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10 Best Books on International Politics

When we read books about politics, many of us may be more inclined to read about what happens in the Anglosphere. It’s natural really- it’s our language, closer to our culture and what we see about on the news.

It is, however, always refreshing to expand our horizons. Here are ten of my favourite books, handpicked, on non-Western international politics and history.

Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa- Paul Kenyon

You may have already read my glowing review of this book and if you haven’t, get to it. This book discusses several contemporary and older dictators of Africa, from the slain Gaddafi of Libya to the man who has been in charge of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. It starts with colonialism, slithers through independence and continues afterwards. Some dictators were murdered, others remained for years or were finally booted out of office.

    It’s a great study of colonialism, the promise of freedom and how these countries suffered under the men who offered them so much. These nations should be rich due to oil and other resources, yet only a few manage to make money from said resources. We learn about dictators who are worth billions, contrasting with the people who live in abject poverty.

    Best Feature: Covers several countries, allowing the reader a greater scope.

    Queens of the Kingdom: The Women of Saudi Arabia- Nicola Sutcliff

    Everyone has their own preconceived ideas of Saudi Arabia, so prepare to have your views challenged. Sutcliff interviews a large number of women who live in the mystical kingdom- wealthy housewives, educated entrepreneurs and illiterate village dwellers among them. They give their views on everything from marriage to education.

    Some are thrilled with having their family keep them close and husbands who are their guardians. Others have experienced insurmountable horror with beatings and underage marriage. What links them all is a love for their culture and country, no matter what they think of their society.

    Best Feature: The women really tell you what they think.

    El Narco- Ioan Grillo

    Many readers will have watched Netflix’s hit show Narcos, which shows the work of the DEA in Colombia and the life of Pablo Escobar. Grillo’s book is the real deal, chronicling the Mexican drug cartels that have gripped the beautiful Central American nature.

    There’s no glamourising money, cars and women here. It’s all gritty, the truth behind the devastation. Kidnappings, murders and tortures are aplenty. Friends turn on friends. Journalists are targeted. Innocent people are killed in the crossfire.

    Best Feature: Grillo lays out the strategies of successive Mexican and American governments regarding the War on Drugs.

    Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women- Christina Lamb

    I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of documentaries about depressing issues, but this book is easily the most shocking and heartbreaking thing I’ve ever read.

    From the refugee camps in Syria to the survivors of Rwanda, we learn about the use of rape as a weapon of war and what it does to women. These women have been raped and tortured. Babies and elderly women aren’t exempt from brutality. Governments ignore it. Rapists get away with it. Families and communities shun victims.

    It’s extremely brutal and doesn’t pull punches when it describes what happens to these women, but there are moments of hope that shine through.

    Best Feature: It shows how war rape has been used for centuries and in every corner of the world

    Shake Hands With the Devil- Romeo Dallaire

    Up to one million people were killed in the space of a few months in three months in 1994 Rwanda. This book is written by Romeo Dallaire, leader of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). Dallaire had a front row seat to the slaughter, taking us from his early life in terror-ridden Quebec to his life after Rwanda.

    It makes one pretty angry- Dallaire desperately tried to get the UN to take notice of what was about to happen, but was ignored. People on the ground did nothing. Villagers slaughtered the people they lived with for years. Dallaire suffered from PTSD and attempted to take his life several times afterwards. It’s essential reading.

    Best Feature: It really portrays the absolute hell on earth that is the Rwandan Genocide

    First They Killed My Father- Loung Ung

    I’m pretty much a hard arse when it comes to movies, but the film of this book had me crying.

    Loung Ung was one of seven siblings in a prosperous, middle-class Phnom Penh. Her life turned upside down upon the arrival of the Khmer Rouge and rise of Pol Pot. Ung then lived through the unimaginable- the death of most of her family, living through forced labour and being a child soldier.

    It was a book that made me often wonder if I was actually reading a true story, for it felt like I was reading a fictional dystopia.

    Best Feature: Gives an inside view of one of the world’s most horrendous contemporary crimes

    Persepolis- Marjane Satrapi

    Unusual in that it’s a graphic novel, Persepolis is the true story of the Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi. Born into an intellectual, liberal Iranian family, Marjane Satrapi was young when the revolution happened. From the first time she was forced into a hijab, Satrapi hated the new regime. Her rebellious nature led her family to send her abroad out of fear she’d be executed.

    Satrapi contrasts her life in the West and in Iran. She talks about her family, what romance is like in the conservative regime and how she sneakily listened to American rock music.

    Best Feature: It’s a story of a fish out of water in a very real way

    Girl With a Gun- Diana Nammi and Karen Attwood

    Diana Nammi was only a teenager when she became part of the Peshmerga, part of Iranian Kurdistan. Nammi fought on the frontlines and in the process became one of Iran’s most wanted people. She saw death and survived it herself.

    Nammi now resides in the U.K., founded a charity for women and has been instrumental in the fight against child marriage. She had to move her for her own safety, but her love for her people is clear.

    Best Feature: Gives a great insight into Kurdish culture

    Without You, There is No Us- Suki Kim

    North Korea is the world’s most secretive country and in this book, Suki Kim infiltrated it. The journalist spent some time as a teacher for the elite’s sons. Her notes and documents had to be kept secret and her life was restrictive. Suki discusses how she became close to her initially unwilling students, where the two cultures learned about one another and how the prospect of watching Harry Potter thrilled them.

    It’s sweet but sad- these kids are just like us, yet live in a regime which doesn’t allow their full potential. On top of that, it’s a very personal look at North Korea instead of the outside analysis that is usually the only thing available.

    Best Feature: We get to know these teenage boys and their dreams.

    Nuclear Folly- Serhii Plokhy

    I’m cheating slightly here as a chunk of the book is set and about the US, but it gives equal treatment to Cuba and the Soviet Union. The year is 1962 and when recon planes catch sight of missile structures on Cuba, all hell breaks loose. We learn about the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro’s desperate attempts to fight the US, Khrushchev’s role and how the Kennedy administration reacted.

    It’s pretty shocking to read how damn close the world came to nuclear war and how Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense under Kennedy) only learned that the missiles were offensive and not just defensive thirty years later. Each of the three leaders had their own fate- Kennedy was assassinated a year later, Khrushchev was eventually pushed out for his role and Castro outlived them both by decades.

    Best Feature: Very intricate in details


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    Is Gender Obsolete?

    In recent years, gender has become increasingly divorced from biological sex, spawning an ever-increasing number of self-defined gender identities. At the same time, sex and gender tend to often be conflated in everyday discourse. What is actually revealed at a gender reveal party, for example, is not the baby’s gender but his or her birth sex. Rather than a useful category, gender has thus become an incoherent concept.

    This raises the question whether we actually need gender to describe reality. While it makes sense to draw a conceptual distinction between biological sex and its sociocultural manifestations (the “hardware” and “software” of sexual dimorphism in humans), there is merit to the argument that, ultimately, there is no such thing as gender, only sex and stereotypes: if we remove biology from the equation, all we are left with are stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.

    Transgenderism provides a case in point. While many transgender people undergo surgery and hormonal treatment in order to transition from male to female or vice versa (notwithstanding that sex is genetically determined), they almost invariably adopt the trappings stereotypically associated with their desired sex to outwardly reflect their gender identity, thus conforming to the norms and expectations of society.

    This process does not require an elaborate theory of gender, especially not one steeped in ideology. In fact, the transgender phenomenon makes a great deal more sense without the esoteric claims and contested theories of those who portray the most basic categories within our species as mere sociocultural constructions. To quote the influential gender theorist Judith Butler, “perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender.”

    In many progressive circles today, it is almost considered a moral duty to deny that the categories of “man” and “woman” refer to biological realities and map onto the different reproductive roles of males and females. This is reflected in newspeak such as “birthing parent” (instead of mother), “people with uteruses” (because not everyone who has a uterus identifies as a woman), or “female assigned at birth.” Such terminology serves to conceal rather than describe reality. Underlying it is an ideology which—based on a conception of gender that is itself ideological—insists on the primacy of gender identity over biological sex.

    Today, there is immense pressure to comply with this ideology. We are, for example, expected to accept that “trans women are women” (based on the circular definition that a woman is a person who identifies as a woman). Gender critical feminists are routinely smeared as “TERFs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), and lesbians who express a sexual preference for biological women over men who merely identify as women are frequently accused of transphobia. Women-only spaces are likewise expected to admit biological males who self-identify as women.

    Another sign of the pervasiveness of this ideology is that the term “cisgender,” which describes people whose gender identity matches their biological sex, is widely used and accepted today, while the word “normal” is viewed as problematic. Underlying this trend is a conflation of two distinct concepts: normality and normativity. Being “cis” (and heterosexual) is normal; the vast majority of people are. This does not imply, however, that deviation from that norm is, or should be, suppressed.

    Yet, gender scholars and activists routinely describe contemporary Western culture as “cis-heteronormative.” A 2021 article entitled “Preventing Violence toward Sexual and Cultural Diversity: The Role of a Queering Sex Education,” published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, offers the following definition:

    Cis-heteronormativity refers to social norms and discourses on the construction of gender identity and sexual orientation that highlight the natural character of sexual binarism (man/woman) as being congruent with gender binarism (masculine/feminine, respectively) … and leading to gender identities that are binary, opposed, hierarchical and complementary and therefore necessarily heterosexual.

    This hypothesis can, of course, easily be tested. All we need to do is observe other cultures and other sexually reproducing species. What we find is that both heterosexuality and sexual binarism are the norm and occur naturally.

    Gender ideologues all but ignore this reality. For many, to assert that the differences between men and women have natural and biological foundations constitutes a form of bigotry known as “biologism.” There is a difference, however, between justifying social norms and hierarchies in terms of biological determinism and acknowledging that we are biological creatures, shaped by the same evolutionary processes as the rest of the natural world. Gender has been used as a means to obscure this important distinction, further complicating the relationship between the sexes, while demanding that ideological assumptions be accepted as fact.

    Gender ideology is commonly associated with the political left, but there is a right-wing version too. Relying heavily on cultural norms and stereotypes, gender traditionalism is not the opposite but the mirror image of the view—held by many progressives for whom gender is a spectrum rather than a binary—that people who are not stereotypically male or female fall outside of these categories. Many of those concerned about the “femininization” of Western men reliably react with outrage whenever a male individual visibly challenges traditional norms of masculinity, for instance when singer Harry Styles posed in a dress for Vogue Magazine. But, if maleness is indeed innate and immutable, such outrage makes no sense.

    This is not to dispute that social conditioning plays a role in the formation of male and female identities. To conclude, however, that these identities can be divorced from human biology is logically unsound. Yet, this is precisely the conclusion gender theorists and activists tend to draw. What varies is the extent to which they disassociate gender from biological sex: the greater the disassociation, the more nebulous their concept of gender. The fact that “sex” and “gender”are used almost interchangeably in everyday discourse, blurring the semantic distinction between the two terms, adds to the confusion.

    So, is gender obsolete? While it makes sense to differentiate between biological sex and its sociocultural manifestations, gender, as a concept, has become so semantically elastic and at the same time so fraught with ideology as to be useless. It seems its main purpose today is as a means of spreading unsubstantiated social theories. The best way to resist this trend is by demanding evidence, pointing out flawed logic, and refusing to speak the language of gender ideology.


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    Words not Deeds

    I think it’s safe to assume, second only to the United States, Britain has the largest ‘free speech network’ in the Anglosphere. Comprised of any array of pressure groups, organisations, commentators, broadcasters, forums, publications, and self-appointed champions and activists.

    Despite this well-funded and high-profile network of talking-heads, very few have spoken out in defence of Sam Melia, Yorkshire organiser for Patriotic Alternative, an organisation described by The Times as “Britain’s largest far-right white supremacist movement”. Gee, I wonder why?

    Of course, there have been a few condemnations of this ruling, although they have been written on the assumption that Melia’s points are just mindless bigotry, and that such vulgarity would be better combatted in an open forum. It’s assumed that even the general thrust of Melia’s angst isn’t up for serious discussion, or vaguely reflected by large sections of the public. In other words, it is (somehow) not legitimately political, even if one believes it to be wrong, for whatever reason.

    For context, last month, Leeds Crown Court returned a unanimous verdict after less than a day of deliberating after an eight-day trial. Sentencing has been adjourned whilst a pre-sentence report is being prepared and Melia been granted bail until he appears in court again on March 1st.

    In April 2021, police uncovered a catalogue of downloadable stickers which were being distributed a group known as the Hundred Handers, an anonymous group of anti-immigration activists led by Melia, responsible for series of so-called “stickering incidents” between 2019 and 2021.

    The court concluded that the stickers were “intended to stir up racial hatred” and “intentionally encouraging or assisting racially aggravated criminal damage”, further declaring that the stickering had “caused fear or alarm” – a delightfully vague and flexible justification.

