Koch-Funded Peasants for Brexit

Covering Brexit has been a challenge for the BBC as a sense of bafflement and hurt pride enshrouds “the nation”. What you need is the boorish leader of some clandestine semi-cult to help you through the complexities. Step up Brendan O Neill. This exchange from November last year exposes the self-importance of the Spiked! editor and the nadir of Anglo-Irish relations brought about by such nonsense…

“I don’t like this idea that the Irish are super fans of the EU… every time the Irish have been asked to vote on the expansion of the EU, they said: No thanks.” Brendan O’Neill of @spikedonline who hails from Irish ‘peasant stock’#Brexit #politicslive https://t.co/32y2XeRbQ7 pic.twitter.com/fSJ5rNP5JB

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 2, 2018

As Brendan O’Neill claims to speak on behalf of Ireland, Andrew Maxwell’s response is class …

We are all @andrewismaxwell pic.twitter.com/cdppxhsR18

— Naomi O’Leary (@NaomiOhReally) November 4, 2018

A gift for Irish Twitter for the next time Andrew Bridgen is interviewed pic.twitter.com/wOsrWjSTUN

— Naomi O’Leary (@NaomiOhReally) November 4, 2018

O’Neill postures as an iconoclastic outsider sticking it to the man. But last year I revealed that he is bankrolled by Charles Koch to the tune of $300,000. The Koch brothers’ funding network has also been credited with the rise in the influence of far-right, libertarian, rampant free-market capitalist thinking in the US and UK.

But amongst the chaos the media don’t care and O’Neill has made a name for himself as a strong backer of Brexit.

Last year he wrote an article for the Spectator where he attacked the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, as “a foreign leader interfering in Britain’s domestic, democratic affairs”.

O’Neill then continued, “It was wrong when the British did that to Ireland, and it is wrong for the Irish now to do the same to Brexit Britain.”

John Rogan has done the best work to sift through O’Neill and the LM Network’s past views on Ireland and their progression from pro-IRA to pro-Gilets Jaunes.

Rogan writes:

“I suspect Brendan O’Neill and his fellow ex-Revolutionary Communist Party/Irish Freedom Movement comrades who form the Spiked Online network still oppose the Good Friday Agreement. It’s just that they now ally themselves with the most hardline Eurosceptic British and Northern Irish Conservative opinion instead of dissident Republicans. The RCP/IFM preferred the violent chaos of Northern Ireland where they could happily (and peacefully) march through the streets of the UK backing dissident Republicanism as opposed to the compromises of the GFA. Now the same network is indulging in the same political onanism looking forward to and promoting a chaotic no deal Brexit.”

Rogan asks:

“How is it possible to explain the political evolution from unconditional support for physical-force Irish Republicanism to their support for Brexiter “traditional jingoistic prejudices of … die-hard Tory Empire loyalists”. A very good question to which I wish I could give an easy answer. It wouldn’t matter, of course, except that leading members of Spiked get lots of media coverage for their present No Deal Brexiter populism — especially Brendan O’Neill in The Sun where he asks “WHERE is the British lion, or at least the British ­bulldog, who will stand up to Brussels?” (5 March 2018) or his backing for the “gilets jaunes” (7 Dec 2018).”

O’Neill is a corporate shill posing as a populist. He is the puppet of a far-right American billionaire and he and his colleagues are on your screens every day spewing out their nationalist libertarian propaganda.