Miranda Devine Brendan O'Neill and a vast international conspiracy led by the chattering classes ...

(Above: use Dr. Google and you'll find a million hits for international conspiracy cartoon. This is just one of them).

" ...They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world called Catholicism. And I know it led to the worst personal damage the world has ever experienced.”

Global moral Catholic do gooders “want to change us”, he said.

“They want to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences. They want to restrict our freedom because they believe they know what is good for us.

“They are not interested in what we're interested in. They misuse religion and morality in their goal to restrict our freedom. What is in danger is freedom, not sinfulness.”

Well who could argue with that? Entirely fair and reasonable ...

What's that you say, some damn Murdoch minion subbie got it all wrong, and the quote by Vaclav Klaus should read thusly?

They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”

Global warming alarmists “want to change us”, he said.

“They want to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences. They want to restrict our freedom because they believe they know what is good for us.

“They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. What is in danger is freedom, not the climate.”

Ah well, how strange one person's fear mongering about international conspiracies sounds just like another's.

It's easy. All you have to do is insert into the above whichever vast international conspiracy you dislike at the moment, including but not limited to lefties, socialists, communists, right wing fruitcakes, capitalism and Gina Rinehart.

All the same, it's quaint, even startling to see the Catholics, led by fearless Cardinal Pell, all aquiver at the international global conspiracy involving the Greens, when we all know that the Catholic Church is involved in a vast international conspiracy (thanks Dan Brown), and it's even more amusing when you see Miranda the Devine jumping up and down about it in Greens turning up the heat on freedoms.

After all, we all know that the likes of Miranda the Devine, Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, the anonymous editorialist at The Australian, and Joe Hildebrand are involved in a vast international conspiracy known as News Corp, determined to sneer at us, the humans, and take away our freedoms.

Oh wait, Joe's not involved in that conspiracy, he's involved in the vast international conspiracy to snatch away our sense of humour.

Whatever, surely it's the shoddiest, laziest kind of argument to resort to - that 'fear of the other' routine that has justified endless wars and human misery - and especially in a matter like climate science, which can be discussed in more rational ways (though come to think of it, in the United States you can still get in to arguments over Darwin and creationist logic at the drop of a hat, and by golly, the hats are dropping everywhere in that country as crazy rules the day).

Now if the Devine had been blathering on about Greenpeace thinking it a jolly good idea to destroy a scientific experiment, she might have had a case (Greenpeace destroy genetically modified wheat experiment).

Greenpeace showed its at one with ludditism, and is this the logical consequence of all the blather perpetrated by the likes of the Devine about scientists being involved in a giant international conspiracy? Who knows, but we recommend it to you as a conspiracy theory.

Or she might have had a point if she'd been blathering about the way the gaggle of conservatives ruling this country still can't unite to allow an R rating for video games - this time the New South Wales Attorney-General decided to abstain from the proposal for god knows what godforsaken reason, when it was always South Australia that was the fly in the ointment (Governments agree on R18+ games rating).

The greatest irony of course in the matter of the Devine scribbling about taking away rights is that at any other time or day in the week, the Devine is always banging some moral drum, censorially scribbling about the way bicyclists take away the freedoms of motorists (never mind that lycra-clad lout Tony Abbott), or how the intertubes must be censored, stapled and mutilated, because no one's thinking about the children ...

There's always a nasal shrillness to the Devine's scribbles, what with her snide snarkey reference to tree huggers and bearded public servants (why she has a set on elderly women, who knows) and recipients of public largesse, all designed to provoke, or to dog whistle to lick spittle fellow travellers, but it turns out this hysteria, this bitterness, is all the fault of others.

Jumping all over the place, like a jumping jack full of too much gunpowder, she even manages to drag in the live cattle trade, and the impact of a television show:

That is a very sobering thought. It is what stops people shopping, and it is what makes the debate bitter.

The more government turns a deaf ear to the people, the louder the people shout.

And then, what is the reaction of an undemocratic government but to find ways to muzzle dissent?

I swear to the absent lord, the Devine is the reason I stopped shopping for News Corp products. Can you count the concepts she mangles with her shouting, including the notion that a democratically elected is undemocratic. You get more sense from a tea pot or a tea bag ...

Meanwhile, if you want an even more perfect example of cliched, muddled, stereotyped thinking, you need look no further than Brendan O'Neill in Bush bashers manufacture Norway's 9/11 and play the politics of fear.

Most of the sensible commentary I've seen on the Norwegian slaughter has made the comparison to the Oklahoma bombing in the United States, which saw Timothy McVeigh kill 168 people and injure many more - and not 9/11.

There are many ideological similarities between McVeigh and Breivik, as well the use of a fertiliser bomb, though Breivik upped the stakes in terms of cold-blooded, one on one, murder.

Where does O'Neill go with all this? Well the header's a good starting point, Instead of Breivik manufacturing a mass slaughter, somehow it's the Bush bashers that have done it ...

Yep, hey nonny no and off we go, into the standard O'Neill turf of bashing those of a left-leaning persuasion, liberal fear-mongers, the well-educated, erudite sections of society in Europe and Australia (oh how terrible it is to be educated, let alone erudite enough to use erudite words like erudite), and of course the chattering classes (and never mind that O'Neill is a prime example of a chatterer who never knows when to shut the fuck up, enough already, we see you chattering away day in, day out), and worst of all, the praising of broadsheet papers, while hapless working class tabloids are denigrated by the hoity toity.

This liberal aping of the Bush approach to terror is very revealing. It suggests that much of the chattering-class critique of the Right's politics of fear was not driven by political principle, but rather by alternative prejudices, by a belief that the Right was demonising and censuring the wrong people.

It shouldn't have declared war on a foreign civilisation, but rather on the inhabitants of our own civilisations, those ill-educated, badly bred, non-broadsheet reading masses, who apparently are just one blog posting away from committing mass murder.

Actually, this constant carry on by O'Neill about the chattering classes was very revealing to me, because I suddenly understood that if I met him in the public bar at Joe Maguires pub in Tamworth, likely enough, rather than entering into a rational argument, I'd feel inclined to give him a punch in the snout.

I guess it's the lumpenproletariat roots, or the Greer masculinist in me.

In the end that's where aberrant perversity gets you. Just one blog posting away from a punch up.

If you can find one scintilla of sense in O'Neill's piece, feel free to explain it to me. As opposed to his enduring contrarianism, and desire to muddy the waters with easy targets - known on these pages as Marlon Bradno The Wild One 'what are you rebelling against, what have you got' syndrome.

Slipshod, shoddy, knee jerk arguments involving terms like 'chattering classes' and 'international conspiracies' are just so much white noise, designed to blot out useful or meaningful sounds.

In O'Neill's case, it's a desperate attempt to wriggle away from the reality that Breivik fancied himself a Christian right wing extremist, and somehow lump the chattering classes with the methodology of the George Bush years in matters such as Iraq. In the Devine's case, it's to use conspiracies against humanity as shorthand for a state of mind in relation to hordes of greenies who should be hung high from lampposts.

In both cases, such simple-minded perversity, such a relentless desire to provoke, helps explain that famous quote by Herman Goering: When I hear the words chattering classes and conspiracy, that's when I reach for my Glock.

Oh okay, That's When I Reach for My Revolver comes from a play and is actually a song, but hey this is loon pond, and disinformation and routine stupidity is all part of a day's frolic

(Below: Leunig on why you should attend a chattering class today. Click to enlarge).