themselves made insinuations, or they have contributed to the one that the Guardian is making overall in the article. One doesn’t have to defend oneself from insinuation; insinuation is not to be taken seriously in law, and in fact is to be treated with suspicion. But a cunningly crafted piece of fake news can make insinuation look respectable.
Nuttall was 12 at the time of the disaster, and was a pupil at Savio high school in Bootle, Liverpool. One of his former teachers, a Roman Catholic priest, has told the Guardian that the school believed it had been aware of the identities of every boy who had been at Hillsborough in order to help them through a difficult period, and that Nuttall was not among them.
Notice that there is no name. This means that the source could be invented; additionally, if a source is to give evidence understanding he is to remain nameless, what’s to prevent him from providing false witness? And if Nuttall wasn’t being counselled by Roman Catholic priests, then so what? Yes, maybe it is unusual in the UK that someone doesn’t want to have the State or the Church in all of their business, but believe it or not, there are people who feel that way.
A fellow pupil at the school who says he has been a friend of Nuttall for decades said the Ukip leader had never mentioned being there. “I have been very good friends with Paul for over 25 years,” he said, adding that during that time they had “never spoken” about Hillsborough.
Again no name. The author suggests that if this friend was such a good friend, then he wouldn’t have had provided the Guardian with the material to do a hit piece.
Unsurprisingly, the writer of the Guardian article admits that all of this yet amounts to nothing – which could be an act of prudence with a mind to legalities, we shouldn’t wonder, for there really is not a jot of evidence, and no one who could have any knowledge of the matter has accused Paul Nuttall of lying:
While the teacher and friend expressed surprise that Nuttall has said he was at Hillsborough, their comments do not prove that he was not present.
The Guardian article also mentions the MP for Bootle of 25 years, Joe Benton. We are supposed to believe that if Nuttall didn’t like to talk about Hillsborough with his long time friend and Catholic Priests, then he should have confided about it with his political adversary during two general election campaigns.
Benton… said that to the best of his knowledge Nuttall had not mentioned Hillsborough when he stood against him as Ukip’s candidate in the 2005 and 2010 general elections.
Nuttall had not mentioned being present at Hillsborough during any public meeting they had both attended, nor in his campaign literature, Benton said, despite the strength of feeling within the constituency about the police negligence that led to the deaths and the subsequent official cover-up that led to Liverpool fans being blamed for the disaster.
Once again, however hard the reader looks for it, he or she will not see an accusation that Nuttall was not at Hillsborough, and therefore must be lying about it. The reader might notice that, unlike the other two non-accusations we saw, this one is implying that there was a moral imperative for Nuttall to have mentioned Hillsborough if he had indeed been present. Here we are moving into slightly different territory. This is actual insinuation that Nuttall wasn’t at Hillsborough. It says that strength of feeling was such that Nuttall should have mentioned his presence at Hillsborough if he was really there. Please notice, Nuttall apparently didn’t tell Benton that he wasn’t at Hillsborough either, so one wonders if any occasion actually arose for the subject to be broached as Benton seems to think it did. In that case, is Benton lying? Can we trust him to tell the truth even if Nuttall did mention something? What we do know for sure is that here is a Labour politician proactively contributing to the smear. And UKIP were pretty sure that Labour were engaged in dirty tricks when they issued a statement about the matter; this is how the Guardian piece here being studied presents it:
Any claim that… [Nuttall] was not at Hillsborough was “totally false and highly defamatory”, the statement said, adding: “Paul was indeed at Hillsborough. He attended the match with his father and other family members. For political opponents to suggest otherwise and for left-wing media organisations to promote such claims constitutes a new low for the Labour party and its associates.”
Consider this statement: any claim is highly defamatory. A quick look at the defamation law (here) confirms what the author instinctively thought was true: “A defamatory statement is presumed to be false, unless the defendant can prove its truth”. So the burden of proof is with the defendant (that is, the party being sued for the defamation). This is probably why no one will come out and make a clear allegation – and on Twitter the author has asked the broadcaster/author/whatever Paul Mason to clarify what he meant when he published a statement claiming that Nuttall was a “lying fantasist”. At the time of writing there has been no reply.
Notice that UKIP also states that political opponents are merely engaged in making suggestions – as Benton clearly did. In fact it should be quite clear to a rational person that Hillsborough is being used as a political football. And so it is a shame to see that certain people connected to organisations representing or supporting the victims’ families are also allowing themselves to become involved in this; please consider the following, also from the same Guardian piece:
Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, said she was surprised that Nuttall had never offered to assist with their decades-long campaign to overturn the cover-up that led to Liverpool football fans being blamed for the 96 deaths.
“I haven’t heard anything about him being at the match,” she said. “Has he given a statement to the police, who have said they want to hear from everyone who was there? He can’t say he hasn’t heard that the police want to take statements from everyone who was in the Leppings Lane, as it’s been all over local and national media.”
