Bartholomew's Notes

Much has been written about the Daily Telegraph‘s front page interview with Lucy Connolly, conducted by Allison Pearson, but here’s a detail worth unpacking a bit further:

She now believes that cases like hers were used to deflect attention away from the Islamist savagery that took the lives of Alice, Bebe and Elsie Dot at that Southport dance class. “I was so shocked. People appear to be more bothered by my political views than by children being murdered.”

Connolly, infamously, had reacted to news of the Southport murders by writing online “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them” – a statement based on the false rumour that the killer was an asylum-seeker. For Connolly’s defenders, the formulation “for all I care” meant that she was merely expressing contemptuous indifference rather than inciting violence, although in context the meaning appears to be that people should not hold back from setting fire to hotels if it achieves the stated purpose of “mass deportation”. As such, the case was prosecuted as a instance of incitement – and the context of widespread disorder was treated as an aggravating factor, comparable to prosecutions for online posts during the 2011 rioting. The prosecution and sentencing are thus perfectly explicable without recourse to a “deflection” claim, and the implied rebuke that what happened to her reflects people being insufficently concerned with “children being murdered” comes across as self-serving and unattractive.

And that’s before we get onto the supposed “Islamist savagery”. This is the theory that the killer, Axel Rudakubana, was motivated by Islamic extremism. The primary basis for this claim is that he had downloaded an al-Qaeda manual and attempted to make ricin, although Pearson’s own pet theory, expressed in response to criticism of the above-quoted detail, is that there is a connection between Rudakubana targeting a Taylor Swift dance class and ISIS targeting Taylor Swift concerts – although it’s not clear what this connection is, given that the Austria plot was not exposd in the media until a week after the Southport massacre. But even if you find this plausible, it remains speculative and Pearson misleads her readers by slipping it into her write-up as if it’s something we all “know” about the incident. The theory has no explanation for why Rudakubana did not identify himself as ideologically motivated in court, or why no evidence of even a superficial identification with jihadism could be found by prosecutors. The simplest explanation for the al-Qaeda manual is that it was consulted as a “how to” guide for someone obsessed with violence and killing.

Ahead of the interview, Connolly was photographed standing between Pearson and Dan Wootton, and the Telegraph and Wootton both boast of having secured her “first” interview. This indicates a dual media strategy, in which Pearson promotes Connolly through the (much squandered) reputational legacy of the Telegraph as mainstream media while Wootton brings her to to conspiracist and alt-right audiences . Wootton’s advocacy of Connolly previously included mocking up a photo of Connolly with facial injuries along with the heading “Lucy Connolly Prison Attack”. This was extrapolated from claims made by Pearson and Reform’s Richard Tice that she had suffered bruising to her wrists from handcuffs. Pearson charactered the incident as “mistreatment”, even though she “slid to the floor” to resist transfer to a different prison wing.

I previously noted Pearson’s own experience of an incitement complaint here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Populist ideologue Matt Goodwin celebrates the recent outbreak of national flag fetishism in England:

The English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton once said “the English are reluctant to display their identity — reluctant to sing their national anthem, to wave their flag, or to affirm their nationhood … But the cost of this reluctance is the steady erosion of something precious —a shared first-person plural.”

What he meant by that was the erosion of a “we” —the erosion of a community, an identity, a home.

The quote struck me as somewhat  undeveloped. Is the “steady erosion” caused by this alleged English reluctance, or is it rather that the reluctance allows “steady erosion” by some other factor? And what are the causes of this “reluctance”? There is no actual argument here, just a portentous banality about how nationist rituals promote community feeling. We’re supposed to take this observation as self-evidently insightful because it issues forth from Roger Scruton.

