Most people would say that they have two grandmothers – the mother of their father, and the mother of their mother.
However, for the fifteen nations that make up the Commonwealth Realms, I believe it can be equally said that we all have three grandmothers. The mother of our fathers, the mother of our mothers, and the mother of nations.
Queen Elizabeth II was the nation’s grandmother, one who was dearly loved and cherished.
For many alive Elizabeth II was not just The Queen, but The Queen. A whole generation of people has been born, grown up and died only knowing Queen Elizabeth II as the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Queen of Canada, the Queen of Australia, the Queen of Jamaica, etc. She has been an almost constant presence in modern British history, from the dark and troubled days of the Second World War to the turbulent and chaotic times of the 21st century.
It’s still hard to describe just how strange everything feels now. The Queen is dead, and the world will never be the same again.
All of us will remember her unfailing service, her sincere faith, her eternal good cheer, and her unflinching desire to make good her promises to the Commonwealth so many years ago. Those who had the privilege of meeting her recall her warmth, her razor-sharp wit and dry humour, and her capacity to make you feel like you were the most important person in the room, not she. She was a giant of her times and there is not one figure in recent history who can command as much respect or adoration.
Queen Elizabeth II oversaw the transition of Empire to Commonwealth, of a war-torn society to a burgeoning modern democracy, a world riven by authoritarianism stepping into the light of liberty. She faced down apartheid in South Africa, applauded her former colonies as they embraced independence, and prayed each year for the good fortune and happiness of all her subjects.
Under her Crown, we were all one people.
It was undeniably the highest honour imaginable to have been a subject to such a monarch, and it is my keenest sorrow to witness her passing. I know that she found courage in her faith in Christ and the Church of England, and I have no doubt she we will walk with the King of Kings through the gates of Heaven.
Her son, King Charles III, has now assumed her throne. I have every confidence in him to ably succeed her in this heavy burden that he has now been called by Grace to take upon his shoulders. He has had a lifetime of tutelage under one of Britain’s most beloved and respected monarchs in her history and has demonstrated remarkable insight and wisdom that was truly ahead of its times.
He inherits a Commonwealth equally at a time of change as his mother found it, a United Kingdom facing challenges at home and abroad, and a Royal Family constantly shifting to keep up with the demands of its age. A trying time for anyone, but His Majesty is up to the challenge. I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of his reign.
I was honoured to have been a subject of Queen Elizabeth II. I am honoured still to now declare myself a loyal, obedient and joyful subject of His Majesty King Charles III.
God save The King.
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Victims, Aren’t We All?
Following Donald Trump’s recent announcement concerning returning to Butler, Pennsylvania just over a month after an assassination attempt was made on his life there, there are many things to reflect on.
One of them is one of the few bright spots from the fallout of that event: that being much of the left finally getting a taste of their own medicine for once when it came to cancel culture. Many of those who attempted to downplay and mock the horror, alongside those who expressed disappointment that the would-be killer didn’t hit his target, felt the full wrath of the Frankenstein’s monster they had developed for decades. The parody band Tenacious D and streamer Destiny were the biggest casualties of this, all the while many others were targeted also, from school administrators and Home Depot employees, with the popular X account LibsofTikTok being the witchfinder general on that end.
Despite such an atmosphere and such scalps, many objected to such behaviour, out of some well-intentioned (if ultimately misguided) commitment to principle against cancel culture as a whole. As expected, many centrist commentators (like Triggernomtrey’s Konstantin Kisin and satirist Andrew Doyle) echoed this point, but more surprising were prominent right-wing accounts, often seen as ‘dissidents’ of the movement, the sort of type expected to appear on Alex Kaschuta’s Subversive podcast.
In particular, anon X accounts, like Peachy Keegan and Posts by Feds came to the defence of those being cancelled, especially when it came to the aforementioned Home Depot employee, who they felt didn’t deserve such vitriol.
All of these are undoubtedly pleasant and well-meaning sentiments, and not without some legitimacy. Indeed, the right shouldn’t perhaps get too carried away with such attitudes when the wind blows in our direction – as Nietzsche once noted, ‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.’
Despite this, I can’t help but feel that such attitude overall is not the best for this moment or any like it when we can finally use these tools against the left.
Firstly, it is true that every society has boundaries on what is acceptable and what isn’t. As far as not wanting a political opponent dead goes – especially just after an assassination attempt – that is perhaps a pretty good standard for what isn’t acceptable in a free society to advocate for, all the while being a pretty low bar to meet in a democratic society.
