Here is a picture of a good-looking girl with very big tits, an hour-glass waist and curvaceous hips. The news item is about athletics, although not the sort most blokes will have been thinking about after oggling this young lady. It is what Wimmin  opposed to objectification are supposed to be fighting against; but after 50 years of their fighting and bra-burning and accusing and man-hating, it doesn’t seem to have made much difference, does it? Other causes might by now, after half a century, have wondered if maybe a change of strategy was called for. But no, not radical feminists…..ooooh, no. They’ve got an ology you see: and once you’ve got one, you’d rather fail than give it up.

I just leave this image up there as something to think about in relation to the rest of this piece. Because whether they like it or not, in both the US and the UK, the Clintonista and Labour Party feminists are an integral part of The Establishment. It is an Establishment that enforces its rectitude on the rest of us by insisting that it is politically correct to think as they do. It doesn’t occur to them that very little of a political nature has ever been correct – or indeed, that the nature of politics in a democracy is the debate about the best means to an end….wherein, by definition, there is no such thing as “correct” until it has been empirically proven to have a beneficial effect on society as a whole.

During decades now long past, there was a think-again, engaging and usually amusing thing called The Anti-Establishment. In recent years, it has withered on the vine. So today, I want to examine why and how that has happened.

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Across the West today, we see nations politically divided by intolerance, along with the rise and rise of inflexible ideology. Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton casually tossed out the view that there was now “no point in showing any respect for Republicans because they’re just unfit to govern”. This is her way of stating (without thought for the consequences of engaging tongue without use of brain) that Leftist Democrats should rule forever….no doubt because they are politically correct. But sadly, it is very hard to find Democrat voters who think she’s dangerous.

Because of his allegedly “hardline” views on Brexit, Boris Johnson is being hounded out of the Party because he wrote that Burqa clad women looked like letter-boxes.  Anyone reading the piece could see that actually, Johnson was making the case for less demonisation of Islam; but it seems to have made no difference. This is bad enough, but last weekend the Party decided to broaden its inquiry into his behaviour by saying it was beyond the pail to call Chequers Brexit “a suicide vest”.

One prominent backbencher remarked to The Times, “Mark my words, if Boris becomes leader we’re going to fuck him up”.

It’s nasty stuff, utterly hypocritical……and not made any better by the fact that Johnson himself is an unalloyed believer in neoliberal economics, and would happily pass legislation making it legal to eat the Poor if he thought he could get away with it.

The reality and makeup of The Establishment has rarely been more obvious than it is today: multiculturalism, greed, ethnic virtue-signalling, literalist feminism, divorce misandry, the shortage of housing and a “need for austerity” exist side by side without many people finding anything odd in this.

The once formidable but now decidedly tedious Private Eye has almost completely lost its raison d’etre under the stewardship of Ian Fizzpop. Once the scion of the Establishment, it has become its most fervent supporter.

Consider the four things the UK Establishment is most against today: Brexit, Corbyn, Farage, and Putin. The Eye is, er, also against all of them. Last week’s front cover was a hopelessly childish and profoundly unfunny anti-Brexit barb, inside was a weak piece on Farage’s net worth. But what does Hizzer approve of? A fascist EU, and lots of self-satisfied right-on comics on TV making jokes about Fatcher on HIGNFY. The magazine should change its name to Cyclops….or better still, The Oldie. Perhaps Ian should make a hignified exit. Ba-boom.

The two most striking examples of objective journalism online now are Off-Guardian and Spiked. Well, and me of course….but I’m about a thirtieth of their size. Neither, however, sets out to be vicious in the Hogarthian sense like the Eye used to. I’m not knocking them – far from it: Brendan O’Neill is speaking up for millions of the Silent when he deconstructs the May Government both on its appalling social policies and it’s betrayal of the Brexiteer majority. They don’t set out to be diamond-tipped satirists, and that’s fine by me: their fearless search for Truth is more than enough.

But there remains a very real need for outrageous, insulting and venomous personal attacks provided they have their facts in a row. The main trend that makes this need obvious is that (starting with Wollaston’s Stalking Bill) it is blindingly obvious that everyone from Diane Abbott via Anne Soubry to Lord Ashcroft is just gagging to shut up the lampooning satire and parody that exists online.