Perhaps there’s some nuance of meaning that has been lost by the three dots – but good luck finding out what it is that has been excised. Goodwin doesn’t provide the source, and although the vocabulary echoes Scruton I’ve been unable to find it anywhere online – not in the Internet Archive, not on Google Books, not by searching several of Scruton’s titles on Amazon’s “search inside the book” function, and not on a website devoted to his work. No-one else has quoted it, either. Of course, that doesn’t prove that the quote is apocryphal, but given Scruton’s quotability the obscurity of its provenance is surprising. We cannot discount the possibility that it is from some uncollected magazine article or speech, or perhaps from Confessions of a Heretic, which is published by a small press that does not allow its books to be included in electronic repositories, but it is reasonable to be doubtful –  and if that aggrieves Goodwin he has only himself to blame for not providing a reference.

Goodwin appears to have a stock of quotes that are difficult to pin down. Here’s anotherone he attributed to Scruton in July:

A nation is not merely a collection of people, it is a collection of obligations: inherited, assumed and passed on.

It sounds Scrutonesque, but again, where is it actually from?

And here he is writing in the Sun earlier this month, making a foray into Classics:

In Ancient Greece, the writer ­Pericles warned that leaders will only hold their state together so long as they listen to the people they lead, “for only then can leaders rule with their trust”.

And in Ancient Rome, too, the statesman Cicero reached the same conclusion, warning the leaders of the city state that unless they look after their own people first — which he considered their “highest duty” — then their civilisation will rapidly crumble from within and become vulnerable to external invaders.

Reference to “the writer Pericles” is not encouraging: there are speeches attributed to the statesman in ancient sources, but no actual writings. And as with the Scruton quote, we are again presented with banal maxims, here formulated in such a vague and offhand way that that original passages are difficult or impossible to identify and contextualise.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

From the Sunday Telegraph:

Elite police squad to monitor anti-migrant posts on social media

An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.

Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.

The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.

The article has been received with apocalyptic fury online, with Reform’s Zia Yusuf calling it “terrifying” and populist ideologue Matt Goodwin warning that “we will all soon be with Lucy Connolly folks” (more on Connolly here). The article itself including condemnations from Nigel Farage and from Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who sneered that “Two-tier Keir can’t police the streets, so he’s trying to police opinions instead.” Rupert Lowe has written with performative discourtesy (“what are you playing at?”) to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (although he doesn’t deign to use her name) demanding answers.

The article is based on letter sent by Diana Johnson, Minister  of State for Crime, Policing and Fire of the United Kingdom, on 17 July. It is publicly available on the UK Parliament website, and it unsurprising to note that in fact it makes no reference anywhere to “anti-migrant sentiment”.

The letter was written to the Conservative MP Karen Bradley, who as  Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had asked for “more detail on the Government’s plans for building police capability to gather open source intelligence from social media”, following on from the the Government’s response to the Committee’s Report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. Bradley wrote on 1 July:

Given the recent scenes in Northern Ireland, where social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder, I am sure you will agree that the way police forces use social media is becoming an increasingly important component of many police responses.

Bradley’s very reasonable observation has now been undercut by her Conservative colleague Philp, who apparently takes the view that the police have no business taking account of how “social media has again been used as a means of inciting and organising disorder” and that “building police capacity to gather open source intelligence” is a sinister conspiracy by the government to suppress criticism.

Here is what Johnson actually wrote in reply to Bradley – some of it is quoted directly by the Telegraph, but those investing in the newspaper’s narrative framing don’t seem to have bothered checking the original source before mouthing off:

Dear Dame Karen,

Thank you for your letter of 1 July regarding the Government’s response to the Committee’s recent report into the policing response to the 2024 summer disorder. As you have requested, I am pleased to set out the further information below.

You asked about current plans to build police capability for using social media intelligence at force and national levels. We are carefully considering recommendations made by the Committee and HMICFRS in this area, including building a National Internet Intelligence Investigations team as part of the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC).