Add to that how politically volatile much of the United States is in right now, any attempt to raise the temperature in such a way to make the tinderbox more likely to explode is beyond reckless and reprehensible. Wanting to stem and cull those who attempt to do so, whether they be well-known celebs or simple custodians, is something perfectly legitimate and sensible to want to do.
This is especially true in Trump’s case. This is a man who has already had much vilification against him to the point whereby his possible death seemed to be something much of the mainstream was happy to egg on, including the several calls for his murder by celebrities, and the Beeb going as far as to air a documentary sympathetic to a previous attempted Trump assassin in Michael Sandford (therefore, the swift backlash to maintaining that atmosphere is an improvement from years past). Given that, alongside the increased political violence against the right across the West (including the attempt against former Slovakian PM Robert Fico), any attempt to further normalise such attitudes is definitely not good for any body politic, let alone the divisive one we have now.
Secondly, the left has cancelled several people on the right for far less over the years, and no-one was safe from that. One many lament Tenacious D being dropped from their talent agency but joking about the assassin missing Trump is objectively far worse than what Winston Marshall did to be chased out his own band Mumford and Sons or what Morrissey did to be effectively shunned by much of the music world that once adored him. Their crimes? The former praised Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy while the latter supported unpopular political parties and criticised much of the UK political class.
Many fans of Destiny may be irritated that he can no longer be monetised on several platforms, but that is nothing compared to YouTuber Felix Kjellberg (better known by his ‘PewDiePie’ alias) being fired from his Maker Studios agency after a smear campaign by the Wall Street Journal to portray him (falsely) as antisemitic over edgy jokes, let alone the lawfare against YouTubers Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and 6oodFella over similar social media edgy jokes.
One may feel sorry for the Home Depot cashier, but many other custodians were thrown under the bus to little attention. Take Brian Leach, a disabled Asda worker who was fired for sharing a Billy Connelly joke seen as ‘anti-Islamic’ by colleagues. Or Beverly Lockwood, a woman fired from Arc Engineers for being a member of dissident political organisations. Or Gillian Phillips, a children’s author fired from HarperCollins for supporting J. K. Rowling and had to retrain as an HGV driver to make ends meet. Or William Kelly, a Virginian police officer, who was fired for financially supporting Kyle Rittenhouse in his 2021 trial. And the worst part is that this is by no means exhaustive, with these links providing more comprehensive lists to that regard.
That leads me to my final point. We are in a culture war. One side is taking it very seriously, using their power and influence to silence those it doesn’t like for banal reasons – the recent culling of the anti-mass immigration website VDare by lawfare is a good example of this. If the other side isn’t willing to fight back in a similar matter because of some so-called principle, it will not win and doesn’t deserve to.
I for one would love nothing more than a return to the idea of having an equilibrium with the left about not cancelling anyone. For that to work however, there must be one in the first place – something impossible when one side is hopelessly unbalanced. Until the right can wield some scalps and cancel its opponents on its own reasonable terms – such as not wanting the death of a much-maligned political enemy – then there is nothing to be gained from being high and mighty while accomplishing precisely diddly squat, an albatross the right has borne around our necks for far too long. The equilibrium can only emerge once we win, and the left has to agree to our terms of peace.
So do not weep for those on the left who are cancelled. At best pity them, but no more. In fact, I would suggest this: when they happily laugh and wallow in glee as VDare is shut down or they grin as the recent wave of rioters in Britain are jailed for holding sticks or naughty social media posts, revel in similar behaviour when the shoe is on the other foot, whether it be against the unemployed Home Depot colleague or in support of the hefty sentences for the midwit extremists of Just Stop Oil they are so in dismay of.
Until there is victory, there can be no honour. While we wait, we might as well take advantage for when the roles are reversed as best we can, to hopefully end this once and for all. Or to quote the villainous Derrick Lynch from Namco’s Crisis Zone arcade game: ‘So you will understand and fear, your own foolish mistakes’.
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What I’ve Learnt as a Revolutionary Communist
This article was originally published in November 2021.
I have a confession to make.
A few months ago I was made an official member of the Revolutionary Communist Group after being involved as a participating supporter for about a month and a half. The RCG are, in their own words, Marxist-Leninist, pro-Cuba, pro-Palestine, internationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist. They believe that capitalism is causing climate change, which they refer to as the ‘climate crisis’, and that socialism/communism is the only way to avert catastrophe.
They believe that the twin forces of imperialism and capitalism work today, and have been working for hundreds of years, to enrich the Western capitalist class by exploiting the labour of the proletariat and plundering the resources of the ‘Global South’. They publish a bi-monthly newspaper entitled ‘Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!’ which acts as an ideological core around which centre most of the groups discussions.
