I knew Bristol was liberal; the city is famous for it. Me? I have traditional values, I am involved with the Conservative party, and I have been a Christian my whole life. But when I got an unconditional offer to study a course at the University of Bristol which ranked third in that subject, I accepted it without hesitation. Nine months into living here and I have seen advertisements for climate-crisis bake sales, intersectional feminist poetry slams, and students “occupying” the Wills Memorial Building (and subsequently whinging that their vegan Deliveroo wasn’t able to reach them) in solidarity with striking lecturers. However, having nonchalantly followed Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatres on Twitter to see if any shows piqued my interest, I saw something that one couldn’t just dismiss as liberal lefty nonsense – this was something truly horrifying.
Tobacco Factory Theatres retweets ThisEgg (a theatre company) promoting their new show, The Family Sex Show (also promoted by The Guardian) The title is possibly alluding to incest, to Red Light District sex shows, and is definitely intended to shock. Already feeling slightly disturbed, I read on. The age recommendation is 5+ and the show description reveals it is intended as “an alternative to porn”. I read on to learn that “there is nakedness, yes. At one point in the show, everyone on stage takes their clothes off…” This is ringing every alarm bell possible.
Posing as “sex education”, the adults involved (who were hastily cast via Twitter only a month ago) don’t seem to know the first thing about safe, age-appropriate sex education. What five-year-old needs an alternative to pornography? Exposure to pornography is often used as a desensitising tactic when grooming children. In defence of this horror show, the website claims that “sexual development and behaviour in children starts from birth”. This is an argument which I have only previously heard from a documentary about PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) to justify removing the age of consent.
Speaking of consent, which this show claims to teach us all about, I have to question why the “actors” get to choose their level of comfort when stripping. A five-year-old child, however, cannot consent to seeing naked strangers. The only guidance for parents is that they can leave if they feel uncomfortable, yet the theatre manager has written extensively on how the actors will be supported if there was negative feedback. How, I ask, are the “actors” the victims in this situation? This show seems to be all about what the adults want to do in front of the children, convinced that they know best. Cyber-flashing has just become a crime, and yet the cast of The Family Sex Show feel it is their right to flash infant-school-aged children. Many Twitter commenters reminisced over days when “dirty flashers” would be chased off by police. Now, liberal parents pay them ten pounds a ticket to bare all on stage. These people do not deserve to be parents.
My sex education at school took place in Year Six. We were ten and eleven years old and were taught about sex and puberty in an age-appropriate, sensitive, non-embarrassing way. The teachers, surprisingly, didn’t find it necessary to strip naked and point to their genitals to get the message across. Most of my generation will have had a similar experience and don’t feel we have gaps in our knowledge. Of course, we have all witnessed the odd person getting changed at the beach rather indiscreetly – but this is contextual, and hopefully accidental. If children are taught that it is normal for strangers to want to show their genitals to them, then this completely undermines the preventative measures that parents, and trusted adults, take against grooming. And as for the argument that “children will encounter porn anyway, so why not teach them about it now?” I worked in Early Years education for four years and I didn’t meet a single five-year-old who could read, write or type well enough to access pornography. And if parents leave it accessible to children, someone needs to call CPS.
I am just thankful that the live show and tour was all suspended during the multiple lockdowns, or we could be two years into child-traumatising theatrical sex shows. The Twitter outrage has been huge, and the account, Libs of TikTok, made famous by Joe Rogan’s podcast, shared the story, at my request, to an audience of 591.3k angry followers. We also have riled up over 800 Bristolian mothers on Mumsnet who have taken this story to the Daily Mail, started a petition, and are boycotting the theatre. Grown adults are being paid to strip in front of little children, in UK theatres, funded by the National Lottery and Arts Council England. Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatres want your money! In return, you and your five-year-old can watch simulated sex acts followed by a stage full of strange adults exposing their genitals. I have never been more horrified.
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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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Neoconservatism: Mugged by Reality (Part 2)
The Neoconservative Apex: 9/11 and The War on Terror
11th September 2001 was a watershed moment in American history. The destruction of the World Trade Centre by Muslim terrorists, the deaths of thousands of innocent American citizens and the general feeling of chaos and vulnerability was enough to turn even the cuddliest of liberals into bloodthirsty war hawks. People were upset, confused and above all angry and wanted someone to pay for all the destruction and death. To paraphrase Chairman Mao, everything under the heavens was in chaos, for the neoconservatives the situation was excellent.
