Such fun

The elections are usually made amusing by the independent candidates, the butterflies and mildly bemused who flit around, providing light relief. This time around an entity that wants us to think that it's serious has provided the amusement. I'm being reticent: it's extreme hilarity that they've provided.

So it came to pass that AzzNazz had a couple of public meetings that my son, in the line of duty, attended. He's the Independent's photojournalist, as anyone who has read a newspaper the last four years knows. Amazingly, and hilariously, the terminally-befuddled who seem to make up AzzNazz's core of supporters took it into their heads that Ben was a security service photographer and this bizarre notion immediately fed into the paranoia that is a staple part of the mentality of most of these political extremists.

The result was that two videos were uploaded to YouTube, showing him strolling around, festooned in cameras, taking photos of the meetings. It is clear, of course, that AzzNazz don't really expect anyone but the couple of men and a dog that attend their meetings to be interested in the rants of their leaders, so a journalist actually showing up must have been a real surprise. Instead of thanking him, though, up into the Net went the videos, paranoid captions and all.

As if this example of astounding quasi-lunacy wasn't enough, a thread was started on x.com.mt by someone who uses the nick "malsey", denouncing the Government for deploying spies. I well remember "malsey" for his extreme right-wing, if sometimes barely coherent, raving on vivamalta.org and he is none other than Mr Malcolm Seychell, an official and candidate, of AzzNazz. He can't hide behind the nick, because someone outed him on the thread itself.

The thread is made up, in generally equal portions, of paranoid delusionals, more reasonable types telling the delusionals that they're probably (probably!!?!?) talking through the back of their necks and others taking the mickey out of the delusionals. As time went on, it was generally accepted that the delusionals were, well, deluded, though there were still some of them pondering on the possibility that they were right anyway.

What a shower this lot are: not content with preaching thinly diguised extreme intolerance, they had to go and confirm to the real world (where the rest of us live) a) that they are utterly incompetent and b) that they attract delusionals, some of whom, worryingly, have a clearly violent streak.

And if you don't believe me, check out the thread on x.com.mt, where even as late as Saturday afternoon, when the story of this total idiocy on the part of these AzzNazz sympathisers had been exposed in the Independent, there were still some fools trying to justify their stupidity. Not to mention other assorted extremists and crypto-racists showing themselves in their true colours, if black can properly be called a colour. By the time I'd almost finished writing this, they had started calling each other names, which really augurs well for this band of brothers.

And they went on and on - with someone calling herself "letty" (she used to be "etoile noire") spouting line after line of invective, quite apart from making it clear that she thinks she's important enough to be the subject of surveillance.

Therein lies the rub, of course. These are generally inconsequential twerps who are just gagging for attention. They're getting a bit now, of course, but it's only serving to show them up for what they are, adherents to a party that, at the end of the day, is as inconsequential as they are.