Southport never seems to be out of the news these days—and for all the wrong reasons. In this post, some images and a link to my recently published essay on Southport.
Hi, ST ... Excellent article. It's beyond incomprehensible how things have so completely reversed to the point where law-abiding citizens are harassed and prosecuted for "crimes" that heretofore were not crimes, and hardened criminals (and even "soft ones") are released.
It's eerily reminiscent of the product of one of Lewis Carroll's drug binges, "Alice in Wonderland." The Red Queen would feel right at home in Britain today...
Of course, the US is pulling an oar in the same boat...
Thank you so much for your kind comments Harley. I completely agree with your remarks about reversals. It really is as though we are living through the looking glass. (I even did a related piece about that called Malice Through the Looking Glass, you might have read it!)
Yes, I did read that. It's one of the pieces that motivated me to subscribe to your Substack...😉 (I like to read stuff from obviously intelligent--but not pretentious--thinkers.😉)
This article at the European Conservative is a much-needed tonic to the hysteria. I have a friend who lives in Southport, and his account of there has never matched the one in the British media (unsurprisingly).
You express some scepticism about 'Two-Tier Kier' as a label. Politically, it's very clever marketing, but I think it does miss an important aspect of how it comes about. To some extent, I think it does emerge out of the fact that the hatred against religion that gained public force in the 1970s (and had academic force from the turn of the century). This was fundamentally a hatred of Christianity.
This anti-Christian hate, foreshadowed by Nietzsche, has led to the bizarre situation whereby Muslim criminals are to be spared punishment because of their ethnicity (or rather, fear that ethnic hatred would be stirred up by their crimes) while Christians are to be condemned for their religion, or perhaps indeed for their whiteness. Christianity is now seen as a white religion - a huge irony, given the number of black Christians on our planet.
Starmer's thus very nearly holds a principled position, although it is a deranged principle, one wholly adjacent to Identity Politics. We are to be judged, contrary to Martin Luther King Jr's dream, by the colour of our skin and not by the content of our character.
In this regard, I truly appreciate your remark:
"This is especially pertinent given that there will be some who will want to blame religion as a blanket cause for the violent Southport murders in addition to a cynically crafted construction of the ‘far Right.’ In case anyone needed reminding, religious Christians, no matter their actual politics, are now construed as ‘far-right’ in the secular progressive worldview."
I'll be including this in Friday's Bazaar at Stranger Worlds. Thank you for writing it!
Thank you Chris, your thoughtful comments are very welcome. I guessed you might find some resonance here given your connections with the north west of England. I just felt that there was a completely different experience of events as lived and witnessed compared with the cynical media manipulation going on. I also felt that the manipulation extended to a kind of managerial control over events in the town. For example, people got to know about the girls' funerals by word of mouth, whereas in the past something like this would have been gently and respectfully publicised to allow people to pay their respects at least. I realised as I was writing that the 'two tier' thing could be applied to more aspects, that there was a public facing ('managed') element and a private, authentic aspect. Then it became really pertinent when it came to the public facing version of religion - with the apparent co-operation of the clergy themselves (the ones that wear the symbols of the clergy at any rate) and those who rolled their sleeves up to actually achieve for children a wonderful gesture of God's love - the Christian idea of God's love if you like rather than a conquering demand for submission that other faith groups might have attributed to them. The irony of a pastor who does not own a dog collar (he told me that in passing) actually getting something done set alongside the submission to secularism performed by the public facing clergy was striking in its contrast. (I should take a moment to include a mention of the other pastors at Lakeside who also rolled up their sleeves along with many, many other volunteers). Your comments about the racial perceptions of Christianity are spot on. Christianity does not have to announce its diversity and inclusion 'policies' they are present and intact a priori. I'm grateful to you for offering to share this as well Chris, very much appreciated.
I'm reading Hoffer's True Believer at the moment and he agrees with the literature. A large unorganised group will always be defeated by a small organised one. The Christian way of individual good works is obviously worthwhile, it ameliorates some of the worst for some people and it provides a stable platform on which to build a moral framework in the future. There's also the small matter of doing good for its own sake. I like to think I do that without having faith. What it will not do on its own is force the level of change necessary, or even manage to form a breakwater. It will be consumed by the tsunami like it was never there at all, unless there is a realisation that we are defeated and must behave like those now victorious did decades ago. The Eastern Bloc Orthodox Church is a great example, it knew that the gospel wasn't nearly enough and under the surface was an intensely political actor, organised and patient. The Maquis in WW2 are another; a disorganised rabble interested only in internecine squabbles until British intelligence moulded them into something useful. That may be happening now around the West but it could still fail through naivety. We need a Crusader army as well as a peaceful clergy.
Unfortunately, a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Until the British state returns to the path of punishing evil and valuing good, the efforts of individuals, while worthwhile in their own right, cannot amount to aggregate gain.
Oliver, this was not just about the backpack scheme as I'm sure you'll understand. I disagree about the worth of individual endeavours and aggregate gain as you put it. I rather take the view that any action taken that tilts the world towards 'the good' does make a difference. If enough people do something positive, it can lead to change. And by that, I mean real political change. Like a snowball gathering more snow if you like. (The ripples from the backpack project are still happening as it happens). My lament for the loss of a public facing Christian approach is one that, having drawn attention to it, one can easily show that there is a residual Christian underpinning which can be harnessed in a very real way to work towards the good. Things are not always what they seem, a point I hope to have made throughout the essay. Only by attempting that tilt, no matter how small the action, can one hope to affect politics. And if we do not try, what then?
