James Delingpole



James Delingpole is a right-wing British novelist, blogger, and in his own words, "an incredibly groovy guy." He identifies himself as "libertarian" which, in his case, seems to translate as free market and anti-science, as he shows no concern whatsoever for the civil liberties of groups he doesn't like and is an ardent chickenhawk who regularly denies the existence of the Israeli government's abuses (basically, he's the male Megan McArdle). He likes to describe himself as "writer", eschewing the more accurate term "blogger". Presumably because too many people associate the term with "ignorant tosser with big opinions and no knowledge", which is an uncannily accurate description in Delingpole's case. He is also isn't terribly groovy, if his general fashion sense is anything to go by.

Delingpole has appeared on Alex Jones' programme discussing his preferred topic of climate change denial, suggesting a willingness to accept paranoid and conspiratorial views of government. Subsequent delusional blogs &mdash; which he presumably views as "satire" &mdash; only reinforce this suspicion.

He is perhaps the most famous mainstream British columnist to sympathise with the alt-right, whom he describes as 'noble vigilantes of conservatism' standing alone against the 'cuckservatives'. The alt-right's antisemitism and overt racism is excused by Delingpole as just 'mischievous internet kids experimenting with irony'.

Telegraph
Delingpole has a popular blog on the Daily Telegraph and labels himself as a "journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything" (possibly a misprint when it should be "right of everything"). He adopts an extremist libertarian approach and tends to focus on climate change (e.g. describing scientists as lying and cheating because he wasn't capable of applying statistics properly, ) various other anti-environmental subjects (DDT, for example), anything against the European Union and anything in favour of an untrammelled free market. He occasionally adds more personal posts such as his opinion on the closure of public libraries. Although in favour of public libraries in principle, they are clearly against the principles of the free market, so they can be closed.

Since most sensible people do not agree with his views, Delingpole frequently refers to non-sensible people to back him up. Thus, scientists are regarded as unreliable while denier blogs such as Watts Up With That are praised as the future of advancement.

His writing style is racy, readable, and incendiary. Combined with his list of accepted libertarian dogma and conspiracy theories, it seems he has looked at the lessons given by Glenn Beck et al. and learned. Assuming he is serious, he is either madly deluded or has seen the money to be had from the stupid mines and wants some of it for himself.

Spectator
Delingpole has a fortnightly column in the Spectator magazine entitled You Know It Makes Sense, where he writes about current events, global warming, and himself. He also has a television review column in the same magazine, which he uses to write about himself and, if there is one on, documentaries about the Second World War. At one time, he wrote another column for The Spectator entitled War Life where he would interview an old ex-soldier and then write 800 words about himself; however, only a handful of editions were published before this column was dropped.

In February 2011, Delingpole wrote in the Spectator about his own positive experience with homeopathy, noting the contradiction between the remedy's efficacy in his own case and the admitted seeming illogicality of the 'science' behind it.

Breitbart.com
After leaving The Telegraph, Delingpole became executive editor of the UK wing of Breitbart.com. He got off to a flying start, equating "weather" and "science" with "lies" and "left-wing". To his credit, he has clearly made a good start to his job &mdash; the collection of crackpots in his team would have made the reality-averse founder of the site proud. His blog posts for the site exclusively consist of declaring climate change and climate science as frauds. As has been stated already, Delingpole has no background in any field remotely related to the subject matter to which he devotes himself. He currently occupies of the role "dapper, witty English gent" left vacated after noted 'moral crusader' Milo Yiannopoulos inadvertently revealed himself as a pederast  in statements on a second-rate podcast even his co-workers in all their story-spinning glory couldn't defend. To be fair, Yiannopoulos is actually quite dapper.

BBC Horizon
Horizon is the flagship science programme of the BBC. In 2011, they aired a programme, "Science Under Attack". Understandably, they invited Delingpole as a representative of the anti-science faction. Delingpole, who doesn't know that he doesn't know anything about science — and presumably saw this as his ticket to becoming general spokesbeing on all things "sceptical" — readily accepted.

On the programme itself, when he was pitched against a real Nobel Prize winner, Professor Sir Paul Nurse, he came off second best. He said that "it is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers." Fair enough &mdash; it's not my job anymore either. However, he admits that he doesn't "have the scientific expertise" to deal with the contents of the peer reviewed literature. Instead, he sees himself as an "interpreter of interpretations" when spreading ignorant bullshit about subjects that he doesn't understand and can't be bothered to find out about. He has since decided that peer review is nonsense anyway, saying that instead we now have "peer to peer review".

Amusingly, he then whined on his blog at great length about being "stitched up".

Conspiracy on global warming
Hanging is too good for climate scientists. It is standard fare for climate change deniers to blame consensus on a conspiracy. To his credit, Delingpole has at least looked around enough to see who is behind this conspiracy. In his own words:

Pretty impressive list. However, after a bit of head-scratching, he found some more:

Oh, and Wikipedia.

Seemingly everybody in the world except Delingpole. This sort of ranting insanity and solipsism is typical of his output.

Watermelons
Not one for giving up on flogging tired tropes until they're beaten to a pulp, Delingpole decided to write a book called Watermelons. "Watermelon" politics is a metaphor, meaning green for money and red for Republican. Republicans are wrapped up in money so they don't care. green for "green energy", and red for "terrifying commie insurgency." Much of his subsequent blogging activity at the Telegraph involved thinly-disguised adverts for his new opus.

See, for example, this or this or this or this etc.

Vaccines
Like many other prominent figures on the right, Delingpole has eagerly jumped onto the anti-vaccine bandwagon. He is now an ally and champion of former gastroenterologist and convicted scientific fraud Andrew Wakefield, which shouldn't surprise anyone

Political career
On 12th September 2012, Delingpole announced that he would be running for the 2012 to become member of parliament for the constituency. He whet voters' appetites by stating that he didn't want the job before announcing his candidacy. Although mooted for fellow loons UKIP, he decided to stand as an independent candidate on the single-issue of wind farms (he's against them). With a grand total of zero wind turbines in the constituency, it is easy to see why he thought this might excite voters.

As usual with Delingpole, the whole stunt was just a bizarre fantasy with no action. On 31 October, he announced his withdrawal from the election. The date is significant, since this was the deadline for nominations for the election and - most importantly - the payment of a £500 election deposit. With a recent opinion poll giving him a whopping 0.1%, he may have realised that he would be wasting his money. In addition, concrete evidence that people are not interested in him or his obsessions may have been a painful dose of reality for him to experience.

A way to become a politician but avoid rejection would be to get himself on the UKIP party list for the European elections. That way, he would simply be assigned a job as an MEP based on the UKIP vote share and wouldn't need to do anything. Unfortunately for him, UKIP decided that he was mentally unstable and too crazy for them.