.....any racial disparities can only be evidence of an officer’s racism.’ It’s not just the police; the health service is riddled with this belief, while across a range of institutions discriminatory hiring policies have been implemented.....
True, and this is one of the most destructive concepts. It is a fundamental, no debate allowed, belief of the left. It's foundational to the DEI movement, and so much more.
Nathan Cofnas traces this belief to John Locke's 1690 statement that, "Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there. And had the Virginia king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been perhaps as knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician as any in it; the difference between him and a more improved Englishman lying barely in this, that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and notions of his own country, and never directed to any other or further inquiries."
Culture is not transmitted genetically. Though parental influences do matter for recent immigrants. However once those foreign elements recede generations in the past they don't matter. Half my ancestry comes from 19th century Germany, but there's nothing German about me.
There is nevertheless strong persistence of culture into even the fourth generation and probably belong. US states with large Scandinavian pops start to resemble Scandinavia etc.
Genetics plays some role in every aspect of society, even if humans are uniquely influenced by culture compared to other mammals.
Sure if people are raised around certain cultural miliwus they will absorb that. Nothing grenetic about it. Culture is learned . On an individual level I do agree people are influenced by their genes. For example we've probably all known families that are susceptible to akcoholism and other addictions.
I'm not so sure. The older I get the more I'm with Filmer on the Two Treatises.
The relation of 'culture' to genetics (and genetics to culture) is a funny old thing. Particularly insofar as physiological outcomes are acommmodated, mitigated or given an abstract telos through the mediation of inherited ritual and custom.
In biology I understand this field is now known as Gene-Culture Coevolution.
Famously, for instance, many East Asians are lactose intolerant - because dairy products were taboo for so long in China due to their association with Steppe Barbarians. Thus 'culture', an artefact of history, language and social practice passed down the generations asserts itself physiologically and 'genetically'.
Equally drinking culture is both cultural and genetic. Northern European drinking culture is what it is because of our inherited Alcohol Metabolism (ADH Genes).
I believe Mr West has touched on this subject before.
Where 'culture' ends and 'biology' begins is not so clear as we would like it to be.
While the above examples are largely merely trivial, much of the failed social engineering of the last 50 years has been built squarely on the back of a dogmatic cultural-genetic Lockean 'Blank Slatism'.
Sikhs, for instance, were long considered a designated Martial Race in the Raj.
Was Vikram Digwa ever going to be content as a jobbing accountant in suburban Southampton? His morbid fascination with martial arts and militaria ought to give us pause for thought.
Get back to me when someone proves that what language you speak or what religion you are is coded in your genes . Language and religion are absolutely foundational to culture. Drinking tolerance not so much.
You aren't following my argument. I am not in a place where I can pursue it right now. But briefly, genetic influences in culture, beyond having humsn genes period, are trivial. The things that matter overwhelmingly, are not genetic.
You nay wish to consider geography and climate too- they are far more influential, even today.
Keywords here are "possibly" and "perhaps". While acknowledging that population genetics may influence our abilities, these little words make room for the notion, one of the best ideas ever in fact, that we should judge people as individuals and not as members of a class or group. So at least here Locke isn't arguing for an epistemological blank slate but rather that we are morally obligated to avoid prejudicial conclusions about individuals based on their background.
"The primary issue is not foreign interference, nor immigration specifically; both the killer and victim were products of migration..."
There is something of a false equivalence being put about here. Henry Nowak was in no wise a 'product of migration' in the same way that Vikrum Digwa is. Not if we mean modern Mass Migration and its attendant infrastructure.
As I understand it, only one of Henry's paternal grandparents was Polish born. And he was 'Old Polish' - he moved to Britain during the Second World War as a Polish emigre soldier and was forced to remain here, presumably against his will, in exile ever thereafter. A wartime migrant of real necessity.
Henry's London born, Anglophone, father was only half 'Polish' and his mother was entirely indigenous.
Henry may have inherited his paternal grandfather's surname but he was only a fourth-part Polish. Moreover, Henry's mother's maiden name is Lucy Ross.
The name Ross, in its Gaelic, topographical origin, has been well attested in these islands for over 900 years. In its Anglo-Norman, Kentish derivation, De Ros there are written records of the name stretching back to at least the 11th century.
That is over 35 generations.
Vikrum Digwa's father, appears to be British born but his mother, Kiran Kaur was born and raised in the Punjab and only moved to Britain, on a spousal Visa, as recently as 1995. The Digwas are recent, economic, migrants of choice.
