I’m not entirely sure whether Stuart Campbell is morphing into David Koresh or Erich Ludendorff. Yesterday, he was using doomsday cult language about how we must all “pray for fire” to come and cleanse the world – which I take to mean that he wants the SNP to lose the election so he can have his revenge against Nicola Sturgeon, even if that means there is a unionist majority for the next five years, thus killing any hope of independence in the near-term. Today he’s nursing a deranged Ludendorff-style ‘stab in the back’ theory by publishing a long list of people who he’s supported in the past and have supposedly joined a “lynch-mob” against him (I’m one of them, needless to say). Well, it cuts both ways, doesn’t it? Scot Goes Pop is actually several years older than Wings Over Scotland, and I remember being quite supportive of Stuart in the very early days and sending traffic his way – I certainly wouldn’t have foreseen at that point that he’d be emailing me out of the blue to call me a “c***” or getting his solicitor to send me legal threats in the dead of night as an intimidatory tactic.
Back The Backstabbers
As for his point that he’s backed my fundraisers in the past – yes, he has, and that did make a significant difference on occasions, although he’s exaggerating the extent of that. I would imagine perhaps 5-10% of the funds I’ve raised over the years can be attributed to Wings’ support, and I was very grateful for that, and I said so at the time. But the idea that nobody can do it without him doesn’t stack up, as can be seen from the fact that I’ve successfully run fundraisers since I was officially designated a “c***”, as have so many others.
I must admit there’s one thing that really does anger me about Stuart’s post, and that’s the way he’s continuing to pursue a vendetta against iScot magazine for something that doesn’t really have anything to do with iScot magazine. As a freelancer, I’ve written a monthly column for iScot since 2017, and I choose my own topics – Ken, the editor, has never told me what I can and can’t write about, and other columnists are given exactly the same freedom. Around a year ago I wrote a piece that did not personally attack Stuart, but did express scepticism about the wisdom of setting up a Wings party. Because that bruised his ego, Stuart whipped his fans up into a hate campaign against iScot for the terrible crime of not censoring me, and as a result a small number of people cancelled their subscriptions. Stuart is, I think, familiar with the words “chilling effect”, and that’s what he’s trying to achieve with these bully-boy tactics. He wants people to self-censor (or be censored) on the basis that they know the penalty they’ll incur if they don’t.
I gather that since Stuart published his post, Paul Kavanagh has received several hundred pounds in donations from people showing solidarity in the face of an unwarranted attack – not quite the effect that was intended. I can’t afford to miss such a golden promotional opportunity, so if you want to #BackTheBackstabbers, don’t forget that Scot Goes Pop is currently running its own fundraiser HERE.
But above all else, you might want to consider taking out a subscription to iScot. Believe me, you won’t regret it – it’s a beautiful publication, and it’s a real treat when it arrives in the post each month. A quality pro-independence magazine is a vital asset for the movement, and it deserves our support.
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