This team will provide a national capability to monitor social media intelligence and advise on its use to inform local operational decision making. This will be a dedicated function at a national level for exploiting internet intelligence to help local forces manage public safety threats and risks. Funding for this capability beyond 25/26 will need to be considered in line with future funding priorities but I am confident that as a first step, this new central team will help build capability across forces to maximise social media intelligence…

Although the Telegraph article does mention “intelligence”, the headline reference to “anti-migrant posts”, and this is why Philp and other critics appear to believe it is about opinions.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

From the Guardian, a couple of days ago:

From tomorrow social media companies must introduce child safety measures under the Online Safety Act. It is a key moment for a British government attempting, like so many others, to rein in tech firms and prevent children encountering harmful content on the internet.

Passed by parliament in 2023, the landmark legislation significantly empowers the regulator Ofcom… Social media companies operating in the UK now risk hefty fines if they fail to take strong action against content that is harmful to children such as pornography or material that encourages self-harm.

The Act has previously been criticised on the grounds that it might have unintended consequences, and/or will be ineffective. However, populists have come up with a new interpretation, which is that the purpose of the Act is instead to censor the news. Thus on Twitter/X, Annunziata Rees-Mogg:

The Online Safety Act, effective by July 2025, may be censoring violent protest footage in the UK, as noted in related posts, with Ofcom enforcing rules that could limit access to such content, raising questions about free speech versus public safety.

We live in a police state where the police have never been so mistrusted. 😡

And:

Hiding the truth increases fear.

Frightened people lash out.

This is dangerous.

“Frightened people lash out” would appear to be a pre-emptive apology for violence, similar to Nigel Farage‘s implication that the presence of counter-protestors at anti-migrant protests obliges protestors to smash up police vans and attack officers.

One supposedly suppressed clip in particular is cited by Rees-Mogg and others: it was uploaded by a user with the name Keira Diss, and shows police restraining and arresting a man at a protest in Leeds. Although fairly tame, some users are now seeing the message “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X esimates your age”. Both the clip and the text accompanying it are affected.

The restriction doesn’t affect me, as accounts created during or before 2012 are assumed to belong to adults. Nor does it affect anyone who has verified their identity on the plaform. If the purpose is government-directed news censorship, then it is rather poor effort. And the clip has not been “censored” by anyone in the UK: the decision to restrict the clip was made in America.

Four possibilities come to mind: (1) the clip has been flagged up either in error, or by someone gaming the reporting system for some reason; (2) Twitter/X decided to restrict access out of an abundance of caution; (3) Musk sees the development as useful in getting users to pay for verification; and/or (4) Musk wants to whip up resentment that will be directed at the UK government rather than at him.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

From the Independent:

Police say claims that officers “bussed” counter-demonstrators to a protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, are “categorically wrong”.

Essex Police have denied the claims circulating on social media; claims of which Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that the force’s chief constable should resign for.

… a force spokesperson said: “There are claims on social media that Essex Police officers ‘bussed’ protesters to the protest outside the Bell Hotel on Thursday July 17.

“This is categorically wrong.

“Officers did provide a foot cordon around protesters on their way to the protest, where they and others were allowed to exercise their right to protest.

“Later, some people who were clearly at risk of being hurt were also escorted by vehicle away from the area for their safety.

“To reiterate, we categorically did not drive any counter-protesters to the site on any occasion.”

Farage’s claim was based on a short clip from a video that he said was “proof” of counter-protestors “arriving at the station and literally, by Essex Police, being bussed to the Bell Hotel”. However, it didn’t take much effort to establish from background details that the video of counter-protestors getting into police vans had been filmed at a location some distance from the station (1). A longer version of the video cited by Farage (easily found on social media) also includes its narrator asking “why don’t they just go home if they are local?”, which obviously implies a context of people leaving the area rather than heading for the hotel. It is not clear whether Reform deliberately left this out or whether they simply relied on one of their preferred information sources, such as Dan Wootton.

Farage has now more or less conceded the mistake, although he goes no further than to say that “If I was slightly out on accuracy I apologise”. But he also now pretends that there is no difference between a “foot cordon” and “bussing”, although it’s not clear what course of action he would have preferred. Maybe his view is that police ought to have kettled counter-protestors at Epping Station, making a mockery of his “free speech” credentials; or maybe he thinks they ought have just allowed two groups of angry rival protestors to roam around Epping (2).

