When faced with the utter treachery of progressive intellectuals, there are times when one is tempted to go back to the old ways. Show up to their threshold, give them a slap with your glove and then hopefully grant them eternal peace from their nightmarish debility in a duel at the next daybreak. Peace would then return and one would tread home with the gratifying thought of having served mankind. But alas, the time of blood feuds is spent, and the resting lion who could once easily crush the hyenas troubling his sleep is now constrained to articulate his maw into words; explaining to them why it is uncourteous and inappropriate to come to his dwelling and trouble his sleep.
So be it. Let us contend defamation with apology, caricature with truth, and cede the arma to the togae; after all, we have no army at our disposal to cross the Rubicon.
An anglophile, and an admirer of Anglo-Saxon famed freedom of speech and liberalism, I must say I have been rather disappointed by how sententious the analysis of British and American newspapers of Mr Zemmour’s political position has been. After having observed now for two months or so the unceasing manhunt of the candidate by mainstream British media, I thought that one should not let this monochord blabber follow its course without a single objection. For example, let us take a look at this stereotypical leftist hit piece from The Guardian.
Written by what many would call an academic demigod, Didier Fassin, professor in anthropology at the Collège de France, one could have expected this article to be a dense synthesis of a profound analysis of French society and politics. How mighty was my astonishment when I found that the author’s main source regarding Zemmour’s ideas was one pamphlet from the junk information website Slate. I can easily guess that Professor Fassin never thought it worthy of his rank to listen to Mr Zemmour with his ears once in the past decade. Here is the only grounded and meaningful paragraph extractable from Professor Fassin’s article about Mr Zemmour:
“Indeed, he [Mr Zemmour] has said that parents should only be allowed to give their children ‘traditional’ French names, approvingly referred to people comparing Nazism with Islam, propagated the so-called ‘great replacement’ theory and argued that employers have a right to turn down black or Arab candidates. He believes that political power should belong to men and that women’s role should be to have and raise children. He has claimed to be on the side of General Bugeaud, who massacred Muslims during the colonisation of Algeria, has contended that Marshal Petain saved Jews during the second world war, and would like the death penalty to be reinstated. His overarching narrative is reversing France’s supposed national decline, which featured again in the video announcing his candidacy.”
Let us dissect these eight claims, in which the author restitutes eight of Zemmour views that he thinks should be problematic and let us try to display to the reasonable and discerning Anglo-Saxon reader how Zemmour’s real positions are not as grossly fascistic and vulgar as Professor Fassin wishes to make it seem.
1. “He has said that parents should only be allowed to give their children ‘traditional’ French names.”
Zemmour argues that the civility under which French citizens are recognised in the public space should be a French traditional first name. That is either from the calendar of Saints or prior traditions such as Greco-Latin history. Let us be clear, he does not speak of the use of a foreign name in private life. He does say that one’s ID and passport are not of the private but of the public domain, which is true.
Indeed, the elites of the now frighteningly multicultural city of London might be revolted by this proposal. These “enlightened divines”, as Burke would call them, would also be edified to know that this was a French law, passed by Napoleon. It was only repelled in 1993 when it was stated that parents had the right to freely choose their children’s names. Still to this date judges may forbid names that are judged disadvantageous to one’s future, such as: ‘Borat Miller’ or ‘Mr Bean Smith’. Anglo-American progressives are prompt to project their multicultural conceptions on France, but our histories differ.
At any rate, for most great societies until the twentieth century, the adaptation of foreign names or their outright changing, especially between Western nations, was the rule. In particular, virtually all French Jews between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, adopted French names as they were finally integrated into French society after centuries of rejection.
“We must give the Jews everything as individuals, but nothing as a nation” is a quote from the revolutionary nobleman Clermont-Tonnerre, often uttered by Zemmour, for it matches entirely his own family’s choices and trajectory, that of Jewish France. This cultural assimilation was the way of integrating migrants in France for the past 200 years, since the founding of the Republic and before.
2. “[Zemmour] approvingly referred to people comparing Nazism with Islam.”