    Moreover, the argument that knowingly supplying material with the mere potentiality of being used in one of a multitude of ways constitutes “criminal damage” isn’t just contrived, it necessarily extends beyond fascist activism, applying to every political cause under the sun.

    So, what did these stickers say? What made them so egregious that it was worth the court’s time? Well, one of them read “Labour loves Muslim rape gangs” – a slightly misleading statement, given that the Tories are a soft-touch too.

    Don’t just take my word for it. Following the acid attack by Abdul Ezedi, a known sex offender who was granted asylum on his third attempt after claiming he had converted to Christianity, Gillian Keegan, Education secretary and Conservative MP said:

    “This is not really about asylum, this is about the attack on a mother and her children, which was horrific.”

    Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Labour MP for Streatham, the constituency where the attack took place, echoed Keegan’s comments on Ezedi’s asylum status and the all-encompassing ‘importance’ of microaggressions stating:

    “His [Ezedi] asylum status is not really the issue of concern.”

    Indeed, the attack was horrific, but it’s abundantly clear that asylum is absolutely part of the equation, much more so than gender. Out of the 710 acid attacks in Britain last year, 339 of the victims were women whilst 317 were men. Erstwhile, had the Home Office not permitted Ezedi to enter the country, and for quite intuitive and grounded reasons, the attack simply would not have occurred.

    Unlike Melia, an unremarkable member of the public based in Leeds, one of the UK’s largest cities, who was found and arrested near-instantaneously, Ezedi, a man with a half-melted face in London, one of the most surveilled city on the planet, has evaded arrest for an entire week.

    Britain’s police are so befuddled at the whereabouts of that they’ve taken to handing out cash prizes to violent criminals and grovelling on live TV, asking Ezedi to turn himself over.

    Much has been said about the police’s waning capability and/or interest in dealing with serious crime, notwithstanding the many coppers who I’m sure are frustrated by the incompetence of their managers, but very little has been said about the force’s bizarre theory of mind.

    How is it possible that an institution which has “modernised” so much over recent decades, jampacking its personnel with psychiatrists, criminologists, therapists, and charity workers, simply not understand how criminals think? Either they’re bad at their job or they’re theories are bunk. I’m inclined to think it’s both, skewing towards the latter.

    Another of Melia’s stickers read “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” – “we” referring to White British people, “2066” referring to the date calculated from research conducted by demographer David Coleman, then-Professor at Oxford University, into Britain’s changing demographics back in 2013.

    Again, what exactly is the cause for concern here? Merely 10 years ago, Coleman’s findings were getting write-ups and openly discussed in ‘respectable’ centre-left outlets, such as Prospect Magazine, The Guardian, and The Independent. Throw in the BBC if you feel so inclined.

    This information, conducted by a highly respected demographer, out-dated though it might be, especially given the recent spike in immigration and the ensuing population growth, hasn’t been treated as a fringe, esoteric, and/or conspiratorial for the vast majority of the time it has been public.

    Yes, freedom of speech should apply to all; that includes alleged and actual fascists, Nazis, communists, socialists, anarchists, supremacists of all creeds and colours, and even Piers Morgan. If our political class were to ever come around to this, they’d understand the efforts of the state are best directed at dealing with people like Ezedi, rather than people like Melia.

    After all, if it has become the official view of the state that one can only express approval for such findings – that or nothing at all – then this absolutely should concern civil libertarians, whatever their political colours, regardless of what The Times says about the ‘offending’ individual and/or organisation in question.

    Other stickers distributed by Melia and the Hundred Handers said: “Mass immigration is white genocide” and “Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back”.

    This is where things get a little more controversial, although it stands to reason that freedom of speech isn’t valued (r feared) for its capacity to regurgitate uncontroversial points of view. When people marched through the middle of London, opposing what they perceived as a genocide by the Israelis against the Palestinians, were there protests en-masse? Were there legal repercussions for chanting ethnonationalist slogans of a foreign nation, such as From the River to the Sea? Not really, quite the opposite.

    Simply put, it cannot be right that one group seeking collective preservation is given the freedom to do so, with near absolute freedom in their methods, turning out in their hundreds of thousands, whilst another group seeking collective preservation, with very few members in their movement and no electoral representation or visible popular support, is denied basic freedom.

    This is not to say the protests weren’t problematic in other ways. Indeed, the problem with said protests was less to do with their opposition to the Israeli government and more due to the nature of allegiance revealed by the bulk of attendees, especially the organisers (Hiz but-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist organisation, view their constituency in global, post-national terms) and the overlapping demographic implications for the broader body politic (it stands to reason that using one nation as a conduit for another nation’s interests is far from democratic).

    My view is elucidated rather well by Ronald Reagan, then-President of the Screen Actors Guild, testifying as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947:

    “As a citizen, I would hesitate to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology. However, if it is proven that an organisation is an agent of a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party – and I think the Government is capable of proving that – then that is another matter.”

    Understandably, there are qualms as to whether either camp’s claim to genocide is technically accurate, although both would claim ongoing circumstances function in much the same way. This can be discussed in a frank and open matter without the throwing people in the slammer.

    As for the deportation stickers, once one accepts the likes of Melia on their own aforementioned terms – or, at the very least, is aware of the social implications of demographic change (i.e. social unrest) – one realises that a serious point is trying to be made, even if with an obvious hint of provocation.

    Right now, the police are suggesting Ezedi is being helped by those in his community. More than the unsubtitled announcement of this revelation, sidelining the otherwise English-speaking population from their own domestic affairs, this shows a severe, multi-generational, and absolute lack of assimilation. You can moralise about the efficacy of deportations all you want, but we needn’t pretend that growing foreign contingencies inside our borders hasn’t created major problems.

    In addition to naughty stickers, police also found a poster of Adolf Hitler on his wall and a book by Oswald Mosley at Melia’s home. For some reason, this is important. I’ve got books by and about Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Joseph Stalin, Chantal Mouffe, Karl Marx, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben and I’m not a radical leftist, or any kind of leftist for that matter.

    Of course, given the stickers and his choice of paraphernalia, we can safely assume Melia is pretty right-wing.  Then again, why should that matter? It is more than possible to have extreme views without being a threat to civilised society, just as one can hold moderate views to such a fanatic and unwavering extent that deviations from the illustrious ‘centre’.

    In the case of the latter, the persecution of such people is seen as a necessary precaution to protect their modus operandi – typically, “liberal values” or “liberal democracy” – much in the same way many ‘extremists’ view persecution of dissidents as a necessary precaution for protecting their own modus operandi: the revolution, the state, the proletariat, the volk, and so on.

    Indeed, views in and of themselves are basically harmless, although much of our political system evidently disagrees. In a similar vein to Keegan and Ribeiro-Addy, Conservative MP and Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee (yes, really) Caroline Noakes’ reaction to the Ezedi case centred around microaggressions – that is, words and mannerism whichcould hypothetically be interpreted as or lead to actions which are harmful:

    “I think there’s a really important message here which is, with respect, the media are not interested in microaggressions, they want to hear about the most egregious offences.

    “The stark reality is every day women will face misogyny and microaggressions. If you’re a woman of colour it will be worse, and we have to be better at understanding the culture that makes men think ‘that’s ok’. It’s not OK and you can see a pattern of behaviours that lead to really horrific crimes.”

    The inverse and counter-intuitive approach our politicians and judicial system take towards words and actions is so confounding it form the basis of a derivative dystopia novel. Alas, it is the quite logical conclusion of our liberal-democratic political system, in which swathes of policy are depoliticised by filtering them the language of rights.

    In Metapolitics, Badiou describes the role of political philosophy in reducing politics from a process of transformation defined by enmity to a passive exchange (a battle, some might say) of ideas:

    “The central operation of political philosophy thus conceived is… first and foremost, to restore politics, not to the subjective reality of organized and militant processes… but to the exercise of ‘free judgement in a public space where, ultimately, only opinions count.”

    This is certainly true, although it is quite clear that politics has deteriorated past this point, for the articulation of political philosophy itself is being drastically restricted. One is increasingly unpermitted to say or believe things happen or should happen for any other reason the one established by those in positions of officialdom.

    Not only has the uniparty agreed that nothing can really be done about people like Ezedi coming into the country, absconding the idea something can be done to prevent people of his ilk from entering the country, they decreed the cause as if it were not up for debate: Andrew Tate saying women can’t drive is the problem, not the Human Right Act (1998).

    Of course, Ezedi’s ability to game the asylum system via by the Human Rights Act (1998) was contingent on his claim of religious conversion, and the prospect of persecution should he return to Afghanistan, despite the fact he intended to return anyway.

    Contrary to initial claims, Ezedi’s baptism was conducted by a Baptist priest. Sure, progressive Anglican priests have played an enabling role in other cases of a similar nature, such as the Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing, and comprise an annoying large section of the CofE’s internal structure, but let’s try and get our Protestant denominations right before we point the finger. The willingness of many on the right to attack the CofE, just to swipe at the easily and rightfully detested Welby, was generally quite pathetic, especially considering ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office.

    In a time of liberal-left ideological hegemony, swelling with liberal universalism and race communism, you must ask yourself: do you have the populist gusto to berate the small handful of octogenarians who continue to read the Book of Common Prayer? Do you have the dissident bravery to attack what little semblance remains of Britain’s established Christian identity?

    Indeed, basically every other religious organisation in Britain is ‘complicit’ in charitable efforts designed to help refuges and converts into the country, real or not, with the bulk of anti-deportation charities and activists having no religious motivation and affiliation at all. The Board of Deputies of Jews has continuously opposed efforts to make asylum laws more strict, whilst the Muslim Council of Britain advertises relief and aid advice no different to that contained in the CofE document making the rounds.

    To any fair-minded opponent of liberal immigration policy, this should constitute an outrage. Alas, as Britain’s left-right becomes a proxy for the mutual animosity between Muslims and Jews, revitalised by the Israel-Palestine conflict, treating the established church as a conniving force is sure to become a new feature of our national common ground.

    According to an eruditely conservative Anglican friend, the clergy doesn’t spend much time catechising with little-to-no effort being invested into understanding the catechumen before their baptism. In a similar fashion to the Home Office’s treatment of asylum applications, everything is done at a recklessly fast pace, with some newcomers being confirmed into the Church a couple of months after their supposed conversion.

    Compared with more conservative parishes, in which the clergy spend well-over half-a-year getting to know their converts, it’s clear that one of the major problems facing the Church, moreso than accusations of whimsy naivete or malicious treason, and accompanying the already well-documented tendency of progressive Christians to reduce their theology to a grand metaphor, is the lack of zeal amongst much of its clergy. An unfashionable but necessary disposition, the pedantic conservatism of the Church has been sidelined in the pursuit of goal completely antithetical to the spirit of the Church itself: reflecting the society it wishes to elevate.

    Unlike the aforementioned individuals and organisations in this article, who are guilty of prioritising words over deeds, the current Church’s fixation on deeds very much detracts from the words on which such endeavours are meant to be considered, shaped, and executed.

    This hegemonic emphasis in the Church on being a do-gooder, on doing charity for the sake of charity, showing little-to-no consideration for textual analysis or well-rounded practical considerations, lest one wishes their faith to be pigeonholed as mere eccentricity or stuffy reactionaryism, runs deep into the “Quakerification” of the Church of England and post-war Britain generally. The extent to which Quakers are so charity-oriented is reflected by their small handful of members, the most “pious” of whom are on the fence as to whether they even believe in the essentials of Christianity or not.

    This is an unsurprising development when one considers the Quaker roots of the organisations integral to the maintenance of the status quo, forces to which the progressive elements of the Church have allied themselves: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Lloyd’s Foundation, The Barclay Foundation, and so on. The next time some midwit reformer wonk tells you religion doesn’t matter in the nitty-gritty of policy – least of all, in a post-religious Britain – hit them with “Blairism is secularised Quakerism” and watch them self-combust.

    An avowed atheist, Clement Attlee, central architect of Britain’s post-war consensus, said of Christianity:

    “I’m one of those people who are incapable of religious feeling… Believe in the ethics of Christianity. Can’t believe in the mumbo jumbo.

    Eventually, Attlee’s sentimentally Christian, but ultimately Atheistic, path to a “New Jerusalem” would be supplanted by Thatcher’s scrupulous and austere Methodism. Contrary to characterisations made by detractors and supporters, insisting Margaret’s Method was rooted in relishing the vulgarity and excess of yuppies, it was explicitly founded on the individualistic Pauline doctrine of the New Testament.

    It would take Blair’s Quaker-ishness to bring the role of religion back into public life. John MacMurray, Tony Blair’s favourite philosopher (as described by Blair himself) became a Quaker near the end of his life, the culmination of his quasi-personalist philosophy, developed on the cusp of (although absolutely not opposed to) the development of modern liberalism. Thereafter, religion’s only permissible utility was its ability to make people feel less lonely in an atomised world, steering clear of anything beyond a shallow, practically non-existent, ultimately contemptuous consideration for scripture, symbol, or sacrament.

