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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Profiling Guido

Last week I was interviewed by David Grossman of the BBC, on the subject of Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. When I did the pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, we published three pieces by Paul (this, this, and this), hence the BBC’s interest. The show I was contributing to, a Radio 4 programme called Profile, was first broadcast at 7pm on Saturday night, and you can listen to it by rootling around here.

The impressive thing about Paul Staines is that he has always understood the connection between political freedom – civil liberties etc. – economic freedom, and what for want of a better phrase is called lifestyle freedom, i.e. sex and drugs and rock and roll. All are but different faces of the same thing: freedom! Most self-styled enthusiasts for freedom tend to emphasise some freedoms but to downplay and even oppose others. Paul Staines always was (and now Guido is) in favour of freedom across the board. Those three LA publications – about human rights abuses around the world, about acid house parties and the efforts of bossy Conservative politicians and of newer varieties of lefty safety nazis to shut them down and to stop anyone having any fun, and about the benefits of unfettered financial markets – cover pretty much the whole spectrum of freedom. When it comes to freedom of any sort, Paul Staines is on the side of the angels.

He is particularly good at distinguishing between the idea of free market capitalism, which is about how we may all do what we want with and trade with what is rightly ours, and the mere interests of particular capitalists.

Not that the man himself is always an angel. He is very flawed, very human. As are all the politicians whom he now torments. Their problem being that they often try to present themselves to the world as something rather more elevated than that, and accordingly as people who know better than we do what is best for us.

21 comments to Profiling Guido

  • nicholas gray

    a related subject is ‘definitions’. The term ‘Liberal’ has so amny variants, that we might need some terms, instead of trying to redeem the old. I propose that all big government supporters be called ‘COMMUNAZIES” and that we add ‘Eccentricarian’ to our own descriptions of ourselves. Does anyone have any other ideas?
    And, replying to those people who are against any symbol of individualism, what do you think of the samizdata sign? I hope you protest regularly against that!
    And good on Guido and all the other supporters of individual liberties! May the silenced minority become the strident majority!

  • veryretired

    And that, in the final analysis, is the crux of the whole issue, isn’t it? Whether one or more flawed and fallible humans has the right, seized by force or voted upon by their fellows, to enforce their vision of what should be upon the rest of us.

    What are the true dangers facing humanity in the 21st century and beyond?

    I would suggest it isn’t the latest environmental crisis du jour, or the possibility that some company selling widgets corners the market, or even that this or that nation acquires weapons capable of extreme lethality.

    These are, each in their own way, externals—facets of life that have been dealt with before many times, sometimes well, and sometimes not so well at all.

    The true danger, as it always has, comes from within us, reaching up from the depths of our emotional and mental structures and inclinations to empower those traits in all of us that have caused no end of death and destruction over the millenia.

    In one of those priceless insights that makes the Bible worth reading, regardless of the state of your religious beliefs, Jesus says, “Nothing from outside can corrupt you, but only that which comes from the heart of man can make you unclean.” (I paraphrase from sheer laziness, instead of getting my St James from the bookshelf)

    So what should we fear?

    Delusional self-righteousness, of the type that declares everyone must do as some guru says, or else;

    Smug disdain, of the type that finds the mundane concerns of ordinary people to be beneath their concern, deserving only derisive contempt;

    Gnostic arrogance, of the type which asserts that special knowledge trumps all else, and confers a right to power that others cannot share;

    Power mania, of the type which can observe mountains of skulls resulting from its dictates, and turn away to dictate further.

    No natural phenomenon threatens mankind as directly as that which emanates from the fissures in the human soul.

    Socrates said all that needs be said, many centuries ago—“Know thyself.”

    Why do I argue, in any and all cases, for maximizing individual freedom, and limiting the coercive power of the collective?

    I could not answer for myself, if I possessed such power, for a single day. And neither could you.

  • RAB

    Well as Eric Morcombe said…
    There’s no answer to that!

  • Tuscan Tony

    Someone needs to whittle a desk ornament with Very Retired’s comment on it, and have it placed on the desks of all those who presume to “govern” us, a la Harry S Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here”

  • Julian Taylor

    I don’t necessarily think blogging has been a healthy advance for democracy or for political engagement

    (4:14 in the Realplayer stream)

    I’m not sure where the deeply unpleasant authoritarian Martin Salter comes in veryretired’s scale, I think its somewhere between ‘Delusional self-righteousness’ and ‘Smug disdain’. To hear such a an individual speak surely reminds one to be thankful that such people as Guido or Richard Ingrams are at large.

