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The Bunker

Daily: PUPPET MASTERS, LOST GOLDEN AGES – The myths that hold Labour back, with Nick Cohen

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6984 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Your opponents are lower than vermin. Politics is a righteous battle of absolute good against absolute evil. A secret cabal controls everything. And only a return to a past Eden can solve our problems. Why do these simplistic myths grip the Left so strongly, and can Labour ever free itself from them? Nick Cohen talks to Chris Clarke, author of The Dark Knight And The Puppet Master, about these fantasies of hidden power and betrayal are not just a Corbynist trait, how they lead Labour zealots to look for traitors not converts, and what the paranoid style on the Left shares with the populist far Right. “The Dark Knight myth stops you understanding other people. The Puppet Master myth stops you understanding power. And the Golden Age myth stops you understanding change.” “Both right- and left-wing populists depend on these myths of golden ages and puppet masters.” “The idea of a glorious socialist past of banners and brass bands that was usurped by evil men in shiny suits is just not true.” “When you talk about never kissing a Tory, you’re writing off huge swathes of the voters you need.” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved

0:05.5

photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.

0:11.8

Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?

0:13.0

I loved going to college.

0:14.0

It's good you can retrain and do something.

0:16.0

Yeah, yeah.

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0:55.3

look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental edition of the Bunker Books Podcast. Today I am delighted to be joined

1:16.7

by Chris Clark, who is the author of a book anyone who is trying to understand what has gone on on the British left

1:25.8

I think ought to read called The Dark Night and the Puppet Master. It's an account

1:31.2

I think the best way to describe it, Chris, of distortions in left-wing thinking and how they work against ever getting a left-wing government of Britain. Would you agree with that? Yes absolutely thanks

1:45.3

for having me on it's the book is I guess it's a polemic criticising left-wing

1:51.5

populism as I call it and specifically criticizing some of the the

1:56.8

myths and narratives which I think prevent truly progressive politics from succeeding and

2:04.8

which often tend to dominate thinking on the left.

2:08.4

Before we go any further, I can imagine some of our listeners wringling their nose and her rump thing at the very notion of left-wing

2:16.8

populism exists because Jeremy Corbyn didn't look like Donald Trump or Victor Orbán. Why would you say what's happened in Britain is

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