Some of the counter-protestors were masked, from which Farage concludes with typical confidence that they were “Anifa”. He also appears to believe that their presence explains why the protest at the hotel turned violent, although he has also conceded the presence of some “far-right thugs”. I did see one short video of an unmasked counter-protestor fighting with a protestor on a road near the hotel (apparently from an earlier protest a few days before), but it was probably no good for Farage’s purposes due to the person filming it abusing the counter-protestor as a “fucking faggot” and a “poof” (3).

Last year, Farage famously amplified false claims that the Southport killer had been known to the security services, which was a guarded reformulation of the internet rumour that he had been on an “MI6 watchlist” and which in turn gave credence to claims that he was an asylum seeker. Farage later reformulated what he had said as “known to the authorities”.

UPDATE: A follow-up story about a protest in Aldershot, from the Daily Mail:

A second police force has come under fire after a video emerged showing officers escorting pro-migrant activists to a protest outside an asylum seeker hotel.

…The latest clip of officers ‘bussing’ counter-protesters saw one activist brandishing a placard supporting the campaign Stand Up to Racism – which is partly funded by trade unions and led by suspended Labour MP, Diane Abbott.

Those scare-quotes appear to be an attempt to suggest that the word “bussing” can have a metaphorical meaning of “escorting”. Such a usage is strained beyond reason, and is obviously an attempt to obfuscate rather than report.

Notes

1. The video was filmed at the top of St John’s Road in Epping, at a junction where Coronation Hill meets Lower Swaines.

2. Populist ideologue Matt Goodwin speculates that the police escorted the counter-protestors to the site because “parts of the British state are deliberately stoking conflict as a way of delegitimising public protest over mass migration and broken borders”. In reply, Sunder Katwala cites a 1999 precedent on freedom of expression, summarised by Sunder as that the police “must facilitate & can not disallow either protest or counterprotest by antagonistic groups, until participants on one or both sides stir up or intimidate”.

3. The counter-protestor was stocky and bald, meaning it was unclear at first which side he was on.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

From Matt Goodwin:

Ugh 🤮. A Muslim matchmaking site operating in the UK advertises virgin wives, urges men to take multiple wives, describes women with a sexual past as “low quality products”, and features a video on when to beat your wife. Is this another sign of “multiculturalism success”?

One suspects that Goodwin has phrased his accusation as a sarcastic question because he knows that the mere existence of some website is a dubious basis on which to draw wider conclusions, although he’s not adverse to making wild extrapolations from casual observations. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, is sure that it “shows yet again how our immigration and integration policies have failed”.

Jenrick is quoted in the Daily Telegraph, which is the source of Goodwin’s post:

NikkahGram, a UK-registered company, describes itself as an Islamic solution for men seeking “a shy, untouched spouse” or wishing to take a second, third or fourth wife.

Virgin women under 35 are promoted as ideal first wives. Those older or with sexual histories are likened to “low quality products”, with their only hope being to share a husband.

The organisation’s social media page features a video on when to beat your wife, as well as claims that sex with non-virgins can cause cancer and that women are intellectually defective.

NikkahGram lists Asif Munaf, a former NHS medic suspended for anti-Semitism, among its staff.

The story appears to have been spun off from an investigation published last week about a website run by Munaf called Dr Sick, which provides medical sicknotes on demand for a fee. For that story, reporters went through the process of buying sicknotes in order to confirm the site’s claims.

Here, though, although the reporter spoke to an unnamed “spokesman”, no investigator registered with the website to see what happens. The site does carry customer testimonials, but these are all anonymised and there isn’t any third-party evidence about the business being active. It should be noted that in 2023 Munaf set up a supposed “University of Masculinity — Muslim Passport Bros” that he said would help British Muslim men find non-feminist brides from Morocco, but that his registered company was dissolved by compulsory strike off in late 2024 without having ever filed any accounts. The only reason it came to wider attention was because Munaf had achieved some celebrity as a contestant on The Apprentice, from which he was removed following allegations of anti-semitic social media posts.