  • I propose that all big government supporters be called ‘COMMUNAZIES” and that we add ‘Eccentricarian’ to our own descriptions of ourselves. Does anyone have any other ideas?

    I prefer the term “Sociofascist”. It chimes so neatly with “Islamofacist”.

  • So now I know waht it is like to read (hear) your own obituary.

    I guess the Guido mask is well and truly off.

    Thanks for your kind words Brian.

  • Gabriel

    The impressive thing about Paul Staines is that he has always understood the connection between political freedom – civil liberties etc. – economic freedom, and what for want of a better phrase is called lifestyle freedom, i.e. sex and drugs and rock and roll. All are but different faces of the same thing: freedom!

    That would explain the consistent improvement in our economic freedom and civil liberties since the 1960s. Maybe one day the state can start dishing out soma and free pornography, then we’ll be really free – in a dystopian kind of way.

  • The impressive thing about Paul Staines is that he has always understood the connection between political freedom – civil liberties etc. – economic freedom, and what for want of a better phrase is called lifestyle freedom, i.e. sex and drugs and rock and roll

    Brain surely one would be hard pressed to define oneself as a libertarian if you didn’t hold these truths to be self evident. I generally use this set of things as my test for someone who claims to be libertarian and most people fall on one of the hurdles usually the last one.

    The hachet job being pulled on Guido is as pathetic as it is amusing. Its not like he hides his past like oh…I don’t know David Cameron?

  • The biggest issue here is if the ‘outing’ of Guido will make any difference. If anything, it will make it easier to mark the difference between Libertarianism and right wing – as the media label Guido Fawkes.

    Maybe he should take the next step and consider standing for office as a true libertarian – the voice of the jilted generation perhaps?

  • Pascow

    There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough
    hew them how we may.

  • RAB

    No, we’ll go on paying for the drugs and the porn, if you don’t mind Gabriel. It’s the libertarian way.
    What kind of shit would you be smoking if the Government was doleing it out???
    So I’ll skin one up with Guido anytime…

    As for that smarmy git Cameron, oozing his way round here, trying to engratiate himself with me, saying he smoked dope too man!
    Well I’d skin one up with him as well.
    But there’s no way in hell I’d ever vote for him!!!

  • Pa Annoyed

    “Paul Staines is on the side of the angels.”

    🙂 Which angels? The ones obedient to authority, willing to bow down before a mortal man, or…?

  • RAB

    Pa Annoyed,
    We all gwan be surfing out there
    on dat lake O’ fire
    And dat’s a fact !!
    Because we are Libertarians!
    Damned before, during and after, the fact.
    Whatever that fact may be.
    Ah, but listen…
    I hear worms turning.

  • The BBC’s hatchet was oh, so dainty, their blows to our heads so very delicate-and their hatred so very real.

  • The fact such vitriol is directed at Guido is proof positive of how effective he has become. He is actually causing the political class some damage and they are pissed off big time.

    Fuck ’em. Remember remember the fifth of November…

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Rock on Paul. Nick Robinson and the rest of them purloin your ideas every morning. Everyone knows this. The bitterness and the hate is so transparent. Fuck them all.

    Andrew Dodge makes an excellent point. Yes, some of us have injested illegal substances. I have touched cocaine probably four times in my life, and felt like a tit afterwards and have not done so since, but I won’t be a sanctimonious chap and claim how ashamed or bad I was. I tried something out, realised it was not a good idea and stopped. 99% of people are in the same boat on this issue.

  • nicholas gray

    TimC- Communazi is shorter than Sociofascist, though both are good words. Leviathanist is also awkward. Any good wordsmiths out there? We need a good, short, word for what we don’t like! Anyone?

  • Speaking as a delivery driver for the MSM,I can easily think of a word; C**t would be suitable eh,wot?

  • guy herbert

    nicholas gray,

    Caesars. (= “seizers” Geddit!?)

  • nicholas Gray

    Not bad, Guy, but how about ‘Spartoid’? They all want a command economy, and someone to tell everyone what to do, just like the Spartans did.