    Should it be any surprise that the Blairite state allows pseudo-Christians into our country so easily?

    Sure, a more critical approach to matters of faith would greatly benefit us in keeping foreign-born sex-offenders out of the country, but this runs against the current of a political obsession with words, not deeds. Nevertheless, if our system placed greater emphasis on Ezedi’s past deeds when processing his claim to asylum, and a little less on words slapped on a few dozen stickers, we’d be simultaneously safer and freer as a result.


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    Another Organization? Splendid!

    Popular Conservatism (PopCon) has just launched and it’s about as popular as booting a crippled dog into oncoming traffic. Spearheaded by Liz Truss, the shortest serving Prime Minister in British political history and the most unpopular Conservative politician in the country, the organization is begging to be ridiculed by the media and the public.

    However, whilst Truss is the face of the group, the organization is directed by Mark Littlewood, former director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a pro-immigration think-tank. Like Truss, Littlewood is a former Liberal Democrat, serving as director for Liberal Vision, a group of economic liberals within the party. Unlike Truss, he’s a former of the Pro-Euro Conservative Party (PECP), a minor offshoot of the Tories which campaigned for Britain to adopt the Euro and oust then-leader William Hague in favour of arch-Europhile Kenneth Clarke. After the dissolution of the PECP, Littlewood became an advisor to the Conservative Party under the leadership of David Cameron.

    Earlier in life, Littlewood worked for the European Movement, an all-party group campaigning for British membership of a federalised Europe; Liberty, the human rights advocacy group which spearheaded campaigns to implement and maintain the Human Rights Act; and NO2ID, a group which campaigns against the introduction of ID cards.

    So, what does Popular Conservatism stand for? Apparently, its aims are: “inform and educate candidates and MPs about the need to reform Britain’s bureaucratic structures” and “advance these policies across the country, whilst demonstrating their popularity.”

    According to Littlewood, PopCon is about: “Giving ordinary people, taxpayers and voters, their freedom back. That was what Brexit was supposed to be about: taking back control.”

    Taking Back Control? Why would Littlewood care about Taking Back Control? Littlewood changed his view on EU integration at the time of the referendum, writing in a personal statement:

    “Twenty years ago, I was a passionate and enthusiastic supporter of European integration. I was President of the UK branch of the Young European Federalists in 1996 and my first job was working for the European Movement. I was enthusiastic about the UK joining the single currency and I even supported the Pro-Euro Conservative Party, a breakaway from the Conservatives on the issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

    “Since then, and bit by bit, my thinking has evolved and the European Union, in my judgment, has increasingly become a force for heavy handed and petty regulation rather than for free market liberalism. The EU is no longer the deregulatory single-market it once aspired to be. Instead, it has become a monolithic and increasingly interventionist bureaucratic super-state. After considerable thought – and with a heavy heart – I have reached the conclusion that Britain would be best advised to leave the EU and I will be voting accordingly on 23rd June.

    “I believe there are risks and uncertainties involved in going for Brexit, but these are – on balance -risks worth taking. There is no guarantee that Britain will become a more outward-looking, globally free trading, open and free society outside of the EU. But there is, in my view, a pretty good chance of it.

    In summary, Littlewood’s euroscepticism (and by extension, the bent of PopCon’s brand of politics) is rooted in the belief the EU (much like the UK, presuambly) has become too protectionist, too nationalist, too conservative and too isolationist, hindering Britain’s ability to push ahead with economic and cultural globalisation. In the government’s own words:

    “Global Britain is about reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage.”

    This aspiration, typically referred to as “Global Britain”, is uncommon amongst Brexiteers generally, but quite popular with a narrow clique of largely London-centric free-marketeers, comprised largely of Tory staffers, centre-right policy wonks, disgruntled civil servants, conservative commentators, and Thatcherite MPs. GBNews’ Tom Harwood, former Chair of Students for Britain, summarises the disposition of this demographic briefly but well: “open globalism, not narrow regionalism”. That’s right, we’re the real cosmopolitan internationalists, the left are the real provincialists!

    As many will remember, “Global Britain” was announced as the official post-Brexit endeavour of the Conservative governments of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, albeit the first and second were over-encumbered by the withdrawal process and Covid to implement many of their desired reforms – besides, of course, importing an unprecedented number of immigrants. Consequently, whilst Boris was intended as the figurehead for Global Britain, the role ultimately fell to Liz “Boris 2.0” Truss.

    For clarity, there is nothing particularly radical about “Global Britain”. It has always been the Menshevik position within the Brexit coalition. Throughout the referendum it was occasionally used as a polemical tactic (i.e. Let’s Go WTO), but nothing more. Contrasted to the Bolshevik aspiration of turning Britain into an island fortress, derided by Britpoppers as “Little England”, the Menshevik aspiration is to turn Britain into a mass financial district, in which vampiric multinationals terrorise Middle England from above and an imported underclass of cheap labour, violent criminals, and ethnic displacement terrorises it from below.

    Of course, it’s colossally terrible but it’s not too dissimilar to the relatively liberal arrangement we had before Brexit and certainly no different to the arrangement we have now. Alas, this doesn’t stop PopCons from complaining the system is stacked against efforts at economic liberalisation. Yes, the planning system is needlessly complicated, but there’s no need for hyperbole; weaning people off microplastics and ultra-processed food isn’t Soviet.

    Essentially, both Global Britain and PopCon are tendencies born out of the ideas contained in Britannia Unchained, a book which seeks to answer the question on everyone’s mind: “How can we get white British people to work more for less and demographically replace them in the process?”. Making immigration uncontroversial by making it productive, saying NO to identity politics, saying NO to the Nanny State, Getting On Your Bike, STEM, India Superpower 2020, Peace… through Commerce. Real Tory Boy stuff.

    This leads into another problem with PopCon. It isn’t just its initial unpopularity, it has no idea how to be popular, despite the fact the answers have been in plain sight for years. Boris Johnson’s popularity peaked when he promised to end immigration and shouted “Fuck Business” to a Belgian diplomat. Theresa May, a completely unknown and irrelevant politician, reached unprecedented levels of popularity after the referendum when she was attacking “citizens of nowhere” to such an extent she was being compared to Adolf Hitler. David Cameron reached the height of his popularity when he was promising to reduce immigration and hold a referendum on the EU, threatening to leave the ECHR, and declaring state multiculturalism to be a failure.

    Compare this with Liz Truss. In her historically brief tenure, she tried to pursue free movement and trade with India and borrow billions to fund tax cuts for the rich. Suella Braverman, for all her many faults, understood during her leadership bid that leaving the ECHR and stopping illegal immigration are popular with the public, especially with voters in the Red Wall – policies which PopCon lightly sprinkled into their otherwise bland, derivative, and highly ironic attempt at wrapping Orange Book Liberalism in a flag.

    Flip-flopping seemed to be an integral theme of the PopCon event. As established, Littlewood and Truss are former Lib Dems, but Anderson is former Labour, Farage was pivoting back and forth between endorsement and dismissal throughout the whole thing, and Holly Valance gave an unrelentingly generic interview stating life is about being left-wing, making money, and then moving rightwards.

    This obsession with switching is bizarre, but it’s the recurring tendency one should expect from an organization which simultaneously fights for the so-called “rules-based international order” and complains about an arbitrary global humanitarian class undermining national democracy; fronted by a former Prime Minister and her group of orbiters who’ve done nothing in their 14 years of government to address any of the problems their organization hopes to “inform and educate” us about.

    PopCon doesn’t seem to understand that some of us have been aware of the Great Replacement, Cultural Marxism and The Blob since secondary school. We don’t need to be told that some people think there are more than two genders or that state-funded charities and quangos are jampacked with people who hate our country; we don’t need to be told liberal-left ideas and values are hegemonic, or that illegal immigrants take advantage of the welfare system. We are children of the revolution, for Christ’s sake!

    All the way down, PopCon is a group for people to scratch their heads at problems they have helped to create, assuming nobody else has identified them before, and offer milquetoast solutions with the galling expectation of jubilant applause.

    It is slightly comical. 2030 will arrive and Liz Truss will be explaining the drawbacks of the sexual revolution and quoting G.K Chesterton. Erstwhile, MechaBlair will be conscripting masses of young White British men to fight Populism in Ukraine and organizing taxpayer-subsidised migrant mega-orgies in The North. Indeed, trying to make political progress with the present batch of Conservative MPs is like trying to scale Mount Everest with Stephen Hawking; it’s really quite demoralising.

    Whilst Donald Trump is saying immigrants “poison the blood” of America, whilst Germany’s AFD is advocating mass remigration, whilst France’s Eric Zemmour is openly discussing demographic displacement, the British right is forced to contend with another attempt to rehabilitate Thatcherism, another attempt to undercut the emergent nationalist, protectionist, and socially conservative elements of the right which have been trying to take root in established positions since the referendum; another perversion of the anti-immigration spirit of Take Back Control (TBC), framed in terms of mere economic and legal technicality, adorning it with another SW1-friendly signifier to go with the rest: TBC as a vote for liberalism, as a call for localist devolution, as a general dislike of politicians, as a mere symptom of economic turbulence, as a nationwide Freudian psychodrama.

    Despite all of this, despite my complete contempt for PopCon, I’m glad it exists. In all sincerity and without a hint of contrarianism. PopCon is bad because it’s Tory-branded Globalism run by Thatcherite Zombies without a hint of self-awareness, creativity, or charisma, not because it’s “another organization” – a complaint I’m absolutely sick of hearing from supposedly disaffected voices.

    At present, Britain doesn’t have a political culture, but it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, some people (mainly our anti-political overlords and pseudo-Anglos within and adjacent to our circles) have espoused the notion that political organization is somehow terribly un-English. However, a brief glance at history tells us that beneath gentle-mannered disposition (some might say caricature) of the native population, political organization, rowdiness, and militancy – even outright violence – have existed for several hundred years in this country, boiling beneath the surface of even standard parliamentary exchanges.

    The snobbish anti-partisanship of those who are disgruntled by the lack of action but see themselves above political organization are an abject cancer. Everyone has remarked that MPs enter Parliament to immediately do something else, whether it’s charity work or presenting a TV show, but few have surmised what this means. It shows that power is contingent on the wider superstructure of society; the Overton Window must be adapted so political objectives can fully actualise themselves and legislated into reality, something the enemies of Britain have done and are currently doing very well.

    As such, we don’t need less organization or less division, we need more. More organization, more division, more militancy, more enmity, more ideology, more partisanship, more coups, more activism, more conflict, more metapolitics of every form and variety. Let the Darwinian selection processes of the political run wild; radicalise democracy against every rendition of liberalism and rejoice as it stampedes over the latter’s mangled corpse. No, PopCon doesn’t deserve to fail… it deserves to be killed.


    Photo Credit.

    Why we need a Hitchens-Navalny strategy for GE 2024

    A few days before the 2010 general election, Peter Hitchens wrote an article in the Daily Mail titled ‘This is the most important article I’ve ever written – and loyal Conservative voters will hate me for it’.

    In it he argued that, despite being counterintuitive, voters must eschew the Tories if there was to be any chance of implementing a genuine, conservative agenda for Britain.

    Much of its analysis of Britain’s woes are completely applicable today. He ends it by writing: ‘Five years’ from now we could throw the liberal elite into the sea, if we tried. But the first stage in that rebellion must be the failure of David Cameron to rescue the wretched anti-British Blair project and wrap it in a blue dress’.

    Fourteen years later, not only is the anti-British Blair project wrapped in a blue dress still ruling the country, but David Cameron is again one of its leading figures, rubbing more shoulders at Davos and advocating military actions more brutal and destabilising than even Blair could dream of.

    In 2019, Brexit allowed the Conservatives to completely refresh their image and successfully brand themselves as a populist national-conservative party. I myself, for the first (and last) time, voted for them in that election. For this I am ashamed.

    What has transpired since is that, what we once identified as Blairism, is in fact part of a wider and even more sinister agenda. If what Hitchens realistically desired was an internal struggle within the Conservatives after a 2010 loss, what we can achieve today is that party’s shattering into a million tiny pieces.

    ‘But Labour will be even worse’, you will undoubtedly hear the Tory Boys cry. If this was convincing and arguable back in 2010, today it is wrong on its face.

    If grassroots supporters and ordinary voters could hear how Tory journalists, politicians and advisors speak amongst themselves, they would be taken aback over how deeply their views are reviled and how deep the liberal rot is.

    It is a party run almost entirely by childless, rootless metropolitans, whose view of conservatism is a Randian wet dream of identikit glass skyscrapers and GDPmaxxing.

