BY BEN PENSANT

Last week the alt-right pulled off their most brazen trick yet, in an act of theft so cheeky it makes the 1958 Israeli land grab look like that episode of Home and Away when Todd pinched Jim’s sandwiches. Because when lefty comic and former mental patient Joe Brand cracked that hilarious gag on Radio 5 about throwing battery acid at politicians, Tory Twitter once again displayed its stunning lack of originality by accusing her of ‘incitement’, demanding she is fired, and reporting her to the police.

Who do they think they are? Us?

Having long ago lost the battle of ideas, it seems the Right have decided the best way to gain the moral high ground is to simply copy the Left’s best moves. So while progressives reacted to Brandgate in the principled manner you’d expect, defending Joe’s right to free speech – despite the fact when Cunt Dickula was on trial a significant portion of the Left either said nothing or screamed for him to be jailed – right-wingers showed their true blue colours, adopting a lazy policy of ‘if you can’t beat them, be them’. Then screaming for Brand to be jailed.

They even had the nerve to justify this by stealing the left-wing battle cry of ‘they did it first!’, that reliable go-to utilised by every decent liberal who’s ever DESTROYED a racist by arguing that ISIS would never have raped children or thrown gays off tower blocks if the evil West hadn’t invaded Iraq, bombed Afghanistan, and drawn cocks on their pencil cases.

They also took the progressive approach to racism – that the best way to tackle it is not to eradicate it but to make sure everyone experiences it – and appropriated it to justify their own authoritarianism. “It’s time the left had a taste of their own medicine!” whined one. “The more left-wing comedians hunted down the better!” snarled another. “It serves her right for getting Thatcher’s daughter sacked from The One Show” squealed thousands, deploying the tried and tested left-wing tactic of stating straight-up lies as facts because they know fine well there’s zero chance their ideologically-warped followers will spend two minutes researching what actually happened.

And on they went, aping the contemporary left and demonstrating their commitment to free speech by demanding less of it. I can see them now, cackling as they turn our ideology against us, exposing theirs as nothing but a sham by insisting the same hate crime laws they’ve spent years decrying are enforced against a 61-year-old woman who said a naughty sentence on the wireless. Indeed if you swap Brand for Rod Lidl, replace the ‘acid’ gag with a rape joke, and pretend that the average outraged milk monitor calling for her head has blue hair and a face like a smacked arse rather than high blood pressure and cheeks of purest Gammon, they’re indistinguishable from your common-or-garden left-wing SJW.

Needless to say, the mob got their wish and Brand was ‘assessed’ by the police, much to the annoyance of envious leftists who haven’t achieved such a feat in weeks. This in turn led to much celebration on right-wing Twitter, with champagne being uncorked by the very same people who would be whining about ‘threats to liberty’ and misquoting HG Orwell if Brand was a Tory.

Who do they think they are? Novaru Media?

You only have to look at the right-wing lunatics calling for Joe Brand to be locked up to see a readymade fleet of left-wing lunatics-in-waiting. Like their liberal counterparts, their ideology isn’t important: what they really believe in is having something to be self-righteous about. Whatever group they hang their piousness on is incidental, because much like us they’re authoritarians at heart, with little time for ethics or values, which can be abandoned or adopted on a whim depending on which group has the coolest costumes. This week’s Union Jack-clad Tommy Robertson clone is last week’s Kool-Aid Corbynite in a keffiyeh. The ideology is irrelevant: the thrill comes with belonging to a group who hate another group.

With both sides as convinced of their own superiority as they are oblivious to their mutual failings, we can sit back and await the glorious day the UK is purged of all the cowards too scared to pick a side, allowing Left and Right to face off like two ancient behemoths, pounding each other into submission by spreading lies, instigating pile-ons, and sending each other death threats. Altogether now…

Let them fight!