The Only Way is Greater suggested a space is filled: keep looking for that ‘loot’. Then there will be ‘coup, revolution, anarchist parties, violence and the likes of Blair, Bush and Clinton’. Most of the world ‘dodges Third World issues’. So much for co-operation.
Kurt Schlichter
The only thing I admire in him is his rallying cry. I have too much time for politics. And Kurt is undoubtedly hysterical, but in a useful way.
Stephen Cave
Schlichter is like a heavy-metal version of Howard Stern – weird and funny but with very little intellectual edge. He would be even more convincing on the One Show because his schtick could be the brainless joke that gets past the BBC patter. It would also give him more space to preach.
Carry On #43 says: Rorty professor, meet semi-literate – or pseudo-literate – libtard. Swinburne would
roll over if he were left to his own devices. K.T. Downing, circa ’90s, would have turned her nose up at Schlichter’s brazen consumerist self-obsession and patronising contempt for those of us in poor countries who worry about economic progress.
Barnett Rush
Schlichter implies a lack of interest in the world through his constant use of the phrase, “Let’s make global capitalism work for you!” which assumes that the world’s problems can be solved by “overnight global” changes to the global economy.
Sean Carthew
When Schlichter talks about “change” it isn’t just theoretical. He talks about a historical transformation – where people are born and bred in societies that do not face up to existing injustices or face death if they do.
Laura Turner
Kurt Schlichter’s issues are not inescapable. I have a novel in progress about a man called Trotsky, and I never take the view that his arguments are true or that the evils he railed against are truly rooted in Western Europe. His interests lie in personal empowerment, at the expense of established institutions and practices in the West, and I put a very high value on our civil liberties and personal equality.
Lord Dormandy
Schlichter is a hugely entertaining radical, whose oversimplified argument is that “the Marxist intervention in the politics of the West has created the bad stuff”.
This is complete nonsense and quite unsuitable as a template for change. Does it matter to Schlichter that ours is a capitalist economy and that he and his ilk have a foot in both camps? Or that this is the first time in recorded history that conflict has arisen? Does he regard Zimbabwe as “revolutionary”? No, he says he wants to change Western institutions and practices.
Jerry Barkman
I often find Schlichter’s politics distasteful. His views are implacably anti-redemption and intolerant of religious alternatives. Schlichter’s political motto is “I am Right”. This is an echo of fascist and homophobic former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, but seems to thrive in the milieu of the American right.
Don McLean
Kurt Schlichter is right about the crisis and the existing poverty crisis, but he is wrong about the means to solve the crisis and his methods of change are shallow. The “masses” to be “primed” and “soaken” is a tired far-right cant, which pretends to a strict control of culture and “the vote”.
Schlichter’s and Duke’s politics have one thing in common – an appeal to voters against their own self-interest. A vote for Blue Blue is a vote for fascism. There is no such thing as purity or weakness in politics.
A reader, who wished to remain anonymous, wrote a letter to the BBC condemning Kurt Schlichter for “misinformation and ridicule”.