    When it comes to social values, foreign policy, education, health and every other significant policy area, there is no difference between them and the people who run Labour.

    In fact, I would go as far to say that Labour is actually run by more ‘normal’ people. So why is it so important to destroy the Tories? Because of what comes after.

    Starmer’s Labour is at this stage a well-oiled machine raring to go. Unlike the Tories, it does not pretend to be something it is not. It is an out-and-proud party of the Davos agenda.

    Its current popularity is based on it not being the party to preside over the last decade and a half of chaos and decline.

    If we are going to have a globalist government, let’s have the exhibitionists instead of those in the closet, as this will help the public correctly identify their enemies.

    Right now, there is no appetite on the left to disrupt Labour from its course, but once they are in power it will not take long for the Corbynista wing to start making movements.

    This could remove from Labour the contingent that actually can make some common cause with the dissident right (Euroscepticism, averseness to dangerous foreign entanglements, distrust of corporate and financial elites, and a belief in the nationalisation of strategic industries come to mind).

    More important is what happens to the Conservatives. Hitchens correctly identifies the Westminster consensus as being ‘only propped up by state funding and dodgy millionaires’.

    The funding is allocated based on the number of seats a party holds, and the donations on its prospects of power. A Tory wipe-out would kill both birds with one stone.

    If the rump of it is allowed to remain as a significantly large party, it is likely to limp on and even capitalise on its new ability to talk the talk from the opposition benches without having to walk at all.

    A vacuum, which we know nature abhors, must be created in its place.

    Current polling shows that support for Reform UK could cost the Tories many seats in favour of Labour, despite Reform not winning any themselves.

    Reform platform is a damn sight better than anything else out there, but Richard Tice’s neocon Tory-lite outfit will not bring about the reform we actually need. It could, however, be the catalyst for it.

    Destroying the Conservative Party once and for all would be a noble and worthwhile aim, and would open the door for major, long-needed shakeup of our politics.

    This is a strong argument that Tice would be well advised to use, but predictably he will say that the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories in 2019 and they failed on Brexit and immigration, so this time they won’t stand aside.

    He will, equally predictably, be countered with the argument that he will still let Labour in without winning seats himself.

    Openly declaring war on the Tories as a necessary first-step in building a viable and genuine conservative political movement is something that is hard to argue against. Such a battle cry could also attract non-Tory voters.

    The only Reform UK politician I have heard express this intent openly is its Co-Deputy Leader, Ben Habib. So it is not an impossibility that they take this line.

    Habib is the real deal, but would need someone with the profile of Farage to meaningfully spread this message.

    If the straightjacket of the two-party system can be broken, a genuine political realignment can take place, making the ‘Red Wall’ shift pale in comparison.

    You might now be wondering where Alexei Navalny comes into all of this.

    We have all heard of ‘tactical voting’, but have you ever heard of ‘smart voting’?

    Umnoye golosovaniye was a website set up by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation that had a single goal: letting people know who to vote for to have the best chance of ousting incumbent United Russia politicians.

    Unlike British tactical voting, this was an integrated, mathematical system that had no limits or any other goals, and would advise you to vote for communist, ultranationalist and liberal candidates alike; whoever had the best chance.

    Many in the ‘non-systemic opposition’ said it would be impossible to vote out the ruling regime in any case, and that engaging with it by participating in elections would only legitimise it. Yet Navalny argued convincingly that shouting from the side lines alone ultimately changes nothing.

    For obvious reasons, success of smart voting was limited in the Russian system, but it is a strategy much better suited to our own system of illusory free elections, which are based on brainwashing and narrative control, as opposed to the more primitive techniques used by the Kremlin.

    There, the process of voting itself has to be manipulated to maintain the status quo, with there being a limit to the amount achieved by propaganda alone.

    Here in the UK, propaganda is the overriding method of keeping out the non-systemic opposition.

    What this means is that our actual electoral system is, compared to the American one at least, largely free from rigging and ballot manipulation.

    This provides opportunity to collapse, or at least fracture, what is an all-encompassing regime by using its own structures against it.

    The Conservative Party is the weak link in the chain – and it can be broken.

    The success of a British smart voting system would depend on how convincingly the argument is made.

    If it is made well enough, we could indeed throw the liberal elite into the sea five years from now.


    Photo Credit.

    On Freedom of Navigation

    Amidst the present difficulties in transmitting knowledge from one generation of educated people to the next, one principle that seems to have been mislaid is freedom of navigation. This has been laid bare by commentary on the recent Anglo-American operations in the Red Sea against the Houthis. Hence, it is worth offering a short explanation of freedom of navigation: what it is, its history prior to its modern codified universalisation and its defences up to the present.

    Before its codification by the United Nations, freedom of navigation was part of customary international law, by its nature quite distinct from how modern international law is established and enforced. It originated in the Dutch Republic’s rule of mare liberum (free seas), coined by influential Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1609, which considered neutral ships and their goods inviolable on the high seas. Naturally, this could benefit trading powers like the Dutch, but came into competition with competing Consolato customs. These were named after the Aragonese Consulate of the Sea, both a body to administer maritime law and a collection of maritime ordinances codified since at least 1494. These rules determined neutral ships could be attacked in times of war to seize enemy goods, but even on enemy ships neutral goods could not be taken. By the seventeenth century, Consolato was often paired with the concept of mare clausum (closed sea), coined in 1635 by English jurist John Selden, which held that areas of the sea could be entirely closed off from foreign shipping. Both principles were supported by the major naval powers of the day, including England, France and Spain.

    As was the case with a number of pivotal concepts in European history, mare liberum was often fought for over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, first by the Dutch alone but later by the nascent American Republic and the Russian Empire as a right of neutral states. The cause of freedom of navigation was greatly assisted during this period by the Dutch victory in the Eighty Years’ War against Spain, as well as the later decline of Spain and Portugal as dominant powers who had attempted to apply mare clausum to the New World’s seas. Another conceptual innovation emerged to resolve some discrepancies between the rival customs in 1702, as Dutch jurist Cornelius van Bynkershoek formulated that maritime dominion corresponded with the distance coastal cannons could effectively protect it; the range of the most advanced cannon at the time was three nautical miles. Beyond the Dutch, naval powers still employed the Consolato principle into the nineteenth century against other countries, especially during major conflicts, but this could be superseded in treaties by freedom of navigation. Ultimately, this became the case for all European powers at the end of the Crimean War in the 1856 Declaration of Paris Respecting Maritime Law, which synthesised the two customs into a rule that enemy goods were covered by a neutral flag whilst neutral goods could not be seized on enemy ships. Arguably, this built upon the Congress of Vienna’s grant of freedom of navigation to key European rivers, which constituted multiple states’ new borders and economic arteries, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The exceptions to the rule outlined by the 1856 declaration were effective blockade and contraband, whereas privateering (in other words, state-sanctioned piracy) was confirmed to be abolished. As Europe proceeded to dominate the world in the nineteenth century, so too did the inviolability of neutral commercial shipping and their freedom to navigate the seas as their juridically innocent business permitted.

    Of course, the growth of freedom of navigation did not result in the disappearance of piracy, nor pirate states. For instance, the United States, Sweden and Sicily fought wars against the Barbary corsairs in the early nineteenth century to ensure the freedom of their merchant ships from ransom and enslavement in the Mediterranean, despite only Sicily possessing an obvious interest in the region. In recent weeks, the Houthis have proven themselves to be another such pirate state through their rather indiscriminate attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. In response, Britain and America (with support from several other countries) have attempted to neutralise this threat to freedom of navigation under Operation Prosperity Guardian. In theory, this should be the least controversial Middle Eastern intervention conducted during this century thus far, since the Houthis are plainly violating the neutrality of benign ships under neutral flags. At the time of writing, there is no hint from the intervening powers of the neoconservative adventurism which defined the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor strong intentions to impose changes on Houthi internal affairs beyond the immediate issue at hand. In practice, the war in Israel has entirely toxified any discourse surrounding events in the Red Sea. Instead of realism, one witnesses what is allegedly another instalment of the clash of civilisations. Whatever the merits of Samuel Huntington’s thesis of contemporary world affairs, such hyperbolic reactions to events in the Red Sea overestimate their significance.

    If America did not exist, it would be in India or China’s interest to assert freedom of navigation in the region due to its foundational importance to the global economy. Readers should bear in mind that the principle has only a tangential relationship to a nation’s trade policy. Although freedom of navigation is a precondition of free trade, it does not determine the extent to which a ship’s goods are impeded from accessing markets at port, only that the international movement of goods can occur without undue harassment. Perhaps a handful of countries at most could be expected to subsist today to a reasonable standard without substantial trade, an interesting notion in itself but beyond the scope of this article. Likewise, most, if not all, nations lack the naval strength to forcibly guarantee the security of their commercial shipping worldwide, given the sheer volume and frequency of post-containerisation international trade. This means freedom of navigation ought not only to be remembered by readers, but as a matter of historical preference and present necessity defended into the future.


    Photo Credit.

    Kino

    When Harvard gets Schooled

    “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.

    Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to “open the gates of hell,” and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence.

    The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years. From systematized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.

    Today, the Palestinian ordeal enters into uncharted territory. The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”

    Authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestinian Solidarity Committee and co-signed by over thirty other student groups at the elite university, this statement has started to cause problems for its signatories.

    Resignations have occurred. Groups have backtracked. Names have been sealed. Why? Because for once in their life, these kids are going to be on the receiving end of the anger that they often direct at others. 

    Responses to the horror in Israel have been varied. Whilst a good majority of people are horrified by the atrocities that have been committed, not everybody has been so sympathetic. Some have outright celebrated what has happened. Others have been more measured in their response, instead doing the ‘both sides’ tango that they are excellent at dancing. 

    Such an example is at play here. The students and societies at Harvard who wrote this letter may not have actually straight up endorsed the atrocities that have occurred, but they did lay the blame squarely at Israel’s feet. 

    The backlash has been sudden and all-encompassing. Academics, fellow students, businesses, politicians and all other types have roundly criticised the groups and students who signed this letter. Those who have been named have distanced themselves from the letter.

    The list of groups and names have been removed from the statement in order to apparently protect them from repercussions. Unfortunately for them, the list remains readily accessible. 

    If these people were so sure of this viewpoint that they signed a statement such as this, it begs the question: why have they decided to step back?

    It’s simple really. They’re terrified of facing the consequences that they demand of others.

    Take for example a woman named Ryna Workman, President of the NYU Law Student Bar Association. Ms. Workman, who had been a summer associate of the prestigious Winston and Strawn law firm, had a job offer rescinded by them. She had written a statement online refusing to condemn the actions of Hamas, all while once again blaming Israel. 

    With such actions costing a student from a top college a job, it’s no wonder that those who signed the Harvard statement are melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West. These students attend the oldest and arguably most elite college in the US, and are primed for their pick of summer internships and jobs in some of the top organisations possible. If their names are attached to controversy, then their necks are on the line.

    Considering Harvard students wish to permeate a culture in which one can easily be shunned for their actions, it’s fair that some might be unsympathetic to their plight. In 2020, students petitioned for any official in the Trump administration to be banned from engaging with the college in any official capacity. Its scores on self-censorship and free speech are abysmal. Students actively keep their opinions to themselves. Harvard is no bastion of freedom.

    These students don’t care if other people suffer for their thoughts, but God forbid they can’t work for some human rights lawyer during the summer holidays. 

    For years, there have been people who have believed that the rules don’t apply to them. They have kept themselves on the right side of the opinion divide. Their voices have been the loudest. They’re the good guys. They’ve never had to worry about their views being scorned. They’ve always been safe. Now, however, they’ve crossed the line that they set down, and they’re reaping the consequences. 

    Considering how many presidents, members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices have attended Harvard, it’s more than likely that these students will be the ones running the country one day. Even if they’re not in the top branches of government, they’ll be the lawyers standing up in court. 

    Harvard is a place that opens doors. They don’t want those doors slammed in their face. It’s just a pity for them they’re the ones usually on the other side of that door. 


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    Cause for Remembrance

    As the poppy-adorned date of Remembrance Sunday moves into view, with ceremonies and processions set to take place on the 12th November, I couldn’t help but recall a quote from Nietzsche: “The future belongs to those with the longest memory.”

    Typical of seemingly every Nietzsche quote it is dropped mid-essay with little to no further context, moulded to fit the context of the essay being written with little to no regard for the message which Nietzsche is trying to convey to the reader; a message which journalist and philosopher Alain de Benoist outlines with expert clarity:

    “What he [Nietzsche] means is that Modernity will be so overburdened by memory that it will become impotent. That’s why he calls for the “innocence” of a new beginning, which partly entails oblivion.”

    For Nietzsche, a fixation on remembrance, on recollecting everything that has been and everything that will be, keeps us rooted in our regrets and our failures; it deprives us of the joys which can be found in the present moment and breeds resentment in the minds of men.