Although there are various companies registered with Companies House containing the word “Nikkah”, there is no “Nikkah Gram” or “Nikkahgram”, and none of them seem to fit the profile. The Nikkahgram website has a page of “Legal Declarations” in which it refers to itself as a “Company” and gives virtual office address in London, but no company number is provided. If the paper has identified a non-obvious registration then one would expect to be told what it is.

Another oddity is that despite claiming to have “exposed” the website, the Telegraph makes no reference to Ustadh Gabriel Al Romaani, even though the “Our Team” page consists solely of him and Munaf, and he has identified himself as the originator of the website. Al Romaani is a Romanian (Hungarian minority, judging from his original Keresztes surname) based in Malaysia who became a Muslim in 2003, and who describes himself as an “Islamic psychology coach”. Like Munaf, he appears to have a focus on masculinity and to belong to an ideological trend that Muslim detractors call the “akh-right”. Munaf has previously promoted Andrew Tate clips on social media, and Al Romaani has also said positive things about him; if the Nikkahgram website represents anything more than self-promoting attention-seeking, then this is the area to be looking into.

UPDATE (9 July): The website was referenced the House of Commons by Reform MP Sarah Pochin, in an Oral Answers to Questions session featuring the Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood:

Pochin: The Secretary of State will be aware of the deeply troubling revelations over the weekend of the so-called Halal bride website. Does she agree that such practices have absolutely no place in Britain?

Mahmood: The regulation of websites and content falls either within Home Office responsibilities for criminal law or with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and I will happily pick up with them the detail around the regulatory issues that are raised by that case.

There was no reason to suppose that Mahmood would have been particularly aware of the Telegraph story, but she provided a businesslike answer to the question of how to explore whether a website might fall foul of the law or regulation due to the “practices” it represents.

As expected, though, Pochin’s purpose was not to seek answers but rather to set the scene for a personalised attack on Mahmood based on her religion. Thus shortly afterwards she appeared with Kevin O’Sullivan (this guy) on Talk TV:

This should be absolutely banned. I asked our own Secretary of State for Justice, a Muslim woman, if she would stop this and she refused to agree that she would stop this. These are the people that are running this country, Kevin. What does this say about the misogynistic culture that is creeping into this country?… This is coming from people established in this country as British Muslims. They are established here as legal immgrants.

The clip has been posed to Twitter/X by Talk TV, along with a further quote attributed to her:

“Shabana Mahmood did NOT agree that it was unacceptable. She should be ashamed of herself. The Labour government is refuses [sic] to answer ANY of my questions.”

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

From the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), 5 June:

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has withdrawn its direction that former Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse face gross misconduct proceedings after a large volume of relevant material was recently disclosed to the IOPC by the Metropolitan Police.

…The allegations centred around comments made to the media in March 2016, concerning his beliefs about the honesty of two witnesses to Operation Midland – a Met investigation into allegations of non-recent sexual abuse – and remarks he is alleged to have subsequently made to former High Court Judge Sir Richard Henriques who had been commissioned to carry out an independent review of the handling of Operation Midland in August 2016.

…There is no evidence within the recently disclosed material that there was any inappropriate motivation in Mr Rodhouse’s comments to the media or which supports that he made those remarks during Sir Richard’s review.

There was, however, substantial evidence to indicate the comments made to the media were the result of collaboration between senior Met officers and staff and that there had been appropriate considerations, including a desire not to discourage victims of historic sex offences coming forward…

It was announced that Rodhouse would face an investigation in 2023. Operation Midland was infamously triggered by Carl Beech, a man whose extravagant tales of VIP child sex abuse and murder were declared to be “credible and true” before any of his claims had been examined and despite obvious similarities with “Satanic panic” ritual abuse tropes from the 1980s. Beech is now in prison, both for perverting the course of justice and for possessing indecent images of children. Two other individuals, “Witness A” and “Witness B”, latched onto Beech’s allegations, but so far they have not been made accountable for false statements made to the police.