Muslim people do not share this tradition of adapting names and they never have. After all, Muslims seldom moved to a country outside of the context of invasion and this wasn’t to change until the 20th century when Muslims immigrated to countries for other reasons. Like Judaism, Islam is a religion of law but even more so. Islam requires not only material compliance of its followers but sets a legal and political order of which they are a part. Thus, the historical distinctions of Muslim countries (Caliph, Sultan, Emir, Sheik) are both religious and feudal titles.
Islam also took from Christianity its universal purpose. Islam sought to establish a universal caliphate. But the lector knows of this, as recent history does not cease to recall us that fundamental difference.
In that aspect, Islam is of all religions the closest one to modern totalitarian ideologies, because it seeks to change every detail of private life in a codified manner, and seeks to bring about these changes universally, willingly or by legitimate force. In short, Islam seeks to transform the individual and the world in their totality.
Hitler himself was an admirer of Islamic values, and said, quoted by Albert Speer:
“Theirs [mahomedans] was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to their faith. The Germanic people would have become heirs to that religion. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.”
The comparison of Islam and Nazism has at least this much relevance but, of course, it does not aim at saying that Muslims are Nazis, nor that Imams are Gestapo officers.
3. “[Zemmour] propagated the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory”
Here, there is no need even for discussion, let alone debate, but just for a brief word.
The ‘Great Replacement’ is but the junction of two simple facts. Firstly, contrary to America, which is based upon no ethnicity, France, as most nations or peoples in the Old World, is very much based upon ethnicity, although not limited by it. France emerged as a nation of people who had shared the same land, history, culture and even religion for 2000 years. In terms of ethnology, France is much closer to the Iroquoian confederation than to the USA. As General Charles De Gaulle famously said to an American diplomat telling him “I know France well, I have lived here for 10 years”, De Gaulle answered, “Well, we have for 2000 years!”
Now, the second idea is even more genuine: The fact that several hundred thousand migrants enter France each year, mainly from African and/or Muslim countries, and that the birthrate of women from these countries is on average twice that of white French women, mathematical law implies that there is a demographic landslide, or “Grand Remplacement” of “European” descendants. Whether it is desirable or not, whether it is even worth discussing, is a question begging to be answered.
So there isn’t anything for Mr Zemmour to propagate but a trivial collection of facts. Most of the people who are willing to vote for him would consider this a major issue independently of his candidacy. Someone ignorant of the ethnic change that France is going through was either in hibernation and has only just woken up, or a very biased leftist who would rather point out the risk of alien invasion than the risk of Islamisation.
4. “[He] argued that employers have a right to turn down black or Arab candidates.”
Zemmour indeed argues that it is an employer’s right to refuse or grant someone a position for any reason he should see fit, whether it is competence, character or skin colour. To discriminate is to choose. It is a most rational and simple argument: an employer is not a public service and refusing to give someone a job, lease him a car or a property cannot be earnestly considered as harm done to this person.
Let’s be clear, a crime committed for any reason related to race, sex, sexual orientation, colour, religion or even competence, regardless of the reason, is a crime and should be punished as such. But rejecting an application is not a crime. How could an act that is not a crime in itself, be called a crime once the intention underlying it is known? In the end, this is nothing but an impugnation of motives. Undoubtedly, society should in any way possible facilitate the life of those who suffer from objective physical and mental handicaps. I ask Professor Fassin and his Londoner friends: Is Muslim religion a mental illness? Is dark skin a physical handicap? Is sexual orientation an objective deficiency?
No, will they will inevitably answer, but it is perceived as such, and this law should be in effect until all prejudice has been removed from society. Should law have a curative purpose? Justice is absolute, and so are good and evil. Crime is a crime, regardless of the time and context. The circumstance may affect the gravity of it, but not the nature of the act. Therefore, by mindlessly stuffing everything they find disagreeable into the criminal category, the left yields to the reproach made to it by conservatives for two centuries: the progressive idea of justice a contingent one, they ultimately subscribe to sophism, that is believe in nothing except themselves.
The proof that recruitment discrimination cannot be called a crime or an offence, is that it is in practice undetectable. How do you prove that someone was hired or rejected based on their ethnicity rather than on their competence? In most cases, you cannot. How do you prove an organisation has a hiring bias? You have to organise tests, which is akin to pursuing a fly with a sledgehammer.
5. “He believes that political power should belong to men and that women’s role should be to have and raise children.’’
