Ann Widdecombe claims it was easier to be a Nazi or Communist in post-war Britain...

[trotsky]

(headline continued)... than a Christian today

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ann-widdecombe-claims-it-was-easier-to-be-a-nazi-or-communist-in-postwar-britain-than-a-christian-today-9520343.html

Ann Widdecombe has claimed it was easier to be a Nazi or a Communist in post-war Britain than being a Christian today because “quite militant secularism” discourages people from expressing their faith.

The ex-MP for Maidstone said it was very difficult to be an active Christian in modern Britain because of some aspects of equality legislation that made people hesitant about being open with their faith in everyday life.

...

"So I think it is a very difficult country now, unlike when I was growing up, in which to be a Christian, an active Christian at any rate."

Christians also faced a "sort of atheism" that "wouldn't once have been said". There used to be a view that "we've all got freedom of conscience, we've all got freedom of expression", she said.

Poor thing.

[rug]

1. There was no internet then. It's very easy to craft any sort of persona these days.

[struggle4progress]

2. Yet another of about 63 million folk in the UK that I've never heard of!

I suspect many of them have opinions

Can we expect more posts from you exploring the sometimes odd views of obscure inhabitants of the isles on the far side of the great pond?

Sadly, Alexander Stuart Wortley is no longer with us

[trotsky]

3. Aren't you just precious!

[LeftishBrit]

4. Obscure? Not to British people, she's not

Admittedly she is known to a certain number of people just because she took part in 'Strictly Come Dancing' after leaving parliament; but seriously, she is a vile, disgusting, religious-right politician who has done more than the likes of Richard Dawkins EVER could to show me the dangers of certain forms of religion.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=263x45614

And no, she is not typical of Christianity in the UK; just of vicious right-wing nastiness in the UK.

[trotsky]

5. I thought it was interesting just because I know we have several regulars here...

who are either in, or from the UK, and figured they could fill us in. Just like you did. Thanks!

[struggle4progress]

9. Perhaps you can forgive me: I can't even keep track of the 535 persons

representing states in the US Congress, let alone the various former-MP has-beens of the UK

In politics, it's always necessary to pay attention to people, crazy or not, who might have some influence

But when crazies don't have much influence, one should try not to give them and their ideas attention and publicity

And, of course, what she says is crazy. There would have been little enthusiasm for Nazis in the post-WWII UK: the government made rather a point of hanging William Joyce, formerly of the British Union of Fascists; Oswald Mosley spent the war in custody or house arrest and quickly found it expedient afterwards to move abroad; Arnold Leese spent much of the war in detention and was imprisoned again in 1947 for aiding former Nazis; John Beckett also remained in detention throughout the war, but the BPP to which he belonged never attracted any popular support after the war and was eventually disbanded

[LeftishBrit]

13. Fair enough; just in this case, she's a bit more than just one eccentric loon

She was perhaps most notorious as a politician for being the Minister in charge of prisons and supporting the policy of shackling pregnant prisoners with handcuffs and chains when in hospital. One female Tory MP switched parties in protest. She was also a big homophobe, and like many 'pro-life' politicians, a supporter of the death penalty (at a time when this was already a minority view even among Tory politicians). She was and is also a sanctimonious economic right-winger:

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/461855/There-s-no-morality-in-living-off-others


As regards her religious attitudes, she is a former Anglican, who converted to Catholicism in protest against the Church of England ordaining women.

[trotsky]

19. Yet racist/xenophobic/religious nonsense should be countered, should it not?

Or are we better off sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring it, as you suggest?

[struggle4progress]

20. It seems your eagerness, to attribute to me things that I never said,

could be producing hallucinations or false memories

I do not think I have ever advocated that we would be better off sticking our heads in the sand

[rug]

21. That seems an apt description of the Ignore function.

I wonder who in this Group uses it.

[trotsky]

22. Yet racist/xenophobic/religious nonsense should be countered, should it not?

There is no need to question my mental state. Please refrain from ad homs.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Not just an ex-MP; she was minister for prisons, and then shadow Home Secretary

(ie responsible for party policy on policing, prisons and immigration), and also shadow Health Secretary. So she was one of the top 4 Tory politicians at her peak.

She is, of course, a complete idiot, as you can see from what she says, and she loves nothing more than playing the Christian martyr. The reason she left the Church of England for the Catholics was that she objected to the ordination of women.

They were apparently going to make her British ambassador to the Holy See, but she declined for health reasons.

You ought to look someone up before assuming they are not well known.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Widdecombe

[struggle4progress]

10. There must be tens of thousands of locally-known crackpots around the world

and one can learn about a fair number of them through the internet

Usually one's response should be, Why bother?