After two months of twice-weekly zoom calls, leafleting in front of busy train stations and protesting in front of embassies, I was finally invited to become an official member. I rendezvous-ed with two comrades before being taken to a door which was hidden down a dark alleyway and protected by a large iron gate – certainly a fitting location for a revolutionary HQ. Inside was an office and a small library stocked with all manners of communist, socialist and anti-imperialist literature including everything from Chavs by Owen Jones to The Labour Party – A Party Fit For Imperialism by Robert Clough, the group’s leader.
I was presented with a copy of their constitution, a document about security and a third document about sexual harassment (the RCG has had issues with members’ behaviour in the past). It was here, discussing these documents for almost three hours, that I learnt most of what I know now about the RCG as an organisation and the ecosystem it inhabits.
The RCG is about 150-200 members strong with branches across the country – three in London, one in Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Glasgow and Edinburgh and possibly more. In terms of organisation and decision-making they use what they call ‘democratic centralism’ – a sprawling mess of committees made up of delegates that appoint other committees that all meet anywhere between once every two weeks and once every two years. They’re also remarkably well funded, despite the fact that their newspaper sells for just 50p. They employ staff full time and rent ‘offices’ up and down the country. They draw income from fundraising events, members dues, newspaper and book sales and donations (both large and small).
Officially, the RCG is against the sectarianism that famously ails the Left. However, one zoom call I was in was dedicated to lambasting the Socialist Workers Party who, I soon learnt, were dirty, menshevik, reactionary Trots. We referred to them as part of the ‘opportunist Left’ who routinely side with the imperialists.
The RCG doesn’t generally maintain good relations with many other major leftist groups. Central to RCG politics is the idea of a ‘labour [small L] aristocracy’ – a core of the working class who have managed to improve their material conditions just slightly and so work against the interests of the wider working class, suppressing real revolutionary activity in order to maintain their cushy positions. The RCG sees the Trade Union movement as the bastion of the labour aristocracy. They see the Labour party also as their greatest enemy – ‘the single greatest barrier to socialism in Britain’.
The RCG takes issue with the SWP specifically over their attitude to Cuba. They believe that most Trotskyists are too critical of socialist revolutions that have occurred in the past and so are not real communists – after all, no revolution will be perfect. The RCG’s issue with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) is that they resent how the CPGB claims to be the main organisation for communism in this country and uses its coziness with the trade unions as a signifier of legitimacy. However, the RCG believes that this makes the CPGB not much more than an extension of the Labour party, which it despises.
The CPGB-ML (Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist-Leninist), on the other hand, are much closer politically to the RCG. They also share the same view on the Labour party. However, the CPGB-ML has recently taken a loud anti-trans position and so the RCG wants nothing to do with them.
Socialist Appeal are a group that has organised with the RCG in London before but the two do not get along due to, once again, the former’s (until recent) support for the Labour party every election. The RCG also shares views with Extinction Rebellion but XR now no longer wants anything to do with the RCG because of the RCG’s insistence on selling its communist newspaper at every event its members attend. The RCG insisting on trying to recruit members at every event it attends, including events co-organised with other groups, is a major source of friction and one of the reasons nobody wants to organise with them. It’s also one of the reasons why the RCG has stopped organising with LAFA – the London AntiFascist Assembly.
LAFA, I was told, are a chaotic bunch. They staunchly oppose all forms of hierarchy and make decisions on a ‘horizontalist’ basis. In true anarchist fashion, there are no official leaders or ranks at all in LAFA and decisions are made sort of by whoever takes the initiative. Unfortunately this means that those who become unofficial leaders in the group are accountable to absolutely no-one because they are not technically responsible for anything, and naturally issues arise from this quasi-primitivist state of affairs. Ironically, this makes the London AntiFascist Assembly kind of based.
Interestingly, one organisation with which the RCG has never had any problems is Black Lives Matter. The RCG and Socialist Appeal were (apparently) the only two groups out on the streets in solidarity with BLM last summer – BLM even allowed RCG members to speak at their events. The RCG enjoyed quite a close and amicable relationship with BLM right up until BLM decided at the end of last summer to effectively cease all activity, with the reason given to the RCG being just that ‘the summer has ended’. Presumably, the bulk of BLM’s activist base either had to go back to school or just got bored.