After 9/11, President Bush threw out the positions on foreign policy that he’d advocated for during his candidacy and became a strong advocate of using US military strength to go after its enemies. The ‘Bush Doctrine’ became the staple of US foreign policy during Bush’s time in office and the magnum opus of the neoconservative deep state. The doctrine stated that the United States was entangled in a global war of ideas between Western values on the one hand, and extremism seeking to destroy them on the other. The doctrine turned US foreign policy into a black and white war of ideology where the United States would show leadership in the world by actively seeking out the enemies of the West and also change those countries into becoming like the West. Bush stated in his 2002 State of the Union speech:
“I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
The ‘Bush Doctrine’ was a pure expression of neoconservatism. But the most crucial part of his speech was when he gave a name to the new war the American state had begun to wage:
“Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch – yet it must be, and it will be waged on our watch.”
The ‘War on Terror’ became a term that would become synonymous with the Bush years and indeed neoconservatism. For neoconservatives, the attack on 9/11 reaffirmed their pessimism about the world being hostile to the United States and, in turn, their views on needing to eradicate it with ruthless calculation and force. A new doctrine, a new President, a new war – neoconservatism certainly held itself up to its ‘neo’ nature. With all this set-in place and the neoconservative deep state rearing to go, they could finally start to do what they had always wanted to do – wage war.
Iraq and Afghanistan became the main targets, with Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban becoming public enemy’s number one, two and three. A succession of invasions into both countries, supported by the British military, ended up with the West looking victorious. Both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein had been removed from power, Al Qaeda was on the run, and various of their top leaders had been captured or killed. It was ‘mission accomplished’ and thus time to remould Afghanistan and Iraq into American-aligned liberal democracies. Furthermore, the new neoconservative elite saw to demoralise and outright destroy all those who had been associated with the Hussein regime and Islamic radical groups and thus began a campaign of hunting down, imprisoning and ‘interrogating’ all those involved. However, this is where the neoconservative project would begin to fall as quickly as it had ascended.The Failure and Eventual Fall of Neoconservatism
A core factor to note is that the neoconservative belief that one could simply invade non-democratic and often heavily religious countries and flip them into liberal democracies proved to be highly utopian. As Professor Ian Shapiro pointed out in his Yale lecture on the Demise of Neoconservatism Dream, the neoconservative’s falsely believed that destroying a country’s military was equivalent to pacifying and ruling a country. The American-British coalition may have swiftly destroyed the armies of Hussein of Iraq and cleared out the Taliban in Afghanistan but they did not effectively destroy the support both had amongst the general population. If anything, the removal of both created an array of intense power vacuums which the neoconservatives could only seem to fill with corrupt American aligned Middle Eastern politicians as well as gun-ho Generals and neoconservative elites who knew very little about the countries they were presiding over.
One such example is Paul Bremer who led the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq after the Hussein regime was overthrown. His genius idea – that totally would get the Iraqi people on the side of freedom and democracy – was to disband the army and eradicate the Iraqi civil service and governmental authorities of those who were aligned with Hussein’s Ba’ath Party; terming it De-Ba’athification. Both led to a plethora of Iraqi’s losing their jobs and incomes and being smeared as enemies of the new American led regime – even low level teachers and privates were removed despite the fact that many of them joined the party simply to keep their own jobs.
While seen as a tactical way in which to remove any potential opposition to the CPA, the move created more opposition to the new government than any dissident anti-American group could have wished to have created – turns out making 400,000 young men, who know how to kill a man in sixteen different ways, unemployed isn’t the best way in which to show your care for the Iraqi people. It also didn’t help that Bremer and the CPA failed to account for a variety of funds and financial given to him for the reconstruction of Iraq, leading to a variety of financial blackholes and millions of dollars that simply disappeared.
Insurgent groups grew and assassination attempts on Bremer became commonplace to such an extent that even Osama Bin Laden himself placed a sizable bounty on Bremer’s head. Opposition to Bremer was so fervent that he was essentially forced to leave his position in the CPA by mid-2004 with his legacy being one of failure, instability and corruption, a legacy which the Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called “the largest single disaster in American foreign policy in modern times”.
Removing opposition instead of attempting to work with it and use their expertise is something the US has done before, especially after WW2 with the fall of the Axis regimes, but the neoconservative mind has no tolerance or time for those who oppose American values – leading to brutal methods being used against those who do not comply.
