Katie Hopkins, perhaps the UK’s most outlandish stand-up comedian and shock-jock news commenter whose Instagram following is well over a million people, has landed in the United States to attend the inauguration of President Trump. She posted on her daily ‘Batshit Bonkers Britain’ (BBB) observations about a feminist protest march in DC this week (above) in a way that showcased her take no prisoners, suffer no nonsense commentary about the Gender Ideology true believers.
I couldn’t help but notice the correspondence between Hopkins’ post about a “transgender woman’s” claim to be suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome and Rowling’s December 2019 tweet that recreated her public image and blew up her status as a progressive icon:
A quick search shows that Rowling, as you probably expected, is not a Katie Hopkins fan. In 2017, when Hopkins reported that Britons were “cowed” following the knife attacks on Westminster. Hopkins has called London “Londonistan” and “Stab City” because of the attacks by machete wielding Muslims there. Per The Independent:
After four people, including the assailant, were killed outside Parliament on Wednesday, Ms Hopkins told the US network Britain was “tiptoeing around cultures that join us”.
“People are cowed by one particular religion, which is promoted by the Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, son of the bus driver,” she said.
“People are cowed, people are afraid, and people are not united,” she continued. “Great Britain is more disunited, it is absolutely divided, more than at any time in its past, and we are in fact a nation of ghettos.
“I think liberals here actually think multiculturalism actually means we all die together, and that’s not a view I support.”
Taking to Twitter, the Harry Potter author compared Ms Hopkins’ comments to the defeatist attitude of a former US ambassador’s view that Britain would lose the Second World War.
Rowling has only recently learned of predominantly Pakistani rape gangs that have cursed Britain for decades. This “news” largely generated by Elon Musk tweets, has been part of the public conversation and denied reality since 2004. Hopkins, in contrast, spoke out about it in 2015 and was censored for it.
Is Hopkins a crusading hero without fault? Hardly. In addition to calling out multiculturalists who could not acknowledge the Pakistani “grooming gangs,” she also libeled a Muslim family in 2015 and was found guilty in court. Though loathe to apologize ever for what she says or writes, “No, I don’t apologize. I think there’s a massive amount of snowflakery these days,” she did issue an apology to the Finsbury Park Mosque for incorrectly linking it to a terrorist attack. She had to sell her home to pay the damages in another court case involving an attack on a War Memorial.
Do Rowling and Hopkins have anything in common beyond a penchant for pointed truth telling vis a vis “transgenderism” and Gender Identity feminists? Sure.
The both are graduates of the University of Exeter, for example. Hopkins degree was in Economics, not French. She had her secondary schooling at a “private boarding school” (a convent school, not an Eton-esque UK ‘public school’) rather than a Comprehensive so she was probably a “posh” Exonian who had a quite different experience than Rowling there. Not to mention that Hopkins was a bodybuilder in her 20s and only failed to graduate from Sandhurst because of an epilepsy episode on the day of her graduation.
Perhaps it’s worth noting that both took Oxbridge entrance exams but were not accepted. Exeter was their disappointing “back-up” school and not a net positive experience. [Hopkins lives with her second husband in Exeter with her three children; Rowling only returned once for an honorary degree.]
They both had disastrous first marriages. You know about Rowling in Porto, suddenly a single mum on the run. Does that top Hopkins’ nightmare? From a brilliant profile in The Times, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again:’
[Her] two daughters are the result of a marriage to millionaire businessman Damian McKinney, who dumped her for another woman after the birth of the second, an experience that she equates with having a “truck” driven into her life. “The day after I had Poppy, I got a taxi home from the hospital and Damian had already gone away with his new partner,” she says. “I had a brand new baby, another daughter under the age of one, and I also worked for the company he owned.” They have had email contact since, but otherwise are estranged.
“At the time I could have killed something – myself, him, someone.”
Both women have charities of their own, though Hopkins’ work is much less known even to her legion of followers. “In 2015, she co-founded the charity “LikeMeatDoes” with the aim of supporting food banks and homeless shelters in the UK.”
Both have had mental illness issues and spoken publicly about it to encourage others to get the help they need. Rowling’s issues with depression are well known. “In 2018, Hopkins spent time in a rehabilitation center for mental health issues. She later spoke about the experience and the importance of seeking help for mental well-being.”
Both women seem to enjoy saying, too, that India Willoughby is a man despite his claim to be a “transgender” woman. See Hopkins on Willoughby here and Rowling here and here about that shared punching bag.
They differ dramatically, it hardly needs to be said, about Donald Trump. Hopkins has celebrated Trump since he first ran for President and been invited to this year’s inauguration because of that support (the UK Prime minister was not invited but he or she never has been). Rowling, to my knowledge, has never said a kind word even in begrudging admiration or gratitude about a man she mocked for years as an idiot. Because, y’know, typos:
Rowling once did apologize about tweets she had made defaming Trump for treating a handicapped child badly at a public event. Footage revealed that the President had been extraordinarily attentive to the child. Rowling deleted the tweets in question — and apologized to the family. “‘I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly,’ she explained.” (Hopkins made a similar non-apology to the mother of a “transgender” five year old.)
I think it fair to assume that Rowling, who has a not especially virulent but still intractable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, did not contribute to Trump’s re-election campaign last year though he was the clear choice of anyone wanting to protect women’s only safe spaces and to preserve women’s sport from the “inclusion” of biological men. I think it a fair bet, too, that she was not invited to the inauguration.
I think that, as different as Hopkins and Rowling are with respect to their left and right leanings and as similar as they may seem with respect to transgender issues, what they have as common ground is the courage to say what they think without the usual filters of “What will people think?” or “Will this idea get me in trouble?”
- The truth offends. It’s supposed to. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
- I’m not in the business of being nice, I’m in the business of being right.
- I say what I think, I don’t think what I say.
- I reserve the right to offend, the right to provoke, and the right to stand up for my beliefs.
- Political correctness is strangling our society. We need to speak up and challenge the nonsense.
- People may hate me for speaking the truth, but I don’t care. I will keep speaking it anyway.
- I don’t need validation from others, I validate myself through my actions and achievements.
- I am not here to pander to your delicate sensibilities. I am here to speak the truth.
- My opinions may be controversial, but they are rooted in a desire for a better world.
Those are all Hopkins free speech one-liners but it’s not hard to imagine Rowling over a cocktail saying the same things among friends.
Will Hopkins replace Rowling as America’s favorite Gender Critical feminist? I’m sure the Gender Critical crowd in MAGA nation has already embraced her as one of their own and I have to think, if her Batshit Bonkers Britain’ videos on Instagram and YouTube continue to trend here post inauguration and her return to the UK, large swathes of the US will claim her as an adopted daughter and spokesman.
