“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.
Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to “open the gates of hell,” and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence.
The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years. From systematized land seizures to routine airstrikes, arbitrary detentions to military checkpoints, and enforced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.
Today, the Palestinian ordeal enters into uncharted territory. The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”
Authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestinian Solidarity Committee and co-signed by over thirty other student groups at the elite university, this statement has started to cause problems for its signatories.
Resignations have occurred. Groups have backtracked. Names have been sealed. Why? Because for once in their life, these kids are going to be on the receiving end of the anger that they often direct at others.
Responses to the horror in Israel have been varied. Whilst a good majority of people are horrified by the atrocities that have been committed, not everybody has been so sympathetic. Some have outright celebrated what has happened. Others have been more measured in their response, instead doing the ‘both sides’ tango that they are excellent at dancing.
Such an example is at play here. The students and societies at Harvard who wrote this letter may not have actually straight up endorsed the atrocities that have occurred, but they did lay the blame squarely at Israel’s feet.
The backlash has been sudden and all-encompassing. Academics, fellow students, businesses, politicians and all other types have roundly criticised the groups and students who signed this letter. Those who have been named have distanced themselves from the letter.
The list of groups and names have been removed from the statement in order to apparently protect them from repercussions. Unfortunately for them, the list remains readily accessible.
If these people were so sure of this viewpoint that they signed a statement such as this, it begs the question: why have they decided to step back?
It’s simple really. They’re terrified of facing the consequences that they demand of others.
Take for example a woman named Ryna Workman, President of the NYU Law Student Bar Association. Ms. Workman, who had been a summer associate of the prestigious Winston and Strawn law firm, had a job offer rescinded by them. She had written a statement online refusing to condemn the actions of Hamas, all while once again blaming Israel.
With such actions costing a student from a top college a job, it’s no wonder that those who signed the Harvard statement are melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West. These students attend the oldest and arguably most elite college in the US, and are primed for their pick of summer internships and jobs in some of the top organisations possible. If their names are attached to controversy, then their necks are on the line.
Considering Harvard students wish to permeate a culture in which one can easily be shunned for their actions, it’s fair that some might be unsympathetic to their plight. In 2020, students petitioned for any official in the Trump administration to be banned from engaging with the college in any official capacity. Its scores on self-censorship and free speech are abysmal. Students actively keep their opinions to themselves. Harvard is no bastion of freedom.
These students don’t care if other people suffer for their thoughts, but God forbid they can’t work for some human rights lawyer during the summer holidays.
For years, there have been people who have believed that the rules don’t apply to them. They have kept themselves on the right side of the opinion divide. Their voices have been the loudest. They’re the good guys. They’ve never had to worry about their views being scorned. They’ve always been safe. Now, however, they’ve crossed the line that they set down, and they’re reaping the consequences.
Considering how many presidents, members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices have attended Harvard, it’s more than likely that these students will be the ones running the country one day. Even if they’re not in the top branches of government, they’ll be the lawyers standing up in court.
Harvard is a place that opens doors. They don’t want those doors slammed in their face. It’s just a pity for them they’re the ones usually on the other side of that door.
-
The Riots: a working-class view
Back in the fourteenth century, England’s lowest class enjoyed the greatest piece of luck it has ever had: the arrival of the Black Death. True, most of us were wiped out, but life became so much better for those who survived. Anyone who wanted our labour now had to compete for it and offer more than their competitors did. These inducements (today we call them wages) went up and up because workers had become so scarce. Such was the plight of the working class in those days that it took a lethal disease that wiped out half of humanity to improve our lot; something which should teach us the importance of the size of the labour pool: how the amount of available labour can be balanced to give both sides a fair deal, or skewed one way or the other to cause economic and social disruption.
Since 1997, the year of the coming to power of New Labour, it has been the policy of every government to saturate the British economy with workers from foreign sources, thus greatly expanding the amount of available labour. This means every lower-skilled, less educated, less qualified worker’s bargaining position and job security were jeopardised. It should be obvious that in a free market – in fact in any endeavour where there is competition – there will be rivalry between the contenders. There will be resentment toward challengers who threaten one’s standard of living, or even one’s very capacity to earn a living. Recently this resentment boiled over and numerous riots occurred around the country. They happened because of what has taken place in Britain over decades: the reckless pursuit of profit by means of reducing labour costs at the expense of (and with no concern for) social cohesion. A ruthless, imported form of capitalism has taken over and sacrificed a section of what is supposed to be one nation in order to benefit another part of that nation. The Left of yesteryear called this class conflict, a term which our modern and very bourgeois Left do not care to use these days; they prefer cultural conflict to class conflict, possibly because so many modern Leftists are themselves millionaires and discussions about wealth inequalities would embarrass them. Populists describe the division of the classes as the elite versus the people, and the American Right has enjoyed success with this message, but whichever terminology one prefers, it is clear that here in Britain what was once arguably one nation has now unarguably been cleaved in two.
