‘Charlie began taking in a lot of harmful ideological messages’

Yookay News Report (Wrong Side of History newsletter #73)

Good morning, and welcome to Wrong Side of History. Once again, thank you for subscribing, and in particular thank you to my most beloved, paid subscribers. Without you, I would probably be standing by the side of a road somewhere, holding a bottle of meths and screaming at traffic. If you can afford to upgrade, I appreciate it, but I understand that times are hard for many.

(I will post a round-up next week with links, but today’s newsletter will be more like a tabloid column, with short comment pieces. I’m experimenting with different formats to see what works)

Recent posts

As this year sees the big 250th anniversary of the United States, I wrote about the enduring legacy of Thomas Jefferson (and why US criticism of European free speech violations is correct). I also wrote about the Intellectuals and the Masses by John Carey, who died recently, about the dangers of listening to what children think about politics, and of ‘democratic backsliding’ in Britain.

European authorities are increasingly willing to use the necessity of countering ‘hate’ to clamp down on opposition, while the will of democratically elected politicians is routinely blocked by non-democratic bodies, especially the judiciary. Presented with the threat of a populist government which might tear up this system, and overturn the sacred ‘rules-based order’, the temptation to place a finger on the scales of democracy may become too strong.

As a result, liberal democracy is undergoing a crisis, and in many ways is no longer liberal nor democratic, but an oxymoronic ‘liberal authoritarianism’. This was a phrase first used by historians to describe the British rulers of India, starting with the East India Company under George Lyall. It described a system of government under a liberal ruling class who were nonetheless compelled to use authoritarian measures to rule over a population which did not give its consent. As the UK state of the 21st century has started to resemble a New British Empire, so this form of government has returned.

And for those free subscribers, here is my overview of Andrew Hussey’s excellent Fractured France,

At the time, Houellebecq was writing Les Particules élémentaires - Atomised in English - the book that would make him globally famous, and the theme was the end of Christianity and death of western civilisation by suicide. After watching both their nations defeated, the two went for a cigarette on the balcony, where opposite was standing a fat woman with a Chicago Bears T-shirt, also smoking and drinking beer. ‘Look at her, look at us,’ the Frenchman said: ‘This is why France is finished.’

‘We both laughed, but I wasn’t sure if I really got the joke.’

Houellebecq elaborated: ‘Look at her. She is how we live today in France. Our civilisation has gone. We are no longer our own people. Or we do not know who we are. And remember, if France dies, Europe dies.’

Houellebecq’s most famous and controversial novel, Soumission (‘Submission’) painted a dark future of a country fallen to Islam, all the more chilling for the sense of relief that civilisational defeat presented, and come out less than a year after Hussey’s own book. On the day of its publication, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo lampooned the novelist by presenting him dressed as a wizard, smoking a cigarette and announcing that ‘in 2022, I’m observing Ramadan!’ Above it, a caption read: ‘the predictions of the wise Houellebecq.’

That issue of Charlie Hebdo was published on January 7, 2015. At 11.30am that day, two men walked into the magazine’s office in Paris and murdered 12 staff members. The French Intifada had begun.

On the subject of France, I also appeared on Winston Marshall’s podcast talking about the clash of civilisations and the great Frankish victory at Tours. As I wrote in my short book about how the Franks created Europe, the French are historically the most belligerent people in Europe because they’re sitting on the best real estate.

Yookay News

The Yookay is characterised in many minds as a state mixing elements of authoritarian menace with total farce and incompetence, a system of anarcho-tyranny ruled by midwits. It’s a slapstick comedy in which WPCs turn up at your house to arrest you over Facebook posts while your son sits in a classroom learning about Harriet Tubman next to a 30-year-old Iranian man pretending to be a child asylum seeker (this actually happened). It’s a system based on the Chinese system of social credit scores, except you gain credit if you’re totally dysfunctional or an actual Islamist, and you lose credit if you notice the problem.

There is an immense global appetite for British Decline Porn and so far this year we’ve served it with record productivity.

We learned that a state-funded video game was created to warn teenagers that questioning the wisdom of mass immigration could lead to referral to the country’s counter-terrorism programme Prevent.

As the Telegraph reports:

Pathways is an interactive game designed for 11 to 18 year-old pupils and funded by Prevent. Young players are directed to help their in-game characters – a white teenage boy and girl – to avoid being reported for “extreme Right-wing ideology” after discussing migration online.

Characters can face extremism referrals if they choose to engage with groups that spread “harmful ideological messages”, or join protests against the “erosion of British values”. Even researching online immigration statistics is portrayed negatively.

Other in-game pitfalls include sharing a video that claims Muslim men, rather than homeless veterans, are being given emergency accommodation. An in-game meter monitors how extreme the character’s behaviour is. Those who “lose” may be given counselling to deal with “ideological thoughts” or referred to an anti-terrorism expert.