It was under the neoconservatives that Guantanamo Bay was opened, a prison known for its mistreatment of prisoners and dubious torture methods. It was under the neoconservatives that Abu Ghraib prison, a feared prison under Hussein’s regime, became a place in which American soldiers and state officials were allowed treat and use interrogation methods on prisoners in manners that violate basic human dignity. And it was under the neoconservatives that began a mass surveillance state in their own country via the so-called ‘Patriot Act’ which put the privacy of American citizens in great danger. The Bush administration claimed that these abuses of human rights were not indicative of US policy, they were and the neoconservatives were the one’s responsible.
Luckily, these abuses were quickly all over mainstream news both inside and outside the US and horrified the population at large, even those who had once been pro the War on Terror. Furthermore, soldiers who had fought abroad came back with horror stories of their fellow soldiers abusing prison inmates and how they’d left Iraq bombed to the ground, displacing families and with casualty rates of up to and around 600,000 Iraqi civilians. The American mood turned against the war and by the end of Bush’s tenure in office 64% of Americans felt that the Iraq war had not been worth fighting.
The average American who felt angry and upset at their freedoms being threatened by Islamic terrorism became just as angry and upset when they saw their own country committing atrocities and taking away the freedoms of others. While it may seem cliche to point out the hypocrisy, this was one of the first times American’s had been exposed to the reality of what their state was really capable of. As Shapiro elucidates, the real legacy of the Iraq war and the War on Terror is that it destroyed America’s moral high ground. A high ground America has never been able to reach to since.
Barrack Obama and the Democrats attacked the Republicans and their neoconservative wing for their human rights abuses, the unjustified invasion of Iraq and implosion of America’s moral standing on the international stage. It is not unfair to say that Obama’s intoxicating charm and message of hope for America was desperately wanted in a post-Bush era in order so that Americans could try and forget the depravities that their country had fallen to in the early 2000s. He promised to pull out of Iraq, close Guantanamo Bay and replace the neoconservative doctrine for one based on diplomacy and moderation.
Bush and the majority of his neoconservatives left office after the election of Obama – in which he beat the then darling of the neoconservative right John McCain – and have since failed to re-enter the halls of power or indeed even their own party. The Tea Party movement supplanted neoconservatism dominance over the Republican Party and those still clinging on for dear life are being cleared out by the new America First aligned Republicans who wish to supplant the war-hawks and globalists with non-interventionists and nationalists.Conclusions
It is not radical nor unfair to say that not since the fall of the Berlin Wall has an ideological group lost its grip on power so completely as the neoconservatives have.
With the failure of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, the grotesque violation of individual liberties at home and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, neoconservatism, and indeed even the US government, became synonymous with warmongering, authoritarianism and out and out international crime. To quote Stephen Eric Bronner in his book Blood in the Sand:
“Like a spoiled child, unconcerned with what anyone else thinks, the United States has gotten into the habit of invading a nation, trashing it, and then leaving without cleaning up the mess.”
Neoconservatives like to hand-wring about the ‘evils’ of Middle Eastern dictators while they allow dogs to tear off the limbs of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, spy on innocent American citizens and bomb Afghani schools full of children into oblivion. Thanks to the neoconservative project of the early to mid-2000s – elements of which still are in place today – the United States became a leviathan monstrosity of surveillance, torture, corruption and warmongering.
It is interesting to see that after being the “cause célèbre of international politics”, neoconservatives are now the frequent targets of ridicule and scorn. And deservedly so, especially considering what neoconservatism has devolved into. The Straussian and genuinely conservative elements of the political philosophy have been ripped out, replaced with vague appeals to liberal humanitarianism and cucking for globalist organisations like the UN and NATO. The caricature of neoconservatives wanting drag queens to be able to use gender-neutral bathrooms at McDonalds in Kabul has shown to be somewhat accurate. After all, neoconservatives exist to promote ‘Western values’ in foreign countries, so naturally what they will end up promoting is the current cultural orthodoxy of progressive leftism, intersectionality and social decadence. An orthodoxy I’m sure Middle Easterners are desperately clamouring for.
However, despite their dwindling ranks and watering down of the ideology, the essence of neoconservative foreign policy remains intact; they still think the world should look like the United States. Therefore, it is unsurprising to see neoconservatives calling for every country in the world to be a liberal democracy along with the American model, or for Western troops to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. Not only are these convictions still deeply held but are a direct expression of wanting American global hegemony to persist. On a deeper level, the recent pearl-clutching and whining from neoconservatives about the whole ordeal is simply a reflection of the anxiety that they now hold. Their ideas about what the world should look like have come collapsing before their eyes. And they can’t bear to face the fact that they were wrong.