Although Labour has traditionally been the party of mass immigration, for the last fourteen years immigration ballooned while a Conservative party was in power. The drama of small boats ferrying illegal migrants across the channel was really just a footnote to (and perhaps a distraction from) a large amount of quite legal immigration rubber-stamped by the Tories. The simple truth about immigration is this: enormous numbers of foreign workers come and settle in this country because British politicians want them to. Mass immigration means there is no pressing need to innovate, no need to invest, no need to waste money training or educating British people, no need to worry about productivity: one can merely import cheap ready-mades, and then carry on importing them. It is the easy option and our politicians have been taking it for years. Any economic growth Britain has achieved has been a sham; merely a growth in population. The group which has suffered most is of course the working class, those who are most vulnerable to low-skilled immigration; a working class that these days has little to no political representation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg recently condemned the working-class rioters, saying that such behaviour might be justified in a dictatorship but not in a democracy like Britain, where peaceful protest is permitted. The problem is of course that protesting achieves nothing. In fact, in modern Britain, voting achieves basically nothing. In 2016, during the referendum on our membership of the European Union, the Leave campaign was only put on the path to victory when the focus was changed from important but philosophical arguments about sovereignty to the issue of immigration. After the vote was won, however, a strange thing happened. ‘I never claimed immigration would come down,’ said Daniel Hannan immediately after the electorate had voted to get immigration down. David Davis said that immigrants would be ‘needed for many years’ and Michael Gove praised how immigrants raised educational standards. If one examines the promises made by Brexiteers one sees that they were never promises. They were not even clear statements, merely hints that could be interpreted in different ways. None of the Brexiteers promised to stop immigration. None of them even promised to reduce it. They promised merely to control it. The word ‘control’ is loved by politicians because it means everything and nothing at the same time. Voters took it to mean that immigration would be reduced, but it could just as easily have meant that it would be left as it was. Perhaps, it could mean that it would be increased – which, incredibly, is what happened, despite a majority in the highest turnout for a UK-wide referendum in British electoral history.
With free movement from the EU interrupted, workers were now imported from the rest of the world. Migrants from very distant and very different cultures would come here in increasing numbers; and because these people were from such distant parts of the world they belonged to different races. This meant that unlike the Poles, the Hungarians, the Lithuanians etc., these foreign migrants would be instantly recognisable as such, from a distance, without them having to utter a single foreign-accented word. And so it is that riots which are economic in cause, which are the consequence of choices made by governments, can appear to be purely racist uprisings – and safely dismissed as such by sanctimonious politicians and their media. By these means a truth has been officially established: that the riots were a temporary madness caused by wicked fascists exploiting the gullibility of working-class people.
The truth however is that in this democracy which Jacob Rees-Mogg believes we live in; the working class are not allowed to vote in their economic interest. Their voice and their interests are repressed. In any general election in the UK there are only ever two parties that have a chance of being elected: the Labour Party, which enthusiastically believes in immigration, and the Conservative Party which believes in it with equal enthusiasm but pretends not to. There has been a convergence of self-interest. First, the greed of a Conservative Party that cares only about its enrichment and which despite its reputed belief in “faith, flag and family” is happy to see the British natural environment, British culture, British traditions, British family life, British history, British ownership, British democracy, British self-respect and the British working class all ruined, each of them being sacrificed in the scramble for quick profit at any cost. And then there is the greed of the Labour Party. This party is, in material terms, as rich and privileged as the Conservatives but is greedy too for moral glory. It wants to be loved by people who matter (educated, cultured people of taste) and so it haughtily condemns the primitive rage of the uneducated people with ugly lives and values who live below. By the magic of media, the material self-interest of the privileged becomes a noble cause. The expansion of the labour pool and the crippling of the bargaining position of British workers is shown as a moral crusade; the pursuit of diversity, the bringing about of a glossy-eyed, handholding, multi-coloured, multi-lingual paradise in which the elite are ‘enriched’ by other cultures while the ferocious competition for jobs pauperises the working class.
Democracy is more than just a word. It is the most efficient way of organising a society ever devised. It balances competing interests by making them visible and enabling them to negotiate. It vents the pressures that create conflict. What the people would have wanted, and would have accepted had anybody in our alleged democracy bothered to ask them, was a moderate level of immigration that would have benefited a moderated capitalism; a capitalist system in which those enjoying extreme levels of wealth and those suffering extreme levels of hardship were both pulled back toward a civilised mean; a more cohesive, moderately patriotic Britain in which all get a just share of everything; in which those who do more and achieve more rightly get more, but not an immoral amount more. In other words, a Britain that was one nation – not the theatre of tribal warfare it is today.