Trevor Philips (himself black and in the Equality & Rights sector) spoke out last week against the hounding of a University professor who suggested that there were some good elements in the British Empire. He described the don as “incredibly courageous and set upon by cowards”, proving yet again that Phillips is a good egg still able to tell shit from sugar. The former NUS President said, “this is all about the suppression of free speech….in the end, censorship always benefits the minority – never the majority”. Right smack bang on the money.

But when it comes to being humorously and mercilessly Anti-Establishment, is there a gap in the market? Or is there just no market in the gap?

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On the surface, it might seem that Fizzpop and his new young friends are busy virtue-signalling purely because that’s the way the market has turned. In the past, I have posted about the robotic ‘is it on the syllabus?’ nature of education in the West these days, and the lack of any real radicalism among the young.

The conformist education model is, I am sure, a major contributory factor. But it hasn’t stopped young feminists at University taking the “abuse” criteria to hysterical lengths – and I mean hysterical in both senses of the word.

It has become a received truth that right wing humour is by definition cruel, misogynist, racist and generally embarrassing rather than funny. But this is to dub all things Anti-Establishment as right wing, which seems to me somewhat bizarre. Also it doesn’t bear examination as an assertion: the antics of those who need counselling for two years because somebody put a hand on their shoulder in the Union Bar is infinitely more giggleworthy than Theresa May trying to sell Britain down the river – as is the cognitive dissonance of those on the Left so tumescent at the thought of rejoining “our” European Union, or excusing Stone Age Islamic sexual ideas by calling criticism of it “phobic”.

I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that two interwoven factors are of major importance: these are the concentration of media ownership, and the climate of fear being created by unelected Alt States via the use of legislation against “abuse”.

For some reason, it appears to be just fine and dandy in 2018 for followers of Momentum, Corbyn and Antifa to scream, swear, shout and gratuitously insult others on social media in a thoroughly hateful manner minus only the evidence to support their remarks. But at the first sign of suggesting that Diane Abbott is an incurable flake, the yells of “racist” and “love not hate” ring out from that same community. Not only is this a rich seam for any satirist with balls, it is also yet another sign of indigenous Stalinism breaking out in Europe…..and in the US, where contrarian speakers are now routinely banned or discouraged on campus.

The injection of ‘cyber-abuse’ into a UK Bill allegedly designed to curb stalking is a disturbing act in that context. It is nothing less than an attempt to crush cultural pluralism….in a State supposed to be multicultural. So too was the joint attempt by Cameron and May four years ago to get “non-violent extremism” banned by law.

But it is the meteoric fall in MSM media buying and selling points that is acting more and more as the concrete foundation and cement for the wall of propaganda being built by media moguls, ideologues and Big Business working in concert. The insidious role of Establishment politicians (of both Left and Right), Newscorp and HSBC in turning the BBC into the Voice of Corporate Dictatorship is no conspiracy: it is an established fact that can no longer be ignored.

Further, the slavish toeing of the Establishment line by both the US and UK “mainstream” media on the issues of Trump, Syria, Assad, Putin and Brexit is so obvious, revisiting those media in print after a year abroad almost blew me away last week.

This combination of legislation demanded by vandals – and dodgy narratives hammered home by the rentacrowd MSM – is, I suspect, the main thing that has driven biting satire from the Colosseum. It is, as so often now, fear of the Roman Mob, its dictatorial senators, the Centurions, the Emperor….and the six gladiators armed to the teeth pitted against one thoughtful citizen-pacifist who preferred the Republic the way it was.

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The Slog often uses wit as a weapon, but I am no highly-skilled creative satirist. A parodist at times maybe: but neither of those approaches is my metier. I remain what I started out as – a deconstructor of bollocks. The very fact that it is the self-appointed Establishments who want to come down hard on what they dub ‘fake news’ is a sure sign that they now have a monopoly of that sector themselves. Two days ago, it was revealed that Facebook – under the direct orders of its owner Mark Zuckerberg – has closed down nearly 6,000 accounts as the US midterm elections approach, because (says Harvard-educated Liberal Democrat Zuckerberg) it was important not to have “inappropriate editorial” in circulation at such a time. Give me strength.

There is no shortage of things to lampoon in today’s Establishment. The only things we’re short of are (a) leaders prepared to be ridiculed, as that goes with the territory; and (b) funny people with the balls to show that what may be sublime to the control freaks is utterly ridiculous to the rest of us.

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