Bartholomew's Notes

From the Christian Post:

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, who serves as senior pastor at Christ Church (CREC) in Moscow, Idaho, rebuked conservative podcaster Candace Owens [1] during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, and explained the various Christian schools of thought regarding modern Israel.

Speaking during a half-hour panel with TheBlaze host Steve Deace that was moderated by Dr. James Orr, a British theologian, Wilson also condemned antisemitism among Christians, which he defined as “Jew hate” and an example of sinful “backsliding.”

Orr is a philosopher of religion at Cambridge University and a “senior adviser” to Nigel Farage, and he was in somewhat odd company for a serious academic: Wilson, a Christian nationalist and theocrat, is the author of the notorious Southern Slavery: As It Was (there had “never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world”), while Deace is co-author of the Charlie Kirk-endorsed Rise of the Fourth Reich: Confronting Covid Fascism with a New Nuremberg Trial, a crank tome which commends various Covid conspiracists.

On the subject of Israel, Wilson and Deace are both broadly supportive, although it is notable that neither subscribe to the idea of Israel being an sign of the “End Times” – the belief is perhaps in decline, reflecting the fact that we all still here despite the State of Israel being nearly 80 years old now, and that Trump represents a promise of Christian nationalist earthly power for decades to come in contrast to inevitable “last days” religious decline.

The Christian Post also noted commentary posted online by Calvin Robinson, described somewhat loosely as a “Catholic cleric”:

Robinson suggested in an X post that the fractures within TPUSA and among conservatives generally indicate simmering generational tensions over the post-WWII consensus regarding Israel.

“Where the old hats can see Jews as especially persecuted because of WWII, Gen Z tend to see that as giving one particular group special treatment, in a world where so many are persecuted. That is before you even get into the Christian Zionist vs. Supersessionism debate on faith,” he wrote.

In the same post, Robinson described Orr as his “good friend” – two years ago they co-hosted an Easter special on GB News. The continued friendship is notable given Robinson’s own views Jews, which have been increasingly belligerent and conspiratorial: in recent posts, he has urged people to “reject the shekels“, which he apparently believes explains pro-Jewish comments on social media (2), and he has argued that the reason there are Muslims (although he pointedly uses the term “Mohammadens”) in Parliament is “because of the Rothschilds” (3). When UnHerd published an article describing Orr as “Farage’s religious Svengali”, Robinson’s interpretation was that “(((Unherd))) has chosen a side”, the far-right “triple brackets” symbolism indicating Jews.

Notes

1. Owens’s wide-ranging conspiracism is notorious, and she has not been put off by an apparent rebuke from her British father-in-law Lord Farmer, a financial backer of GB News. Most recently she was using her show to wave around a copy of a antisemitic volume called The Talmudic Jew.

2. Robinson’s post was rebuked by Julia Hartley-Brewer.

3. Robinson here extrapolates from the fact that the Jews Relief Act 1858 allowed Lionel de Rothschild to sit legally as an MP in Parliament without taking a Christian oath. However, although a member of the Rothchild family benefited from the Act, the Rothschilds were not responsible for it passing through Parliament, and the Oaths Act 1888, which allowed other non-Christians to enter Parliament, would have been passed anyway as an obviously needed democratic reform. Robinson’s framing is pure Rothschild conspiracism.

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From Lord Cruddas on Twitter/X, in September:

I tried to do this for the @Conservatives via the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) to bring more democracy to the party with elected officials to stop the disenfranchisement of our members. CCHQ were not interested in giving up their grip on the party. No further comments required.

Cruddas was responding to a post by June Slater (1) listing various numbers indicative of Reform UK’s rapid rise. As far as I am aware,  Cruddas’s post is his only public reference to the apparent demise of his CDO group – it seems that the website was taken down a few months ago, and the url is now for sale via GoDaddy. The purpose of the group (previously discussed here) was to support the selection of populist-right Conservative election candidates, framed as support for “grassroots” decision-making in contrast to candidates being imposed by Conservative Campaign Headquarters. Critics suggested its real purpose was to revive the fortunes of Boris Johnson; as reported in the Guardian in 2023:

The Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), which is gathering in Bournemouth on Saturday, insists it is not a Johnson-revivalist group, and that its only purpose is to make the party more accountable to the rank and file.

For all that, it is notable that almost every speaker lined up – among them Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries – is a noted Johnson supporter. The CDO itself emerged from anger at the way the former prime minister was removed by Tory MPs.

Further:

Senior Tory insiders, already concerned at what they see as a party within a party, were alarmed when it emerged in March that Arron Banks, the former Ukip donor, had held discussions with Cruddas about the CDO’s work.

The same paper noted a year later that Cruddas had “shared dozens of social media posts supportive of Nigel Farage and Reform UK”, including

a post by Arron Banks claiming “anyone left supporting the Conservative party isn’t patriotic” and one by an X user saying: “If every Reform voter can convince just one other person to switch from Lib/Lab/Con to Reform then they will win a landslide. It’s a matter of duty for us all.”

A “former Tory MP” was then quoted:

“If Lord Cruddas had any decency he’d resign the whip and defect officially to Reform. He’s either in or out of the Conservative party and his tweets suggest he’s out and Reform are welcome to him.”

So far, Cruddas has not taken the MP’s advice: however, Dorries defected in September, and Rees-Mogg is currently calling for a Tory-Reform alliance. This is despite Reform’s negative view of Boris Johnson and of the record of the last Conservative government. (2)

Of course, welcoming ex-Conservatives who were close to Johnson is also potentially a problem for Reform; Nigel Farage was recently pressed by a journalist on this point:

If you are so criticial of [Johnson] why are you accepting people who were in his government who were extremely close to him politically like Nadine Dorries and Jake Berry?

His reply:

Well, we’ve accepted one or two people who were in that government, who understand the error of their ways and have come to us for repentance.

Dorries and Berry haven’t contradicted him, but given that Dorries previously referred to her “absolute undying loyalty” to Johnson and has written two books on “the political assassination of Boris Johnson” such a claim is impossible to take at face value. (3)

Notes

1. June Slater, dubbed QaNan by critics, is a populist-right and conspiracy influencer. In summer 2024 she provided a pre-recorded message to a Tommy Robinson rally in London, and a few months ago the Reform-controlled Lancashire County Council invited ridicule for posting an image of her addressing a council cabinet meeting by Zoom.

2. A recent Reform graphic posted by Nigel Farage features an image of Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss and David Cameron, above which Farage wrote that “they lied to you before and they will lie to you again”. The exclusion of Theresa May from the graphic was probably an oversight, but the inclusion of Liz Truss is worth noting.

3. Some populist-right activists are wary of Dorries due to her involvement with bringing forward the Online Safety Act. Her response in an interview was to complain that the Act had been “mutated” by “so many MPs”; as examples, she cited the arrests of Lucy Connolly and Graham Linehan, although these in fact had nothing to do with the Act.

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