Henry had one Polish grandparent who was a wartime refugee. Vikram's mother and presumably all his grandparents were actually Punjabi born. And spoke Punjabi at home.
To imply that both men were equally 'products of migration' is putting it a bit strong.
"Globalisation makes the Right stronger, and for all that Elon’s power is troubling for democratic norms, one suspects that European politicians would like to shut down his website because it would hamper opposition to their project of social engineering. It’s also understandable why British politicians – and the general public – dislike Musk, and indeed Donald Trump. But, to paraphrase Captain Blackadder, I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the foreign interference front. You can’t spend your political life opining about US politics and be surprised when the Great Satan takes an interest in you. You might even say that they have awakened a sleeping giant."
The dissolving of national boundaries psychologically between conservatives in different countries is indeed one of the reasons why I think it has been common to talk about "the West" as opposed to simply the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, France, etc.
Surely though, any movement born of 'dissolving national boundaries' cannot be a conservative one.
There can be no 'Conservative International'. Not as the term has historically been understood in England, anyway.
The basis of conservatism is not ideological, it is topographical. Indelibly Fixed. Non-transferable. Like the Bed of Odysseus it grew up from the soil and draws its vitality from the same. To imply its alienation is to read its obituary because it cannot be uprooted and transplanted.
All true conservatism is essentially and finally a sublimation of the Fifth Commandment. Real Property, not Chattels.
It is quite simply the Landed Interest. Pope's 'Paternal Acres'
A trans-national 'conservatism' is almost a contradiction in terms
No, not at all. Almost everyone is conservative, especially the bourgeoisie. People have different ideas of what needs keeping, but they all want to keep things a certain way. “Tory” is different, and lines up with your aristocrats perhaps.
But surely it needn’t be pointed out that a conservative in America or Russia or Spain or Germany is a very different thing to a conservative in England? The ‘certain way’ is fundamentally and materially different in each and every particular and peculiar context.
Conservatism is endemic, idiomatic, non fungible, in each and every several context in which it finds or commands expression. That is its sublime beauty.
When Pushkin epigraphically prefaced his Eugene Onegin with the famous pun on the Latin pietas of Horace - o Rus - he was making precisely this point. It is a love which, like romantic love, is the same - but utterly different - in every time and in every place.
That deep, mystical, almost exilic love of one peculiar place - the Homeric, Ithacensian, πατρίς γαῖα - is the same but different in every iteration of the conservative longing.
It is not a political programme that can be usefully broadcast from one national context to another.
Perhaps I use the term landed interest in an eccentric way.
When I say the landed interest I don’t merely mean wealthy landowners, although of course them as well, but I mean it in the sense that Disraeli used the term in the Corn Law debates-
"When we talk of the landed interest, we do not mean a few great lords or a few wealthy squires; we mean that great body of the nation whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of the soil."
I’m not sure musk does have more reach than the old press barons. Or at least, can’t hold as much unchallenged influence. Yes, he has a big platform. But every time he says something you can just click on it and see a million people presenting counter arguments. It’s as if ever edition of the daily mail came with an enormous supplement section refuting everything it said
he did have a huge impact in making the grooming gangs issue centre stage after years of it being well-known about but not much thought about. He was able to do this almost on a whim, while a press baron would still need some buy in from newspaper staff.
there is also only one twitter, its only rivals being Facebook and TikTok (I guess Instagram, but nothing like as political, BlueSky is pretty irrelevant), while most press barons were confined to one country (Murdoch the exception) and there were usually a few.
Ed, another excellent piece, you are on a hot streak at present. On the digital barons, you will remember that when anyone to the Right of Tony Blair was being cancelled on Old Twitter, the smug response on the Left was that free speech did not mean anyone had a right to a platform (implying that a disequilibrium in access was not a problem at all) and that the Right could go and start their own. As we know, Elon turned the tables by buying Twitter and the Twitter files, explained by the likes of Matt Taibbi, were as big a revelation as the opening up of the Stasi files.
The Left's response, BlueSky, is pretty irrelevant, but that's not Elon's fault and although I take your point that two wrongs don't make a right, the intensity and duration of the Left's unapologetic stranglehold on Twitter means I'm not too troubled by Elon's actions. On the ground in the Yookay, Elon may have X, but the Government has the BBC and the police as its enforcers.
