Will someone please direct the Elders’, or the Lobby’s, efforts against this nut! And soon, before he publishes some half-baked “criticism of Israel,” to defend himself with.

A few selections from the article, “The professor the anti-Semites love: Kevin MacDonald, Cal State Long Beach, and the downside of academic freedom”:

“What troubles me most is that your criticism of Jews may be taken seriously by groups and individuals who both fear and hate Jews,” Martin Fiebert [MacDonald’s potential publisher] wrote… “Your manuscript, unintentionally perhaps, reinforces the stereotype that all Jews, be they assimilated or not, are clannish, deceptive, and exploitive. I’m sure you would be dismayed to find that your book has a treasured place in the bookcases of neo-Nazis along with ‘Mein Kampf’ and the ‘Protocols of Zion.’”

“I certainly reject the tactics and the rhetoric of these people. It’s very crude,” MacDonald added. “But to the extent that David Duke is trying to advance a white ethnic interest and so on, I don’t have any problem with that.”

I like hijacking other people’s words and using them to start hares running. On my own blog, I’ve used this word ‘negativist’ (much loved of Will of this parish, from whom it came). And a while ago, we had ‘bloggertarian.’

That was a laugh that was.

My favourite word at the moment is ‘memebot.’ I saw it a few weeks ago in the comments here …or more precisely, here:

“For examples, see just about every other article by Seumas Milne. The imperviousness to evidence and reason is quite remarkable. He’s not so much a thinker as trafficker in assertion; a memebot, if you will.”

Seumas Milne is, indeed, a memebot. As is Simon Tidsall (dealt with nicely by Norm here).

These are both examples of journalists that offend my Eustonian prejudices, of course - I’m sure that you can find a few membots that exhibit them as well. Be my guest.

Other examples are, of course, our friends the bloggertarians. Raise a question - any question - and the answer is always ’sack public employees’ / ’school vouchers’ / ‘government can’t work’ etc. The thick shitheads.

A one line assertion is always sufficient for memebots. It’s getting so that you can’t write a post anywhere without a few of them popping up to annoy you. It must stop.

The reason that I’m writing about it here is because I think it may be a useful shorthand comments policy for any bloggers who like getting half-decent arguments back in their comment threads.

In future, I may just delete commenters on the grounds that they are memebots. A one word explanation. Take my advice, for once in your life? Delete your memebots too. Life’s too short to do anything else.