This collapse has been occurring for some time and hopefully with the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and the recent moves amongst elements of the right and left to adopt a more non-interventionist approach to foreign policy, the collapse of neoconservatism will remain permanent. After all, the neoconservatives who backed President Joe Biden – thinking he would spell a revival in their views – have now had an egg thrown in their face. Biden has proven himself to not be aligned with neoconservative foreign policy views.
Despite his claims that ‘America was back’ and his past support of foreign interventionism, it is evident that Biden has no real ideological attachment to staying in Afghanistan. In turn, he seems to have found it relatively easy to pull out and then spout rhetoric that wouldn’t be uncommon to hear at a Ron Paul rally. He stood against nation-building, turning Afghanistan into a unified centralised democracy and rejected endless military deployments and wars as the main tool of US foreign policy. Biden, alongside President Donald Trump, has turned the tide of US foreign policy away from military interventionism and back towards diplomacy. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
However, while the ‘War on Terror’ may firmly be at an end – the American state has worryingly turned its eyes towards a new ‘War on Domestic Terror’. A war that political scientist and terrorism expert Max Abrahams worries will be catastrophic for the United States, quoting Abrahams:
“The War on Terror destabilized regions abroad. It’ll destabilise our country all the same… We cannot crack down on people just because we don’t like their ideology…otherwise the government is going to turn into the thought police and that is going to spawn the next generation of terrorists.”
The neoconservatives may have lost the war on terror but the structures and policies they put in place to fight that war are now being used, and being used more effectively, against so-called ‘domestic terrorists’. The American regime’s tremble in the lip is so great that it now believes the real threat to its existence lies at home. While this ‘War on Domestic Terror’ is still in its early stages, it is clear that the neoconservative deep state’s toys of torture, mass surveillance and war are now being put to other uses. Only time will tell if it will have the same consequences in America as it did in the countries it once occupied.
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With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq; the continued rise of anti-interventionism on the right and left; and the memory of the failure of conflicts in the Middle East fresh in people’s memories, neoconservatism has been all but relegated to the ideological graveyard – its body left rot under the cold soil for eternity. A fitting fate.
“A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality” proclaimed the godfather of the ideology. But in the perusal of utopian imperial ambitions it has now suffered the same fate – neoconservatism has been mugged by reality. A reality it so desperately and violently tried to bring to heel.
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Tories for Revolution
Whilst writing this, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has survived a no-confidence vote, brought about by, of all things, having an ‘unloicensed’ booze-up. Although he’s allowed to stay in the job, his prospects are grim. Most of the Tory backbenchers not on the PM’s payroll voted against him, and the Conservatives continue to trail behind Keir Starmer’s Labour – a man with as much positive energy as a recently divorced mortician, a deflated man for a deflated party.
That said, the Conservatives’ tanking popularity cannot be reduced to “a bad look”. I’m sure such a notion is very consoling for the parliamentary party. Never mind the insufferable coverage of “Partygate”, the government’s track-record over the past few months has been utterly terrible – far more severe than a regrettable office party to any serious person. Most people could vote for a lockdown-breaking Prime Minister provided he was governing in their interests, but he’s not.
Giving a blank cheque to Ukraine to fight a losing war with Russia, betraying his Brexit-voting supporters on immigration – continuing to permit absurd numbers to pour across the border, legally or illegally, and an underusing a historic supermajority; consequently failing to break the stranglehold of NGOs and a Blairite civil service, and reinforcing the government’s failure to implement supply-side solutions to Costalivin, the people with the most reason to hate this government are the conservatives that (theoretically) should be supporting it. All this said, we’ve been in similar circumstances before. Economic turbulence, government scandal, political disaffection, and an absence of progressive vision, it should be remembered that all these factors contributed to the rise of a new and dynamic political force. Of course, I am talking about the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus.
Co-founded by Jonathan Bowden and Stuart Millson in November 1992, the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus (RCC) was a fringe right-wing pressure group aiming to introduce a new, radical, and idiosyncratic brand of conservatism into British politics. In Bowden’s words: to introduce “abstract thought into the nether reaches of the Conservative and Unionist party”.
Before the establishment of the RCC, Bowden and Millson both operated in right-wing circles. Bowden became active in local Conservative Party politics in the late-80s and early-90s after dropping out of Cambridge University, during which time he joined the Monday Club. After failing to get elected to the club’s executive council, Bowden was appointed co-chairman of the club’s media committee alongside Millson in 1991.
