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Sunday 18 February 2018

Who’s Behind The Red Roar?

Appearing on the scene only last year, a blog called The Red Roar has caught the attention of Zelo Street regulars, and mostly for the wrong reasons. A Twitter feed that follows more than twice the number of its followers - just under 2,200 as I type - but manages to generate significant numbers of likes and RTs from its feed is one sign that someone out there is giving it a little assistance. There is more in the same vein.
The target of The Red Roar is the Labour Party, or perhaps one should stress the party as it is right now: anything and everything that can be spun against the current leadership is thrown into the mix. Kicking anything Momentum is de rigueur. Any whiff of alleged anti-Semitism that can be dredged up will be dredged up. In other words, The Red Roar serves up the view of Labour that the right-leaning Press Establishment wants to see.

It has been put to me that The Red Roar is the product of those “disaffected Blairites” of recent legend, but I’m not so sure. The language is that used by the Tories and their press pals: the defeat of the Haringey Development Vehicle is referred to in terms that would be used by the Murdoch press, with anything deemed undesirable termed “Hard Left”, the term imported from Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

All the targets beloved of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are present and correct: there are attacks on Haringey Councillors, Emily Thornberry, Emma Dent Coad (the old “sharing a platform” smear once more), Chris Williamson, Unite the union, Jon Lansman, John McDonnell, The Canary, The Skwawkbox, Len McCluskey, and of course Owen Jones.
A further parallel with The Great Guido is the occasional morsel of information about goings-on around Parliament. And then we come to an amateurish attempt to curry favour with the Murdoch press, “Canny Brooks outfoxes Guardian hacks at West End showing”.

This post tells “Politicos and hacks alike have been queuing up to see Ink, the play that chronicles the establishment of the Sun and the impact it had on the industry and the country … They include Rebekah Brooks, the former ‘Current [sic] Bun’ editor who now runs its parent company News UK. She attended the play at the Duke of York theatre, where she went unrecognised because her distinctive flame-red hair was pinned up”.

How The Red Roar came by this nugget is not told. But readers do get “She will have been delighted by the play’s relatively sympathetic portrayal of her boss and mentor Rupert Murdoch … But the same cannot be said of the group of senior Guardian contributors who saw the play the same night. They were even more aghast when they discovered Brooks had been present in the audience but they had failed to spot her”.

Tee hee hee! Rebekah wonderful, invented Guardian people total and utter poo holes! But seriously, what is this, other than a desperate attempt to suck up to the Murdoch mafiosi? The Red Roar may not have any connection with The Great Guido or any other Tory misinformation purveyor, but it treads the same boards. The occasional swipe at Tories to maintain cover isn’t making it. It doesn’t work for the Fawkes rabble, either.

So who is behind The Red Roar? We’ll find out - sooner or later.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh it'll be the Russkis again.

Ask The Friends at Vauxhall Cross or the Boys at Langley. Or even that well-known, philanthropic, clued-up organisation at the FBI. Keystone Kops the lot of them.

Putin doesn't have to "interfere" in anything. All he has to do is leave the useless fuckers to make the usual screw up. Sooner or later they trip over their own shoe laces.

Anonymous said...

Sadly they’ve got Domain Privacy enabled on the URL name - so a Whois query reveals nothing about who registered the site initially.

Anonymous said...

The fact that its written in pure tabloidesque is the main giveaway. "Hacks and politicos" "flame red hair" "Current Bun" nobody outside the bizarre interwoven world of tabloid journalism talks like this. All it needs is a "tragic tot" and a "secret romp" and we'll have the full set.

Phil BC said...

I'm convinced it's a Guido operation. Their logo seems quite Guido-esque.

keefer said...

Agree with Phil BC. The logo's colour palette and lines are similar style to Fawkes.

Jaxster said...

Guido slips in a plug for red roar into this article. Very much in favour of it strange that.

https://order-order.com/2018/03/16/labourlists-to-the-left/

Rob Shepherd said...

Here's a little help in determining ownership. With apologies for this being a bit techy, the underlying IP addresses for theredroar.com and order-order.com are both in the same IP address block - that is to say, they are very close neighbours and owned by the same webhosting company.

theredroar.com's IP address is 209.15.20.202; order-order.com's IP address is 209.15.20.228 . This message block belongs to the hosting company Peer 1, meaning both sites are hosted by the same business-focused and not inexpensive webhosting and data company. And if that isn't coincidence enough, it also appears both theredroar.com and order-order.com use the same email provider, the Australian company Fastmail.

What are the chances that two entirely independent yet similar-looking political blogs, that use very similar tabloid writing, would choose not only the same webhosting company but also the same email provider?

Case pretty much closed, I think, m'lud. And perhaps a bit of cold water to pour on the idea that The Red Roar is just some amateur thing run by "a handful of volunteers". Under the bonnet it's a pretty professional operation.

Anonymous said...

The whole lot will be brought down.

Long time coming, but it will be worth it.


Anonymous said...

Funny - I just noticed a Guido link to a RR story today (16/1/20) and wondered who was behind the site. It's obviously devoted to attacking the Corbyn/Momentum left. Today's story is that Rebecca L-B doesn't like the idea of late-term abortion (who does?) therefore she wants to make it illegal (I don't like the idea of colonoscopy, but I don't want to ban it), conflating a personal view with a policy position. Designed to put LP members off her. "EXCLUSIVE: Long-Bailey backs stricter abortion laws"

I think if it IS Guido, he's probably a hired gun here. From a political perspective, if Momentum are unelectable, as a Tory he should welcome an RLB leadership.

But Guido knows on which side his bread is buttered. When the aide to the MP Robert Halfon discussed "taking down" DFID minister Alan Duncan ("scandal?" was one suggestion) with an agent from the Israeli Embassy, Shai Masot*, a story which should have outraged any Tory, Guido's response - a single "nothing to see here" story.

https://order-order.com/2017/01/11/al-jazeera-eggs-israeli-conspiracy-sting/

There are some people for whom a UK government benevolently neutral vis a vis Israel/Palestine would be very unwelcome. Hence all the slurs against JC.

* Masot - "Boris is an idiot"
Maria Strizzolo - "But he's sound on Israel"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098970/Ambassador-issues-grovelling-apology-Israel-plot-Tory-minister-Diplomat-caught-video-conspiring-smear-UK-minister-end-contract-Israeli-embassy.html