Opinion The Hellfire Club Exclusive commentary by Martin Kelly From The Washington Dispatch Jan 26

Opinion

The Hellfire Club
Exclusive commentary by Martin Kelly
From The Washington Dispatch
Jan 26, 2004

If one must sin, then sin big. The Hellfire Club, a group of dissolute who terrorized London in the late eighteenth century, lived and died by that principle, once kicking a stranger to death for kicks. That time in history also produced Deacon William Brodie of Edinburgh, by day the Dean of the city’s Guild of Cabinetmakers, by night its crime boss, with a hand in everything from burglaries to cockfighting. Brodie’s story so frightened the young Robert Louis Stevenson that he used him as the model for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

On January 23rd, the Deacon was abroad again, 216 years after he was hanged. Dr. Jenny Tonge was forced to stand down from her post as a frontbench spokeswoman for the British Liberal Democrats, after making a comment that if she were a Palestinian, she would consider becoming a suicide bomber. That is not a stupid comment. It is a very calculated statement of support for killers from someone who so hates the State of Israel they are willing to incite others to kill for no reason other than hatred of Zionism. It is particularly incendiary given that the person who holds the title of Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard, is Jewish, in a country where one in five are reported to be uncomfortable with the idea of having a Jewish Prime Minister. It could only have come from someone living in conditions of affluent free speech, earning a good wage at someone else’s expense (mine) and with the ability to indulge their preferences and prejudices unfettered by any form of self-discipline. By thus praising the homicide bombers, Jenny Tonge expressed a desire to feel the Devil’s pain.

There are many others, of course, who aspire to membership of the Hellfire Club. Old Bandy Legs himself, Robert Duvall, has taken Steven Spielberg to task for saying that the time he spent in Fidel Castro’s company was ‘the most important seven hours of his life’. The meal stuffed into the mouths of some liberals forces them to call homicide bombers ‘activists’ or ‘dissidents’, while calling Castro a democrat. Right now, Castro, once portrayed as a comic opera brigand, is holding a real dissident and activist, Dr. Oscar Biscet, in conditions more suited to the days of Devil’s Island, for daring to have the courage to be a seeker of liberty. What, surely, is more American than to seek liberty? And why isn’t President Bush focusing more on the Devil on his own Doorstep, who, according to Insight Magazine in 2002, might have been aiding Saddam with WMD programmes?

What has happened here seems to be a reversal of the Monroe Doctrine. Saddam bad, Fidel, like, we ignore, dude, OK? Are the Americas the only place in the world where people aren’t supposed to be free? No, actually. The world’s fastest growing economy is China. China, the land of genocide on the female foetus, is a country where a billion people suffer under the yolk of a dead philosophy, maintained only to ensure that a small imperial elite get to keep the good jobs, the big houses, the big cars and the kickbacks. All governments in the European Union and both governments in North America are complicit in this, by continuing to permit the tsunami of cheap imports the Chinese produce. The Chinese people should not have to suffer so that Europeans and North Americans can buy cheap cutlery. According to the Milhous-like George Trefgarne of The Daily Telegraph, the wealth of the Chinese elite is increasing at a rate far out of proportion to any trickle down reaching the poor schleps who are losing limbs in the foundries. Such satanic hauteur will meet an accounting far more desperate than anything the most vicious apostle of the Cultural Revolution could produce. Their Great Leap Forward will be a Great Fall Downward, but like Lauryn Hill said, they still have time to repent.

Sometimes, it seems that nations and civilisations are beyond redemption. Mugabe, Black Hitler, is without doubt Africa’s Enemy of Liberty Number One. The Zanu-PF movement he leads is exactly like the Hellfire Club. There have been two reports recently of two white farmers being beaten to death for no reason other than that they are white. For all his other failings, President Bush has banned senior associates of Mugabe’s like Nolbert Konunga, Episcopalian Bishop of Harare from travelling to the USA. What, ahem, is Senator Kerry’s position on Zimbabwe? Or Governor Dean’s? Or, dare we ask, Reverend Sharpton’s? Zimbabwe is a country and people crying out to be free. For them, liberty is still within living memory, they just want their country back, a country that is one of the planet’s most beautiful and productive spaces, to be free from the tyranny of a nasty old man with a stupid looking wee moustache. We don’t seem to be doing anything substantial to help them.

Jenny Tonge apologises for evil because the living conditions of some Palestinians. Tony Blair fails to take action against the evil of Robert Mugabe because he is petrified of being called a racist. Whichever witchdoctor thought up racism made powerful juju. Failing to recognise the presence of evil, even when it’s shouting ‘God is Great!’ is the easiest way for it to win. When Osama decided to take on the USA, Bill Clinton, just about the only modern political figure who could trump the Hellfire Club in his desire to satisfy his own appetites, sat on his behind and did nothing of any substance whatsoever. All the Hellfire Club needs to do to win is for us to ignore them. That is a principle that Hamas, Jenny Tonge, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party know all too well. Hell Mend Them.