Meanwhile, Millson was an officer at the Western Goals Institute (WGI), a right-wing anti-communist group that formed out of Western Goals UK – a British offshoot of the USA-based Western Goals Foundation. Although it was based in Britain, the WGI was not bound to the Conservative Party or British politics, opting to associate with a wide range of right-wing parties across the world, such as the Conservative Party of South Africa and France’s Front National. The Board of British Jewish Deputies described the WGI as “not fascists or anti-Semitic” but as inhabiting the “nether-world” of the fringe right.
When Bowden and Millson were expelled from the Monday Club in 1992, the controversialist and vanguardist energy of the WGI, combined with the desire to influence British politics within conservatism’s remit, lay the foundation for the RCC identity. Self-described as “Conservative, Nationalist, Unionist, and New Right”, the RCC saw itself as anglicised parallel, rather than a direct outgrowth, of the European New Right – a right-wing pan-European nationalist movement that ascended to prominence in the 1970s following the establishment of GRECE – Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (Research and Study Group for European Civilization) in 1968, led by Alain De Benoist and Dominique Venner.
Despite its short lifespan (1992-1994), the RCC acquired national notoriety. The Labour Party and Conservative Party liberals attacked the RCC as far-right infiltrators, whilst the more Eurosceptic and traditionalist factions of the Conservative Party, despite ideological and strategic differences, were more sympathetic to their cause. In terms of activity, the RCC published policy papers and even hosted some well-attended fringe events at Conservative Party Conference. However, it mainly centred around the publication of a newspaper aptly named: The Revolutionary Conservative.
Despite being a short-lived publication, the content was surprisingly diverse. A defence of a right-wing alternative to the European Union, a nationalist economic proposal, as well as attacks on Major’s leadership, British intervention in Bosnia, “The Bolshevik Broadcasting Company”, immigration-led demographic change, Liberal Conservatism, all designed to “set the blood pressure pounding in those Oxfam veins”, are just a few examples of the articles published whilst the RCC was active.
However, unlike conventional party-political groups, the RCC was united by a belief in the political power of culture. As such, one could also find think-pieces on The Windsors and national decline, military heroism in the works of Ernst Junger, rumours about Michael Jackson, the sexual politics of Camille Paglia and Andrea Dworkin, and cream teas with Alan Clark. The literary section formed a notably large chunk of the newspaper, with reviews ranging from novels to biographies, from politics to socio-biology, as well as ponderings on art (Wyndham Lewis) and music (Richard Wagner vs Tina Turner).
However, what is most notable about The Revolutionary Conservative is its overtly anti-PC articulation, being humorously cruel and sometimes bordering on total misanthropy. Indeed, the RCC referred to its flagship paper as “the most politically-incorrect magazine in Britain”. The “Introduction to Revolutionary Conservatism” reads as follows:
“Are you sick and tired of being bullied by women who look like men in your local library? Are you sick of transvestite vicars running the country down as they reach for their macro-biotic dieting recipe books? Are you sick of anti-racist Noddy? Does your gorge rise when you see Peter Tatchell engaged in a die-in opposite the Palace of Westminster? Are you sick of your local council hosting Chad-awareness days at your expense?”
…We say, burn the Red Flag! Kick those trendy vicars in the seat of their pants (although they would probably enjoy that), let Peter Tatchell die of AIDs (the sooner the better) and put tanks on the streets of Handsworth. If you agree with these modest proposals… then you should subscribe to The Revolutionary Conservative”
The extent to which the rhetoric is to be taken in earnest or is merely a matter of performance is neither here nor there. One gets the impression that they enjoyed the ambiguity, whether it was a practical necessity or not. Even if the following write in was an advertising tactic or genuine, it’s still hilarious:
“Dear Sir… I obtained a copy of your noxious publication… I almost threw up my breakfast. To refer to Madonna as a slag is over the top… She is merely a distracted and somewhat sad girl in need of prayer, recuperation, and the sort of church socials my wife organises… the general tone of your magazine is harsh, masculine, ultra-reactionary, yet abusive yet stentorian…”
“Dear Vic… The idea of you gagging on your All bran and Hovis gave us considerable pleasure in the Editorial Department. We have decided to use your description of the magazine – harsh, masculine, ultra-reactionary, and yet radical, etc. – as an advertisement”
Gradually, a fringe-right ecosystem would develop around the RCC. The most notable outgrowths were Right Now! – a magazine dedicated to “politics, ideas, and culture” that ran from 1993 to 2006, featuring contributions and interviews from various people across the political right, and the Conservative Democratic Alliance – a group of ex-Monday Club members, opposed to what they saw as “sleaze, double-dealing, arrogance, incompetence, Europhilia, indifference and drift” within the Tory Party – particularly its leadership, which it often decried as neoconservative.