Thank you. I’d rather Elon just didn’t tweet about politics and just allowed a fair and open forum for debate, but this is better than what went before
Yes good points. But that phenomenon of people who get all their world view from one newspaper - which still exists - doesn’t quite apply to musk on Twitter. As the platform itself is still a lot of different voices
"Indeed, as Ozempic’s destruction of the ‘body positivity’ movement illustrates, much of the turn from peak woke is downstream of technology, just as technology caused the Great Awokening in the first place. New forms of social media, with their conformity-inducing pressure, radicalised elite opinion in the US and reached a peak in the summer of 2020, which felt like being stuck in a global insane asylum, collective madness aggravated by the isolating effects of lockdown."
I am amazed though at how mainstream figures associated with the "dissident right" have gone since "peak woke". Figures like Steve Sailer and Curtis Yarvin certainly feel a lot less "underground" than they were in, say, 2012.
"...any racial disparities can only be evidence of an officers racism."
That is why the fact that the mens 100 metre sprints at the Olymoics have only ever been won by men of West African descent - only ever - is the clearest possible evidence of prejudice by the Olympic authorities against Europeans, Chinese, Amerinds, Eskimos, Australian aborigines, Tartars, Maoris etc, etc.
I think a certain kind of journalistic deception has lost its prestige, where everything said in the article is true but a salient point which changes the meaning of the situation is ignored. That used to be seen as respectable but Community Notes and the culture it created destroyed that respectability.
Often it has been replaced by just making stuff up, after the Epstein files were published my social media was filled with invented stories about celebrity cannibalism. There is a notable effect of social media making conspiracy theories dumber.
I also don't recall British politicians including Starmer complaining about the power of American social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter, under pressure from the Biden administration, to censor evidence of massive harms from the Covid "vaccines".
"Had Community Notes existed at the time, the Ferguson shooting would not have become a cause célèbre because social media users would have seen that journalists misrepresented the incident. Today, when politicians make claims regarding disparities, everyone can freely see that they don’t understand statistics. Post-Elon, a number of typical BLM-style stories have disappeared from the media narrative thanks to technological fixes, not just Community Notes but also police bodycams."
At least they show empirical data even if it is interpreted wrong. As Hanania put it,
"The MSM keeps showing you that there are massive racial and gender disparities, and they continue to exist no matter how much effort is put towards eliminating them. This is like if Pravda kept showing you the economic data proving that capitalist countries are rich and the Soviet Union can’t produce enough grain to feed itself, but encouraged its readers not to lose faith in socialism. I think a fair observer would have to conclude that, even if this is propaganda, it is of an unusually honest kind.
If conservatives are at war with the left, then the fact that they give you the ammunition that you use to fire at them, which conservatives don’t have the industrial base to manufacture themselves, is itself impressive. Sorry, but you’re not getting that from Infowars or your favorite right-wing anon Twitter account that you think is speaking truth to power.
BLM was a bunch of shameless grtifters who smuggled every leftwing cause they could into an antiracism agenda. But abusive policing is a problem,and one that victimizes everyone not just black people (at least in the US). We shouldn't turn a blind eye to that.
that may be true, but their entire argument about disparity was BS.
I'm always cheered up when I read about a BLM activist spending their money on a luxury home or yacht. Better than spending it on race communism, and anyone who donated deserved to be swindled.
"The remedy is simple: enforce civil rights laws as written—which means requiring a higher standard of proof than “disparate impact.” In a rational anti-discrimination regime designed to unify the citizenry, a plaintiff seeking redress would have to establish, with concrete evidence, that he or she personally and intentionally had been denied some benefit, or inflicted with some punishment, solely or largely because of his or her race or sex."
Of course Tommy Robinson wasn't jailed for being a freedom fighter.
Although I do wonder why Mandelson wasn't jailed for Mortgage fraud in 2001. Did he declare his loan from Geoffrey Robinson (no relation to Tommy) to his building society?
It had the potential to be a criminal offence, but no one went to the police. It’s like misconduct in a public office: it happens to prison officers or (in ye olden times) the police - or courts martial for soldiers and junior officers. Ministers and generals however are above the law. (See the flagrant miscarriage of justice that was the case of the MURDER of Speckled Jim 😁)
I think that if Mandelson were guilty (personally I think he's wrongly persecuted) and had been prosecuted it would have made people whose mortgage applications were not 100% accurate more careful and made the credit crunch less bad in the UK.