The French candidate says some qualities are more closely related to one or the other gender. He states that political power belongs by default to manhood. A clear example of this is the traditional virtue of virilitas so cherished by Republican Rome. For biological reasons, the functions of power, war, and political decision making were, for dozens of millennia, by default masculine functions. Those of education, housekeeping, cooking and, even I dare say, finance were by default feminine ones.
He is right. Of all the folks and communities of mankind ever known on this planet, there was never a single matriarchal society. Some societies are more matriarchal than others, but it is only relative and never absolute. Processor Fassin knows this perfectly well, for he is himself an anthropologist, and in order to disagree with Mr Zemmour, he would have to go against the scientific consensus in his own field.
This again should not be an inspiration for fixed laws in a Republic founded upon the principle of equality between individuals regardless of their sex, and it would be absurd for a patriot of the nation of Joan of Arc to try and relegate women to the household. But that it is not in any way part of Zemmour’s agenda, even by extrapolation.
6. “He has claimed to be on the side of General Bugeaud, who massacred Muslims during the colonisation of Algeria.”
None will disagree that the massacre of innocents can be excused or even explained. But then again, this is not what Zemmour did: Zemmour lauded a military man’s uncompromising patriotism. He did not excuse this particular command of Bugeaud to suffocate an entire tribe into the cave where they had taken refuge.
Being coherent with my own words, I believe that statues of General Lee should not be taken down in the US, because despite fighting for an evil cause, he was still a great military leader, a patriot, and even freed slaves that he should have received has inheritance, before the war. Alas, few heroes of American, French or British history were saints, and fewer even by modern standards of sanctity. If Lee is taken down, how long before Nelson, Napoleon, Churchill and De Gaulle receive the same fate?
To remind Anglo-Saxon readers of the historical context, one of the casuum belli of the French conquest of Algeria from 1830 onwards was to put an end to slave raids that had plagued the Mediterranean for a millennium. And this was far from being a pretext, as some historians like to put it. When the French expedition took Algiers it immediately freed several hundreds of French slaves – thousands of European slaves altogether. This excuses nothing but explains how the struggle between the Western and Muslim worlds is not a recent, superficial or arbitrary one, and how the situation cannot be naively diagnosed in all abstraction of history.
7. “[Zemmour] has contended that Marshal Pétain saved Jews.”
Marshal Pétain and the regime of Vichy generally speaking – despite being regimes founded upon the treason of the French nation, forsaking the alliance with Britain, and collaboration with Nazi Germany – spared France from total defeat. Fighting to the end would have meant that the whole of France would have been conquered and placed under direct German governance, like Poland, Czechia or Greece. One knows that in the latter countries, the proportion of Jews who died in the Holocaust reached 90%, in the case of Greece or the Netherlands. In France, it was around 10%. Vichy leaders still instinctively rejected Nazi racist axioms. In France, in Italy, in Spain, Jews undeniably found a better shelter from hatred and deportation than under direct German rule.
This does not mean that Mr Zemmour ignores the existence of the Vel d’Hiv deportation, of the Lois Juives, or of the militia’s massacres, and general servility of Vichy towards Germany. He acknowledged it and maintained his position all the same.
Be that as it may, this historical thesis was not at all invented by him. It was generally accepted in France, even defended by Jewish and Israeli historians, until the publication of Robert Paxton’s book Vichy France which condemned Vichy as altogether evil. Recently, an Israeli historian has published sources that demonstrate the active role of Vichy in attempting to protect French citizens, regardless of their religion, from the Gestapo and the SS.
I think that Pétain was a traitor to France, but history is complex. This matter is still an area of academic debate, and I believe it will forever remain a matter of opinion. Only the party that wants to censor the other one will truly be wrong.
8. “[He] would like the death penalty to be reinstated.”
One can reasonably disagree with Mr Zemmour, and join the liberals who believe, like Victor Hugo, that “Vengeance is human, Justice is divine. The State is in between, its role is to heal, to better the men.”
Nevertheless, support for the re-establishment of capital punishment is widespread among French people. Some months ago, the Rwandese refugee who burned the cathedral of Nantes, that had been left to roam about by the police because “He was not subject to detention under European laws of asylum” said the French interior Minister Darmanin, eventually found the primary target of his arson, the vicar of the cathedral, and stabbed him to death, in the Vendée. Most of the perpetrators of the past ten years were known to be dangerous by the intelligence services but were still left free because of lack of space in prisons or EU legal restrictions.
