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The extraordinary abusive responses to a satirical piece which poked fun at a new Welsh independence party backed by a right wing pensioner, have been shocking after we pointed out he had posted a picture of a paramilitary leader holding a gun on his blog.
Some might believe it says more about the prickliness of the extreme nationalist community in Wales than it does about The Eye.
We have been called online, “bastards”, and “fucking tossers”.
A James Marshall Henton, who uses an icon of the Welsh flag, said we were “ridiculous”.
Our satirical writer Edwin Phillips, the author of the offending item, has endured a barrage of abuse, and the insults have included “pathetic” as well as a “shit head”.
The Editor of The Eye, Phil Parry, who published it, has also suffered offensive accusations, including “why do you publish such rubbish?” and “you are a complete twat”.
The astonishing outbursts followed publication by us, of a satirical Press Release to the mainstream media from new Welsh independence party Ein Gwlad (Our Country).
In it we highlighted the controversial background of a key supporter of the new party, Royston Jones, who writes a contentious right wing blog under the pseudonym ‘Jac o’ the North’.
His blog has included highly inflammatory statements, including attacks on the rights of the disabled with the words: “Am I alone in thinking there’s an element of a Victorian freak show in the Paralympics?”.
For this Mr Jones was awarded the ‘Full of Shit Award’ by the ‘Republic’ website.
He has promoted a petition on his blog calling for social housing in Wales only to be given to Welsh people.
Mr Jones has attacked our Editor by claiming he belongs to another political group.
He said: “He’s (Mr Parry) a mouthpiece for the Labour Party (many of The Eye articles have been about the misdeeds of the Labour Welsh Government and its leader in Wales, First Minister Carwyn Jones) and often ‘trails’ stories for Llais y Sais (we never write ‘trails’ for other organisations)“.
On ‘Jac o’ the North’ he celebrates his past links with the 1960s paramilitary organisation Free Wales Army (FWA).
He has published a picture on his blog of its leader Cayo Evans pointing a gun at the camera as others look on laughing, and praises Mr Evans on ‘Jac o’ the North’ as a “friend” as well as a “comrade”.
For comments like these Mr Jones and his followers have been accused of being “stupid” and “knuckle-draggers”.
One said: “I feel like taking a bath after I read his (Mr Jones’) stuff”.
The launch of Ein Gwlad has come almost 10 months after it was first advertised by Mr Jones on his blog, and this too we have poked fun at which has also been the subject of a torrent of abuse online.
He wrote on ‘Jac o’ the North’ on November 19: “The meeting yesterday went very, very well. I was delighted with the turnout and with the enthusiasm shown…perhaps the one disappointment – given the interest he’s shown in the new party – was that Phil Parry of The Eye wasn’t there. You could have had a scoop, Parry – ‘Shock! Horror! irritating little git thrown out of meeting”.
When we first drew attention to this apparent delay in a factual piece, we again endured a huge number of insults, some it would appear from the same people.
In a tweet one said it was ‘boring’.
Another said it was “crap”.
It seemed this slowness was partly caused by logistical problems following revelations on The Eye.
An Aberystwyth hotel was earmarked for the first meeting but officials there cancelled the booking saying they had “concerns”.
Yet insulting comments are not only the preserve of supporters of Ein Gwlad, but Mr Jones himself.
More than three years ago he called Mr Parry “a lying bastard” and dubbed him “vermin”.
Abrasive, provocative statements have long been used by backers of Ein Gwlad as preparations were undertaken.
One wrote online: “When the day for the official launch arrives, we’ll be fully kitted and armed”.
The delay too has been referred to, although not in the way you might expect.
A supporter of Ein Gwlad wrote last November: “Jac o’ the North says that following a successful first meeting the details of a new Welsh political party should be revealed in March 2018 once they are ironed out”.
Perhaps the sending of abusive comments by supporters of Ein Gwlad will also be ‘ironed out’.
Or perhaps not.
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I was sorry to see that ‘Ein Gwlad’ has got off the ground after all, and that an inaugural meeting was held in Llanelli. This is not just because it is the town where I grew up, but because as there is so much drug dependence and social disintegration, certain people may be easy targets for the rhetoric of hatred.
Yet we may have been misjudging some if its core members. I have heard now that Jac is not to get a post on its steering committee as the other founders see him as ‘a bit of a dinosaur’. This is heartening news.
They were being quite euphemistic. According to Martyn Shrewsbury, Jac has been retweeting stuff from European neo-Nazi sites, which is quite consistent with his incoherent rants about unspecified ‘Israeli crooks’. He has also stood up for those who wanted to retain the Confederate flag in the Deep South after a massacre at a Black church.
Jac would say he has a right to do this under the alt right interpretation of ‘free speech’. A blogger who was once prepared to take him seriously has had second thoughts after he had a snarling piece accusing us all of cultural Marxism. The blogger had previously found him interesting because she mistook his scattergun conspiracy theories for genuine investigative research. Now the scales were beginning to fall from his eyes.
The police and a lawyer anxiously edit Jac’s blog for libellous content after the event. They do this in all kindness to keep him out of court and out of jail. But he can’t see it. He thinks they are maliciously curbing his god given right to freedom of speech.
But he only believes in freedom of speech for himself. When Pussy Riot bravely exercised freedom of speech to criticise the homicidal dictator, Putin, he thought that two years on a gulag was ‘about right’, and gloated:”Well done Vladimir Vladimirovitch!”
When I explained why I disagreed with him at his own request, he bombarded me with bigoted hate speech and in the very same email, tearfully accused me of being nasty to him, in a tremulous babyish way. I had the impression that he was quivering under a chair, sucking his thumb. At the time, I was foolishly worried that I had sent him over the edge into a psychotic episode. I didn’t realise that this is his usual behaviour. He is that very unattractive combination, a sadist and a cry baby.
Martyn Shrewsbury claims that he wrote an article gloating about the death – possibly by suicide- of a transsexual from Swansea who had been on the political scene. I wonder how he would have reacted, had he eensent an emotional appeal, asking him to desist.
While he deleted a comment I made on his blog, making the ridiculous claim that disabled people are human, he retained and therefore implicitly approved of approved of a contribution from a ‘Big Gee’. Big Gee is relieved about Brexit. This is because he thinks it is part of the New World Order, a Zionist plot to take over the world. He says we ‘need people like Jac o’ the North’ to draw our attention to these things.
In my humble opinion, he is dead wrong. We most certainly do not need people like Jc o’ the North! That Jac has gone down the rabbit hole into anti-Semitic delusions and neo-Nazism is no great surprise. His attacks on disabled people were a warning sign. The famous quote should have started:”First they came for the disabled people”, because they were the first….but not, of course, the last.
I suppose that for Jac, disabled people and transsexuals represent something he doesn’t want to face up to in his own psyche such as perceived weaknesses or ambiguous sexuality. But his angry meltdowns prove he is fragile, and his early pictures look rather epicene. We all have vulnerabilities. He doesn’t have to pretend to be a tough hard man. We know he isn’t.
W have to be thankful that no party wants him as a leader, not even ‘EinGwlad’. Otherwise, we’d really be in trouble.