The implication of the IOPC statement is that the “recently disclosed material” is exculpatory for Rodhouse, but it remains unclear how exactly. The case against him was set out long before its discovery, and so the fact that it contains “no evidence” against him is neither here nor there. Neither would we expect it to have any evidential bearing as to what Rodhouse might have said privately to Sir Richard Henriques.

Further, although details of “collaboration between senior Met officers and staff” may reveal something of Rodhouse’s decision making, it is not clear why it therefore absolves him of responsibility. The statement seems to be saying that “collaboration” means that responsibility was so diffuse that no-one can be blamed. The public may take the opposite view, that the case against Rodhouse has been dropped to keep the lid on a wider scandal.

The IOPC decision has been criticised by Lady Brittan, who is Leon Brittan’s widow, and by Harvey Proctor, who has issued a statement that includes the following:

…The IOPC has upheld my complaints. They acknowledge Rodhouse misled the public about Operation Midland – but now claim he was not alone. Instead of naming those responsible and holding them to account, they have dropped the case entirely. Because the misconduct was collective, no individual will be held responsible. What sort of justice is that?

For Mr Rodhouse to claim he acted with “honesty, integrity and care” in Operation Midland is as grotesque as it is offensive.

Sir Richard Henriques found over 40 failings in the Met’s investigation -an investigation Mr Rodhouse led. Innocent men, including myself, had our reputations shredded, homes raided, and lives wrecked based on obvious falsehoods. Mr Rodhouse authorised those raids. He was warned about the unreliability of Carl Beech, now convicted as a paedophile and fraudster, yet he pressed on. That is not integrity – it is dereliction…

I will be writing to Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to demand a meeting and an explanation. I will also ask the IOPC to justify how it can claim to uphold complaints while simultaneously refusing to act on them…

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

From the Daily Telegraph:

Concern about mass migration is a “terrorist ideology” that requires intervention by the Government’s anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, according to official documents.

An online training course hosted on the Government’s website for Prevent lists “cultural nationalism” as a belief that could lead to an individual being referred to the deradicalisation scheme.

This encompasses a conviction that “Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups”, staff taking the course are told.

…Prevent’s official “refresher awareness” course, hosted on gov.uk, states that “cultural nationalism” is one of the most common “sub-categories of extreme Right-wing terrorist ideologies”, alongside white supremacism and white/ethno-nationalism.

One might expect the url link there to click through to the primary source, but it instead bizarrely takes readers to an irrelevant opinion pice by Daniel Hannan from last year complaining about Labour in general terms.

Also oddly, the article fails to explain where the three “sub-categories” have come from. The impression is that Prevent has come up with the terms itself, and that they perhaps reflect a new government directive. Readers are not told that the terminology described instead reflects usages adopted in May 2019 by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), MI5 and Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP).

The reason for this omission, I suspect, is that the article is primarily a vehicle for promoting Toby Young:

Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union (FSU), has written to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, urging her to reconsider the classification urgently.

…He said: “While not defined in law, nor subject to statutory constraint, the definition in the training course expands the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial.

It is reasonable to suppose that Toby Young (sorry, “Lord Young of Acton”) came to the Telegraph with the story and the “gotcha” screenshot from the Prevent course, and the grateful hack then set about rounding up pundit quotes rather than digging into the actual background.

I previously noted Toby Young’s own “lawful but politically controversial” views here.

Background

A 2022 report from the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament that has the missing background:

The following are MI5 and CTP’s definition and categorisation of ideologies that potential terrorists might adopt: as with Islamist terrorism there is no suggestion that all those who hold these views or subscribe to these ideologies have terrorist intent – this categorisation process is used as a means of assessing those who might be potential terrorists:

• ‘Cultural Nationalism’ is a belief that ‘Western Culture’ is under threat from mass migration into Europe and from a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups. The ideology tends to focus on the rejection of cultural practices such as the wearing of the burqa or the perceived rise of the use of sharia law. In the UK this has been closely associated with anti-Islam groups.