But there again, Mr Zemmour’s support for the death penalty is anecdotical in the greater picture of his battles and it is certainly not something he would have the leisure and popularity margin to reinstate if he managed to beat Le Pen and Macron.
As a way of conclusion, I will say that it matters greatly for foreign conservatives or reactionaries to understand their French comrades and comprehend the hope we put in Mr Zemmour. For every new decay brought by progressivism in any one of our nations inevitably ends up plaguing the other ones, and we have a common interest in vanquishing deconstructivism in the West as a whole. One could not forget how the French theory (it is a shame in itself that such devilry should be characterised as French) crept from the intellectual boroughs of Paris, insidiously wrecking itself on the shores of New England, and eventually mutated into the notorious, dreadful and destructive cancel culture that scourges our time.
The fact that a member of the Collège de France, pretty much the equivalent of Cambridge Trinity College in England, should write a derogatory article about a French presidential candidate in the British media demonstrates what is wrong with France’s establishment. The establishment of my country lives in an enclosed penthouse, more concerned about what foreign elites think of them than about what their own people think about them. Sound familiar?
Where their fate might be worse than that of Britain’s establishment, is that their minds and their logos are colonised by Anglo-Saxon structures, and they play the role of New-England progressives more readily than that of French scholars. Professor Fassin is probably eminent in his field, but in this particular case, he blatantly used his position and network at The Guardian to cast a stone at My Zemmour, because of political enmity. Even in the case that The Guardian did ask him for his contribution, he could have passed, quite obviously not being an expert in the matter.
I will also indulge in begging The Guardian, or any British media outlet, that if they should wonder about Mr Zemmour’s views they should simply ask him directly and let Professor Fassin return to his studies, by which he is certainly much beguiled so that he has no spare time to come down from Mount St Genevieve and seek quarrel in the political arena.
One last sting: The Guardian seems to gather and spread information about France only through those with whom they are in ideological communion; the same way that the American or Soviets informed themselves about the countries they invaded or ‘freed’, only with the local communists, pro-West or Shia Muslims. I think I am fair to call this a colonial method.
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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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The Dualism of Contemporary Archaeology
Time Team was an amazing programme. It was educational yet accessible, undeniably British and true to its discipline. Really, it was everything one could wish for from a television programme. Beyond the screens, it was just as successful in blasting a hole into the ivory tower of academic archaeology, the programme’s lack of gatekeeping and obfuscation opening a realm previously exclusive to university departments.
In 2006, its presenter claimed Time Team had published more reports on its excavations in the past decade than every university archaeology department combined, whilst criticising the shortcomings of the activity (or somewhat lack thereof) within the academic establishment. From the passion of the assembled historians and archaeologists in each episode, it is not difficult to believe this may have been the case.
Broadcaster politics and the pursuit of demographic ‘relevance’ destroyed this British staple rather swiftly in the early 2010s. In retrospect, it was the last hurrah for British archaeology before it wholly sank into the same cultural strife engulfing the rest of modern academia. However, it would be unwise to discard contemporary archaeological activities as nonchalantly as one might do with the rest of the humanities. Due to its fundamental characteristics, a unique dualism now exists within the discipline which merits some attention.
Readers will likely be able to guess many of the negative consequences contemporary culture has imparted onto academic archaeology, chiefly since they are the same as in other humanities subjects. These are focussed on the interpretations made beyond excavations in published writing, thus in the part of the discipline which is closest to modern history’s general malfunctioning. Both disciplines suffer from a homogenous progressive politics amongst academics, so generally hegemonic outcomes of that sort are all but guaranteed for the foreseeable future.
This renders discussion of certain historical subjects completely taboo, even when the tangible evidence is revealed by archaeologists, lest academics be seen to support a supposedly ‘toxic’ mindset about the past or something similarly in contravention of their worldviews. History is neither a story of progress, nor a proof of progressive values’ precedence and inevitability, but such facts are amongst those ignored by a paradigm of deconstruction.