I really think there is an important principle here - "With laws we build the land, with lawlessness we destroy it."
(From Njall's saga - people don't listen to him and the results are not optimal
During the Armenian Genocide, the Russians wanted to call it a "crime against Christianity and civilization" as opposed to the other Entente Powers who called it a "crime against humanity"
I'm curious, as one of those Americans who have been disgusted by the treatment of Tommy Robinson, why you think he was jailed, if not for speaking truth (unwelcome truth) to power? I realize that in Britain it's all about class, and Tommy Robinson is on the wrong side of the class barrier, but nothing I've read or heard - I've listened to the man speak online - indicates he's doing anything but trying to reassert free speech rights in a country that has miserably abandoned them. I'd be interested to hear why my own take on this is wrong, if indeed it is.
His most recent case was for contempt of court, which has always been a pretty serious charge in Britain. he posted false information about a Syrian teenager which got the family threatened, and after being ordered to desist repeated the claims.
it's worth pointing out that it's not just class but that he comes from a particular football hooliganism subculture. 'Tommy Robinson' is a sort of non de pleume for the leader of Luton Town's firm.
On the other hand, I will say that he is incredibly brave, and is the kind of person you'd want to have your back in a fight. His basic grievances are also correct, and Luton was completely overrun by Islamists in his late teens, some funded by the government. He was radicalised, he said, by seeing the Taliban openly fundraising in the town while his friends were in the Army fighting them. His gripe about the dangerous spread of radical Islam has just been ignored, often quite cynically, by the authorities, many of whom are behaving in a cowardly way.
He is also unusually charismatic, and his ability to raise a nationalist crowd is something unprecedented in our history and quite terrifying to the authorities. Football crowds are especially worrying, and I imagine a few are aware of their role in Yugoslavia's troubles.
He has essentially reach the status of what might be called 'community leader', especially now that he has friends in Washington. Maybe one day he'll lead a power sharing government with some Islamists.
Well, those charges seem to me to fall in line with the old dictum "find me the man and I'll find you the crime". Even if some of the things he reports are false - and I'm not so sure they are, from the things I've read - is it normal to send people to jail for saying them? Of course, this is in a country that now imprisons citizens for tweeting impolitely. I can't see Robinson as anything but heroic for standing up for his own people, and taking hit after hit from the powers that be for his trouble. I fantasize that some day, England will return to sanity, and Tommy Robinson will have a statue built memorializing his courage. Probably not going to happen, but one can fantasize.
Incidentally, my greatest exposure to Robinson is through the Danish Trykkefrihedsselskabet (Free Press Society) who have reported on him many times, and have invited him to speak in Copenhagen. They are not a bunch of football hooligans, but a thoughtful and open-minded group of people devoted to free speech and the preservation of European liberalism. If he has their stamp of approval, I'll go along without question.
Sadly, the native Britons have actually been conquered many times, despite the WWII rhetoric, and don’t seem that bothered TBH. The Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the Normans, the Dutch, the Americans in 1941…
.....any racial disparities can only be evidence of an officer’s racism.’ It’s not just the police; the health service is riddled with this belief, while across a range of institutions discriminatory hiring policies have been implemented.....
True, and this is one of the most destructive concepts. It is a fundamental, no debate allowed, belief of the left. It's foundational to the DEI movement, and so much more.
Nathan Cofnas traces this belief to John Locke's 1690 statement that, "Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there. And had the Virginia king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been perhaps as knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician as any in it; the difference between him and a more improved Englishman lying barely in this, that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and notions of his own country, and never directed to any other or further inquiries."
This isn't wrong though
Culture is not transmitted genetically. Though parental influences do matter for recent immigrants. However once those foreign elements recede generations in the past they don't matter. Half my ancestry comes from 19th century Germany, but there's nothing German about me.
There is nevertheless strong persistence of culture into even the fourth generation and probably belong. US states with large Scandinavian pops start to resemble Scandinavia etc.
Genetics plays some role in every aspect of society, even if humans are uniquely influenced by culture compared to other mammals.
Sure if people are raised around certain cultural miliwus they will absorb that. Nothing grenetic about it. Culture is learned . On an individual level I do agree people are influenced by their genes. For example we've probably all known families that are susceptible to akcoholism and other addictions.
Genes work at both the individual and the population level.
Genes only work in individuals who have them. There is no quantum woo that enables them to gave spooky action at a distance
I'm not so sure. The older I get the more I'm with Filmer on the Two Treatises.