-
The Impossible as Motivation
“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
– Antonio GramsciLike all disaffected individuals who supported the Conservatives in 2019, I too find solace in the work of a certain Italian Marxist philosopher and his insights. The simplicity of that quote often speaks to a dormant impulse in the human condition, the belief that things really can change; that, when everything is said and done, we will win. We must, as President Trump once said: “…treat the word ‘impossible’ as motivation.”
In the history of Great Britain, this nation has faced many challenges and many dark days. Those dark days still lay ahead, for that can be assured. Those obstacles within our national politics seem numerous: civil servants, fifth columnists, various media establishments and even entire political parties which claim to represent the interests of the country. Out of this election, it is plain as day. Labour will win, through sheer dullness and the fact that Sunak has clearly given up and not even attempted to try during this race for his own premiership. The reason why people do not like Sunak is because, at his core, he represents ultimately why people do not like Conservatives or politicians in general. They are mostly losers who want to be liked and be seen as important by others; they want to be winner but have never fought truly for anything in their lives. It is for this reason, they are not worthy of any votes or seats. It is not because they have fought and failed, it is that they have never even tried or put up a fight.
From this, the only cure that needs to be given is that of Zero Votes and Zero Seats. Vote Reform now, Cummings later. This can be summarised as voting Reform now to give the Conservatives zero seats, thus ending them (at least, as much as possible) as a political force within Great Britain. Out of this, we should unite around a different right-wing party, one that genuinely seeks to change the direction of the country and prepared to ask and answer the questions that matter. Why are we having these problems? Why are people struggling to buy a house? Why is this country declining?
Following on from this, it is clear that Farage is here to stay and can become a massive nuisance for the administrative state, the state that is allergic to change and remains prestige-orientated. As such, Farage is not the man who will do these things; he is a media personality, not someone who is interested in the nitty gritty of continuing (starting with Brexit) a decade-long (if not century-long) process of fixing the foundational issues of this country. Farage is an Einstein in an Oppenheimer world, it would seem.
Farage understands the need for generating a new excitement around a political issue, he understands that nothing is impossible, even that the mere usage of the word should be taken as motivation. Indeed, his lifelong struggle to get Britain to leave the EU is one such endeavour which, even at the best of times, felt like an ultimately impossible task until it wasn’t. This is not dissimilar to Trump, a figure who isn’t sensitive to the nuance of details, but fundamentally understands the broad picture, why things needs to change, and how to go about doing it.
As such, one hopes that if Reform becomes akin to UKIP, they can become a political force that asks the big questions that the majority of the population want asked. Additionally, Reform should be able to shift the Overton window on a series of issues, bringing them to the forefront of politics from outside of the mainstream political parties. These should range from immigration, the economy, the housing crisis, and the need to dismantle the administrative state.
This being said, like UKIP and the Brexit Party before, when Reform has kicked through the door, it should again vanish. By the end of the decade, Reform should be as important as UKIP is in 2024. Reform should not be here to stay in the long term. Now that it seems possible that Reform will replace the Conservatives, just as the Labour replaced the Liberals throughout the 1920s, allowing them to fully turn their guns on Labour, exposing them as being no better. Of course, Labour is not up to the task of governing and will almost certainly do damage to Britain. Given that Starmer is a wet lettuce of a man, unlikely to last long in post, they’ll have plenty of material to work with.
From this, Reform can generate space for something to be built for the 21st Century, something with real long term vision and purpose. Insert “assorted weirdos” reference here. Indeed, it is rather fitting that the two individuals that are attempting to offer real alternatives to the current issues facing this country are the same two which brought Brexit home (twice if you count the 2019 general election). Now we could realistically see this occur again. Farage’s media personality pushing the core issues into the forefront of British political life, while Cummings dominates the nitty gritty of how to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and securing the real victories. Additionally, both men want the complete destruction of the gate keeping Conservatives and are radically anti-establishment and Westminster, something the vast majority of the electorate share.
Although Cummings has modelled his work on Singapore’s People’s Action Party (I would encourage all to read ‘From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000’), and its stewardship under Lee Kuan Yew, it is another Southeast Asian leader that he should also look at too. Ho Chi Minh (hear me out), and his leadership of North Vietnam, can be summarised as that of revolutionary self-belief and determination. The clinical and principled nature of Singapore, combined with the zealous optimism of Vietnam, would propel the country back into a forward-thinking, functioning 21st Century nation state. It should be hoped that, when Cumming’s Party is ready and the door has been blown open by Farage’s Reform, it too should move into place. A tech-focused, big tent, anti-establishment party that seeks to radically fix the core issues within the country. Radically reduce immigration, tackle the wealth disparity and tax avoidance, and dismantle the permanent administrative state.
In conclusion, Politics is Never Over. Things have returned to being interesting – we could witness another realignment in our national discourse. This should be motivating for people like Farage and Cummings. We can smell blood right now on both Starmer and Sunak, so we must take this chance to end the declinist duopoly once and for all, and scramble to build something in its place thereafter. As Farage stated in a mere four words: “We’re just getting started.”
-
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.