Although the RCG strictly prohibits any illegal activity at any of its protests, one clause of the constitution is ‘a revolution clause’ requiring members to leave their jobs and move house at the discretion of the RCG. I was told this clause has never been invoked and isn’t expected to be invoked for decades at least but is there in case a genuine communist uprising were to take place somewhere in the country and RCG leadership decided that it needed members to move into the area to help. The RCG is intent on staying firmly on the right side of the law for the foreseeable future – supposedly until class consciousness is raised to such a level that the time for revolution arrives. Whether or not history will pan out the way they think it will, only time will tell.
Perhaps most curious was the group’s confused stance on lockdowns. They are fiercely pro-lockdown and pro-mask, but also highly critical of the government’s approach for reasons that are quite vague. Why a communist organisation would want to place unprecedented power in the hands of a government – a Tory government no less – that it thinks operates as the right arm of global capital is beyond me. When I brought this up, a lone voice of dissent in my branch, I was told I had made a ‘valid point’ and that the group needed to discuss the matter further, but that was it. The only explanation I could arrive at was that unfortunately the RCG, and I think the Left generally, are deep in denial about being anti-establishment.
The RCG’s modus operandi is the weekly stall: three or four communists will take a table and a megaphone to a busy location and try to hand out leaflets and sell copies of the FRFI newspaper. The idea was that people whose values loosely align with those of the groups could be contacted and organised by way of these stalls. The law of large numbers means that these stalls are curiously successful – one two-hour stall at the weekend can sell a dozen newspapers and enlist a handful of people to be contacted by the group at a later date. The process of collecting people and funnelling them down the contact-member pipeline is a slow one with a low success rate, but they’re relentless.
Interestingly though, I believe their decades-old activist tradition is actually one of their biggest weaknesses. Ironically, so-called progressives are stuck in the past. The RCG has a very minimal online footprint – it uses its profiles on twitter and Instagram only to post dates for upcoming events. The RCG have so much faith in their traditional method of raising ‘class consciousness’ (translation: spreading communism) that they’re losing the internet arms race and thus their grip on young people – their traditional base. The fact that the group has a large proportion of older members might have something to do with it.
However, Leftists are good at street activism – they’ve been doing it for decades. Leftist activist groups have ingrained in their traditions social technology – sets of practices, behaviours and attitudes – that have developed over time and that their opponents would do well to familiarise themselves with, like looking at the homework of a friend (or in this case, an adversary).
The RCG believes that it is one of very few, maybe even the only, Leftist group in Britain today committed to maintaining a substantial street presence. One of the conditions for membership, after all, is promising to attend at least one street protest a week. The RCG no doubt take their activism seriously, with a comrade even describing the group to me as being made up of ‘professional revolutionaries’. They believe that they are growing and will continue to grow in strength, propelled by financial and then ecological crises. They are very excited for the collapse of the Labour party, which they believe is all-but imminent, because they think it will cause swathes of the Left to lose faith in a parliamentary means of achieving socialism and take to the streets, where the RCG will be waiting for them.
My time as a revolutionary communist has been challenging but what I’ve learned is no doubt valuable. I strongly encourage others to do as I have, if only just for a few weeks or so. Join your local leftist organisation – pick a sect, any sect! Expand your knowledge, see a different perspective and gain skills you might not gain anywhere else. Speak to people with a completely different viewpoint from yours and learn how they think, you’ll be a slightly better and more knowledgeable person for it.
Quote: Leftists are good at street activism. They have ingrained in their traditions social technology that have developed over time and that their opponents should familiarise themselves with.
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They’ll Hate You Regardless
Well, that’s that then. It definitely could’ve been better, but I was expecting much worse; I was expecting slam poetry about the Windrush Scandal from an NHS nurse, followed by a breakdance exhibition from Diversity, a ‘witty’ monologue about gay sex from Stephen Fry, topped off with a ‘modernised’ version of God Save the King.
The concert was thoroughly mediocre though – I’d be surprised if anyone under the age of 25 could name more than half of the line-up. When will the palace learn that glitzy American pop stars are not fit for royal celebrations?
In retrospect, it’s clear that the worst aspect of the coronation wasn’t the subversion of pomp and circumstance, but the commentary which overlaid it.
Once the more lavish aspects of the procession had subsided, along with the smattered allusions to Modern Britain, and the royals assembled on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Bridgerton actress Adjoa Andoh, who had been graciously invited to commentate on the King’s coronation, said:
“We’ve gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly white balcony. I was very struck by that.”
Anyone brushing this off as a stray comment from the WOKE (!!!) Liberal Metropolitan Elite clearly hasn’t been paying attention. As we saw with the death of Elizabeth, a vast chunk of the ‘criticism’ directed at the British monarchy is pure racial resentment. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.