    As such, it is wise to be select with what we remember and how we remember it, should we want to spare ourselves a lifetime of dizzying self-pity and further dismay. In my mind, as well as millions of others, the most destructive wars in human history would qualify for the strange honour of being ‘remembered’, yet so too would other events, especially those events which have yet to achieve fitting closure and continue to encroach upon the present.

    As of this article’s publication, it is the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of Charlene Downes, presumed murdered by the Blackpool grooming gangs. At the time of her murder, two Jordanian immigrants were arrested. Iyad Albattikhi was charged with Downes’ murder and Mohammed Reveshi was charged with helping to dispose of her body. Both were later released after denying the charges.

    Currently, the only person sentenced in relation to the case was Charlene’s younger brother, who was arrested after he punched a man who openly joked that he had disposed of Charlene’s body by putting it into kebabs, according to witness testimony; information which led the police to change their initial missing person investigation to one of murder.

    As reported in various media outlets, local and national, throughout their investigation, the police found “dozens more 13- to 15-year-old girls from the area had fallen victim to grooming or sexual abuse” with an unpublished report identifying eleven takeaway shops which were being used as honeypots – places where non-white men could prey on young white girls.

    Like so many cases of this nature, investigations into Charlene’s murder had been held up by political correctness. According to conservative estimates, Charlene is just one of the thousands of victims, yet only a granular fraction of these racially motivated crimes has resulted in a conviction, with local councillors and police departments continuing to evade accountability for their role in what is nothing short of a national scandal.

    However, it’s not just local officials who have dodged justice. National figures, including those with near-unrivalled influence in politics and media, have consistently ignored this historic injustice, many outrightly denying fundamental and well-established facts about the national grooming scandal.

    Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party and likely the next Prime Minister, is one such denialist. In an interview with LBC, Starmer said: “the vast majority of sexual abuse cases do not involve those of ethnic minorities.”

    If meant to refer to all sexual offences in Britain, Starmer’s statement is highly misleading. Accounting for the 20% of cases in which ethnicity is not reported, only 60% of sexual offenders in 2017 were classed as white, suggesting whites are underrepresented. In addition, the white ethnic category used such reports includes disproportionately criminal ethnic minorities, such as the Muslim Albanians, who are vastly overrepresented in British prisons, further diminishing the facticity of Starmer’s claim.

    However, in the context of grooming gangs, Starmer’s comments are not only misleading, but categorically false. Every official report on ‘Group Sexual Exploitation’ (read: grooming gangs) has shown that Muslim Asians were highly over-represented, and the most famous rape gangs (Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale) along with high-profile murders (Lowe family, Charlene Downes) were the responsibility of Asian men.

    As shown in Charlie Peters’ widely acclaimed documentary on the grooming gang scandal, 1 in every 1700 Pakistani men in the UK were prosecuted for being part of a grooming gang between 1997 and 2017. In cities such as Rotherham, it was 1 in 73.

    However, according to the Home Office, as they only cover a subset of cases, all reports regarding the ethnic composition of grooming gangs necessarily reject large amounts of data. As such, they estimate between 14% (Berelowitz. 2015) and 84% (Quilliam, 2017) of grooming gang members were Asian, a significant overrepresentation, and even then, these figures are skewed by poor reporting, something the reports make clear.

    One report, which focused on grooming gangs in Rotherham, stated:

    “By far the majority of perpetrators were described as ‘Asian’ by victims… Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so” (Jay, 2014)

    Another report, which focused on grooming gangs in Telford, stated:

    “I have also heard a great deal of evidence that there was a nervousness about race in Telford and Wellington in particular, bordering on a reluctance to investigate crimes committed by what was described as the ‘Asian’ community.” (Crowther, 2022)

    If crimes committed by Asians were deliberately not investigated, whether to avoid creating ethnic disparities to remain in-step with legal commitments to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, or to avoid appearing ‘racist’ in view of the media, estimates based on police reports will be too low, especially when threats of violence against the victims is considered:

    “In several cases victims received death threats against them or their family members, or threats that their houses would be petrol-bombed or otherwise vandalised in retaliation for their attempts to end the abuse; in some cases threats were reinforced by reference to the murder of Lucy Lowe, who died alongside her mother, sister and unborn child in August 2000 at age 15. Abusers would remind girls of what had happened to Lucy Lowe and would tell them that they would be next if they ever said anything. Every boy would mention it.” (Crowther, 2022)

    Overall, it is abundantly clear that deeds, not words, are required to remedy this ongoing scandal. The victims of the grooming gang crisis deserve justice, not dismissal and less-than-subtle whataboutery. We must not tolerate nor fall prey to telescopic philanthropy. The worst of the world’s barbarities will not be found on the distant horizon, for they have been brought to our shores.

    As such, we require an end to grooming gang denialism wherever it exists, an investigation by the National Crime Agency into every town, city, council and police department where grooming gang activity has been reported and covered-up, and a memorial befitting a crisis of this magnitude. Only then will girls like Charlene begin to receive the justice they deserve, allowing this crisis to be another cause for remembrance, rather than a perverse and sordid aspect of life in modern Britain.


    Photo Credit.

    The Nationalist Case for Caution

    Over the last few weeks, we’ve been experiencing a rare phenomenon; politicians seem to have grown a spine. There’s tough talk of deportations and standing up to Islamic extremism. It’s far too good to be true. Many MPs and our Prime Minister have been living vicariously through Israel, springing to the defence of the Israelis and British Jews with extreme fervour. Cross-party leader support from Sunak and Starmer has been unwavering.

    However, whilst the latter is facing rebellion from his immigrant and militant leftist contingent as Israeli aggression continues unabated, Sunak engaged in the humiliation ritual of meeting Israeli leaders at the King David Hotel. I’m unsure if a meeting between a sitting British PM and the Israeli leadership has been held there since Jewish terrorists bombed it, killing many Britons, but it’s certainly something I would not like to see again from a future PM.

    The conflict in this area of the world does not particularly interest me. There are so many domestic problems facing Britain that I am somewhat dismayed that the sclerotic and otherwise necrotic government can rapidly reanimate when something so detached from us reaches their desks. As this latest crisis has rolled along several unfortunate reality checks have hit Britain. In an ideal world, we could completely wash our hands of it, but we are not in that position. Imported ethnic conflicts are coming to fruition and we need to navigate them as best we can.

    Many Israelis were killed and over 100 hostages were taken, Israel retaliated with its usual tactic of bombing Gaza with extreme prejudice. The actions of Hamas provoked disgust from the wider British public, seeing people murdered in their homes does not sit particularly well, or so you would have thought. After the Israel response, pro-Palestinian demonstrations erupted across the UK. Among the usual suspects of white leftists was a sizeable ethnic minority contingent. London drew the most attention, at home and internationally, and most of the attendees were of minority ethnic backgrounds.

    Between the messages of “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea” less familiar ones started to emerge; the idea that what Hamas had achieved was anti-colonialism in action. This is where alarm bells should begin to ring, especially if you have been listening to leftist talking points in recent years or paying attention to protest actions. If decolonisation was not in fact simply tearing down statues or renaming streets but murdering your “oppressors” then perhaps this large and young contingent of resentful ethnic minorities could turn out to be a life-threatening problem. As the country moves toward the White British becoming a minority, as in London, this is a ticking time-bomb. When you see at the most recent protest, in which White people are attacked for defending the Cenotaph and being called “White Trash” by immigrants, the nature of this protest as anti-White decolonisation action becomes more clear.

    MPs and media personalities began the tough talk immediately. “Deportations for anti-semitic students” and possible prison time for Hamas supporters. Nothing so far has come to fruition in that regard and deportations are unlikely to happen because the Tories have failed to dismantle the legal apparatus that allows the successful appealing of deportation efforts. Deportation efforts that are consistently hampered by an industry of state-leeching legal practices and lawyers. A more devious development appeared during the most recent protest with the publishing of an article exploring the “English roots of anti-Semitism.” A feeble attempt to paint these events as originating as a native White issue or an extension of historical anti-Semitism, not something artificially imported. 

    It was at this point I began to think “Where was this talk when minority rape gangs were exposed or terrorist attacks were carried out here?” It was non-existent. We were actually encouraged to “Not look back in anger” with special government networks rolling out I “heart” (city/town affected by terrorism) almost immediately and a deafening silence with regard to the former. Anybody that has spoken out about these issues has been frequently demonised or silenced, they have not enjoyed even a fraction of Government support that Israel and British Jews have received over the last few weeks.

    In response to the hostage crisis in Israel, British Jews have been running a poster campaign and projecting the images on the back of trucks in London. These efforts have been disrupted in the form of posters being torn down or the vehicles being stopped by the police themselves for the sake of “public order.” The people doing a substantial amount of the poster tearing have been minorities and in a particularly amusing clip a Jewish man states to an unconcerned Black woman that he “supported Black Lives Matter.” For him he had been a good ally how could these people betray them? Don’t they know they’re only meant to undermine White British society? The great irony that many British Jews are pro-immigration and support leftist causes that have led to this is not lost on us. Indeed, many leftist Jews were marching for Palestine in a somewhat annihilationist expression of self-determination.

    The police have been no less cowardly than usual in their reactions. Violent rhetoric against Jews and Israel, actual calls to Jihad, being hand waved away by the police. As one would expect British people with Union flags or the St. George’s Cross have been arrested, escorted away or spoken to with typical condescension. Since the Oldham and Bradford riots the British police have been deathly afraid of policing minority issues for fear of them rioting or triggering acts of terrorism. This fear needs to be presented to the public as the police are utterly incapable of presenting this issue themselves. We saw a little bit of spine from the armed officers a few weeks ago but they have since stood down, happy to operate in a system that oppresses Whites and one that will throw them under the bus for political expedience. I’m not sure what is going on with the police in the UK; large swathes captured by leftists is the easiest answer, but many officers must be “lying back” and “thinking of the pension.” In the most recent protests we have seen police officers injured, although it’s hard to muster sympathy. Police support on the Right is definitely on the wane.

    The online nationalist space has been interesting. Many Third-Positionists have naturally aligned themselves with Palestine and other aggrieved minorities in order to “strike out” at “Jewish power structures” and to rebuke Israel itself as a “colonial holdout.” Fundamentally, the minorities they are in a temporary alliance with see no difference between Jews/Israelis and Whites. Their incredibly short-sighted tactic is stoking anti-White rhetoric that is all too often used to put White British interests down.

    The counter-jihad types have once again insisted that this is proof that we are indeed in a civilisational war with Islam, but I tentatively disagree. We have a demographic problem that extends beyond the Islamic population here. This should not be a theological debate, it’s a question of race; the preservation of the White British. I would be lying if I said that the large protests taking on Islamic characteristics didn’t alarm me. It’s as if we were seeing a vision of the future. The prospect of large Islamic voting blocs is something that could have us leaning more on the counter-jihad ideology in the future. Thankfully our electoral system suppresses this somewhat, although that itself is a double-edged sword suppressing us.

    Others have seen the Government’s bold talk of deportations as a good opportunity for us to begin broaching the demographic question. I am not convinced that pushing this under the guise of dealing with “anti-Semitism” will serve us in any real capacity long term. Like all rushed legislation, it actually has the ability to hurt us in the long run; you set the precedent that anti-Semitism is somehow antithetical to life in Britain then many similar pieces of legislation could follow. We are already staring down the possibility of a Labour government that wants to make “misogyny” a “hate crime”, we don’t need more restrictions to speech before then if they can be avoided.

    One silver lining from this mess, if not a vehicle to directly push deportations, is that it shows the obvious failure of the enforced multiracial project we call Multiculturalism. The success of this project has been so heavily disputed in recent weeks after being somewhat cynically trotted out by Suella Braverman. One other potential benefit is that it once again allows us to hammer home the point about the blocks to deportations from the ECHR as well as the legal practices opposing them being funded by the taxpayer.

    The left has revealed its agenda by living vicariously through the actions of Hamas and the government has revealed their priorities in jumping to the defence of Israel and British Jews. Nationalists are effectively homeless; we have to advocate for ourselves. Leading from our principles towards our goals and not simply hoping to achieve something by serving others who have so often opposed us. Immigration, repatriation, withdrawal from the ECHR, smashing the Equality Act and Human Rights Acts, are all things that take precedence. Can we take a step toward doing any of these things with this crisis? Undoubtedly, but we must be cautious.


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    Featured

    On the Killing of Sir David

    This article was originally published on October 2021.

    On the 15th of October 2021, at around midday, police were called to Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, where a man had reportedly been stabbed 17 times. That man was Conservative MP Sir David Amess, who died roughly 2 hours later. The second assassination of a parliamentarian in 5 years, Sir David Amess MP was murdered whilst carrying out his duty as a representative, attending his weekly constituency surgery.

