Marina Hyde just EXPOSED herself as the liberal chancer she really is on book festival boycotts

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:

Fossil Free Book vs. Baillie Gifford. The boycotting of book festivals. pic.twitter.com/ygbgbE8I3e

— The Rest Is Entertainment (@restisents) June 17, 2024

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?

Marina Hyde and Richard Osman (both Oxbridge cunts btw) are the perfect poster children for the mediocrity that defines British media and culture. https://t.co/GCCAKFbBBe

— Cathy Brennan (@TownTattle) June 17, 2024

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

classic centrist columnist. “I preach about how awful this world is, from my landed gentry and well paid life. but should anyone make a stand to change it, you’re ridiculous bed wetters.” without a terrible world that they can preach about, Hyde et al will have no ivory tower. https://t.co/CbUkz8olBx

— eyeswideshut (@eyeswideshut75) June 17, 2024

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

Marina Hyde’s whole privilege existence is based upon a politics where the few matter more than the many. A Daughter of a baronet doesn’t get to cry “Art for art sake.”

— John Smith (son of Harry Leslie Smith) (@Harryslaststand) June 17, 2024

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:

Oh, bless the white privilege of imagining that not everything is politics. And the irony of Marina Hyde, who literally makes her living using an art form – writing – to be political, putting this forward is…quite something. https://t.co/xOl1x3O5Yo

— Irim Sarwar (@irimtated) June 17, 2024

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

Who thought someone could moan for 6 minutes about being accountable for the power structures they seek to profit from https://t.co/C1zDQUghTt

— Me (@Barnard17) June 18, 2024

Oh, bless the white privilege of imagining that not everything is politics. And the irony of Marina Hyde, who literally makes her living using an art form – writing – to be political, putting this forward is…quite something. https://t.co/xOl1x3O5Yo

— Irim Sarwar (@irimtated) June 17, 2024

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:

Who are “the wreckers” here?

Is it @fossilfreebooks workers who are using their right to free speech and calling for an end to deadly pollution?

Or is it the bosses of @BaillieGifford who have cut funding for festivals rather than cut funding for the wrecking of our future? https://t.co/l8clu4B5ly

— Ansell Eade (@AnsellEade) June 18, 2024

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:

Nonsense. It is Baillie Gifford who seek to politicise art by making it compatible with the aims (and advertising) of an asset manager, and in turn their profit from Israeli apartheid. The call for divestment is the call to depoliticise art. You and Marina have it upside-down.

— Julian Sayarer (@JulianSayarer) June 17, 2024

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

In any event, why does Marina Hyde think investment bankers are funding arts festivals? Cos they just really love books? Corporate social responsibility programmes are just when companies are really nice? It’s thought-numbing reactionary dreck.

— C (@Obseyxx) June 17, 2024

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:

It never fails to catch me off guard how, when self-confessed liberals are confronted with the need for actual radical action to create a fairer world, they are so quick to reel back in horror and support the status quo. https://t.co/82eRyCG2nG

— David Veevers (@DavidVeevers1) June 18, 2024

Who are “the wreckers” here?

Is it @fossilfreebooks workers who are using their right to free speech and calling for an end to deadly pollution?

Or is it the bosses of @BaillieGifford who have cut funding for festivals rather than cut funding for the wrecking of our future? https://t.co/l8clu4B5ly

— Ansell Eade (@AnsellEade) June 18, 2024

What Marina Hyde and Jonny Geller mean here by ‘a contraction of the human experience’ is really just the loss of insulation, among the middle classes, from the effects of politics. https://t.co/PzsPZtVufj

— Jon Stone (@shotscarecrow) June 17, 2024

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:

I love how Gaza like climate change has become a derisive reference for western liberals when they want to rail against what they believe are the eccentric concerns that are destroying their way of life. https://t.co/tAERDzlcZ1

— Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social (@im_PULSE) June 17, 2024

This is just genocide apologism. Very well dressed up, sure, but the point is clear: “Please let me get on with my life and stop asking me to discuss what is going on in Gaza”.

— No Context Zands (@RobZands) June 17, 2024

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:

In 2019 Jeremy Corbyn wanted to protect EVERY public library for ALL UK children.

In 2024 Marina Hyde wants to protect £223bn Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of Cheltenham Festival’s one-off Children’s outreach programme.

PICK YOUR FIGHTER NON-THINKING PEASANTS!!!! https://t.co/Jb2233Yyk6

— Love Ssega (@LoveSsega) June 17, 2024

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:

Given how damning @MarinaHyde has been about Saudi Arabian sportswashing, surely not hard to understand the problem with artswashing? https://t.co/MLsCe9FLFa

If the Saudi Public Investment Fund was sponsoring these festivals, there would be no debate about art being political! https://t.co/6IcTtd3ZWZ

— Huw Jordan (@huwjordan) June 17, 2024

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:

I also seriously doubt that Hyde would take this attitude to demands relating to cultural events and the Ukraine-Russia war. Hard not to read this from Lady Dudley-Williams at fizzing anger at the impertinence of the grotty little shouty people.

— Asterios (@AsteriosTweets) June 17, 2024

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