I see that Helen Dale has turned up on a Youtube with Carl Benjamin, better known (apparently) as Sargon of Akkad, discussing Brexit. The discussion, which went on far too long to keep my interest, was intelligent enough, but I was more interested in the "meta" aspects.
First, she is sounding very British these days (although that happens if you live in a country); but more oddly, if I understood her correctly, she is now in the Conservative Party and said something like she was "conservative from birth". Which sounds a tad odd: did I read somewhere in one of the many articles/interviews about her that she once said she helped (when very young, and perhaps with her father?) on a Greens campaign? But she has also said her father was a con man and made many disparaging remarks about him at other times.
In any event, I have a suspicion that we are witnessing another re-invention of herself.
More significantly, this Benjamin character is a controversial figure, who I have managed to avoid knowing anything about until now. He's running for the pro-Brexit, anti immigration UKIP, and The Guardian notes that he was a big figure in the Gamergate controversy in 2014 (and not in a good way.) He's also in trouble for some "joke" he made about how he wouldn't rape a certain politician, and he's not apologising for it. He puts on an air of reasonableness in some of his material, but Buzzfeed notes his online presence is closely associated with an alt.right fanbase.
I seriously doubt he is someone who (shall we say) reasonable people should be associating with.
Dale has also done an interview with James Delingpole - the climate change denying twit and general right wing gadfly. Apparently, he was all gushing about her take on Roman society. For a person who thinks libertarians should stop denying climate change, she sure doesn't mind helping the profile of one of the most prominent climate change denying writers of the last decade.
At the risk of being accused of jealousy or undue obsession with her, I say again that there has always been something about her manner in talks, interviews or writing which strikes me as a facade of intellectualism more than anything substantial. But she wins over many on the "classic liberal" or libertarian right, who do not perceive her this way.
She's pretty fascinating, because I perceive her as very strange, and rather Zelig-like in many ways.
4 comments:
Perhaps she has a longing for the celebrity status she acquired from that novel until she was exposed. Her constant shifts since then suggest relevance deprivation syndrome. Her novel about Rome has probably tanked so now she is seeking attention elsewhere. She should have sought out a psychoanalyst long ago, there is something wrong.
You don't have evidence for CO2-warming champ so its dishonest to keep wanking on about it. I was very happy to see Helen looking tanned and healthy in that interview. She looks terrific. Plus she's a repeat winner, a true sweety, and good at everything.
I think its good for people to reinvent themselves now and then and I think Helen does this. The problem is she was subjected to a witch-hunt at a very early age. This was the most powerful witch-hunt I have seen in my life-time. I'm not kidding. So for example there was a Muslim-African girl who was pretty cute and she was a little bit over-promoted in Australia. She was made a bigshot spokesperson and given roles before she was really adequate for them. When people all were dumping on her I tried to stick up for her a bit the best I could. But the dumping on Helen when she was a kid was just 1000 times worse.
Thank goodness a few worthies like our national poet came out and stood up for her. Many of my intellectual antecedents had been Jewish at the time and I was back and forth on the Israeli situation. Remember this was before 9/11. So I was not anti-Judaic at the time and not any time before 2008. But I could not understand why people were beating up on this young girl for what struck me as misdemeanours.
There was about three pages total of plagiarised stuff that she must have forgotten to edit out in earlier drafts. As an attempted writer myself I think its okay to steal a lot of gear just to get the process going but it should be all gone pretty early in the re-writing process. But since she had an whole award winning book and only this small volume of residual copying left over, it shouldn't have reflected on her talent.
And the other crime was to pursue an alter-ego as a Ukranian. So fucking what? I think she reinvents herself like this to protect herself against extreme hostility. The Jews murdered tens of millions of Ukrainians in the 30's, and given the nature of her story, in my view she was protecting herself. She was a highly intelligent young girl and I think she had every right to stick up a protective layer as an artist. What harm could it do?
In my view the problem was with Australia and not with Helen. She can reinvent her own act every second year, set up any number of protective barriers, to protect the girl and the artist, as much as she wants ...... and its really no-one elses business but her own.
Last time I met her, and last time I talked to her, was before I turned anti-Judaic. Jason can verify this, so don't try and condemn her by association, or I'll come around and slit your puppies throat.
3 pages? It may have only been 3 paragraphs. I cannot really remember. It ought not have added up to anything for someone that age.
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