Contrasted to the political zeitgeist of New Labour and Compassionate Conservatism, the RCC and Right Now! soon acquired reputations as being “extremist”. Robin Cook attacked William Hague for failing to contain “extremists” within his party – Right Now! serving as a reference point for the claim. Overtime, the fringe-right Tory scene declined, partially due to sustained attacks from the left and centre-right, partially due to the unwillingness of more right-wing Tories to associate with a movement that was increasingly critical of their party, and partially due to disorganisation, infighting, and a feeling of hopelessness to achieve change within or alongside the Tories.
In retrospect, were they “extremists”? In my view, I would say no. Upon inspection, the RCC was closer to “culturally-oriented” paleoconservatism or right-wing populism than anything fascistic. Granted, the RCC’s presentation and political priorities certainly differed from the bourgeois moralising of traditional conservatism; being far more concerned with mass immigration, nationalist rhetoric, and embracing bohemianism for culturally right-wing ends, than re-sanctifying Christian morals or pushing free-market Euroscepticism. The RCC et al. often found themselves torn between what they saw as “the free-market worship” of Thatcherite Dries and the social wetness of the… Wets.
In 1994, the RCC dissolved as Bowden and Millson went their separate ways. Bowden would continue to operate in right-wing political circles, briefly joining the cultural nationalist Freedom Party, momentarily serving as its treasurer. However, Bowden would eventually join the BNP in 2003 after being offered the role of “Cultural Officer” by then-leader Nick Griffin. Bowden left the party in 2007 citing concerns about the party’s finances, political strategy, and Griffin’s dictatorial control of party elections; he compared the BNP to a “tin-pot dictatorship”. Whilst he would continue to attend events organised by local BNP groups, he dedicated most of his time to artistic pursuits and ultimately cut all ties with the party in 2010. Similarly, Millson would orient himself more towards culture, mainly reviewing music and art.
Given how ‘forthright’ the RCC was, it’s interesting to imagine how they would react to the present government. After all, the Conservative Party of the early 2000s was bad enough in their eyes. Naturally, one can imagine they would be mortified, but would they be wrong? Britain is on track to becoming a third-world country and its main right-leaning political force are behaving like communists. I’m willing to bet that an RCC-style organisation would do very well. Then again, the same laws which make opposition to the regime so difficult are often the ones which have caused the specific problems we currently face.
Marked by weakness and a lack of imagination, the only thing currently between the Tories and political annihilation is their ability to note how terrible the opposition is. It has been the Tory Party’s go-to tactic for a while now. Eager replenishers of the status quo, Britain’s main “opposition” is underpinned by a sincere and existential hatred of the nation. Civil-servant galvanising, NHS-worshipping, border-abolishing, rape-gang denialist NIMBYs, they fly into tireless frenzy should it be rumoured that the Conservatives have opted to be slightly less useless than usual.
Some will point to the RCC as an exemplary case of how Tory Party radicalism is destined to fail. Whilst it is easy to understand this view, very few have been able to pose convincing alternatives. Reclaim is a joke, Reform is in many ways worse than the Tories, the SDP have one (1) council seat, the Heritage Party has zero (0), and UKIP hasn’t been relevant since 2015. If you’re going to join a political party, you might as well join one with a chance of winning. Once you accept that, the RCC transforms from another failed movement into useful case study to learn from. Right-wing dissidents should not conflate ‘political failure’ with ‘political worthlessness’. If one-hundred failures should inspire one glorious triumph, then those failures are not so worthless after all.
Above all else, the central problem identified by the RCC persists to our current political situation – conservatism can only win if it’s cooler than the left. There’s nothing attractive about delay, hesitation, or lamentation. Political energy belongs to the transgressive and the constructive. Conservatives, more than anybody else, should know that if one thing is constant in humans, it is the desire to feel a part of something exciting – such as a revolution, like “the one in France” or not. Bemoaning the Left’s successes and cultural power, calling them mean, hypocritical, high-status, and so on; projecting yourself as some blighted Chattertonian romantic for the attention of your enemies is nothing more than embellished whining. Whining with a cause is still whining and no revolution in history materialised from whining and whining alone.