Perhaps more disturbingly, for people of any political persuasion, archaeology can prove civilisations are not immortal and can fall in a wave of decisive violence in the right conditions. The anonymous archaeologist Stone Age Herbalist covered the flaws of contemporary academic archaeology in greater detail in an article for UnHerd last year, which I certainly recommend.
As for the other side of contemporary archaeology, the discipline remains defined by recovering tangible evidence of the past from nature, in other words a bedrock of empirical objectivity. If one puts aside the declining rigour of historical interpretations, the basic role of an archaeologist remains vital for our understanding of the past and its transmission to future generations. The past archaeologists excavate is less ‘living’ than, for instance, an extant Tudor manor, but is still has ample potential to animate the mind about how our ancestors once lived and contributes a great deal to our verifiable knowledge of history.
A couple of examples worth praising are in order. First, the ancient city of Pompeii should be at least vaguely known to all readers. After all, it is one of the most impressive archaeological sites in the world, accompanied by the allure of its dramatic demise to Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. About a third of the city remains unexcavated, but is generally off-limits from further work in favour of extensively conserving previously unearthed buildings.
However, excavations restarted over the last few years in areas last dug over a century ago have brought forth a wealth of new discoveries, and digs on a new insula (city block) to relieve pressure on exposed walls have been widely reported for a fresco depicting something reminiscent of a pizza. The story of Pompeii is only growing richer as a result of this new archaeology. Second, a lot less readers will know about cuneiform, let alone be able to read it. Globally, only a few hundred people can competently translate the oldest known form of writing used by the Sumerians and Akkadians, whereas archaeologists have found some half a million clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. Digitisation projects in recent years have aided the accessibility of these artefacts, but the scarcity of scholars yet hampers our recovery of that past.
Therefore, a paper published in May discussing a new project to translate Akkadian with neural machine translation might revolutionise our knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia. In essence, it uses similar technology to Google Translate to render Akkadian cuneiform as meaningful English phrases or sentences. Accuracy is far from ideal, as formulaic texts are translated with some skill by the program whereas literary texts are practically out of the question, but the prospect of substantial usefulness in the future exists without making Akkadian scholars redundant.
What does all this tell us? Contemporary archaeology derives an ultimately negative trajectory from its academic overseers, but this is indistinguishable from the rest of academia in the current deconstructive paradigm. Whilst the discipline is buttressed by an inherent tangibility and objectivity which still produces new discoveries, it should not be overlooked when discussing a restoration of academia towards renewed sense. Indeed, such a project will start from a better basis in archaeology than any other subject in the humanities.
I severely doubt archaeologists will begin grinding artefacts into dust which reinforce uncomfortable facts about human nature, but similar effects can be achieved more subtly by the custodial institutions. Archives and museums increasingly see their collections through a far more reductive and essentially monochromatic lens, with all the nuance therein of a medieval executioner by trading in absolutes. These institutions have developed culturally modish tactics to bypass their natural approach to tangible history and enable presentism to abound, removal to storage being the bluntest. One should not need to remind readers how much poorer the world will be in terms of future maintained knowledge the longer this persists.
We are almost lucky contemporary archaeology possesses characteristics that cannot let transient perspectives fully dominate. They may become the only tools left in the humanities to fight the entropies of this age, until such time as we remake the others ourselves.
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The possible booster/lockdown trade-off
At the time of writing, the UK is facing a sharp rise in cases of the novel Omicron variant. As a result, after a relatively normal summer and autumn, the government has now enacted ‘Plan B’, a series of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) including mandated mask wearing as well as work-from-home and vaccine passport recommendations, all intended to slow the virus’ spread. Further, despite having previously denied having any intention of doing so, it now appears to be floating the possibility of a third national lockdown or lockdown lite, limiting indoor dining (in winter…) and socialising. Amidst this, the government’s messaging continues to be that Omicron’s defeat lies in widespread uptake of the covid vaccine’s booster dose, which is not really surprising as we had previously been warned that the emergence of new variants would likely require cycles of booster jabs. This may not seem like terribly controversial advice in a country like the UK where, up until now, vaccine acceptance has been high. However, it is naïve to assume that all those who accept the jab do so for the same reasons. And, by that token, short-sighted not to consider the negative impact that another lockdown (or indeed the mere threat of one) could have on future levels of vaccine acceptance amongst some.