• ‘White Nationalism’ is a belief that mass migration from the ‘non-white’ world, and demographic change, poses an existential threat to the ‘White Race’ and ‘Western Culture’. Advocates for some sort of ‘White’ homeland, either through partition of already existing countries, or by the (if necessary forced) repatriation of ethnic minorities. Much of this rhetoric is present in the ‘Identitarian’ movement.

• ‘White Supremacism’ is a belief that the ‘White Race’ has certain inalienable physical and mental characteristics that makes it superior (with some variation) to other races. Often associated with conspiracy theories that explain the decline in ‘white’ political and social status over the last hundred years. This can also encapsulate a belief in the spiritual superiority of the ‘White Race’, often describing racial differences in quasi-religious terms (such as the ‘Aryan soul’).

A 2019 article in the Guardian has further details:

Counter-terror officers said the rightwing terrorists are being inspired by three distinct sets of ideology, all of which have associated individuals and groups.

Cultural nationalism and the far-right is anti-Islam, anti-immigration and anti-government. Groups that display this ideology include, but are not limited to, the Football Lads Alliance and the English Defence League. The ideals of cultural nationalism inspired in part the actions of Darren Osborne, the terrorist who drove a van into worshippers outside Finsbury Park mosque, killing 51-year-old Makram Ali.

The ideology escalates to white nationalism and identitarianism… Finally, the ideology heightens further to white supremacism and the extreme far right.

The Prevent “refresher awareness” course expresses the three sub-categories more concisely, as provided by a Telegraph screenshot:

Extreme right-wing

We define extreme right-wing terrorism as the active or vocal support of ideologies that advocate discrimination or violence against minority groups. The 3 most common sub categories of extreme right-wing terrorist ideologies and their narratives are:

• Cultural nationalism: ‘Western culture’ is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.

• White/ethno-nationalism: Mass migration from the ‘non-white world’ and demographic change poses an existential threat to the ‘white race’ and ‘Western culture’.

• White supremacism: The ‘white race is biologically, culturally and spiritually superior to all other races. An alternative form of government, ranging from fascist regimes to ethno-tribalism, should replace Western parliamentary democracy.

UPDATE: This October 2023 article by Karam Bales at Byline Times about Prevent noted the following:

Specific “extreme right-wing ideologies” listed as potential terrorist ideologies are Cultural Nationalism, White/Ethno Nationalism and White Supremicism, while left-wing ideologies are described as falling into “Two broad ideologies: socialism and communism. Each is united by a set of grievance narratives which underline their cause.”

It’s this inconsistency between the demarcation of specific extreme right-wing ideologies compared to a much broader approach to left-wing ideologies as a whole which has led to accusations of the politicisation of Prevent.

In other words, right-wingers were happy enough with the three far-right categories when balanced against “socialism”. The phrasing on the course page on this point has since been changed:

While extreme right-wing and Islamist terrorist ideologies contribute to thelargest part of the terrorist threat to the UK, left-wing, anarchist and single-issue ideologies and narratives can also cause a person to be radicalised into terrorism.

Bales also has a thread about the Telegraph story here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Speaking from his back garden, Laurence Fox discourses on the colours of the progress pride flag, in ways you would expect:

Baby pink, baby blue, that’s the child mutilation cult. White is Minor-Attracted People, that’s paedophiles…

He then proceeds to burn the flag.

Fox’s source on the flag’s supposed colour symbolism is likely to be a 2023 video in which a black American named Maj Toure made a comparable claim:

blue stands for attraction to infant boys… pink stands for attraction to minor girls… and then white stands for attraction to virgin children.

As he speaks, a caption on the screen brings up another flag with a wide white stripe in middle – this is the supposed “MAPs Pride Flag”, which was uploaded to Tumblr in 2018 along with the explanation that white represents “our innocence and unwillingness to offend”. However, as explained on Snopes, the person who made the upload subsequently changed their tagline to “Y’all need a therapist, not a community”, indicating that whole idea was literally a “false flag” intended to draw in paedophiles in order to then rebuke them.