The relation of 'culture' to genetics (and genetics to culture) is a funny old thing. Particularly insofar as physiological outcomes are acommmodated, mitigated or given an abstract telos through the mediation of inherited ritual and custom.
In biology I understand this field is now known as Gene-Culture Coevolution.
Famously, for instance, many East Asians are lactose intolerant - because dairy products were taboo for so long in China due to their association with Steppe Barbarians. Thus 'culture', an artefact of history, language and social practice passed down the generations asserts itself physiologically and 'genetically'.
Equally drinking culture is both cultural and genetic. Northern European drinking culture is what it is because of our inherited Alcohol Metabolism (ADH Genes).
I believe Mr West has touched on this subject before.
Where 'culture' ends and 'biology' begins is not so clear as we would like it to be.
While the above examples are largely merely trivial, much of the failed social engineering of the last 50 years has been built squarely on the back of a dogmatic cultural-genetic Lockean 'Blank Slatism'.
Sikhs, for instance, were long considered a designated Martial Race in the Raj.
Was Vikram Digwa ever going to be content as a jobbing accountant in suburban Southampton? His morbid fascination with martial arts and militaria ought to give us pause for thought.
Culture and heredity are not a neat duality.
Get back to me when someone proves that what language you speak or what religion you are is coded in your genes . Language and religion are absolutely foundational to culture. Drinking tolerance not so much.
You are moving the goalposts slightly, friend.
Your first comment argues that ‘culture is not genetically transmitted’ while your second narrows the assertion to ‘language’ specifically.
A strong case can be made that culture is at least genetically mutually coeval with biology. It is known as the dual inheritance theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_inheritance_theory#Cultural_influences_on_genetic_evolution
You aren't following my argument. I am not in a place where I can pursue it right now. But briefly, genetic influences in culture, beyond having humsn genes period, are trivial. The things that matter overwhelmingly, are not genetic.
You nay wish to consider geography and climate too- they are far more influential, even today.
Keywords here are "possibly" and "perhaps". While acknowledging that population genetics may influence our abilities, these little words make room for the notion, one of the best ideas ever in fact, that we should judge people as individuals and not as members of a class or group. So at least here Locke isn't arguing for an epistemological blank slate but rather that we are morally obligated to avoid prejudicial conclusions about individuals based on their background.
Very good, tracing this line of thought back that far. Can you tell me where Cofnas wrote that? I would be interested to read it.
https://ncofnas.com/p/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights
In any case, would Henry Nowak’s murder have gotten this much media attention without X? People outside of the UK might have never heard about it
"The primary issue is not foreign interference, nor immigration specifically; both the killer and victim were products of migration..."
There is something of a false equivalence being put about here. Henry Nowak was in no wise a 'product of migration' in the same way that Vikrum Digwa is. Not if we mean modern Mass Migration and its attendant infrastructure.
As I understand it, only one of Henry's paternal grandparents was Polish born. And he was 'Old Polish' - he moved to Britain during the Second World War as a Polish emigre soldier and was forced to remain here, presumably against his will, in exile ever thereafter. A wartime migrant of real necessity.
Henry's London born, Anglophone, father was only half 'Polish' and his mother was entirely indigenous.
Henry may have inherited his paternal grandfather's surname but he was only a fourth-part Polish. Moreover, Henry's mother's maiden name is Lucy Ross.
The name Ross, in its Gaelic, topographical origin, has been well attested in these islands for over 900 years. In its Anglo-Norman, Kentish derivation, De Ros there are written records of the name stretching back to at least the 11th century.
That is over 35 generations.
Vikrum Digwa's father, appears to be British born but his mother, Kiran Kaur was born and raised in the Punjab and only moved to Britain, on a spousal Visa, as recently as 1995. The Digwas are recent, economic, migrants of choice.
Henry had one Polish grandparent who was a wartime refugee. Vikram's mother and presumably all his grandparents were actually Punjabi born. And spoke Punjabi at home.
To imply that both men were equally 'products of migration' is putting it a bit strong.
"Globalisation makes the Right stronger, and for all that Elon’s power is troubling for democratic norms, one suspects that European politicians would like to shut down his website because it would hamper opposition to their project of social engineering. It’s also understandable why British politicians – and the general public – dislike Musk, and indeed Donald Trump. But, to paraphrase Captain Blackadder, I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the foreign interference front. You can’t spend your political life opining about US politics and be surprised when the Great Satan takes an interest in you. You might even say that they have awakened a sleeping giant."