The game was developed with Government backing by councils in East Yorkshire over growing concerns about immigration and tensions about migrant accommodation in their communities…

Charlie – described throughout the game using the pronoun “they”, regardless of the gender chosen – is faced with a number of choices, and players make decisions based on multiple-choice questions. These are marked red for bad and green for good.

The first is whether or not to download a video shared on a gaming platform: players are asked to choose between telling an adult; discussing the video to find out more, or sharing it.

Then Charlie, who is outperformed by a black student at college, must decide whether or not to accept his misfortune or blame immigrants for “stealing jobs”.

After this, Charlie comes across a video that claims “Muslim men are stealing the places of British veterans in emergency accommodation” and “the Government is betraying white British people and we need to take back control of our country”.

Charlie can scroll past it or “engage directly with the post”. Choosing to engage leads to the message: “Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t realise that some of the groups they were engaging in were actually illegal.”

He or she can also “find out more about the topic”, but this research is framed negatively. The character is shown being bombarded with research papers, statistics, information about protests and other material regarding the “‘replacement’ of white people”.

After this, he or she continues browsing and encounters “lots of harmful groups who agreed with these sentiments”. The game adds: “Charlie began taking in a lot of harmful ideological messages. In fact, some of the groups were actually illegal.”

Prevent, for those unfamiliar with the workings of the UK, was set up after the July 7 bombings to counter extremism, but - inevitably - has come to spend more energy fixating on people with ‘far-right’ sympathies than with Islamists. The latter might be far more of an actual terrorism risk, but majority nationalism is the real enemy of a multicultural empire.

It was also revealed that the Metropolitan police employed a suspected child rapist in a diversity drive, who went onto become a convicted child rapist.

More than 100 applicants who initially failed vetting procedures were later allowed to join after their cases were referred to a special panel set up to scrutinise rejected applications from ethnic minority candidates, and help the force meet diversity targets. They included PC Cliff Mitchell, who was recruited despite having being accused of raping a child. His application was initially rejected, but this decision was overturned. He was later convicted of 13 counts of rape, including six against a child. Mitchell, now 26, was among 25 officers given a second chance who went on to commit criminal offences or misconduct, including violence, sex attacks and drug use.

To understand why the British state behaves like this, you need to appreciate that it is institutionally anti-racist. If you are not seen as sufficiently committed to that ruling ideology, you have no future within the vast state bureaucracy. (Even the Americans are noticing the results.)

We also learned that the United Arab Emirates will no longer pay for its young people to go to university in Britain because they are so overrun with Islamists, and they don’t want their children radicalised by the cast of Four Lions.

It was also revealed that West Midlands Police portrayed fans of Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv as ‘uniquely violent’ to justify banning them at their game at Villa Park last November. In fact, as Tory MP and Aston Villa fan Nick Timothy points out:

They used “intelligence” supposedly from Dutch police that has been utterly repudiated - by the Dutch police and other authorities. And when the Home Affairs Select Committee asked why the vital information about the danger *to* Israelis was kept secret, the Chief Constable ludicrously said it was because he had not been asked for it. In other words: “We won’t tell you the truth because you didn’t ask a specific question about a thing you didn’t know because we hadn’t told you.

Essentially, there were threats from members of the local ‘community’, as this BBC report described it – a masterclass in what Steve Sailer called ‘lame news’, reports deliberately designed to not inform the reader. Why should a ‘community’ on the Staffordshire/Warwickshire border care about an obscure dispute 2,000 miles away? Of course, it’s because Birmingham is 30 per cent Muslim and Aston over 70 per cent, and the police feared that they couldn’t contain violence from locals - so they kowtowed. Birmingham police also covered up threat to Israeli players

This is what they always do, because the British state’s primary objective is ‘community relations’. The police come under political pressure in the way they deal with these relations, they are in an impossible position, and they should tell the truth about that fact - that the British state has ceded authority, and the monopoly of the threat of violence. Remarkably, one of the mosques mention in the story actually had a say in choosing the city’s chief of police.

It gets worse. As the Times later reported:

‘The elected police chief at the centre of the Israeli football ban row has been accused of offering to give a controversial mosque the equivalent of a “blank cheque” to apply for public funding. Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, wrote that he would be “very happy” to provide Green Lane mosque with a generic letter of support that would allow it to apply for future, unspecified public grants.’

The mayor of Birmingham, meanwhile, has been busy making statements about ICE (of course he has).

As the Telegraph’s Sam Ashworth-Hayes puts it: ‘The principle problem of the sensitive middle aged right winger is that reality is so absurd and the actions of the state so malign that you sound like a conspiratorial lunatic when you set out a straightforward factual description of events.’ I know - I do!

Alcohol-free beer: the cause of, and solution to, none of life’s problems

The government wants to prevent 16-year-olds from drinking alcohol-free beer because it might ‘normalise’ beer drinking. Alcohol is dangerous to about 5-15 per cent of the British population, who have a genetic predisposition towards alcoholism, but it is ‘normalised’ in our culture - the best that we can hope for is to create a more positive environment. As parents of teenagers, we worry mainly about spirits, since few teens actually like the taste of beer and it is far easier to consume dangerous amounts of booze if taken via vodka and a mixer. I tend to take the view that the state and the tax system should promote ‘small beer’ – defined as 2% alcohol – and that 16-year-olds should be able to drink weak beer in pubs if in the company of adults - they can already do so if it’s to accompany a meal. As a balance, we might raise the age of buying spirits to 21.

It’s notable that, bit-by-bit, 16- and 17-year-olds are being denied the opportunities to step up. Just last week the government announced that learner drivers would have to wait another six months before taking their test, making a policy of a problem, since the waiting lists are now so long. Most tragic of all, teenagers are being squeezed out of the workplace, which is impeding their ability to develop in a way that is quite cruel. (I’m a big advocate of legalising child labour.)

At the same time the franchise is extended to 16-year-olds, which makes one conclude that voters for children is obviously very cynical. If you don’t trust someone that age to drink a Lucky Saint, you surely don’t trust them to choose the government we must all live under.

Can you fly, Bobby J?

This week, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick after she learned that he planned to defect to Reform. This seems like bad news for the British Right, since their best hope was for an unofficial pact or agreement, and the prospect of coalition, which is now less likely. Any Tory strategy of creating clear blue water with Reform seems doomed to me, likely to be punished by the first-past-the-post system unless the economy rises in salience. Many people were quick to write off Badenoch, who has grown over the last few months, but the party’s reputation is cooked, as my kids say; as for Jenrick, I think he is the only senior politician who understands the problems facing Britain.

The Trump effect

Donald Trump is a huge liability to right-wing parties everywhere, and thanks to his inexplicably mad Greenland obsession, Danish leftists are now ahead in the polls. Tak!

Apparently, one British soldier is being sent to Greenland. As one wag put it, ‘I know a Jason Statham plot when I see one.’

Trump famously helped Canadian Liberals win re-election, and here, as in Britain, the Great Awokening continues. The Canadian government recently announced a $200 million fund ‘to provide sustainable funding for black-led, black-focused and black-serving organizations. This is what diversity, equity, and inclusion looks like.’ I mean, it’s what equity (race communism) looks like, for sure. Remember when some Canadian police opened their appeal for two missing children by making a land acknowledgement and paying tribute to Nova Scotia’s black community?

Shah shah a go back?

I have no idea whether the Iranian regime will topple, although I obviously I hope so. One interesting trend in Iran is that in recent years it has seen among the fastest rates of conversion to Christianity in the world, as reported here, here, here and here. I’ve heard of a common phenomenon of young Iranians seeing Jesus come to them in dreams, and then converting, but I couldn’t find any evidence that this was a notably Iranian phenomenon (I imagine that dreams are quite a common trigger for religious conversions).

I do recommend this BBC documentary from the 1980s about the Iranian revolution, which made me wonder why they can’t put more old Beeb docs on iPlayer (apparently the costs would be high).

Betting markets now put a 24 per cent probability of Reza Pahlavi returning to Iran by the end of June, which isn’t bad. I always got the impression that he was something of a lost cause and had little support outside of the US, but it appears that he’s more popular in Iran than we all assumed and crowds seem to be chanting his name. Every time a monarchy is restored, an angel gets his wings.

LKY right once again

Vietnam’s economy continues to surge. although it faces risks. Considering that it’s home to 100 million people, and has fertility rates that are not yet catastrophic, it could be a major economic power in the coming decades.

In his memoir From Third World to First, the great Lee Kuan Yew described how the reformist Vietnamese leadership came to him for economic advice, which he duly gave.

Despite the country’s great poverty, LKY was optimistic and wrote that ‘they were an energetic and intelligent people, Confucian at the grass roots. I believed they would bounce back in 20 to 30 years. Every meeting had started and ended punctually. Their leaders were serious men.

‘The Vietnamese will take some time to shake off their communist straitjackets and move freely and flexibly. Once they have done this, I have little doubt they can make the grade’, as they have ‘formidable qualities’. That was in 2000, so a pretty accurate timeframe. My father, who deeply loved the country, would be very happy to see Vietnam embrace its true destiny as a great capitalist power.

On that happy note - thanks for subscribing good people, and have a great weekend!