Hi, ST ... Excellent article. It's beyond incomprehensible how things have so completely reversed to the point where law-abiding citizens are harassed and prosecuted for "crimes" that heretofore were not crimes, and hardened criminals (and even "soft ones") are released.
It's eerily reminiscent of the product of one of Lewis Carroll's drug binges, "Alice in Wonderland." The Red Queen would feel right at home in Britain today...
Of course, the US is pulling an oar in the same boat...
Thank you so much for your kind comments Harley. I completely agree with your remarks about reversals. It really is as though we are living through the looking glass. (I even did a related piece about that called Malice Through the Looking Glass, you might have read it!)
Yes, I did read that. It's one of the pieces that motivated me to subscribe to your Substack...😉 (I like to read stuff from obviously intelligent--but not pretentious--thinkers.😉)
Ha! Love it! Thank you!
Hi Caroline,
This article at the European Conservative is a much-needed tonic to the hysteria. I have a friend who lives in Southport, and his account of there has never matched the one in the British media (unsurprisingly).
You express some scepticism about 'Two-Tier Kier' as a label. Politically, it's very clever marketing, but I think it does miss an important aspect of how it comes about. To some extent, I think it does emerge out of the fact that the hatred against religion that gained public force in the 1970s (and had academic force from the turn of the century). This was fundamentally a hatred of Christianity.
This anti-Christian hate, foreshadowed by Nietzsche, has led to the bizarre situation whereby Muslim criminals are to be spared punishment because of their ethnicity (or rather, fear that ethnic hatred would be stirred up by their crimes) while Christians are to be condemned for their religion, or perhaps indeed for their whiteness. Christianity is now seen as a white religion - a huge irony, given the number of black Christians on our planet.
Starmer's thus very nearly holds a principled position, although it is a deranged principle, one wholly adjacent to Identity Politics. We are to be judged, contrary to Martin Luther King Jr's dream, by the colour of our skin and not by the content of our character.
In this regard, I truly appreciate your remark:
"This is especially pertinent given that there will be some who will want to blame religion as a blanket cause for the violent Southport murders in addition to a cynically crafted construction of the ‘far Right.’ In case anyone needed reminding, religious Christians, no matter their actual politics, are now construed as ‘far-right’ in the secular progressive worldview."
I'll be including this in Friday's Bazaar at Stranger Worlds. Thank you for writing it!
Stay wonderful,
Chris.
Thank you Chris, your thoughtful comments are very welcome. I guessed you might find some resonance here given your connections with the north west of England. I just felt that there was a completely different experience of events as lived and witnessed compared with the cynical media manipulation going on. I also felt that the manipulation extended to a kind of managerial control over events in the town. For example, people got to know about the girls' funerals by word of mouth, whereas in the past something like this would have been gently and respectfully publicised to allow people to pay their respects at least. I realised as I was writing that the 'two tier' thing could be applied to more aspects, that there was a public facing ('managed') element and a private, authentic aspect. Then it became really pertinent when it came to the public facing version of religion - with the apparent co-operation of the clergy themselves (the ones that wear the symbols of the clergy at any rate) and those who rolled their sleeves up to actually achieve for children a wonderful gesture of God's love - the Christian idea of God's love if you like rather than a conquering demand for submission that other faith groups might have attributed to them. The irony of a pastor who does not own a dog collar (he told me that in passing) actually getting something done set alongside the submission to secularism performed by the public facing clergy was striking in its contrast. (I should take a moment to include a mention of the other pastors at Lakeside who also rolled up their sleeves along with many, many other volunteers). Your comments about the racial perceptions of Christianity are spot on. Christianity does not have to announce its diversity and inclusion 'policies' they are present and intact a priori. I'm grateful to you for offering to share this as well Chris, very much appreciated.
I'm reading Hoffer's True Believer at the moment and he agrees with the literature. A large unorganised group will always be defeated by a small organised one. The Christian way of individual good works is obviously worthwhile, it ameliorates some of the worst for some people and it provides a stable platform on which to build a moral framework in the future. There's also the small matter of doing good for its own sake. I like to think I do that without having faith. What it will not do on its own is force the level of change necessary, or even manage to form a breakwater. It will be consumed by the tsunami like it was never there at all, unless there is a realisation that we are defeated and must behave like those now victorious did decades ago. The Eastern Bloc Orthodox Church is a great example, it knew that the gospel wasn't nearly enough and under the surface was an intensely political actor, organised and patient. The Maquis in WW2 are another; a disorganised rabble interested only in internecine squabbles until British intelligence moulded them into something useful. That may be happening now around the West but it could still fail through naivety. We need a Crusader army as well as a peaceful clergy.
Unfortunately, a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Until the British state returns to the path of punishing evil and valuing good, the efforts of individuals, while worthwhile in their own right, cannot amount to aggregate gain.
Oliver, this was not just about the backpack scheme as I'm sure you'll understand. I disagree about the worth of individual endeavours and aggregate gain as you put it. I rather take the view that any action taken that tilts the world towards 'the good' does make a difference. If enough people do something positive, it can lead to change. And by that, I mean real political change. Like a snowball gathering more snow if you like. (The ripples from the backpack project are still happening as it happens). My lament for the loss of a public facing Christian approach is one that, having drawn attention to it, one can easily show that there is a residual Christian underpinning which can be harnessed in a very real way to work towards the good. Things are not always what they seem, a point I hope to have made throughout the essay. Only by attempting that tilt, no matter how small the action, can one hope to affect politics. And if we do not try, what then?
Maybe we learn how to grow a new tree?
And the seed comes from somewhere. You can't invent that.