The anti-white rhetoric of the monarchy’s critics isn’t some exceptional tendency or blip, it’s the logical conclusion of an inherently republican understandings of representation and legitimacy.
As Britain undergoes historic demographic change, primarily due to mass immigration (in other words, the result of government policy) an increasingly large subsection of the population, conscious of their distinctness to the heads of state, will likely pursue the dismantlement of what they perceive to be an arbitrarily (that is, oppressively) white Christian political structure, in order to better reflect (at the very least, better accommodate) Britain’s newly ‘diverse’ population.
If you’re scratching your head as to why the monarchy is unpopular with younger voters, I suggest you take a gander at the demographic composition of younger voters – and younger people generally.
Of course, institutions by their very nature cannot be diverse; people identify with them because they reflect a fundamental homogeneity which underpins the group from which they emerge, and by extension, seek to sustain.
Differences may very will exist within them, but none of these differences will constitute diversity in the contemporary sense, as they don’t aim to breach the underlying unity required to make them recognisable.
This is definitively true of monarchy – a role defined by a sole person, restricting any metric of difference from being, nevermind represented.
In any case, it would be simply unjustifiable, within the parameters of republicanism, for a state to have an unelected white Christian as its head, especially when the citizenry is both minority-white and minority-Christian.
Given this, the monarchy risks following the course of Parliament; a battle ground for fragmented groups with increasingly little sense of essential or collective being – antithetical to the monarchy’s imagined role as a constitutional lynchpin to counter-balance the enmity of domestic politics.
Even if the institution is defanged to the point of mere ceremonialism, as has been the case over recent decades, much to the delight of so-called “progressive patriots”, it has been maintained that even if Britain’s monarchy ceases to be politically problematic in a functional sense, it remains politically problematic in a representational sense.
The overarching point is that, as Britain’s monarch, it doesn’t matter if you permit politically motivated investigations into obvious questions or if you commit to protecting all faiths as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. It doesn’t matter if you declare your support for Our NHS or opt to include Black Gospel in your coronation ceremony.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion matter for zilch: your enemies will hate you regardless.
Just as Scottish and Welsh separatists are prepared to devolve the union out of existence, modernisers and republicans are prepared to reform the monarchy out of existence. No amount of capital-C Compromise is going to fundamentally change their defining position.
Moreover, just as Scottish and Welsh separatists evoke a sense of ethnocultural distinctness whilst pursuing policies to undermine Celtic culture, modernisers and republicans evoke Cromwell, Roundheads, and the English Civil War, even though Cromwell would’ve absolutely despised them, they possess the prudence and restraint of Cavaliers, and have nothing but contempt for Englishness – often proudly declaring they’re not English whatsoever.
“You will never be a real Roundhead. You have no God, you have no purity, you have no zeal. You are a narcissistic degenerate twisted by leftism and secularism into a crude mockery of English revolution.”
When the British republic comes, assuming it does, I doubt we’re going to get Cromwell 2 or Lord Protector Nigel. Indeed, Farage himself has suggested we’ll end up with some moth-bitten mandarin: “some duffer… Neil Kinnock, or somebody.” – a failed politician with the shameless desire to be remembered as a Bismarck-esque elder statesman.
Although, as circumstances present themselves, it’s completely plausible that we get a ‘respectable’ long-standing representative of the so-called anti-racist coalition… His Excellency, President David Lammy.
As far as we know, British republicanism is a team effort; a team disproportionally comprised of (exceptions accounted for) post-colonial grifters from BAME and non-Christian backgrounds, White leftists and liberals, many of whom lay claim to permanent victim credentials, with others are eager to affirm their ‘Otherness’, whether to worm their way out of discussions about colonialism or revitalise some feud the Anglo has long forgotten.
In which case, who supports the monarchy? Exactly who you’d expect. Again, accounting for notable exceptions, it’s White English conservatives, especially those living in rural areas and with Anglican heritage. In simpler terms: the sort of people that gave us Brexit, but I digress – the pivot away from memes about royal ethnic make-up to an unabashed proxy war for ethnic grievance won’t end well.
Given this, if Charles knows what’s good for him, he’ll reject any and all further attempts at ‘modernising’ the monarchy and reverse any that have been undertaken since the end of WW2, rather than counter-signalling policy that slightly, if barely, edges towards defending the interests of his realm, his post, and especially of his dwindling (in part, rather old) number of core supporters.
After all, given the transcendental nature of kingship, should a monarch violate the spirit of their post, no monarchist would feel conflicted about withdrawing their support, if not for the benefit of a hypothetical republic, but for the benefit of the institution itself.
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