I'm right-wing

I'm not actually right-wing, obviously, but I thought it might be fun to just say it and see if it comes true.

Your Cohens, your Kamms, your Aaronovitches, for example - they're allowed to pretend say that they're left-wing, and people even believe it. They're even described as such by people who claim to have a handle on these things, as if it's not so much a matter of debate. Maybe they even think that they are, somehow, just because they've said it.

It's almost as if saying something makes it become true, no matter what kind of material evidence might pile up to the contrary. So that's why I've decided to call myself right-wing for a day - just a day, mind - to see if that makes me right-wing by the end of it. I hope that people will be describing me as a 'right-wing blogger' by sunset. It's been done the other way, but I think I may be first to attempt to make myself right-wing just by saying it. If it worked for those chaps - and look, they got nice writing jobs at right-wing newspapers because of it - then I'm sure it will work for me. If I call myself right-wing, but slag off everything on the right, then I think I can engineer myself a position at Socialist Worker or the Morning Star as a 'right-wing' columnist.

Not that I'm plannig on writing anything tremendously right-wing, you understand. No, I'm following the model of Kamm, Cohen et al with this. I'm not going to actually agree with anything like that. Well, I think you have to try and make some kind of token attempt to cling onto something on your designated political sphere, don't you? So I'll say this: I think free markets are a good idea. Yes. I do. I think they're important so people can have goods and services more efficiently.

There. Now I'm allowed to disagree with everything else on the right, yet still be called right-wing. And it's from this carefully engineered position that I can find it easiest to take potshots at those who would head-scratchingly consider themselves to be ideologically closer to someone who calls himself 'right-wing' than someone who wouldn't. Ah, but that just allows me to take more careful aim, doesn't it, and it makes my argument carry a little more persuasive tone, doesn't it? Look everyone, I'm on the right, and even I think that X Y and Z done by the right are really bad things and that those poor fools on the right defending those things are clearly messed up in the head, verging on insanity, and have been largely discredited through the years, in fact no-one with any sense listens to them any more I'll have you know.

So, Thatcher. Obviously. Seeing as I'm right-wing, that's the most obvious totem to go for, isn't it? Thatcher was terrible. Ruined things for the right. Instead of having proper right-wing views, like collectivisation and Marxism, she decided to have those discredited and foolish right-wing views that were opposed to that. No-one actually believes that any more on the right, and it's rather embarrassing frankly that anyone should come out and say any of that stuff any more.

Reagan - the same. Dreadful man. Invading other countries to try and defend economic policies? No-one on the right actually agrees with that. It's only a tiny rump of silly people who think things like that. Actually the real right-wing, of which I'm part, really thinks that the best thing to do is to have a more internationalist approach to foreign affairs and economics in general. Reagan was rubbish.

Blair and Bush? Oh dear. There are some on the right, I'm afraid, who would say that their policies made the world a safer place. But seeing as I'm on the right I'm in a better position than most to understand just how stupid and far-fetched this idea is. Because I'm on the right I can tell you that it's complete nonsense and that they were simply slaughterers and murderers. It's really as simple as that and if you weren't on the right you wouldn't understand that at all. And those economic policies? Making the rich richer and the poor poorer? Honestly, that's not what being on the right is about at all. We're all for higher taxes for the rich and more Government spending.

There we go, I think you've got the general idea with that one. Remember, I'm only calling myself right-wing for a day, but I truly hope to be remembered as such by tonight.