At a 60 per cent discount, Amazon recommends that I purchase Shaman of the Radical Right: The Life and Mind of Jonathan Bowden, by Edward Dutton. Bowden was at school with Damian Thompson, who is annoyed at the very existence of an old university associate of mine; my Facebook has been down for weeks, despite my having been sent a code to reactivate it, so I cannot congratulate him on having drawn such ire. Completing the circle, I also knew Dutton at university. He once tried to seduce me after Mass, so I know his little secret.
Dutton is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Mankind Quarterly, which he used to edit. Another member is Dr Adel Batterjee of Jeddah, the founder of the Benevolence International Foundation, which was placed under UN sanctions because it was a front for funding al-Qaeda. In 2018, Dutton secured the publication of this masterpiece in Evolutionary Psychological Science. On the Editorial Board of that is Professor Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard. In 2021, a very short time indeed from 2018 in the life of a quarterly journal, Pinker wrote that, "Oliver Kamm's urbanity, erudition and compassion are raised to the power of two in Mending the Mind. He put them to work in crafting this gorgeous and urgent book, and on every page they remind us of his moral that enviable gifts are no protection against the affliction of depression." Kamm, Pinker, Dutton, Batterjee. Batterjee, Dutton, Pinker, Kamm. Truly, an Axis of Evil. And all coming to Durham in a week's time.
Have you bought it?
ReplyDeleteI do not want to give money to him or his publisher.
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