Given the toxicity of vaccine discussions (consider, the boogieman figure of the antivaxxer as the epitome of wilful ignorance and callousness, even before covid), the vaccine-hesitant report being unlikely to share their reservations with vaccine-acceptant peers for fear of encountering derision or scorn. As a result, vaccine accepters seldom have to engage with anything other than a David Icke-esque caricature of vaccine hesitancy. This obscures how, far from belonging to separate realms of ‘reason and science’ and ‘irrationality and conspiracy’, vaccine attitudes exist on the same spectrum, tipped by out-and-out refusal and full acceptance, and filled in by a gamut of vaccine hesitancies. Similarly, the binary outcomes of a vaccine decision (either you get jabbed or you don’t) obscure how people with different degrees of hesitancy will opt to receive covid vaccine but, given their differing stances, may respond differently to future policy changes regarding boosters and lockdowns.
Through a study based on a series of online surveys March 15th and April 22nd, 2021, academics from Swansea University identified at least two sorts of attitude amongst accepters of the covid vaccination. Being vaccine-accepters, both had received at least one dose of a covid vaccination or indicated their intentions to do so when it was offered to them.
However, whereas ‘full-accepters’ experienced few qualms about their decision to get jabbed, often just seeing it as an extension of a well-established social-norm, ‘accept-but-unsure’ accepters were more ambivalent, thus flirting with vaccine hesitancy. Though they did accept a jab (or said they would when it came to it), they did so with some concerns about its safety and effectiveness.
In explaining their eventual decision to accept the vaccine, they emphasised a trust in science (“I was a bit suspicious… but the science today compared to years ago is outstanding isn’t it?”) and sense that, whatever their reservations, the vaccine was in some way necessary to allow for a return to ‘normality’. Vaccination was seen as “the only way forwards, to get on with our lives”. Anecdotally, I find that this certainly chimes with my experience of social media last spring when Twitter was briefly aflood with clips of fully vaccinated Israelis rediscovering the pleasures of legal public-gatherings and indoor dining, and promising a happier, freer summer than the last. More academically, surveys carried out by the ONS this
September found that 65% of previously hesitant accepters gave a desire for restrictions to ease and life to return to normal as one of their motivations for getting jabbed (interestingly, only 21% gave potential vaccine passports as one of theirs but this is another story).
Importantly, this recognition of the vaccine’s necessary role in our return to normality often involved a recognition that this was not a ‘one off’, that is, that there would in all likelihood be cycles of boosters in response to novel variants of the virus. It was largely recognised that as these emerged, we would need to continue receiving jabs to protect normal life and stave off life-destroying NPIs like lockdown.
This means that for some accepters, vaccine acceptance is a trade-off between some degree of hesitancy and a desire to see normal life resume. They got jabbed (and accepted that they would need to do so again in the future) on the understanding that this guaranteed their ability to live as before. As a result, the UK government’s re-threatening of this ability each time crisis looms may start to gnaw at these people’s levels of vaccine acceptance. If each time numbers climb my being vaccinated is not enough to protect normality from threat, the accept-but-unsure accepter might think, why should I swallow my hesitations and continue to accept the jabs? Though there are surely those who (for whatever reasons) will accept round after round of booster as necessary, even as authority continues threaten their civil society and flourishing, I think that it would be naïve to assume that this will be the case of all those who accepted the first, second and even third jab.
I do not know what the scale of this problem is, the quantitative research into various types of vaccine acceptance in the UK seems somewhat limited. However, if we are to trust government’s claim that the already limited numbers of unvaccinated people pose a significant threat to public health, whilst also seeing how they are unlikely to respond positively to coercive measures like vaccine passports, I do not see how adding to their future numbers would not be, on the government’s own terms, damaging to the effort against covid. Resorting once more to anecdote, over the last fortnight or so, I have heard more than one (generally young) person express their grumpiness at having to accept a third, and potentially fourth, jab given the limited risk the virus poses to them and the disruptions the fresh barrage of NPIs has caused in their lives. However minor this problem turns out to be, the government needs to consider the impact that their continued treatment of normality as a privilege could have on some people’s future vaccine acceptance.
