book boycotts beliefs expose her hypocrisy

  • Post last modified:June 18, 2024
  • Reading time:14 mins read


Liberal shill and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has thrown her toys out the pram with the most privileged take imaginable. It was over book festival boycotts against climate-wrecking and genocidal investments.

Predictably, Hyde was incensed at the supposed “politicisation” of literary art and laid into the protesters fighting it. Or translation: she couldn’t give a toss about the Israel massacring people in Gaza, or people dying on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Because god forbid these get in the way of her little literary self-promoting event.

In a six-minute rant of epic cognitive dissonance proportions, Hyde showed all that’s wrong with the Western liberal media class.

Marina Hyde harping on about Baillie Gifford

On 17 June, Marina Hyde and Richard Osman’s media and TV podcast The Rest is Entertainment turned its attention to book festival boycotts.

Specifically, the pair opined on investment management company Baillie Gifford pulling out of or getting banned from major literary festivals. As the Canary has previously reported, this has largely occurred in response to protests against the company’s controversial investments.

In this particular instance, Hyde lambasted one specific group: Fossil Free Books. The group comprises literary workers who are calling for their industry to divest from fossil fuels and businesses propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As its website explains:

Baillie Gifford currently has up to £5bn invested in the fossil fuel industry,[2] including the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)[3] and Petrobras.[4]

CNOOC is a shareholder in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which is already displacing people from their homes in Uganda and, if it goes ahead, will be the world’s largest heated crude oil pipeline.[5] Petrobras is one of the top ten companies for projected fossil fuel development and exploration this decade.[6] These investments are funding destruction and harm in very real terms.

We’ve just renewed our call for Baillie Gifford to divest from the fossil fuel industry and from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide. Read our updated open letter, signed by 800 members (and counting) of the literary community.

However, Hyde took umbrage with Fossil Free Books’ aims, arguing that the festivals shouldn’t be “politicised”.

The Canary won’t regale you with the nitty-gritty details of her soapbox tirade. The crucial point is, Hyde harped on about the wonderful philanphropic sponsorships of Baillie Gifford, and lambasted the boycotts. If you’re so inclined, you can watch her shit the bed here:

Largely, it was a media masterclass in rank hypocrisy. Thankfully, the good people of X have graciously well and truly ratioed her for it.

Hyde on her landed gentry high horse

Marina Hyde also branded the cultural boycotts a “contraction of the mind”. We hear you Marina, Fossil Free Books equipping themselves with the tools and information to fight the oppressors is evidently an exercise in shrinking the cerebrum.

A poster on X postulated that perhaps its those big Oxford bods that are festering in mindless mediocrity. What, like Hyde herself perhaps, who read English at Christchurch College?

Of course, her high-horse shit is also rich from someone preaching from the landed gentry with an enormous media platform:

Lest we forget, Hyde – or Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams – is the literal daughter of a baronet:

What’s more, she shamelessy peddled the position that “not all art is political”, so why punish the spineless book festivals taking blood money?

Except of course, Hyde quite literally makes a living out of just such snivelling liberal media takes herself:

And, for Hyde, it’s blatantly about high-tailing it on the profiteering gravy train more than anything else too:

Did we mention Hyde is a frequent-flier of the literary festival circuit? In May, she was a speaker at the Stratford Literary Festival. And you guessed it, Baillie Gifford is its sponsor. We’ll just leave that there…

Mind-bending athletics

Naturally, that might explain her doing mind-bending athletics to point the finger of blame at – *checks notes* – the protesters:

In short, between ditching the book festival scene and divesting from fossil fuels and genocide, Baillie Gifford chose the former. Because ultimately, capitalists will always sacrifice their environmental and social goals for profit. It’s literally their MO. Nothing political about that. But of course it’s the boycotters fault that book festivals are short on funding.

In other words, she has it quite backwards:

In fact, as some on X highlighted, investment companies sponsoring cultural events is precisely this ‘politicisation’ she so despises:

According to Marina Hyde, what’s not to love about laundering the image of climate crisis and genocide-funding corporations?

Planet-wreckers or polite little literary festival wreckers

Of course, that’s the rub. For the media establishment, it’s all about protecting the status quo:

Because boo-hoo, your middle class book soiree is cancelled. Meanwhile, Hyde couldn’t even masquerade as someone who cared about the climate crisis or Gaza:

Nevermind that Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s cultural institutions and sites, including over 140 historic monuments. Or that the climate crisis is decimating the natural world.

It’s almost as if Marina Hyde isn’t actually interested in protecting art at all. Instead, reactionary punching down is the bread and butter of Western liberal chancers like Lady Dudley-Williams. Compare and contrast:

Marina Hyde: hypocrisy on high

Some on X exposed her as the hypocritical opportunist she really is. Notably, on the one hand Marina Hyde has spoken out against sports-washing for prolific human rights violator Saudi Arabia. Yet, when it comes to fossil fuels and Israeli genocide, art-washing is golden:

Hyde brazenly flirts within the politically permissible – that is, the media has manufactured the conditions for her flaccid criticism of these boycotts. Largely, it has done this by dehumanising Palestinians and colonised Black and brown communities in the Global South. By contrast, as one astute X user suggested, she’d likely be champing at the bit to stick it to Russia:

Yet, if Hyde’s rattled – she’s right to be. Because, with drivel like this, it’s only a matter of time before readers tire of her liberal lickspittle. Ultimately, Hyde’s selective outrage is not surprising. She predicates her privilege on massaging the image of criminal capitalists tyrannising people and the planet for profit. What is surprising, is that anyone still listens to her shite.

If you weren’t already folks, now would be a good time to boycott the Guardian and its corporate capitalist-abetting band of two-faced stenographers.

Feature image via The Rest is Entertainment – X





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