Boris Johnson’s new cabinet gives us our latest example of left-right political travel. From circles around the Revolutionary Communist Party to the inner circle of the Boris Johnson’s new libertarian Cabinet:

one of the most radical appointments is Munira Mirza, who heads Johnson’s policy unit after serving as his deputy mayor for arts for eight years. Her appointment to such a senior job in charge of all policy was unexpected given her lack of experience in Westminster politics.

Her background is unusual: she has links to a circle of former Revolutionary Communist Party supporters who wrote for Living Marxism, then morphed into libertarian provocateurs involved with Spiked online magazine.

Over the years, she has been a prominent critic of multiculturalism as a government policy, opposing Theresa May’s racial disparities audit for public services by claiming the “scene was being set for another bout of political self-flagellation regarding the subject of race in Britain”. She is also co-founder of the Manifesto Club, a pressure group challenging the “erosion of public freedoms”.

Rowena Mason “Boris Johnson ushers in radical new era of special advisers” (06.08.2019)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/05/boris-johnson-ushers-in-radical-new-era-of-special-advisers?fbclid=IwAR0sqchnApAtyZrJDRk3rzR5ZKfkjZ9CIEgPvomdK6CZ5kAKQQcrG3p08No

An earlier article by Shuja Haider gives some wider context and paints portraits of fellow-left-right-travellers. The article particularly focuses on the journey of Nick Land: how he started as a “cyberpunk absent-minded professor” at Warwick University and went on to become a “self-professed neoreactionary”. The work of Deleuze and Guatarri seemingly being part of that trajectory:

Deleuze and Guattari set out to describe “the most characteristic and the most important tendency of capitalism,” which they called “deterritorialization.” While in traditional societies the “material flow” of production was regulated by the division of the earth, capitalism set it loose. Yet if capitalism liberated production temporarily, it also tried to counteract this tendency by reinstituting forms of “territoriality,” bringing “all its vast powers of repression to bear” on the very forces that drove its unparalleled flows. The path to emancipation, they argued, was not to withdraw from capitalism, but to “accelerate the process.” Lyotard took this tendency in the opposite direction, in what he would come to proudly call his “evil book.” Workers, he said, desire their own oppression. Far from seeking emancipation, they “enjoy swallowing the shit of capital.”

Shuja Haider, “The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction” (March 28, 2017)
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/03/28/the-darkness-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-artificial-intelligence-and-neoreaction/

Last word + Links:
These are notes towards a longer piece.
More notes here: https://frictionfilms.net/2019/06/03/left-right-political-slipperiness-in-green-and-brexit-lands/
Frank Furedi link to be checked out: http://frankfuredi.com/
Another relevant article: “The RCP’s long march from anti-imperialist outsiders to the doors of Downing Street “, BobFromBrockley’s blog https://brockley.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-rcps-long-march-from-anti.html?fbclid=IwAR091TJvHf__dSXxFr36OCXXuYWslpzYLwF0w_i6U5JUxNfRiRG2huPT8Ys