Showing posts with label Mike Stuchbery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Stuchbery. Show all posts

Twitter historian Mike Stuchbery shows how not to debate far right

Characters from the loony part of the right such as Paul Joseph Watson (Infowars crank who made his name as a 9/11 truther and loads of other conspiracies) or Peter Sweden (lunatic who among various things has dabbled in holocaust denial and flat earth) ought to be eminently easy low hanging fruit to “school”.

However not for former supply teacher Mike Stuchbery, who somehow manages to come out of exchanges with them looking just as foolish with his awfully smug abuse laden supposed “historical smackdowns” that prove little but his ability to skim read Wikipedia.

For instance see this irrelevant reply to a tweet here. “Your ancestors traded white slaves to Baghdad” which is followed by a thread mentioning some Islamic trinkets from centuries ago. What exactly has slave trade and some trinkets centuries ago got to do with a complaint that a country is changing in a way someone dislikes?

(As a sidenote it is amusing Peter Sweden bemoans “my culture” considering his anti-Semitic, homophobic, and tradlife misogynistic views would fit in nicely in Saudi Arabia.)



Here is another example: “is this a 15th-century French noblewoman or a 21-century Muslim woman from Luton?” Again what is the point? We should stop being bothered by niqabs in the UK as you found a picture of a veiled woman from over 500 years ago?


Then there is this attempt at a “historical smackdown” that inadvertently just simply backs up what the guy is saying.


This is a theme from Stuchbery’s tweets. A reply of “hey dickhead, in 1567 whites/Western country did this, PS get fucked” to whatever bad thing some far-right person is complaining about.

Here he is for example (in response to it being mentioned by some far-right account) on honour killings, a specific type of violence more common today within South Asian or Middle Eastern families, which he falsely conflates with domestic violence and homicide solely so he can say “whites do it too!”. There may be instances where that has happened, but saying “Honour-killing? Roman & Jewish culture allowed husbands to murder adulterous or disobedient wives” or Anne Boleyn’s death “could be described as an honour killing” is an utterly worthless point to make.

Firstly, no Anne Boleyn is not equivalent to cases such as Banaz Mahmod and Samia Shahid or others you read about from places like Pakistan (think you will find it was not Anne Boleyn’s own siblings and parents plotting to kill her for who she married). Also secondly, this is such a pathetic childishly tribal take on a serious issue. Those suffering from honour based violence today are not likely to find much comfort in being compared to the wives of Henry VIII.


Also on acid attacks: “Acid attacks are nothing new in Britain. They were quite common-place in Victorian London” and because that came earlier than their current prevalence in South Asia can be blamed on “whitey” for some reason. Why the issue of acid attacks needs to be viewed from some tribal lens of which race did it first is beyond me.


For someone who likes to talk of “melting pot”, Stuchbery has a habit of pointlessly bringing up “whites” that would impress the most obnoxiously identitarian of far-left or alt-right activists. Such as here: “Ah, the annual curated season, 'White People Can't Follow Simple Instructions'”. Why exactly does a story of somebody wearing the wrong shoes have to be made about race?


Unsurprisingly whilst he notes names such as “Democratic People's Republic of Korea” may not be perfect descriptors he cannot say the same for Antifa cretins, who he compares to WW2 heroes and praises their thuggish violence. Even Trevor Noah could strongly condemn those idiots.



He’s also pro punching Nazis, and doesn’t care even if innocent people get hit in the crossfire. And supports teachers’ pushing their politics on 10 year olds (or at least as long as it’s politics he agrees with like Donald Trump being Hitler).

(Another sidenote: Stuchbery says he lives in Luton, which is notably home to Amjen Choudary and his Al Muhajiroun crew, the hardcore Salafist Luton Islamic Centre, and Britain First on their “Christian Patrols”. Has the Twitter coward who applauds thugs and cries “punch them, punch them, never stop punching them” ever dared lay a finger on any of those people?).


Finally his takes on concerns over large scale Islamic migration to Europe are simply laughably stupid and twee.

For example another of his long threads compares the 50,000 Huguenot Protestants from France moving to England in the 16th century, to fears over large scale Islamic migration into Europe on the scale of over a million from failed states in the 21st century. Stuchbery says there are “many parallels” between the two, of course he neglects to mention the many obvious differences ...

He then rounds off the thread with this: “Anyhoo. Refugees? Asylum seekers? Nothing new under the sun. My Muslim neighbours in Luton work just as hard and contribute just as much. And if you somehow think that they're not assimilating... Dudes, they already took your damn biscuits”.


Somehow I find it doubtful those with concerns about large scale Muslim migration (who are also branded with a broad brush as all “xenophobic mouthbreathers” by Stuchbery) are likely to persuaded otherwise by pointing to Luton of all places, or that integration there is all going fine because a hijabi won a TV baking show.

On the contrary, Stuchbery again just unwittingly made the best argument for immigration scepticism possible. There is not a single sane person in the UK who would point to Luton, often referred to as “the UK’s Most Radicalised Town” and linked to dozens of jihadist plots and far-right rampages, as a good example of successfully well integrated Muslim migration.

Nobody in the UK would want their town to end up like Luton. Yet Stuchbery responds to the hyperbole on Fox News by portraying the problems in Luton as nothing but lies and claims “it’s actually probably the most accepting and welcoming place I’ve ever lived” and the fact it’s a “heavily Muslim area” is “part of the reason” it’s “fantastic”.

If he thinks that then great for him, but brushing over problems in places like Luton, and claiming everything there is just going swimmingly is as misleading as what you might see from the far-right. The right response to Fox News exaggerating is to call out and correct them, not to simply point at an exaggerated or false claim and then use that to just merrily deny real problems in order to portray everything “multicultural” as all hunky dory. This is just rancid dishonesty and denialism.

Nevertheless Stuchbery’s shtick has quickly become a Twitter favourite for some on the Left in particular churnalists at clickbait outlets looking for low effort articles. However you suspect though this is largely down to the awful people he has positioned himself against as his actual arguments are utterly terrible and unlikely to impress anyone beyond an echo chamber of those already sold on the “multicultural” bromides of a Justin Trudeau.