The colours referenced by Fox in the progress pride flag are more sensibly interpreted as incorporations of the 1999 transgender flag created by Monica Helms. According to Helms, speaking to Atlanta magazine in 2020:

In the 1990s, Mike Page, the person who created the bisexual Pride flag, encouraged me to make a flag for the trans community. One day, I woke up with the idea for the colors—the traditional color, light blue, for boys, pink for girls, and a single white stripe for those who are transitioning, gender neutral, or intersex. I took it to protests, marches, funerals, transgender days of remembrance.

In the flag as shown by Toure, the white area forms a triangle to the far left; in the version burnt by Fox the white is a stripe and the triange to the left is yellow and contains a purple circle. This represents the incorporation of Morgan Carpenter’s 2013 intersex flag. It might be argued that this means that the white stripe is redundant, and conspiracists will say that it must therefore have some other meaning. However, Helms distinguishes between “intersex” and two other categories, which can be seen as being continued to be represented.

Traditionally, conspiracists have claimed to discern secret Satanic messaging within logos or instances of artistic expression that they disliked; the idea of secret paedophile messaging is a secularised variation of the same phenomenon.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

The Telegraph whips up a new controversy about the Attorney General:

Lord Hermer is facing fresh calls to quit after personally signing off on the prosecution of Lucy Connolly.

Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to stirring up racial hatred in the wake of the Southport killings last year.

…Lord Hermer, the Government’s chief lawyer, approved the 42-year-old’s prosecution despite having the constitutional power to prevent it, his office confirmed.

While Connolly’s sentence was decided independently from the Attorney General’s office, his involvement in the controversial case has raised fresh questions over his political judgment.

However, buried much further down in the article is some extra context that makes a mockery of this “fresh questions” framing:

Connolly was jailed for inciting racial hatred, which is an offence under the Public Order Act (1986).

That offence, along with 60 others, requires that the Attorney General give their consent to any prosecutions. (1)

In other words, the Telegraph‘s supposed revelation is nothing more than publicly available general information about how the legal system works.

Further:

It is rare for the Attorney General to refuse to give consent because, by the time it reaches their office, the Crown Prosecution Service will have itself determined that a successful prosecution is likely, it is understood.

It would be particularly surprising for the Attorney General to overrule the CPS in a case associated with widespread public disorder and violence. However, the initial paragraphs – inevitably – have been widely interpreted to mean that Connolly was prosecuted because Hermer took a special interest in her case, or even that by not blocking the prosecution he acted improperly. Thus Allison Pearson denounces the Jewish Hermer as a “globalist”, while GB News ideologue Patrick Christys implies that the story indicates that Keir Starmer was involved.

The Telegraph article also rounds up some quotes – indeed, it is likely that the story was contrived primarily as a vehicle to publicise criticisms from the likes of Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage. It is worth noting that the statements sourced from Kemi Badenoch and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philip focus on Connolly’s sentencing; Badenoch claims that “our Attorney General is content to keep people like Lucy Connolly behind bars”, while Philp states that the “sentence seems unduly harsh”. It is alarming if senior political figures think that the Attorney General has a role in sentencing, or the power to reduce sentences.

A useful primer on the Connolly case has been provided by Matthew Scott at BarristerBlogger. His observations on Twitter/X about her sentencing appeal outcome are also worth reading. One wonders why none of the individuals quoted in the Telegraph story refer to her failed appeal; could it be that the story was prepared some time ago, and has been dusted off in order to bandwagon on a different controversy involving Hermer?

Note

1. The passage continues: “The requirement was designed to act as a safeguard to prevent the criminal justice system unreasonably clamping down on free speech, The Telegraph understands”. One wonders why the paper preferred this mysteriously sourced explanation over the CPS website, which refers to ensuring “a consistent approach”.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »