It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world*

...when the latest edition of the supposedly liberal-left-leaning London Review of Books includes a major article on the so-called ‘Palestine Papers’ by Alastair Crooke of Conflicts Forum, an organisation that acts as cheerleader for the racist, misogynist, terrorist Hamas; a long lead article by Judith Butler, notorious for describing the same organisation as ‘part of the global left’, and a hagiographic review by the anti-rationalist pro-faithist Terry Eagleton of Eric Hobsbawm’s latest book, which glosses over the latter’s acquiescence in Stalinism.

…while the current edition of Standpoint, published by the right-leaning Social Affairs Unit, features a timely piece by David Cesarani on the part played by anti-Semitism in the downfall of NUS president Aaron Porter, a critique by Douglas Murray of public funding of reactionary Islamist organisatons, and an insightful and sympathetic on-the-ground account of the Egyptian democratic revolution from Shiraz Maher, not to mention reviews by stalwart liberal commenators such as Nick Cohen and Clive James.

Of course, left-wing readers of Standpoint have to put up with a bit of predictable rightwing-ery from the likes of John Bolton and Melanie Phillips, just as there are still occasional nuggets of liberal sanity to be found in the LRB. But it's come to something when your average anti-totalitarian secular-humanist social democrat can find more to agree with, and less to make him/her throw up his/her hands in horror, in the former publication than in the latter.

* copyright Ray Davies