By David Campbell Bannerman, Chairman of The Freedom Association
Has the world gone mad? A proposed assault on personal freedoms with a 6pm curfew designed to keep women safe. Not from some nutty fringe group, but from a Member of the House of Lords – Baroness Jenny Jones – and endorsed by the SNP’s international engagement spokesperson MP Hannah Bardell.
Excessive policing of a vigil, not even a protest, but then with extremists hijacking it for their own extreme agenda. The supposed female arrested was actually an actress and activist. The police rightly had to protect Churchill’s statue from a mob shouting abuse at the police officers. Gatherings have been made illegal in these exceptional Covid times when we are meant to be all confined home, but enforced randomly it seems by Mayor Khan and Commissioner Dick. They stand back for BLM or extreme Left causes, and pile-in to those opposing lockdown or honouring the murdered Sarah Everard.
Statues covering all aspects of our history are suddenly being damned or torn down with the say so of a few insistent and determined individuals, representing extreme elements in our society. Our great ‘traditional’ institutions – such as universities, the National Trust, English Heritage, and even Kew Gardens, are suddenly panicking and doing idiotic things such as questioning Churchill’s legacy at Chartwell or attempting to rename plants with potential slavery connotations. Potty indeed.
A valued Duchess and her captured Duke are declaring war on the Royal Family with hearsay evidence and plenty of erroneous claims with the Media lapping it up and blasting it globally. The TV and radio are full of victims all being oppressed by the State, and demanding redress and special treatment, talking in strange therapist terms of ‘empowerment’ and ‘white privilege’ and ‘taking ownership of’, with presenters setting them up and cheering them on. People have been forced to resign for the tiniest remark seen to be a little controversial, or even ridiculously non-controversial on examination, just not in fad. Even the term ‘BAME’, which seems duly respectful, is suddenly out of fashion and inappropriate.
We now have a new Hate Crime Act in the United Kingdom, which criminalises thought and opinion at the dinner table; which encourages condemnation of adults by the words of their own children, as encouraged by Hitler, Stalin and in the pages of ‘1984’. Big Brother Yousaf of the SNP and his acolytes are watching and innocent speech and expression are now under serious threat in Scotland. The largest Arts Festival in the world with such diversity of expression, now subject to thought police.
This is the politics of the mob. Of the Witch Hunt. As I learnt from TFA’s excellent ‘Cancel Culture’ webinar, it seems that social media is a big part of this, as it allows very personalised instant attacks on a person or organisation, for them to be ‘cancelled’ or shunned, in the old vernacular, like a virtual mob circling a house of an accused witch. No evidence of being a witch was needed to burn them in those days other than people feeling threatened. Twitter I know to be very direct and personalised – there is no real firewall protection apart from blocking. The SNP nats are adept at ‘pile ons’.
It is tempting to dismiss this all as a mad, mad world. Perhaps even occasioned by enforced isolation due to Covid, but I fear it is actually not incidental but part of a sinister, deliberate and dangerous attempt to tear down our society, and destroy it from within. There is a plan.
A cultural war is an easier battle to win than an economic or political one for Marxist revolutionaries. Because culture is malleable; it is not guarded in constitutions, in laws, in verifiable analysis and data. It is handed down from family to family, generation to generation, and is open to question and attack. Chairman Mao saw this in China – the Cultural Revolution may have inspired today’s events. This is a transatlantic movement as with BLM reciting US slogans and a US-style race problem the UK does not have. Favoured expressions of yesterday suddenly become unacceptable.
Now the very term ‘woman’, incontestable before, is deemed unacceptable to use. Biden’s Democrats are seeking to outlaw its use there. The world must be turned on its head to safeguard the rights of binary people or transgenders. This is not to disrespect either group, it is just about maintaining a proper balance.
What was thought acceptable 20 years ago is suddenly offensive now. Look at all those creepy warnings now put by the BBC on golden TV episodes that were mainstream and funny not so long back. Health warnings on ‘Fawlty Towers’ for ‘offensive content and language’; ‘Dad’s Army’ for its ‘discriminatory language’; and ‘Little Britain’ taken down because of one of the characters. Are snowflakes so easily offended?
Indeed, where has our humour gone? Monty Python stars are now lucky not to be damned or banned on university campuses. Everyone lives in fear of one ‘unacceptable’ joke ending a career or friendship. Political Correctness is a malign influence that seeks to make us all so self-regulated we all lose spontaneity or wit from fear of saying the wrong thing. The fear of damnation, with the Witchfinder Generals on the prowl. Hard-Left elements who seek to damn at the slightest error. We are becoming increasingly serious and contained.
This regime is at its height now in universities, which routinely disrespect free speech and free opinion, and are marching through our institutions like that famous domino wave. The police have ‘taken the knee’ to hostile crowds. Big tech is politically correct to some extreme, rigorously now closing down or silencing all, seemingly beyond their ‘Woke’ sense of ethics. If you ban a President, as in Trump, who one may not agree with and take exception too, but is one of the greatest elected representatives in the free West, as Twitter has done, then who is safe?
Then there is Hollywood. Highly insecure – Los Angeles is rich in fortune tellers – and obsessed with image and fortunes and fads, it is hardly surprising how Meghan Markle’s views are so well received there as she is a representative of it. ‘Me Too’ was all very well, but how many leading names in Hollywood knew about Weinstein, who was treated like its Royalty, but chose to stay silent because careers and money were at stake? Now awards ceremonies like the Oscars or BAFTAs are at risk of being degraded into a tick-box PC-driven exercise seeking to represent minority groups sufficiently.
The intent of all of this in my view – the evil minds controlling this – is to cause chaos in our society, as the Frankfurt School proposed through critical theory, in order to make it weak, confused and introspective. That way it is easier to make it fall.
They take valid causes – such as a vigil for a young woman tragically murdered after a late-night walk or for a flawed black individual killed unjustly by police choking (black lives do indeed matter) and they turn them into extreme anti-State, anti-Police, anti-White, anti-Establishment, anti-majority demonstrations. They are prepared to trample over the causes and people they purport to represent, and justify this all by being part of a wider Revolution – the destruction of Capitalism and Liberal Democracy.
It is time we all saw the very real dangers in what is happening and come together to expose the reality and to fight it all the way. The Freedom Association should take a lead on such a fight back, and is well placed to do so. Let’s organise!