This is at yet another level – and it starts to get scary. Mrs Aspinall is saying that Nuttall should have acted, not just made a statement, in order to prove himself. This is in fact the beginning of authoritarianism (and it’s ironic that she chooses the example of failing to report to police). One thinks of totalitarian dictatorships where if one does not proactively display support for the system, then one is a deviant, and worthy of suspicion – and worse than that, a criminal to be disposed of as the State sees fit. Please recall the histrionics displayed by the North Korean people when Kim Jong Il died – all out of fear of being accused of not grieving enough for the departed Dear Leader. The author begins to wonder if there is a sense of political ownership of Hillsborough so that it has become an issue of sacrilege that the “enemy” – Nuttall was a Tory in his first political incarnation – could have suffered too. The abovementioned Paul Mason did make it clear on Twitter that there are political tribal issues at stake:
UKIP funder Aaron Banks hates the working class so much he says Hillsboro “just a disaster” – but it was part of Thatcher’s war on us
And so in that case, the author suggests that what we are looking at is a politically motivated witch hunt that uses Hillsborough to generate moral panic. To explain: the moral orthodoxy in this case is related to the elevation of Hillsborough victims into martyrs through efforts by police to scapegoat fans. Nuttall, by apparently telling a lie connected to it, is cheapening that moral standard. Thus there must be fury, and alarm – and the context in which to hunt and eradicate the morally abnormal culprit. An historical witch hunt had the appearance of being about reaction to spiritual deviance on the surface, but underneath it was an abuse of power; an opportunity to get rid of a threat to the power without anyone questioning the illegitimacy of the act – to assassinate without comeback. This is what has been happening to Nuttall. The reader will get to read more from people connected with Hillsborough groups shortly, and more of an opportunity to observe the role being played by these individuals, and perhaps to decide if they too are politically motivated. One hopes that they are unwitting pawns, and as such it might be worthwhile for them to contemplate that the peril of being exploited – especially to try and shore up a dying political party and system – is losing sympathy for their cause. (It occurs to the author that it might not have been possible to exploit Hillsborough in this way if the fault for the tragedy, as appears to be the case in actual official inquest, hadn’t been entirely laid at the door of the State through its particular actors and officials. There will be further investigation into this at a later time).
The next development in this Nuttall-at-Hillsborough saga has to do with content of his website. Responsibility for this has since been claimed by an assistant – who did the decent thing and offered to resign – and Nuttall has admitted to its being inaccurate, and also his error in not checking his website himself. Indeed, Nuttall did not try to pretend certain information was true on first being confronted with it. That the man did such a thing in the context of the witch hunt against him shows character that makes the notion of his being dishonest rather implausable. And on the contrary, depsite what is a cut and dry matter, it is the corporate-media that continues to be dishonest.
The following are two extracts from a MailOnline article (here). The first appears in the body of the article, and the second is in a caption of an image:
1- Paul Nuttall was “forced to make a humiliating confession that a blog post on his website claiming he lost ‘close personal friends’ at the stadium tragedy was incorrect.”
2 – Earlier this week Paul Nuttall was forced into making a humiliating confession that he did not lost (sic) ‘close personal friends’ in the 1989 stadium tragedy – despite claiming he did in a blog post on his website
Because Paul Nuttall has admitted ultimate responsibility for the content of his website, the corporate-media can probably get away with this (by which is meant the promotion of the notion that the claim was personally made by Nuttall). It isn’t in the spirit of the truth, but the corporate-media isn’t interested in that. The despicable aspect of the maintenance of this evolved deception is that it facilitates reaction that perpetuates the moral panic referred to above (and so the witch hunt can continue). Consider the following from a Guardian article entitled “Hillsborough families dismayed by Paul Nuttall’s ‘insulting’ admission”. Each extract is followed by the author’s own brief comments:
Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose 18-year-old son, James, died in the disaster, described the admission as “appalling”.
“There’s a lot of people who survived that day who did lose personal friends. It’s devastating for them because they’re still suffering and for the guy now to backtrack is appalling,” she said.
We’ve heard from Mrs Aspinall before. This appears to be an attack on Paul Nuttall citing incorrect information as a basis for it.
Sue Roberts, secretary of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose brother Graham died at the match, said she had found Nuttall’s admission hard to understand.
“Anybody who was at Hillsborough, that was bad enough anyway,” she said. “To have actually lost close personal friends or, worse still, family members – it’s the thing that’s defined our lives for the last 28 years.
“People are still tormented by their loss. To actually try and say that you’ve lost close personal friends and then to backtrack and say I didn’t, I can’t understand how anybody could be that cruel and callous.
“This latest hurtful statement that he didn’t lose close personal friends – people have now got to come forward.”
Look at what appears to happening in this extract. Again, there is an attack on Paul Nuttall based on something that isn’t true. This is executed in very emotive language, and it is vulnerable to accusations that it is for the purpose of inspiring, by guilt, someone to perform the act that Sue Roberts appears to be desirous of – that is, someone should inform on Paul Nuttall. Again, connotations of a Stasi-society.
Steve Kelly, a member of the Hillsborough Justice campaign whose brother Michael died in the Leppings Lane end, urged the under-pressure Ukip leader to provide further evidence if he was at Hillsborough that day.
“He’s claimed that he can back all this up. Well, if that’s the case, that’s all he’s got to do to clear his name,” he said.
“Clear his name” – as if Paul Nuttall has actually committed a crime.
It would be fitting to end this article with Paul Nuttall’s own words as delivered at the recent UKIP spring conference.
This is two-fold, actually. Firstly, I take the blame for the fact that I failed to check what was up on my website in my name, that was my fault and I apologise.
But I will not apologise for what is a coordinated, cruel and almost evil smear campaign that has been directed at me.
It is based on lies from sources who have not been named. It has been a tough week for me but I will not allow them to break me and I will not allow them to break Ukip.