The dissolving of national boundaries psychologically between conservatives in different countries is indeed one of the reasons why I think it has been common to talk about "the West" as opposed to simply the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, France, etc.
Surely though, any movement born of 'dissolving national boundaries' cannot be a conservative one.
There can be no 'Conservative International'. Not as the term has historically been understood in England, anyway.
The basis of conservatism is not ideological, it is topographical. Indelibly Fixed. Non-transferable. Like the Bed of Odysseus it grew up from the soil and draws its vitality from the same. To imply its alienation is to read its obituary because it cannot be uprooted and transplanted.
All true conservatism is essentially and finally a sublimation of the Fifth Commandment. Real Property, not Chattels.
It is quite simply the Landed Interest. Pope's 'Paternal Acres'
A trans-national 'conservatism' is almost a contradiction in terms
A religious conservatism, a revival of Western Christendom, for example, could work across national boundaries.
Am I confused here? Isn't a tautology something that is true on its face? I think you mean "contradiction in terms".
Thank you!
You are quite right.
No, not at all. Almost everyone is conservative, especially the bourgeoisie. People have different ideas of what needs keeping, but they all want to keep things a certain way. “Tory” is different, and lines up with your aristocrats perhaps.
But surely it needn’t be pointed out that a conservative in America or Russia or Spain or Germany is a very different thing to a conservative in England? The ‘certain way’ is fundamentally and materially different in each and every particular and peculiar context.
Conservatism is endemic, idiomatic, non fungible, in each and every several context in which it finds or commands expression. That is its sublime beauty.
When Pushkin epigraphically prefaced his Eugene Onegin with the famous pun on the Latin pietas of Horace - o Rus - he was making precisely this point. It is a love which, like romantic love, is the same - but utterly different - in every time and in every place.
That deep, mystical, almost exilic love of one peculiar place - the Homeric, Ithacensian, πατρίς γαῖα - is the same but different in every iteration of the conservative longing.
It is not a political programme that can be usefully broadcast from one national context to another.
Eloquently put! I just don’t think it is solely the landed interest.
Thank you!
Perhaps I use the term landed interest in an eccentric way.
When I say the landed interest I don’t merely mean wealthy landowners, although of course them as well, but I mean it in the sense that Disraeli used the term in the Corn Law debates-
"When we talk of the landed interest, we do not mean a few great lords or a few wealthy squires; we mean that great body of the nation whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of the soil."
…I liked “Acorn Laws”…🙂 - sounds like something an Anglo-Saxon swine-herder would be preoccupied with!
I’m not sure musk does have more reach than the old press barons. Or at least, can’t hold as much unchallenged influence. Yes, he has a big platform. But every time he says something you can just click on it and see a million people presenting counter arguments. It’s as if ever edition of the daily mail came with an enormous supplement section refuting everything it said
he did have a huge impact in making the grooming gangs issue centre stage after years of it being well-known about but not much thought about. He was able to do this almost on a whim, while a press baron would still need some buy in from newspaper staff.
there is also only one twitter, its only rivals being Facebook and TikTok (I guess Instagram, but nothing like as political, BlueSky is pretty irrelevant), while most press barons were confined to one country (Murdoch the exception) and there were usually a few.
Threads has some traction, but I waste enough time on Twitter without joining another Meta platform. I hear it’s even more left-lib than BlueSky.
Ed, another excellent piece, you are on a hot streak at present. On the digital barons, you will remember that when anyone to the Right of Tony Blair was being cancelled on Old Twitter, the smug response on the Left was that free speech did not mean anyone had a right to a platform (implying that a disequilibrium in access was not a problem at all) and that the Right could go and start their own. As we know, Elon turned the tables by buying Twitter and the Twitter files, explained by the likes of Matt Taibbi, were as big a revelation as the opening up of the Stasi files.
The Left's response, BlueSky, is pretty irrelevant, but that's not Elon's fault and although I take your point that two wrongs don't make a right, the intensity and duration of the Left's unapologetic stranglehold on Twitter means I'm not too troubled by Elon's actions. On the ground in the Yookay, Elon may have X, but the Government has the BBC and the police as its enforcers.