    As with similar tragedies, the conversation surrounding the event is entirely comprised of people fighting over which conversation “we should be having” instead. For instance, people of certain political dispositions were more aggravated by the press reporting that the assassin was of Somali origin, rather than the actual murder itself; wanting to talk about “muh racist Daily Mail” than anything of importance or substance. As disorienting as tragedies are, they can be a good source of sobriety, putting on full display the true nature of peoples’ character and allegiance.

    Whilst this should be a wakeup call for Britain to radically reform its asylum and immigration policy, mere policy reform will be a job half-done and therefore a lesson only half-learned.

    To summarise what has happened: a man from Somalia immigrated to the United Kingdom, acquired British citizenship, and assassinated a sitting MP in broad daylight. Leaving aside the fact that it shouldn’t be so absurdly easy for someone outside of Britain to enter the country and kill one of its elected representatives, it must be noted that there are two possibilities given this information: either the killer held his extremist views before entering the UK, or he was radicalized here.

    If the former, it would simply be a case of reducing or shutting off immigration from designated “high-risk” countries. However, given the prevailing ideology of the political and media establishment, such a solution would undoubtedly be resisted at every turn. If the latter, the need for policy reform doesn’t change (it shouldn’t be so easy to enter the United Kingdom from a country like Somalia, acquire British citizenship, kill an MP, etc.).

    However, what does change is the focus of the problem. If the assassin adopted his extremist views after he arrived in Britain, it means that Britain is producing, at the very least permitting, people to exist within its own borders that actively want to destroy it. In short: our policy problems stem from a deeper, ideological, and existential problem. Britain is indifferent to its own survival.

    Some may argue that this problem has been diagnosed before, and they would be right. If so, why diagnose the problem again? What good is there repeating what people know? Whilst Chesterton correctly notes that ‘obvious’ things cease to be so overtime, courtesy of people not wanting to remind themselves of what is ‘obvious’, that is not the point being made here. The point is that the remedies proscribed in recent years to this problem have been ineffective.

    Ever since 9/11, the hegemonic counter-Islamist rhetoric has been “We’re the West. We’re more liberal than you, we’re more diverse than you, we’re more inclusive than you, we’re more tolerant than you, and if you cross us there will be hell to pay!”. As with discussions surrounding the need to create cohesion between native and immigrant populations, “integration” is touted as the solution to mitigating Islamism at home. By demanding allegiance to a common liberal culture, espousing fundamental values of tolerance, inclusivity, diversity, and other vaguely defined terms, we can create a stable society.

    When the shared identity of a society is liberty, is tolerance, is inclusion, is diversity, it will tear itself, both ideologically and in practice, apart by its own contradictions. Liberty produces chaos, leading to surveillance and bureaucracy not necessary in high-trust, homogenous societies. Tolerance produces indifference to forces bent on destroying society and the Tolerance which it provides. Inclusion can only produce puritanical exclusion, for no amount of Inclusion will ever be inclusive enough. Diversity produces social fragmentation, which can only be overcome by producing a new monoculture; a watered-down culture, portioned by diversity officers, that nobody can identify with. Ultimately, the attempt to encompass all, necessarily alienates all. This is the doctrine of modern political liberalism.

    The logical conclusion of this ideological farce is what sensible people have known all along: order is a prerequisite to liberty, unanimity is a prerequisite to tolerance, exclusion is a prerequisite to inclusion, homogeneity is a prerequisite to diversity; all provided until they threaten the basis of their existence. These are courtesies, not identities; they are courtesies only possible when rooted in something more fundamental. As a result of this project, we have become a nation of identikits, slogans churned out by committees, and cohesion which relies on debilitating consumerism, ever-complicating bureaucracy and tyrannical officialdom; a society held together by paper instead of blood, and a nation that cannot inspire loyalty in its inhabitants. On the whole, not a sustainable state of affairs.

    At bottom level, our problem is a near flat out denial of the British in-group. Liberal technocracy has gutted Britishness and been prancing around in its skin. Over 1000 years – roughly 300 years of them in monarchical union – the United Kingdom, a bounty of organically developing culture, has amounted to Gogglebox, PG Tips, and twee jokes about the rain. It’s about politely asking if “the queue starts here” for the polling station. Remember: STRONG BRITAIN, GREAT NATION, STRONG BRITAIN, GREAT NAAAAATION.

    Perhaps because we are an island, relatively untouched and untroubled throughout our history, especially when compared to the geographical basket case of continental Europe, that we have never had to think about the nature of our identity in as much depth, making it suspectable to cynical exploitation by our current elites. See, the obvious isn’t so obvious!

    Given the repellent artificiality of our culture, is it any surprise that it spits out extremists of all shapes and sizes? Our inability, often refusal, to define ourselves, opting instead to abstract our identity away, leaves us vulnerable to evildoers that yearn to see the vacuum filled. Habri Ali was not only a naturalised British citizen, but he was also known to the police courtesy of his referral to Prevent. This man had every form of “education” about our “values” that could be provided, and it changed nothing.

    As much as liberal democrats – and even reactionary nationalists – might not like to accept it, nationalism and democracy are conjoined twins, the will of the people is wrapped up in the idea of “a people” of common identity rooted to a particular place, making the acceptance of democratic decisions possible. Bleating about the dangers of identity politics doesn’t change the fact that British identity politics must necessarily be treated as an exception.

    When the future of Britain hangs in the balance, it is more that right to ask: “who are the British people?”. If we are serious about making amends, the “conversation” we need to be having is this: what is Britishness? In my mind, one thing is for certain: a foreign-born Islamist that stabs a representative of the British nation to death isn’t British, and if he is considered British, then he shouldn’t be. I don’t care if he knows where St. Paul’s Cathedral is.


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    The Importance of Brexit

    “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” – William Pitt (speech to House of Commons, 18 November 1783).

    In light of the recent immigration figures, many are starting to question if Brexit was really worth it. The revised figures from ONS show an unprecedented and almost comical increase in the number of arrivals after Brexit, with net migration jumping from less than 300,000 to over 600,000 between our departure from the EU in 2020 and 2023.

    So-called “Bregret” (portmanteau of Brexit and Regret) afflicts both Leave and Remain voters. Even Nigel Farage, the embodiment of British euroscepticism, has been quoted as saying: “Brexit has failed.” Of course, the full comment was along the lines of “Brexit has failed under the Conservatives” but this hasn’t dissuaded journalists and Remainers from circulating the quote as a form of anti-Brexit propaganda; particularly useful when all your senile prophecies of Brexit-induced calamity fail to manifest.

    Hoping to capitalise on this growing sentiment, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, after making a long-winded joke feinging ignorance of Britain’s existence, said the UK had “goofed it up” by voting for Brexit and said it should reconsider its decision to leave. Von der Leyen added that it was the job of the young to reverse Brexit and that re-unification was “the direction of travel” for the UK.

    Why exactly Von der Leyen believes reversing Brexit is top priority for Britain’s youth, I’m not so sure. Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to find something more lame than bustling about a European bureaucracy, tasked with placating the asinine prejudices of some overpromoted schoolmarm. I must say, I was hoping for greater clarity from the so-called grown-ups. One moment they’re saying good riddance, the next they’re asking us to come back. Truly, a terrible, terrible break-up.

    In any case, before we wallow in self-pity about our desire to be an independent country – and it must be said: the British right does love to wallow – let us remember several very important facts about our relationship with the European Union.

    First, immigration wasn’t “better” prior to Brexit. Circumstances have worsened, but net migration still increased each year of Britain’s membership. During that time, white British people were projected to become a minority in Britain within just a few generations, a trasnformation which people are slowly beginning to realise would be a disaster for a variety of intersecting reasons, from ethnocultural balkanization to a collapse in social cohesion and civic trust. The EU was more than happy to accommodate these arrivals through direct and indirect means, from inviting migrants to enter the continent en masse to funding NGOs to import them in the name of European Values, a concept which (just like British Values) has nothing to do with being European.

    Considering that we are navigating a new political relationship with the EU, our departure should’ve sparked greater interest in European politics. Alas, many politicians and commentators have chosen to overlook Europe in favour of America and the Third World. As such, many have forgotten (or just don’t care) about the state of EU governments and their ability – or rather, their inability – to grapple with mass immigration. Take the hint: our continental companions aren’t voting for nationalists in record numbers because they believe immigration is too low.

    In the Netherlands, net migration spiked from less than 100,000 to over 200,000 between 2020 and 2022. Likewise, Germany and Spain experienced a sharp increase in arrivals around this period, whilst Sweden, Denmark, and Italy continue to experience mass immigration and its consequences, despite their ongoing efforts to reduce the number of asylum seekers.

    Second, Britain’s membership of the EU didn’t just coincide with mass immigration, it deliberately made immigration far harder to control. Since Brexit, the government has used its powers to liberalise border restrictions, thereby dishonouring the spirit of the vote to Leave. This isn’t inconsequential abstraction. Our membership of the EU was officially discontinued via an act of Parliament, the European Union Act 2020. As Montesquieu tells us, for a law to be interpreted correctly, one must give credence to its unwritten aspects; the reasons behind why it exists at all. As such, it is more than legitimate to factor in the motivations behind the Leave vote, it is required.

    Minus a few liberal commentators on the SW1 circuit, the vote to leave the EU was motivated by a desire to see immigration reduced, giving rise to inquiries about the condition of our national sovereignty. In the field of electoral politics, this fundamental concern motivated support for a referendum, coinciding with the rise of the BNP in the early noughties, UKIP’s historic success in 2015, and the Brexit Party’s equally historic victory in 2019.

    The failure of the Rwanda scheme was an unfortunate setback for immigration restriction, but the Supreme Court didn’t strike down the Rwanda Scheme because of Brexit, the judges struck it down due to our commitments to the ECHR via the Human Rights Act (1998) and our status as signatories of the UN Refugee Convention (1951) and Protocol (1968). Indeed, realising our circumstance for what it is, it’s clear the solution isn’t less Brexit, but more Brexit.

    The EU’s cornerstone commitment to the free movement of people within its borders, alongside various liberal and humanitarian dogmas imposed at the supranational level via the European Court of Justice, doesn’t override such commitments, it compounds them. As such, EU countries trying to get a grip on migration have had to square off against the EU, ECHR and the UN simultaneously. Denmark’s own Rwanda scheme hasn’t borne fruit precisely because of its run-ins with EU law.

    Rejoining the EU, throwing away our potential to regulate migration because the current government is doing the opposite, wouldn’t be tactical, it would be stupid. It is like a freeman reapplying his shackles to avoid sticking his hands in a hot furnace.

    Third, if we re-enter the EU, we won’t have any bargaining power whatsoever. It’s evident that the EU is moving in the direction of more federalisation, not less. At the end of last month, the European Parliament approved a major treaty reform proposal, spearheaded by everyone’s favourite Belgian liberal europhile: Guy Verhofstadt.

    The proposal intends to transform the European Commission from an over-glorified think-tank, one comprised of representatives from every member state to a fully empowered executive cabinet, one comprised of individuals selected by the President of the Commission with less-than-reassuring guarantees of equal representation.

    The European Council and the European Parliament would be transformed into upper and lower houses respectively. In possession of equal power, the former would be headed by the President of the EU Commission (thereafter, the EU President) whilst the latter would be allowed to propose laws, remove commissioners, and nominate the President. National states would surrender control over policy pertaining to public health, law and order, industry and energy, education, foreign policy, defence, and border control, whilst giving up environmental policy in its entirety, entrenching a division of devolved, shared, and centralised competencies.

    However, the most consequential reform in the proposal would see an end to the EU’s principle of unanimity (all states must agree to a proposed reform) to QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) on a variety of areas, in which just over half (ranging from 55% to 65%) of all member states can initiate EU-wide reform. Touted as a means of making the EU more efficient and decisive, it would effectively allow countries to impose reforms one each other, without regard for democratic consent or national interest.

    Even if this proposal doesn’t produce something ‘radical’, federalisation remains a significant threat to national sovereignty across Europe. Keep in mind, the Lisbon Treaty took roughly eight years to materialise. Throughout those eight years, many compromises were made, but the end goal was fulfilled: it moved Europe towards unification with a Soviet disregard for democracy. At the time of our departure, the EU was already on the brink of federalising, possessing all the essential characteristics of a federal union minus central powers of tax-and-spend, something which could change in the near future.

    Despite our departure, it’s been business as usual, the EU’s transition from a trade confederacy to a political union hasn’t slowed down. If anything, it has sped up, spurred on by current events and heightening pre-existing political tensions within the union.

    As it stands, two blocs dominate European politics: a centre-left bloc lenient to federalisation and a centre-right bloc hoping to dilute and/or reverse certain aspects of federalisation. Many of the right-wing populist parties the British press enjoys construing as hardline fascists have little-to-no intention of leaving the EU. They belong to the aforementioned centre-right bloc, hoping to leverage fiscal handouts from the EU by using the principle of unanimity (hence why many are so keen on getting rid of it) whilst pursuing a more conservative approach on specific issues, such as immigration and judicial matters.