Sometimes, of course, one should bother to learn about what certain crackpots are doing, because they have real political clout

But often what one sees is just attention-whoring, which is reinforced when one drives traffic to links reporting the attention-whoring -- and in such cases one ought, whenever possible, show very little interest

Widdecombe's comments here follow a formulaic playbook: one says something ridiculous and outrageous, in order to provoke a storm of controversy and argument, which guarantees several days of attention. Unfortunately, the media sometimes cooperate in this, since it provides an inexpensive source of stories leading people to pages containing paid advertisements

Very little discussion is necessary or productive in such cases. One can, I suppose, search for some appropriate gloss -- such as, If Widdecombe considers it appropriate to compare herself to the Nazis, who am I to argue? -- but the prospects for learning anything significant seem limited, and the fact that she has apparently retired from politics rather reduce the urgency of attending to anything she might spit out

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. And yet, you did bother

although the main thrust of your first post was "don't post like this again".

[struggle4progress]

12. Perhaps you can explain to me why I should care what she says

I take a rather consistent stance on the point I've made in this thread: over the years, I've tried to explain to people here at DU why it's a mostly a waste of time to post about Coulter or Limbaugh or Palin, for example

There can be exceptions: for example, when the Republicans were tripping all over themselves not to offend Limbaugh, it was reasonable to use that as an opportunity to tie Limbaugh around their neck

But as a general rule, I think the right response to a report about yet more BS from Limbaugh is -- Who?

[LeftishBrit]

16. I disagree. I think these people have huge influence, and for citizens to ignore them, just allows

them to have more influence.

If they weren't already influential, OK, ignore them and don't give them their 15 minutes; but in the case of Limbaugh or Widdecombe it's too late for that, and ignoring them just gives them free rein to trample all over everyone, and call the shots politically.

In 2009-10, I was tutting over the likes of Palin and Santorum, and thinking smugly that It Couldn't Happen Here. While local 'pro-lifers' (of whom I had not yet heard) were beginning what grew to be a successful smear campaign against our MP to get him defeated by a Tory. AND the extremist 'Christian Concern' group were getting a foothold into our local area, with one of the colleges of our University allowing them for several years to use the college as a base for the homophobic, extreme 'pro-life', anti-secular Wilberforce Academy, with support from the American Religious Right. I mean, a college of one of the best-known and most prestigious universities in the country, was accepting money, some of which came from the Alliance Defence Fund, to promote vile views and give them respectability by association with our university. I'm sure it wasn't deliberate; the College just weren't paying attention to who was booking conferences there. And thus they increased the organization's 'respectability'.

I failed to pay sufficient attention to religious-right nutters in the past; I will NOT make that mistake again!


P.S. If you don't care personally what she says, that is fine - no need for you to contribute to the thread, or even read the posts; but it is not fair for you to taunt other people for discussing the matter.

[struggle4progress]

18. Let me point out an opposite danger, which I finally understood

during the reign of St Ronnie the Reagan

Ronnie was not a terribly informed man, and so he was not terribly informative either. Ronnie would regularly stand up and say the most horridly inaccurate and ignorantly offensive things -- and he would say these things in a matter-of-fact friendly avuncular way. And a lot of us would fly into rages and spend time contradicting him, and the people who liked Ronnie would then be told we were just a bunch of nasty partisan malcontents

I finally realized it was a set-up. Ronnie was paid to be the front man, who distracted us from all this criminal crap behind the scenes

We would have done better to ignore just about everything Ronnie ever said and to continue working on the issues we were already working on without ever mentioning Ronnie. He was one big tarball of distraction. We won when we educated people carefully about issues. We lost when we got sucked into RonnieWorld

And it's going to be the same with Widdecombe: she's attention-whoring, and it's just a distraction. You can predict where the conversation goes; she's chosen her ground carefully, and she's playing a game where she's planned her moves several steps ahead

Widdecombe: You treated the Nazis better than you treat us
Response: Grr. Growl. Grr
Widdecombe: See?

What's the upside? I don't see any. Does it help move us forward? I can't see how; it looks to me like it only gives her a focal point for organizing

[LeftishBrit]

14. She still has some influence, though less than in the past

She is a columnist for the Daily Express. And she is known to the public, even those who might have been too young or too politically unaware to remember her ministerial career, because she was, in her 60s, a participant on 'Strictly Come Dancing'. This contributes to the media attention, and also to her current influence; it shouldn't, but it does.

There are loons who are simply out for attention, and there are loons who have some influence. Ignoring those with influence does not help. I wouldn't recommend ignoring the rantings of a prominent Republican member of Congress, even a former one such as Santorum or Gingrich. She is in the same category.

[struggle4progress]

17. Santorum and Gingrich can safely be ignored IMO

Gingrich resigned from Congress fifteen years ago: although he'd won re-election just a few months earlier, he really resigned in disgrace. His ship was sinking, and he knew it. He's been pretty thoroughly analyzed by now: he was nasty as a politician, and he's been a scumbag personally

Santorum shot himself in the knee politically eight years ago, with his corrupt claim to live in a house he was actually renting out, in order to obtain free school district resources for his children: he's not making a comeback either

[Iggo]

7. Lady, if it was militant, you'd know it.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. To be fair...

...Anne Widdecombe is an awful excuse for a human being, and awful people say awful things.

[LeftishBrit]

15. Best comment on the thread!