Thank you. I’d rather Elon just didn’t tweet about politics and just allowed a fair and open forum for debate, but this is better than what went before
Yes good points. But that phenomenon of people who get all their world view from one newspaper - which still exists - doesn’t quite apply to musk on Twitter. As the platform itself is still a lot of different voices
"Indeed, as Ozempic’s destruction of the ‘body positivity’ movement illustrates, much of the turn from peak woke is downstream of technology, just as technology caused the Great Awokening in the first place. New forms of social media, with their conformity-inducing pressure, radicalised elite opinion in the US and reached a peak in the summer of 2020, which felt like being stuck in a global insane asylum, collective madness aggravated by the isolating effects of lockdown."
I am amazed though at how mainstream figures associated with the "dissident right" have gone since "peak woke". Figures like Steve Sailer and Curtis Yarvin certainly feel a lot less "underground" than they were in, say, 2012.
"...any racial disparities can only be evidence of an officers racism."
That is why the fact that the mens 100 metre sprints at the Olymoics have only ever been won by men of West African descent - only ever - is the clearest possible evidence of prejudice by the Olympic authorities against Europeans, Chinese, Amerinds, Eskimos, Australian aborigines, Tartars, Maoris etc, etc.
I think a certain kind of journalistic deception has lost its prestige, where everything said in the article is true but a salient point which changes the meaning of the situation is ignored. That used to be seen as respectable but Community Notes and the culture it created destroyed that respectability.
Often it has been replaced by just making stuff up, after the Epstein files were published my social media was filled with invented stories about celebrity cannibalism. There is a notable effect of social media making conspiracy theories dumber.
I also don't recall British politicians including Starmer complaining about the power of American social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter, under pressure from the Biden administration, to censor evidence of massive harms from the Covid "vaccines".
"Had Community Notes existed at the time, the Ferguson shooting would not have become a cause célèbre because social media users would have seen that journalists misrepresented the incident. Today, when politicians make claims regarding disparities, everyone can freely see that they don’t understand statistics. Post-Elon, a number of typical BLM-style stories have disappeared from the media narrative thanks to technological fixes, not just Community Notes but also police bodycams."
At least they show empirical data even if it is interpreted wrong. As Hanania put it,
"The MSM keeps showing you that there are massive racial and gender disparities, and they continue to exist no matter how much effort is put towards eliminating them. This is like if Pravda kept showing you the economic data proving that capitalist countries are rich and the Soviet Union can’t produce enough grain to feed itself, but encouraged its readers not to lose faith in socialism. I think a fair observer would have to conclude that, even if this is propaganda, it is of an unusually honest kind.
If conservatives are at war with the left, then the fact that they give you the ammunition that you use to fire at them, which conservatives don’t have the industrial base to manufacture themselves, is itself impressive. Sorry, but you’re not getting that from Infowars or your favorite right-wing anon Twitter account that you think is speaking truth to power.
BLM was a bunch of shameless grtifters who smuggled every leftwing cause they could into an antiracism agenda. But abusive policing is a problem,and one that victimizes everyone not just black people (at least in the US). We shouldn't turn a blind eye to that.
that may be true, but their entire argument about disparity was BS.
I'm always cheered up when I read about a BLM activist spending their money on a luxury home or yacht. Better than spending it on race communism, and anyone who donated deserved to be swindled.
As Michael Anton put it in his 2020 book,
"The remedy is simple: enforce civil rights laws as written—which means requiring a higher standard of proof than “disparate impact.” In a rational anti-discrimination regime designed to unify the citizenry, a plaintiff seeking redress would have to establish, with concrete evidence, that he or she personally and intentionally had been denied some benefit, or inflicted with some punishment, solely or largely because of his or her race or sex."
Superb post. Thank you Ed.
thank you!
Of course Tommy Robinson wasn't jailed for being a freedom fighter.
Although I do wonder why Mandelson wasn't jailed for Mortgage fraud in 2001. Did he declare his loan from Geoffrey Robinson (no relation to Tommy) to his building society?
was this Notting Hill Gategate? I can't remember the details
Yes, Mandelson didn't declare a loan from Geoffrey Robertson in the register of interests and had to resign.
According to this https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jul/02/davidhencke he didn't tell his building society about it.
According to this
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mortgages/guides/what-is-mortgage-fraud/?msockid=22e4e976b4dd69202b7afe43b5396878
That's wrong.
Although in case Mandelson's lawyers do read this - I am sure he was innocent of mortgage fraud.
