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Rod Liddle between Tory anarchist and tabloid hack
Posted by diogenes on 2026-August-11 17:19:44, Tuesday|
Just very occassionally, a gleam of logic and common sense is, no doubt purely by accident, allowed to enter the public realm. In the course of researching the continuation of the British SDP (Social Democratic Party) long after it had ceased to be of any electoral significance, I came across a character called Rod Liddle, a "journalist" (I feel that all journalists these days need to be put in inverted commas) who went from Socialist Workers Party to Labour to Brexiteer to SDP, who thought that homosexuality was "unnatural and perverse", but despite this had an interesting sideline in upsetting the woke establishment when it came to sexual attraction to kids. In this 2012 Spectator piece, he wrote that he once considered a career in teaching, but the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. ...Rather disappointing conclusion, but never mind. It was enough to get the attention of leftie Ash Sarkar who tweeted about the article, and clearly thought Liddle's comments outrageous, though she doesn't seem to have commented further on them beyond saying that she had initially thought they were a parody. Admitting to being sexually attracted to teenage girls was, for Sarkar, itself sufficient proof of moral turpitude. I mean, if someone had said that homosexual attraction is in itself proof of moral terpitude, she would no doubt have pointed out that no one chooses the nature of their sexual attraction; but, anyway, I digress. However, presumably not wanting to be outdone by a leftie, Julie Birchill, a particularly nasty Zionist nutter, accused Sarkar of hypocrisy -- not, I hasten to add, on the ground that I suggested above, but rather on the ground that, as a Muslim, Sarkar herself "worshipped a paedophile" (i.e. the Prophet). Of course, Muslims do not "worship" the Prophet, but, making the connection between Islam and sexual transgression so beloved by the Right, Birchill urged her supporters to wade in against "the Islamists" and "nonces". In the end, after "liking" posts saying that Sarkar should kill herself, she was forced by the threat of legal action into delivering an abject apology to Sarkar. Anyway, The Spectator article wasn't Liddle's only foray into the subject of attraction to kids. In an article published by The Guardian in 2003, Liddle went so far as to say something incredibly obvious, yet unsayable in today's climate: that no one should ever punished simply for looking at something, and that therefore the whole law that criminalises viewing images of naked kids is absurd and unjust: How absurd the law is. But at least it is an appropriate reflection of our collective neurosis and confusion about paedophilia generally. The one laudable and necessary aim - to protect children from abuse - has become warped by our consuming, obsessive hatred for those who find children sexually attractive. There is no causal link between viewing child porn and abusing children. And even if there were, it would not be sufficient, within the philosophy of our judicial system, to simply assume that an unpleasant penchant for the former presupposes guilt of the latter.  |
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