    As the three main net contributors to the European project (at least, since Britain left), the establishments of France, Germany and the Netherlands have become increasingly hostile to the perceived impertinence of their Eastern neighbours as well as eurosceptics within their own borders, eager to suppress the political influence of both to make their investments feel like a worthwhile endeavour.

    President Macron has waxed lyrical about “Strategic Autonomy” – that is, unifying Europe in response to the threat from Russia and ensure Europe can defend its interests in a world dominated by United States and China – whilst Chancellor Scholz has continuously voiced support for a federal Europe, classing it as politically inevitable and a top priority of his centre-left coalition government. As for the Netherlands, despite the triumph of Wilders, whose government is bound to face legal trouble with the EU over its immigration policies, the country has merged the last of its combat troops with Germany, further raising concerns about the possibility of an EU defence union, shifting the allegiance and direction of militaries away from their respective countrymen and towards a supranational authority.

    Erstwhile, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy softened its position on EU membership prior to its electoral victory, partially out of practical considerations (e.g. the failure of Salvini’s hard Eurosceptic approach, Italy’s relatively integrated relationship with the EU, and to maintain access to certain economic packages) and partially out of ideological hangovers, such as trying to pursue a diluted form of the European New Right’s “Right to Difference” at the continental level, coinciding with her party’s historical association with the Italian Social Movement.

    Orban’s Hungary also falls into this bloc but is a net beneficiary, meaning the desire to leave is far less potent. However, despite its generalistic support for EU integration, Hungary is decried as a subverise contrarian state, protected from having its voting rights revoked due to an informal alliance with Poland, another major net beneficiary. That said, since Donald Tusk’s victory in the recent general election, this alliance has basically broken down, making the Polish state’s position antithetical to what it was only a few years ago – that is, when it was decrying the EU as Germany’s Fourth Reich. There’s been talk about Hungary forming an alliance with Slovakia’s newly elected left-wing populist and eurosceptic government, but this seems more hearsay than fact.

    If Britain were to rejoin the EU, it wouldn’t matter if we aligned with the centre-left or the centre-right, as the outcome is very much the same: should we rejoin, we’re destined to be less free than ever before. A unified continent has never been in Britain’s interests. It wasn’t in our interests in the 1800s and it isn’t in our interests now, and there should be absolutely no excuse for empowering an organisation which does not respect our interests, regardless of our membership status.

    The Conservative Party is going to lose the next election because of its reactionary liberal tendencies, having betrayed the trust it was bestowed to act as custodian of the Brexit revolution. Consequently, a neo-Blairite Labour Party is going to take up the reins of government, not because of popular support but because disaffection with Britain’s increasingly unresponsive political institutions.

    Ever since the referendum, the entire political establishment has been scrambling to find a different route to the end of history, but these are largely short-term fixes. If the UK can be pushed back into the EU, the centrist anti-political demagogues of British civic life will be more than happy to oblige, and it is this reality which the Conservatives must face.

    If the Conservative Party wishes to survive the impending electoral winter. It must undergo a metapolitical transformation, the likes of which it hasn’t experienced since Disraeli carried the party across the threshold of the democratic age. It must realise the historical significance of Brexit, as a genuine and outright rejection of a depoliticised consensus, one which has moved democratically sovereign nations in the direction of becoming technocratically managed open societies.

    Given this, British politics should be bursting with excitement, overflowing with zeal about how best to navigate these unchartered waters, yet the political mainstream is utterly stagnant. It’s aware of its own imaginative poverty, yet does nothing to remedy it, opting to regurgitate the last ten years in whatever way it can. To spectate British politics is like watching a perpetually vomiting ouroboros, gagging on its own tail and drenching its body in sick, yet persists on its quest of self-consumption.

    This peculiarity is compounded by the fact Britain’s next steps are obvious. At home, we must undertake a great, national effort to ensure Britain can stand on its own two feet, building up social and economic capital in whatever way it can and without hesitatation. We must adopt a survivalist mindset, comparable to Singapore in the aftermath of its ejection from Malaysia. Abroad, we must realise that we have a hostile empire on our doorstep, headed by a vanguard of vandals dedicated to plucking the jewels from Charlemagne’s crown, eradicating any trace of its eclectic ruggedness and vitality, and melting it down for gold in the name of inoffensive minimalism and utilitarian ease.

    Downstream of their inability to let Brexit go, these vampires will stop at nothing to collectively punish the British people for voting against their influence. They’ve said so themselves and the people of Europe understand this. We should be funnelling money to hardline eurosceptic parties to undermine the EU from within. Instead, the British government is trying to out-regulate the Germans.

    At this moment, Britain is more than a nation, it is a political experiment, one which the entire world is watching. Having rejected the embodiment of the end of history, of the end of politics itself, we must consider ourselves the last hope of democratic sovereignty, the final chance for the nation-state to prove its worth in a world of empires. Should we rejoin the EU after only a few years of independence, the entire world shall bear witness to something far worse than the end of British freedom: the end of alternatives in an age of necessity.


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    When Celebrities talk Geopolitics

    “There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of how it feels to be Muslim in this country.”

    Oscar-winning Susan Sarandon’s comments at a pro-Palestine rally in New York saw her dropped by her representatives, United Talent Agency. Sarandon is far from new to activism and politics, having spent her many decades in the spotlight discussing various issues. It seems that this time she may have gone too far, judging by the reaction of UTA.

    The newest development in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine/Hamas has captivated the world, from the United Nations to local councils. Governments at all levels across every country have voted on ceasefires, because county councils apparently have a lot of say in geopolitics.

    What is arguably even more prominent is the input of our entertainers. One can easily browse X or Instagram for a few moments and find a litany of celebrities who have given their views on the conflict. As a general rule, said celebrities have called for a ceasefire. In response to conflict, calling for a ceasefire is treated as the obvious response- it’s easy to say, you don’t sound too partisan and it’s essentially saying you just don’t like war. Any more nuance than that isn’t really expected of anyone.

    At the end of one such open letter, those who signed it stated that “the United States can play a viral diplomatic role in ending the suffering.”

    The United States probably can, yes. Celebrities? Not so much.

    Celebrities like to use their voices to amplify issues, from war and presidential endorsements to abortion and LGBT rights. One only has to look at the star-studded events held by Hillary Clinton in 2016 to see how celebrities gravitate towards politics. Considering Clinton boasted guests like Katy Perry and Beyoncé, it’s plain to see that it’s a voice politicians accept. You’ll find celebrities using social media, posting blacked out squares on Instagram in an apparent promotion of Black Lives Matter. Perhaps they’ll wear a pink hat to protest anti-abortion legislation.

    They are well within their right to do this, as we all should be. They also generally reside in the country in which they protest. The issue, however, comes when celebrities meddle in geopolitics.

    The conflict in the Middle East is not an easy one, despite claims to the contrary. It involves years of religious and ethnic fighting, controversial borders, terror, violence, and bloodshed. The sides cannot, and often will not, agree to terms. So precious is Jerusalem to religious groups that conflict in its holy sites is far from rare. Saying ‘oh let’s have a ceasefire’ may stop a few problems in the short term, but it’s not a permanent stop to generations of problems.

    Most notably, celebrities may have a say in their collective fan communities, but they do not have any influence on geopolitics. Even Joe Biden, who the aforementioned open letter was directed at, did not listen. Meanwhile, both Palestine and Israel are doing what they believe they need to do to survive. Hamas is doing what they believe they need to do to eradicate Israel. They are not going to listen to someone with an Oscar nomination or a Top Ten song.

    That’s not to say that we shouldn’t speak out about issues because we feel it won’t influence things. Celebrities have the right to talk about the conflict, but let’s not pretend that we should care what they think or that it has any influence on anything. Most of us- celebrities and normal people- do not have the expertise to properly understand the situation. We can take a moral stance, but let’s not pretend that celebrities are necessarily informed.

    The action, however well intentioned, is almost always performative. Celebrities allow themselves to be almost bullied into saying something, anything, by fans so that they’re not cancelled. Look at Taylor Swift. Her platform and wealth are equally large, so much so that her general lack of political inclinations is met with side-eye at best, and boycotts at worst. We expect celebrities to act as moral leaders and arbiters, to the detriment of real discussion.

    Perhaps one day we won’t expect celebrities to be geopolitical experts. Perhaps one day celebrities won’t feel the need to ensure that their views aren’t the most important in the room. Much as COVID and January 6 turned people into armchair experts in virology and treason laws, the conflict in the Middle East has made us all experts in international relations.

    Celebrities, continue calling for ceasefires if you wish, but don’t expect Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas to take you up on your advice.


    Photo Credit.

    Notes on the Social Democratic Party Conference

    Upon arriving at Church House, I was asked for my name so I could receive my pass. I wasn’t on the list. After a few brief minutes, assuring the two very kind activists working the reception that I wasn’t a militant infiltrator, it turned out that I was on a completely different list – the VIP list. Jesus Christ, I thought, the Conservative Party never gave me a VIP pass!

    Making my way up the stairs to the conference hall, I walked in on the SDP membership voting on various motions; policy proposals that may or may not be adopted into the party platform. The Labour Party is hated for a variety of valid reasons; I would know, I tend to hate them for such reasons myself. That said, one of the benefits of being a Labour member, compared to being a member of the Tory Party, is the ability to influence policy through voting. Unfortunately, it comes with a catch: sharing a party jampacked with gay race communists.

    Conventional wisdom tells us that we cannot have our cake and eat it, but the SDP provides a pretty compelling counterargument. You can have a democratic party, one which gives people some degree of political influence in exchange for paying the membership fee, without having to contend with smelly environmentalists and minority-interest bandits.

    Just before he started his speech, Clouston made an offhanded remark about his reputation for soft-spoken oratory; a huge relief, given he isn’t an exciting speaker. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. On the contrary, it shows Clouston is self-aware which is a good thing… a very good thing. The last time a quiet man decided to “turn up the volume” everyone wanted him to shut up.

    For clarity, there is a difference between an exciting speaker and an engaging speaker. The former concerns form whilst the latter concerns substance, and there was plenty of substance to his speech, both in terms of delivery and content. Clouston knows he’s a natural priest, and there’s nothing more off-putting than a priest who tries to be exciting. As such, Clouston stuck to what he’s good at: giving clear, methodical, and authoritative sermons, dictating the creed to the congregation, plucking quotes from the writers and leaders of bygone ages like prophets from the Old Testament; an Apollonian counterbalance to the Dionysian rabble-rousing of the chain-smoking, ale-chugging Nigel Farage.

    And what was this creed, exactly? What was he cooking? “Vote positively” (if you believe in something, vote for it; that is, participate in democracy), “don’t vote Tory” (self-explanatory, in more ways than one), “don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t know what a woman is” (it’s certainly preferable to the alternative), “elect national leaders not charity workers” (Leeds is more important than Lagos), “don’t divide us” (stop being anti-white and turning Britain into a low-trust hellhole), “support conviction politicians” (hear, hear), “trade deficits matter” (HEAR, HEAR), and consider standing for election (we’ll get to this).

    Of course, Clouston wasn’t the only speaker. Rod Liddle gave an unreservedly pro-Israel speech, whilst Laura Dodsworth outlined the dangers of social engineering. Graham Linehan was brought out for his regularly scheduled post-cancellation rehab session. Hugo de Burgh, who really should get into voice acting, gave a good speech on the long-term consequences of short-termist politics. In other words, there was something for everyone, it wasn’t half-a-day of “The Left Have Gone Quackers!” and such.

    In-between speeches, it was abruptly announced that the SDP had received £1,000,000 from an anonymous donor. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing it was Paul Marshall. My evidence? First: I suspect the SDP is too dirigiste for the likes of Jeremy Hosking, even if he enjoys the so-called culture war aspects of contemporary politics. Compare this to someone like Marshall, who stood for parliament in Fulham in 1987 as an SDP-Liberal Alliance candidate and has provided support to organisations like UnHerd and the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

    Second: Marshall’s son was on one of the panels. Winston’s contributions largely revolved around wanting to do stuff, rather than talking about doing stuff. Too right! Pontification only get us so far. Eventually, reality itself must be confronted as it is. Best not to waste your courage on fixing problems made in your own head, so to speak.

    Still, discussions, forums, debates, etc. all have their place, and were present at the conference in addition to stand-alone speeches. Ross Baglin’s comments on the civil service were particularly welcome, as were his caveats to proposed fix-all technical solutions. As I have stressed to people many times, the political aspect of politics cannot be denied; the sooner we normalise viewing the civil service as a political problem, rather than some technical banality to be tolerated as part of British civic life, the better.

    Of course, as Baglin also pointed out, this partially relies on conservatives developing a politicised frame-of-mind, overcoming their instinctual tendency to pursue an undisturbed life. Indeed, this has been a challenge in the past and remains a challenge now, but it’s evident that right-wing ideology, having been pushed to the periphery of public acceptance, has also attracted a large contingent of anti-establishment dissidents. Instinctually open-to-experience and somewhat contrarian, most have no interest in leading a depoliticised existence. Any party prepared to meet them half-way is sure to benefit.

    However, despite the varying merits of the aforementioned, one could sense Matt Goodwin’s speech was the most anticipated, actualising in the most explicit form of praise one can receive on such occasions: a standing ovation. Concluding the SDP’s diagnosis of contemporary British politics was correct, and the consensus of the British public could be found in the party’s manifesto, Goodwin reassured members the only thing between their policies and a political breakthrough was a matter of publicity.

    Goodwin covered the bases you’d expect him to cover. Left-on-economy good, right-on-culture good, CRT is divisive, Gary Lineker is a libtard (please keep in mind, dear reader, that I am paraphrasing quite a bit). Goodwin’s insistence on using the term “political correctness” instead of “woke” – apparently, 95% of British people understand what the former means, compared to roughly 50% for latter – was a pleasant surprise, as was his call for total war against Britain’s public institutions and political duopoly.

    I shan’t hash out all of my contentions with everything that was said at the conference as they’re mostly theoretical points – that is, not specific to the SDP or even party politics in general – and deserve their own piece, if anything at all. Nor shall I conclude with my thoughts on what the SDP should do going forward. Like a corporate multinational stooge, I have outsourced such menial, unpaid labour to a young SDP activist, whose perspective is surely more valuable than anything I can provide here.

    Instead, I shall conclude with this: the last of Clouston’s eight points won’t be for everyone. For many, building a house and/or writing a book is obviously preferable to running for Parliament. However, if there is an SDP candidate standing in your area, and your MP isn’t Sir John Hayes or someone of reliable calibre, it wouldn’t hurt to support them (assuming you’re not planning to stay at home on election day).

    Putting aside the hang-ups one might have with the party’s chosen aesthetics, rhetoric and sloganeering, the SDP platform isn’t half-bad: protecting civil liberties, civil service reform, bringing now-foreign-owned industries and assets back under national control, and a generational pause on immigration is preferable to the prevailing consensus of mass servitude, debt, and immigration. One activist described the party platform as “Singapore mixed with Blue Labour.” Indeed, it’s unconventional; like ordering a bowl of rice to go with your lamb and mutton. An acquired taste, for sure. Possibly in need of some refinement, at least according to some. Nevertheless, there are objectively worse options on the menu. Zimbabwe mixed with Judith Butler, for example. Human flesh served with… human flesh.

    This isn’t so much an endorsement as it is a request to keep an open mind. As Barry Goldwater once said: “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Similarly, conventionality at a time when national self-harm is standard procedure isn’t patriotic. When faced with such dire circumstances, a good dose of unconventionality may very well be in order, especially at the ballot box.


    Photo Credit.

    Breakfast with Thierry Baudet (Part III)

    In mid-July, the Mallard was fortunate to have breakfast with Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch ‘Forum for Democracy’ (FVD) party in the Netherlands. We discussed his views on manufactured consent, immigration, CBDC, and climate change; and his new book ‘The Covid Conspiracy’. Part II can be read here.

    TM: Why do you think that your party is allowed to exist?

    TB: Well, they are currently trying to pass a law to make it possible to forbid it. The Dutch Secret Service published a report about undermining of public faith in established institutions. They call it ‘anti-institutional extremism’. They claim that it occurs when a narrative is created which undermines public trust in institutions. They claim that it is dangerous for democracy. They then claim that that means it should be able to ban any political party which might so undermine trust.

    TM: And that just happens to be you?

    TB: Yes, parties that disagree with the Covid narrative, parties which might have sympathy for Russia, parties who do not agree with mass immigration. It shows that we are slouching towards totalitarianism. There is one single allowed approach to all issues and there is no room for difference of opinion.

    TM: Do you think a party like yours might spring up in the UK?

    TB: I don’t know. Your political system is extremely difficult to penetrate for small or fringe parties. It is a general trend in Europe, and probably also in the US, that you are not allowed to doubt the underlying assumptions anymore. Go back to the 1960s and the Vietnam war: then, there were people arguing in America about fighting communism abroad. Nowadays, every politician just agrees that ‘something must be done’ about Russia/climate Change/refugees etc. There is no public discussion allowed. They want militant democracies.

    TM: What do you feel are the other differences between FVD and other European right-wing parties?

    TB: First, we are much more radical. The AfD, for instance, does not want to leave the EU.

    Second, we are the only group to create a social and economic framework for our members. This is not something that we have seen with other movements in Europe, we are the most progressive from that point of view.

    Third, we embrace aesthetics and culture. We think that what we offer instead of the other parties is the Western tradition. We talk a lot about beauty, music and traditional architecture. I do not see the others talking about that but it is absolutely crucial to the conservative message. We have aesthetics on our side. We have love on our side. We love the things that have been created for us and the tradition that we have inherited. We are not just liberals; we actually have a vision for a completely different way of living. This has not been crystalised yet but a lot of our members are actively searching a means to be religious again. A means to experience the transcendental dimension in life. You cannot go without those things, it is every aspect of your life which is not just the political. 

    TM: It seems to me that a lot of people do not care about those transcendental dimensions anymore. Do you think that’s true? If so, why?

    TB: Yes, a lot of people don’t care about it. But I also think that there is an ideology behind ugliness. I believe it is linked to the teachings of the Frankfurt school. They believe that beauty, the family, national identity, etc were all elements of fascism. These thinkers have decided that they should target the beautiful. It is why the left wing reveres ugliness. They like the idea of harmony being disturbed, they have been taught that harmony is associated with fascism, and it is their job to destroy it. They are told that if they build things in a beautiful way, it is kitsch. They want ‘happy chaos’ – but that doesn’t exist. We are transitioning to a new era with no focal point, no traditional family. A world where everything is fluid and deconstruct-able. This is very much the dominant philosophy, and it is of course in the interest of large corporations because it turns people into consumers. 

    TM: Quite a bleak view, Thierry. Do you have any hope? Do you think it will change?

    TB: I think that the human will for liberty is stronger but that this malaise may last for decades. I think it might become a lot worse before it gets better. 

    The only thing that I think I can do is continue fighting. I’m not going to go down with this, and become bitter… I will try as hard as possible to live a good life. Secondly, I think that we can connect with each other and help each other have a nice life. There is a lot that we can do if we are inventive and remain loyal to one another. It is very difficult for any state to control everybody. 

    We can’t foresee the future in every detail, but I meet a lot of fantastic people speaking out. There is a real will and energy among people to regroup and form alliances and set up platforms. 

    TM: So, it’s not over?

    TB: It’s not over.


    Photo Credit.

    Breakfast with Thierry Baudet (Part II)

    In mid-July, the Mallard was fortunate to have breakfast with Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch ‘Forum for Democracy’ (FVD) party in the Netherlands. We discussed his views on manufactured consent, immigration, CBDC, and climate change; and his new book ‘The Covid Conspiracy’. Part I can be read here.

    TM: So who made the decision then?

    TB: I cannot point at a single desk. That is not how things work. My point is that all mainstream media and government agencies are intertwined with an international group of people who meet in Davos and the EU and New York. They are in turn influenced by secret services, multinational corporations, huge tech and pharmaceutical companies. That is where the scenarios are planned. 

    Before Covid, between eight and ten massive pandemic simulations were ran. There was a huge simulation called Event 201 which involved the John Hopkins Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CIA. They ran scenarios on what to do if a corona virus struck. This was all just before a massive corona virus did strike. Through these scenario plannings, governments were already given their instructions on how to respond. Then everything simply had to be coordinated in lock step.

    TM: Do you not think we have to prepare for things?

    TB: We have to prepare for things but the irrationality of the plans points to different interests, not to the genuine interests of the public. So if we are incapable of seeing the scenarios created for us by the big players in the background, then our democracies are in danger.

    TM: So Covid has demonstrated that our democracy does not work?

    TB: The processes we thought we had in place to make rational decisions are void. 

    TM: Void or captured?

    TB: Captured is better. There are mechanisms in place which create the impression of consent. You can generate a narrative which suggests that there is a consensus. 

    By contrast, when you give people an actual question and a choice, in a referendum for instance, you admit that there is a choice. That is why the system is so opposed to referendums, because the very principle of a referendum implies a choice. At that moment, but not before, people will start to realise there actually is a choice. 

    TM: Are you not worried that too many referendums will cause apathy?

    TB: No, I think it will increase turnout, ownership, responsible citizenship. What puts people off is when they feel that nothing matters. It is just another asshole in a grey suit.

    TM: Why do you think that elected officials are unwilling to make the changes they promise? In Britain, for example, the Conservatives have been promising to reduce immigration for decades, and yet we have seen an exponential increase.

    TB: The reason is that they are unwilling to uproot the established powers which desire these things. immigration is in the interest of real estate owners. It is in the interest of big corporations and the worldwide globalist political establishment which wishes to do away with national identities. There are very, very strong powers in the background that push for these policies. If you push against them, the entire system turns against you.

    But there is also a cynical element. Politicians can be unwilling to solve problems because their business is to be there when there are problems. Covid provided a rare opportunity for us, because it showed what happens when you actually go against the current. Trump experienced the same thing. The entire fabric of society will turn against you. It’s a price which the Conservatards are not willing to pay, but the long-term cost of that is losing your country.

    TM: Depressing?

    TB: If you put your faith in established politics then, yes. But if you put your faith in choosing a free life and siding with the alternative, then things can be better. There is a huge reservoir of sensible, normal people who can see it and are willing to oppose it. 

    TM: Let’s talk about your book.

    TB: With every crisis, the answer from politicians is ‘more centralisation’ and ‘more internationalisation’, because we are stuck with this globalist elite which pulls the strings and works hand-in-hand with big corporations and international politicians. Big corporations help politicians win elections. These politicians then give multinational corporations legal immunity and tax breaks. We do not have a free-market or a capitalist system, we live in an age of corporatism. If they make a mistake and something goes wrong, they get a bail-out from taxpayers. It is very unfair to the normal person.

    TM: You said earlier that you wanted a Swiss style direct democracy. Do you think that Switzerland governs itself well?

    TB: No, simply having a better system of government itself is not enough. It is not a panacea. Switzerland is a lot better off than most of the other countries of Europe, but there are still many problems with it. It is a very interesting country because it is a meeting point for the globalist elite. They need some cafés around the world where they can do business safely, and Switzerland is one of them. Dubai, Singapore, and Iceland are perhaps some other examples. That is why I think Switzerland will probably continue to be all right for the coming decades. The country was not, however, able to escape immigration, climate policies, CBDCs, etc. 

    TM: CBDCs?

    TB: In 2008, it was effectively made clear that the dollar was dead. It would only be a matter of time before the US Dollar would lose its global dominance and the US would lose a massive instrument for foreign policy. People started to think about what to replace it with. They believed that they had to re-invent money. I think that this has resulted in the shift to Central Bank Digital, Currencies, where money is not really a store of value but instead is a coupon. It is issued by the government and can be withdrawn by the government.

    CBDC is the government taking full control of the financial world. The lack of any physical component to money means that you cannot take action to survive inflation. Because CBDC is digital, it is also much easier to manipulate and control. It can be set up so that you as an individual can spend it only on certain things within a fixed distance from your house. CBDC is also completely non-fungible, which means it is completely unique to you. It makes it much easier for governments to track and control you. I spoke about it in my book, where I referred to it as the ‘Death Star’ of liberty. It is a slave currency. 

    TM: That links back to what you were saying earlier, there is nowhere to run. You cannot even escape that if money is phased out.

    TB: Exactly. You can either oppose it politically or you can set up your own parallel society. But it is very difficult to oppose generally. That is why we are working on setting up our own blockchain-based trading system.

    TM: So, are you not a fan of crypto currency?

    TB: I am a fan of decentralised blockchains. I’m not sure if Bitcoin was created by secret services to pave the way for CBDC, or if it actually maybe was someone working on CBDC and decided to launch something to oppose it, that is also possible. The complete lack of sound arguments for introducing CBDC is really surprising.

    TM: What are the arguments of its proponents?

    TB: That CBDC provides more credit options to the poor because the government can guarantee that their bank accounts remain open. Another is that it increases transparency and reduces the ability of people to launder money. So, the offer of CBDC is that the state gets complete control over your ability to live and spend money, and in return you get potentially less money laundering. Maybe they aren’t going to do it today or tomorrow, but in, say, five years, some crisis hits, and they suddenly claim a moral obligation to do something about it and CBDC becomes a huge problem for everyday normal people. 

    To be continued…


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