Imagine they have other things to worry about but yes likewise etc etc
It had the potential to be a criminal offence, but no one went to the police. It’s like misconduct in a public office: it happens to prison officers or (in ye olden times) the police - or courts martial for soldiers and junior officers. Ministers and generals however are above the law. (See the flagrant miscarriage of justice that was the case of the MURDER of Speckled Jim 😁)
I think that if Mandelson were guilty (personally I think he's wrongly persecuted) and had been prosecuted it would have made people whose mortgage applications were not 100% accurate more careful and made the credit crunch less bad in the UK.
I really think there is an important principle here - "With laws we build the land, with lawlessness we destroy it."
(From Njall's saga - people don't listen to him and the results are not optimal
"Ship delayed by storm. STOP. Arriving at Liverpool Tuesday. STOP. END WHITE GENOCIDE – ELON. STOP"
The word "genocide" didn't even exist in the 19th Century. It was created to describe the Nazi Holocaust.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=genocide
ha! good point
STOP THE EASTERN ATROCITIES. BULGARIAN LIVES MATTER
During the Armenian Genocide, the Russians wanted to call it a "crime against Christianity and civilization" as opposed to the other Entente Powers who called it a "crime against humanity"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1915_Triple_Entente_declaration
It was created ironically by a Polish Jew in the 1930s to describe what happened to Armenians and Assyrians in WW1.
I'm curious, as one of those Americans who have been disgusted by the treatment of Tommy Robinson, why you think he was jailed, if not for speaking truth (unwelcome truth) to power? I realize that in Britain it's all about class, and Tommy Robinson is on the wrong side of the class barrier, but nothing I've read or heard - I've listened to the man speak online - indicates he's doing anything but trying to reassert free speech rights in a country that has miserably abandoned them. I'd be interested to hear why my own take on this is wrong, if indeed it is.
His most recent case was for contempt of court, which has always been a pretty serious charge in Britain. he posted false information about a Syrian teenager which got the family threatened, and after being ordered to desist repeated the claims.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c704eedkqkvo
he's been convicted of mortgage fraud, assault (twice), using a fake passport and stalking, among other things
https://theweek.com/crime/tommy-robinson-a-timeline-of-legal-troubles
it's worth pointing out that it's not just class but that he comes from a particular football hooliganism subculture. 'Tommy Robinson' is a sort of non de pleume for the leader of Luton Town's firm.
On the other hand, I will say that he is incredibly brave, and is the kind of person you'd want to have your back in a fight. His basic grievances are also correct, and Luton was completely overrun by Islamists in his late teens, some funded by the government. He was radicalised, he said, by seeing the Taliban openly fundraising in the town while his friends were in the Army fighting them. His gripe about the dangerous spread of radical Islam has just been ignored, often quite cynically, by the authorities, many of whom are behaving in a cowardly way.
He is also unusually charismatic, and his ability to raise a nationalist crowd is something unprecedented in our history and quite terrifying to the authorities. Football crowds are especially worrying, and I imagine a few are aware of their role in Yugoslavia's troubles.
He has essentially reach the status of what might be called 'community leader', especially now that he has friends in Washington. Maybe one day he'll lead a power sharing government with some Islamists.
Well, those charges seem to me to fall in line with the old dictum "find me the man and I'll find you the crime". Even if some of the things he reports are false - and I'm not so sure they are, from the things I've read - is it normal to send people to jail for saying them? Of course, this is in a country that now imprisons citizens for tweeting impolitely. I can't see Robinson as anything but heroic for standing up for his own people, and taking hit after hit from the powers that be for his trouble. I fantasize that some day, England will return to sanity, and Tommy Robinson will have a statue built memorializing his courage. Probably not going to happen, but one can fantasize.
Incidentally, my greatest exposure to Robinson is through the Danish Trykkefrihedsselskabet (Free Press Society) who have reported on him many times, and have invited him to speak in Copenhagen. They are not a bunch of football hooligans, but a thoughtful and open-minded group of people devoted to free speech and the preservation of European liberalism. If he has their stamp of approval, I'll go along without question.
Sadly, the native Britons have actually been conquered many times, despite the WWII rhetoric, and don’t seem that bothered TBH. The Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the Normans, the Dutch, the Americans in 1941…
A new study around the infamous IAT has revealed that the biggest bias as actually pro-female!:
https://x.com/SteveStuWill/status/2063667300499407279
The "Women Are Wonderful" Effect strikes again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect