This is another response to a recent article by CJ, a very long-time psychical researcher and member of the paranormal research group ASSAP. Over the past few days he has written a two-part article discussing the Psycho-Social Hypothesis of the UFO experience and its possible flaws, which I have also responded to. Now he has put up a similar thought-provoking essay on the possible neurological origins of the ghost experience.
CJ states that we don’t just see with our eyes, but with our brains. There are particular sections of the brain devoted to turning the electro-chemical impulses from our peepers in to vision, and our conscious visual perception of the world around us. Among other parts of brain mentioned by him is the visual cortex located at the rear of the skull. People who have received an injury to this section of the brain may become cortically blind. There’s nothing wrong with their eyes or optic nerves, but the blow to the visual cortex means that they cannot translate the impulses from the eyes into images in their brains. There also a related phenomenon in which the cortically blind nevertheless seem to have some kind of vision subconsciously. When these people are asked to point to a person or object, they are perfectly able to do so with accuracy, even though they aren’t consciously seeing anything. To them, it’s all guesswork, even though something more than this is operating.
This leads to the thorny question of what is actually going on when people see ghosts. Scholars, theologians and spiritualists have been discussing the nature of spooks since the days of the Greek philosophers. And many people, who believe that scepticism only arose in the 18th century Enlightenment, would probably be astonished how much scepticism towards ghosts, demons and magic there was in the Middle Ages and before. Theologians had to wrestle with the problem of how ghosts could be seen, if the soul was immaterial. They concluded that there was a third form of material between the soul and ordinary matter. This was spirit. It was extremely tenuous, but nevertheless could be seen, and so could souls when they were embedded or cloaked in it. In the 19th century some Spiritualists suggested that the deceased were made of matter as we are, but this was at a higher vibration and so usually invisible to us. This followed 19th century theories about the ether and how atoms were some kind of whirlpool within this attenuated stuff that pervaded the entire cosmos.
A similar explanation has been used by Contactees and members of UFO-based New Religions to explain their contacts with the space brothers. These religions arose before humans had sent probes to the neighbouring planets and discovered how hostile they were to organic life like ours. George Adamski, dubbed by UFO Magazine ‘the great pretender’ because of his notorious hoaxes, claimed that he had met and interacted with men and women from Venus and Mars. Mars, unfortunately, is not the Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs full of beautiful alien princesses, feudal warlords and alien creatures. Nor is the world of canals of Schiaparelli. It is an almost-completely airless world more like the Moon, and any life existing there is probably microbial. Venus is not C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra either, or the various primordial swamps suggested by previous scientists. It’s a hell world of sulphuric acid rain, a mean temperature of 400 degrees and an atmospheric pressure 40 times that of Earth. Any life departed from its rocky surface many millions of years ago. But several decades ago, a gentleman from the Aetherius Society tried to explain away this divergence from his religion’s teaching on Wogan. Debating the issue with astronomy presenter and broadcaster Patrick Moore, the presenter of the Sky at Night, this said that the aliens on Venus with which his religion claimed to be in contact, had not been detected because they were at a higher vibration.
Back to ghosts, CJ appears to be following the view of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research that ghosts are hallucinations, though of a different nature from that experienced by schizophrenics and others with mental health problems. They suggested that ghosts were hallucinations caused by other minds, living or dead. Crisis apparitions are one example. These are when a person suddenly sees an image of a friend or loved one on the verge of death. The SPR believed that they are caused by the dying individual telepathically sending out an image of themselves to the percipient. The theory that ghosts were telepathic impressions from other minds is the central premise behind L. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic ghost story, The House and the Brain.
There is clearly something to this. There are ghost encounters that do indeed suggest that the experience is in some sense hallucinatory, but nevertheless also objective, generated by something or someone. In one of the cases investigated by Tony Cornell, an academic and veteran paranormal investigator, he and a colleague were called out to a haunting in a woman’s house. Their car broke down along the way, and so one of them stayed to get this sorted out while the other went on to talk to the woman. When he arrived, she explained to him that there was a red-headed woman by the fireplace. His fellow turned up a few minutes later, having heard nothing of the previous conversation. When he came in, he asked who the woman by the fireplace was. This suggests that there was an objective element to the experience, in that there was something or someone there generating the image of the woman seen by the house’s occupant and one, but not both, of the ghosthunters. This has given rise to the Stone Tape theory, based on the ideas of T.C. Lethbridge, in which there is something in the environment that records mental impressions, and which replays them to certain sensitive individuals. These people then experience them as ghosts.
If this is correct, then it raises the question of what changes or features in the visual cortex or other structures of the brain involved in vision, that allow genuine mediums and clairvoyants and ordinary people to perceive ghosts. The brain, it has been said, is the most complicated organised structure in the cosmos. At the moment there are controversies over the possible existence of neurological differences between certain sections of humanity. There has been a long-time debate over whether there is a difference between the brains of men and women, and whether this is the cause of different mental abilities between the sexes. Obviously this is intensely controversial. A few decades ago one neuroscientist discovered that the corpus callosum, the bridge between the two hemisphere’s of the brain, was thicker in women. This discovery was received with fury by some, and there have been demonstrations against the neurologist, including physical assault, one of which left him with a fractured skull. See the relevant article in the volume The Human Brain Evolving. Differences in brain structure have also been claimed as the origin of homosexuality. A Californian doctor, LaVey, claimed after extensive dissection of the brains of gay men, that one section of their brains was more similar to heterosexual women than to hetero men. And it has also been claimed that gay women’s brains are similarly more like that of heterosexual men than heterosexual women. This appears to be the accepted view. But some neurologists have questioned whether men’s and women’s brains are all that different. These doctors and surgeons point out that you can’t immediately tell the sex of a brain from its appearance. There may be immense problems examining the question of a neurological origin of the ghost experience.
And it is questionable whether the theory that ghosts are some form of hallucination actually explains all the varieties of the ghost experience. Looking through Hillary Evans’ excellent Seeing Ghosts, it is clear that people’s experiences of seeing and encountering ghosts is extremely varied, and often doesn’t simply consist of seeing or hearing them. Some of the encounters in the book are about instances where the percipient had eaten with a supposed ghost in a café or restaurant, only to find out later that this person had been dead for days before. Yet when they met them, they behaved like a fully embodied, corporeal being. And what about poltergeists, the noisy ghosts that throw objects about? These appear to have a physical reality, at least in their effect on the homes and property of the people haunted by them. They aren’t hallucinations, although the entity responsible for the hurled plates or whatever may also be invisible and immaterial in itself, just as the ghost causing the hallucinatory experience in that model is also objectively invisible and immaterial. It is possible that there is no single ghost experience, but a variety of related or apparently similar phenomena, and so no single explanation is possible. Or it may be there is a single ghost phenomenon, but that it involves a number of factors and processes, including hallucinations, but that these may vary according to types of experience. CJ has stated that this is the first part of his discussion of ghosts and hallucinations, and promised that in his next piece he’ll return to the subject of UFOs. I await both with interest.
Yay for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator for Vermont. If we lived in a just universe, he’d be in the Whitehouse now, just as Jeremy Corbyn would be in 10 Downing Street. He’s a secular Jew, but he understood the hardships and problems of America’s ordinary working Joes and Joannas. Clips of his presidential campaign showed him being embraced, and comforting all kinds of people, including theologically conservative, blue-collar Christians from the American south, worried about unemployment, healthcare and the destruction of the domestic industries that were their livelihoods.
In this video, addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie tells him clearly not to insult the intelligence of the American people, and states, over and again, that it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to
point out that in a little over six months that his extremist government has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and wounded over 78,000, 70 per cent of whom are women and children.
point out that his bombing has destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving almost a million people, half the population, homeless
To note that his government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, electricity, water and sewage.
To realize that his government has annihilated Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing 400 healthcare workers.
To note that his government has destroyed all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no educational opportunities.
To agree with virtually every humanitarian organisation in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which so many thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.
He states clearly that anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But please, he says to Netanyahu, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use anti-Semitism to distract attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts.
It is not anti-Semitic to hold you (Netanyahu) accountable for your actions.
I’ve left the Labour party, but still have immense respect for Labour MPs like Richard Burgon who are still campaigning for socialist solutions in the party, and I wish he and they the very best.
‘Dear Friend
I hope you are well and looking forward to the Easter break.
Below is an update on my key campaigning in recent months, including for a real ceasefire in Gaza, an end to austerity and for Julian Assange to be freed.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be presenting a new Climate Change Bill in Parliament to stop MPs being able to take any funding from the oil and gas companies driving the climate crisis – so keep your eye out for that!
In solidarity,
Richard
CAMPAIGNING AGAINST ISRAELI WAR CRIMES IN GAZA
Israel’s war on Gaza has left over 32,000 dead, most of them women and children. Famine is hitting Gaza, hospitals cannot get the medical supplies they need, and aid is not getting in. The situation is catastrophic.
Although the recent UN Security Council ceasefire resolution is incredibly welcome, it is already being ignored and, as I said in Parliament this week, our Government must now take action to ensure it is enforced and Israel respects this ceasefire vote and international law.
I have been working in Parliament for our Government to end arms sales to Israel and to hold the Israeli Government to account over its war crimes in Gaza.
This has included hosting a series of evidence sessions attended by dozens of MPs with leading global experts. I will be presenting evidence from these sessions to the International Criminal Court in the coming weeks and demanding that justice is done.
I have also been campaigning on the very real possibility that UK military exports were used in an Israeli military airstrike on a compound housing British doctors volunteering in Gaza. You can watch my question on this in Parliament here.
I’ve written to Foreign Secretary David Cameron demanding the Government launches an investigation into whether UK-supplied military equipment was used in the bombing of British doctors volunteering in Gaza.
NO MORE CUTS, NO MORE AUSTERITY
This month Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered his budget with no real solutions to the deep crisis facing our communities and that plans yet more austerity.
Austerity has driven down wages, stagnated our economy, and shattered our public services, including pushing our NHS to breaking point. Over 300,000 people have died as a result of Tory austerity.
We need to build the movements to ensure austerity is ditched for good.
In Parliament, I recently called for an urgent debate on the damage caused by austerity economics. You can watch my speech here.
We need a wealth tax on the super-rich
Deep inequality scars our economy. The rich are getting ever richer, while the vast majority are losing out. Ahead of the Budget, I organised a meeting with leading campaigners for economic justice to look at how we build an economy that serves the 99% not the top 1%.
I will keep campaigning for wealth taxes on the super-rich so that we tackle inequality and to get the resources needed to rebuild our broken public services.
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE
Julian Assange could spend the rest of his life in a US prison for his journalistic work including for exposing war crimes in US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Extradition would strike a blow against press freedom. It would set a dangerous precedent for other journalists and media organisations the world over.
I have been campaigning in Parliament and beyond for Julian Assange to be freed. Ahead of the High Court ruling on Assange’s case, I spoke at the demonstration there demanding that Assange is not extradited to the US, making it clear that exposing war crimes is not a crime.
I also spoke to Left Foot Forward on the huge implications his extradition would have for human rights and press freedom around the world.
Following the High Court’s decision, It is welcome that Julian Assange will not be extradited immediately. But the danger to Julian Assange and to wider press freedoms remains.
HELP ME TAKE ON THE TORIES
A general election could happen any time. As part of my campaign to get re-elected, I’ll be contacting tens of thousands of constituents before the election. But to do so takes time, resources and support from activists.
The Tories may have their dodgy donors but we have a movement of people wanting to make a real difference in these difficult times.
I know times are very hard for many of you but for those who wish to, and can, make a donation to my local campaigning ahead of the General Election, you can do so here. Every penny will be used towards my re-election campaign.
Horrible. Unfortunately, the custom has spread into some of the immigrant communities in Britain. A few years ago there was a feature on the local BBC news for Bristol, Points West, about an African girl in the city campaigning against it. Despite it being illegal in Britain, I think so far there’s only been one prosecution. Part of the problem is that those cultures which practise it take their daughters back to their countries of origin to have this barbarous operation performed. I’ve therefore had absolutely no hesitation in signing this petition.
‘Gambian politicians want to make female genital mutilation legal again, and we have just 90 days to stop them. They think that cutting off the genitals of 5-year-old girls is the right thing to do… For many it’s too late, but we have the chance to protect the girls who haven’t been cut yet by keeping the ban on the books. So sign now and we’ll work with local partners to make sure lawmakers know the whole world is watching!
More than 200 million women and girls worldwide have been forced to have their genitals cut off, and sometimes their vaginal opening sewed up.It’s called female genital mutilation (FGM), and it’s done to girls as young as 1 year old.
Over the last 30 years, people all over the world took a stand against FGM. They made an impact: country after country has outlawed it.
Some Gambian politicians want the country to become the first in the world to reverse its ban – putting young girls at risk of being cut apart and setting a dangerous precedent.
We can help stop them. We have less than 90 days before they vote – less than 90 days to raise a global outcry so loud, so powerful, that Gambian politicians will have no choice but to listen. Local organizations are already protesting in the streets. Sign now and we’ll work with them to bring our global call to the corridors of parliament!
FGM still happens, of course, even with the bans. But legal protections are a massively important step in stopping the horror. In fact, last August three women were brought to justice in The Gambia for performing FGM.
Justice is possible. Protecting girls is possible. Ending this horrific practice is possible.
But only if we all stand together, united, and face those who want to roll back progress. We can’t give even an inch of ground, because there are millions of people who would like nothing more than to go back to the days of backroom butchery.
They’ll see The Gambia as a beacon. But if we bring a massive wave of global protest to The Gambia, we can keep the ban on the books and send a strong signal to the rest of the world. Sign now and help share widely!
Avaaz has fought for the rights of women and girls – together, our community has stood up for reproductive rights, for a definition of rape based on consent, for girls’ education and against child marriage. We’ve helped make some important wins, now let’s come together again for girls in The Gambia and across the world.
With hope and determination, Nate, Huiting, Antonia and the whole Avaaz team
I know that many of the readers of this blog have very different attitudes towards the trans issue and so may find the following essay offensive. It is certainly not my intention to insult or offend anyone, but merely to examine a distinct sociological aspect of the mass trans movement as it has emerged over the last decade or so. This has taken it far beyond the issue of the appropriate treatment of adults and children suffering distress or confusion about their biological sex. If this was simply the case now, I believe that it would have been quietly and amicably resolved a few years ago, and would be of no more interest than the question of suitable treatment for other people suffering distressing psychological and mental health conditions.
But the medical question has been co-opted by radical postmodern political activists and has been transformed and broadened as part of today’s identity politics. The ideologues behind this movement see it as part of a broader agenda to radically transform western society, and the mass movement that has emerged from this is bitterly intolerant of its critics and detractors. It has thus taken on the sociological character of a religion, and in some aspects particularly resembles historic heretical sects and cults as explained below.
Mutilating the Flesh for the Spirit: Trans Ideology as Quasi-Religion
According to the ideologues, adherents and activists of trans ideology and practice, trans identity, and the social and medical transitioning of troubled and psychologically confused individuals from their birth to the opposite sex is entirely rational and scientific, based on a scientifically recognised and confirmed medical condition. Its gender critical detractors, however, such as Barry Wall of the EDI Jester channel on YouTube and his many followers, are harshly sceptical of this ideology. For them, stripped of its scientific trappings, the trans movement is ‘a flesh-sacrificing cult’ with its basis in the Cartesian dualist separation of mind and body. A recent commenter, furiousfemale996 on one of the Jester’s posts, ‘Queering Classrooms – LGB Alliance Responds’ recommended that if the trans ideology is taught in schools, it should not be taught as a sexual identity like homosexuality in PSHE, but instead taught in RE as a religious cult: ‘They need to teach all kids how to recognise the signs of a cult.’
In fact, sociologists of religion such as Clifford Geertz have formulated the concept of quasi-religions to describe secular ideologies and movements that perform some of the sociological functions of religion, and the trans ideology certainly conforms in many respects to such a classification. Indeed, the concept of religion itself is notoriously difficult to define. While most people would automatically regard religion as the worship of supernatural beings, these are absent in some religions. The Latin term ‘religio’, from which the modern English ‘religion’ is derived, means literally ‘to tie together’ and may originally have meant something like filial piety to the Romans. Many cultures do not recognise a religious sphere as distinct from the secular as the two are so bound up together in their way of life. Snorri Sturluson, the 13th century writer of the collection of Viking myths, the Edda, described Viking paganism as ‘an old law’. Some sociologists of religion eschew discussions of the supernatural and define it as about ‘matters of ultimate concern’. Another academic definition simply states that it divides the world into the important and valuable and less important and valuable. There are also secular religions, such as Humanism and its predecessor, the Ethical Church Movement of the 19th century, that developed as rationalist, scientific alternatives to supernatural religion. The sociological description of these as quasi-religions, rather than simply religions, is important as many atheists take considerable offence to their movements being described as a religion. The ‘quasi’ element in the term serves to differentiate these movements from supernatural religion proper, while emphasising that they still perform some of the socialogical functions of religious belief and worship.
The secular movements identified as quasi-religious include nationalism, Humanism and the totalitarian political ideologies of Nazism and Communism, the latter because their doctrines of the Thousand Year Reich or the age of true communism have strong similarities to millennial, apocalyptic Christianity. Religions commonly have a set of core doctrines, rituals and ethics so that their adherents form a distinct ideological and moral community.
The core beliefs of the trans ideology may be simply described thus:
Everyone has a unique gender identity distinct from their biological sex. For trans people, this gender identity is opposite to that of the sex they were born as. This gender identity represents their authentic sex, and must be recognised and protected through progressive legislation. As members of the opposite sex trapped in the wrong bodies, they also require medical and surgical intervention to transform their bodies into those of the identified sex. At the same time, following the ideas of postmodern feminist Judith Butler and her text, Gender Trouble and the doctrines of Queer Theory, sex itself is a matter of social performance following socially constructed ideas of masculinity and femininity. Thus, sex is reduced to a matter of fashion and stereotypical gender roles and activities, distinct from the biological, embodied reality. This has led to nonsensical statements from politicians like Keir Starmer that only one per cent of women have penises, or circular definitions of womanhood such as ‘a woman is anyone who identifies as one.’ At the same time, the trans community and its supporters draw a clear moral distinction between themselves and their critics. The trans community has appropriated the general gay rights movement, presenting itself as an integral part of the general gay and bisexual community, which is conceived as uniquely loving. An LGBTQ+ cartoon to promote gay and trans acceptance among children reviewed and critiqued by the ‘femalist’ pro-woman activist, Kelly Jay Kean-Minshull, presents this community as animals in a parade. One of them has the mastectomy scars from ‘top surgery’, the polite euphemism for double mastectomies performed on trans identifying girls and women. The voiceover, singing a version of ‘The animals went in two by two, hurrah’, declares that they love each other so proudly.
Trans people are also presented as uniquely virtuous and persecuted. Outside the realm of the blessed elect are the gender critical fallen, creatures of absolute hate, prejudice, and malignity. As Maria MacLachlan of the Peak Trans vlog on YouTube and other gender critical feminists have discussed and demonstrated, these activists accuse feminists like MacLachlan of being Nazis, planning a ‘trans holocaust’, who must be physically fought, beaten and killed. See her video ‘Awful Argument 8: Terfs Are Rightwing’. MacLachlan has herself been physically assaulted by a trans activist, and has documented similar attacks on gender critical feminists in videos such as ‘Another day, another trans activist bully, another feminist assaulted’. In America, gun-toting goons in black bloc have appeared as stewards for trans rallies. This may be considered as a political paramilitary uniform, which would be banned over on this side of the Atlantic under legislation designed to suppress genuine Fascists like Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. As I write this, the government is deeply concerned with the issues of political and religious extremism and is busy formulating a definition of such that would allow the proscription of dangerous anti-democratic groups. A definition of extremism and terrorism could fairly include the violent, paramilitary wing of trans activism but due to the identification of trans with pro-gay liberalism and its advocacy from the left, is unlikely to do so.
Rather than being rational and scientific, the core doctrines of the trans movement resemble supernatural religion, and particularly Platonic Gnosticism. The distinction between a gendered mind separate from the body does indeed bear a marked kinship to Cartesian mind-body dualism, with the twist that the ghost in the body’s machine has its own gender. It also resembles Gnosticism in that primacy is given to the disembodied gendered mind with the body given much less regard. In Platonism, the ancient Greek philosophy derived from the great philosopher, the human soul comes from the realm of the spirit among the stars. In Gnosticism this realm is the creation of a good god, as opposed to that of matter, in which these spirits are entrapped. Matter is the creation of the evil god, and the flesh body a prison from which the Gnostic believer hoped he would be freed on death to ascend to the higher realms through belief in the Gnostic cult’s salvific message.
The trans cult eschews this supernatural, post-mortem doctrine in favour of a this-world practice in which the trans person has their flesh altered and mutilated so that they may ‘live their authentic lives’. At the same time, ideas of femininity and masculinity divorced from their biological reality, also resemble Plato’s transcendent forms. These are the patterns for the material world and its objects, which are their expressions. Thus, for example, there is the transcendent idea of a dog, or a man or woman, beyond the individual dogs, men, and women of material reality. In Queer Theory, this transcendent idea of gender is superior to biological reality. The idea of that sex alone, divorced from the reality of the physical body, is considered authentic. The biological sex is considered false, almost a product of mara, the realm of illusion in Hinduism, when it contradicts the inner conception of the sex of the trans person. The rhetoric that trans people must be accepted as their preferred sex or altered to conform to it to live their authentic lives comes partly from the contemporary emphasis for authenticity in popular culture. Rap musicians, for example, frequently talk about ‘keepin’ it real’. But it also seems to derive from Kierkegaardian existentialism and its stress on an authentic faith and life.
Gender mutilation is also a part of many cultures and religions, ranging from FGM, male circumcision to castration. Male circumcision is an important rite of passage among the Dowayo people, studied by the anthropologist, writer and broadcaster Dr Nigel Barley. In his book The Innocent Anthropologist Barley states that the Dowayos regarded circumcision as removing the biological elements that prevent boys from being real men. In a passage discussing how widespread the practice is amongst cultures throughout the globe, he states that in some societies the testicles may be hacked off. As the Jester has stated, there have been religions that practised castration, such as the Christian Skoptzi, as well as the Galli, the priests of Cybele in ancient Rome. They castrated themselves and dressed as women. Some shamans were also transvestites. The trans ideology resembles these castration cults, especially with WPATH’s embrace of the Eunuch Archives and eunuch as a gender identity.
But Queer Theory goes beyond individual transformation to call for radical social change. Some members of the movement have called for the destruction of the bourgeois heterosexual family, such as a recent trans person, Samantha Hudson, promoting Doritos in their Spanish advertising campaign. Internet trans activist Jeffrey Marsh has also suggested to the confused and distressed young people watching his YouTube channel that they should break with their biological parents if they refuse to accept their imaginary gender identity. This is particularly pernicious, as Clive Simpson and Dennis Kavanagh, the hosts of the gender critical Queens’ Speech podcast, have made clear. Many young gay people have suffered from being disowned and rejected by their families unable to accept their sexuality. This has caused them no little upset and distress, and is clearly not something to be blithely recommended to naïve children. But radical trans activism goes much further. The mathematician and fierce critic of postmodern woke nonsense, James Lindsay, in one of his anti-woke New Discourses podcasts has critically analysed a piece published in an American educational journal by two LGBTQ+ activists, one of whom is a drag queen. For them, drag queen story hour is not just about promoting literacy and toleration towards gay and trans people amongst young children. It is about creating an alternative, queer identity among children and youngsters in order to turn them into radical social activists. This queer identity is deliberately made unstable in order to alienate them from bourgeois society. Instead of their biological family, the children are to be turned instead to the trans and queer community as their real family. This again resembles the radical cults and ideologies that seek a radical transformation of society, including Nazism and Marxism, which attacks the family in The Communist Manifesto.
The trans movement also resembles radical cults in its separation of the trans individual from the outside world. The trans community is presented as uniquely loving and accepting, in contrast to the normal world outside the movement. Members of the trans community may encourage youngsters undergoing a crisis of gender identity to flee their homes to live and reside with them. It is exactly the same as the way religious cults have sought to separate their believers from their friends, family and community outside them. It also resembles ‘lovebombing’, a strategy also used by cults to capture new converts. In the initial phase of proselytization these cults impress upon their new members how the cult loves and values them. As the person is drawn into the cult, the attitude hardens until they may be subjected to harsh punishment inflicted for breaches of the cult’s discipline or morality. Questioning the cult’s doctrines and seeking to leave are particularly harshly dealt with. Detransitioners, former trans people who have regretted their decision and sought to revert to their previous birth sex, are shunned and excluded from their former trans colleagues, and may even be abused and vilified like heretics and apostates.
Whatever its scientific trappings, it is clear from this analysis that the trans movement counts in many respects as a secular quasi-religion. Even the claims of a scientific basis do not disqualify this identification. Since the rise of science, many new religious movements have claimed a scientific basis for their doctrines. One of the small press Spiritualist magazines published in Bristol in the 1990s proudly declared that it was ‘in support of psychic science’.
The designation of a movement as a religion or quasi-religion is not a comment on its moral content or nature, even though many people in today’s sceptical, secular society consider religion as intrinsically irrational and malign. Much bloodshed and oppression has been inspired by religion, but at their best religions have also inspired tremendous altruism and social advance. The French historian of science, Jean Gimpel, in his The Medieval Machine, described how Christian religious belief resulted in scientific breakthroughs and advances in the 14th century. Several of the mathematical treatises from India and the Islamic world collected by Henrietta Midonick in her Treasury of Ancient Mathematics: 1 begin with a dedication to Brahma, in the case of Hindu India, and Allah for Islam. And while Humanism is a quasi-religion, it is very far from violent and oppressive movements such as Fascism and Communism.
What the designation of quasi-religion for the trans movement does mean is that its claims to scientific objectivity needs to be scrupulously and critically examined and rejected. At the same time, as Mr Wall’s commenters have suggested, it should be taught in RE rather than PSHE. Britain is now a multicultural, multifaith society. Regardless of what one feels about their truth content, most of the traditional religions since the Enlightenment are benign, offering their believers hope and comfort in a transcendent realm away from the trials and sufferings of the flesh as well as stressing the importance of altruism and moral conduct. Others, particularly some of the most notorious New Religious Movements that emerged in the ‘69s and ‘70s, are much more malign. School students should be taught that intolerance, repression, and cult-like behaviour are not confined to supernatural religions. They are also to be found in the secular realm amongst ideologies and movements that would angrily reject any claims of a religious or quasi-religious basis. Yet they are there, and children should be given the skills and reasonable scepticism to identify them as such and so avoid them. And this needs to include the trans movement as a grave threat to young minds and bodies.
Further Reading
Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge 1963).
Smith, John E., Quasi-Religions: Humanism, Marxism and Nationalism (Basingstoke: MacMillan 1994).
Thurlow Richard, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918 -1985 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1987)
Wilson, Bryan, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982)
Bruce Gilley, The Case for Colonialism (Nashville, Tennessee and London, New English Review Press 2023)
Introduction
This is a controversial book that arose from an extremely controversial academic article written by the author. It’s particularly timely as yesterday the Guardian reviewed an exhibition on Black slavery with the approving comment that it was a great rebuttal to those who are now arguing that British imperialism was benign and civilising. Gilley is indeed one of the latter. in 2018 he was moved to write an academic article defending European colonialism after researching Sir Alan Burns, the last British governor of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, and reading positive comments about British colonialism from the anti-colonialist activist and writer, Chinua Achebe. Achebe is regarded as a staunch enemy of British colonialism, and yet Gilley presents quotation after quotation showing that his attitude was more nuanced. Achebe stated that by and large, Nigeria under the British was well run and that they cared for their colonies. He noted that he owed his education to European missionaries who ran excellent schools, the state schools and finally the university founded by the British. He had no animus against the British themselves, and lived in London. He was also attacked for writing in English rather than his native Igbo, despite the fact that an Igbo language press did not exist.
Benefits of Colonialism
Gilley argues that colonialism benefited its subject peoples by modernising their countries with western technology, medicine and industry, as well as fundamental institutions of political liberty as property rights and democracy. It was not regarded as illegitimate by the colonised peoples themselves. The book begins with a letter from the peoples of the Lakes region of Nigeria, now Lagos, for the British to take over their lands to protect them from their tribal enemies and inviting them to stay as long as they liked. Their willing acceptance of colonial authority was shown in the way they moved closer to the centres of colonialism, not away from them, seeking the greater opportunities to be found there. The colonies’ indigenous peoples formed the majority of civil servants, police and soldiers so that the number of White administrators in some of these nations was minuscule compared to the vast populations over which they ruled. And some of the former colonies are coming to a positive reappraisal of the colonialists as the founders of their nations. This is happening in Nigeria with Lord Lugard and the former Belgian Congo with A Brazza. Moreover, the abysmal misgovernment and corruption in these nations is forcing many of them to look back on their former colonial overlords requesting them to return. After the explosion at the port of Beirut several years ago, a petition in Lebanon went up calling for the French to return and take over the colony. 60,000 people signed in the first hours it was up on the Net. Macron acceded to the request, so that the French state acted as a kind of supervisor in an international arrangement in which a western company took over the running of the port. A Belgian journalist, van Reynbrouck, was surprised when he visited the former Belgian Congo by the numbers of young Congolese who came up to him asking when the Belgians would return. In a similar case to Lebanon, the Indonesian authorities were extremely concerned about corruption among the customs officers in Jakarta. They sacked all 3,000 of them and brought in a Swiss company to rebuild it. But the projects to reintroduce elements of western colonialism to genuinely modernise and restore good government and business practice to these countries goes far beyond that. One economist has recommended setting up ‘charter cities’ in the former colonies, with the authorities’ consent. These would be leased to the former colonial powers under 99 years leases, like Hong Kong, and governed by the former imperial masters. At the same time, leases granting residential status would be given to a limited number of migrants seeking to live and work there. In this way modern, democratic government and business would return to the former colonies.
Resulting Controversy
Gilley submitted his article promoting colonialism to two academic journals. One turned it down because it was too controversial. He then offered it to another, the Third World Quarterly. They published it to a storm of outrage. Over a hundred academics, including those of his own university, demanded that he be sacked or subjected to something like a Maoist ‘struggle session where he would be forced to recant his sin. Eventually the article was withdrawn because of threats to lives of the magazine’s editors and staff from anti-colonial fanatics in India.
The book is partly a response to this controversy. The first few chapters describe the affair and respond to his critics. The next part of the book provide examples of the positive influence of colonialism around the world, including iconoclastic reappraisals of German rule in Africa and China and a complete demolition of the claim that King Leopold’s rule in the Congo was genocide resulting in the deaths of 8 million Black Africans. The chapter on German imperialism shows that, rather than proto-Nazis, the Germans had made explicit provision for the good government of their subject peoples leading to their eventual independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1880. They ruthless punished imperial administrators and troopers who abused and victimised the natives. In Qingdao their chief judge was keen to incorporate local, Chinese law into that of the colony and wrote three books on the subject. The genocide against the Herero in Southwest Africa was not planned and was largely the result of forces beyond the authorities’ control.
Refutation of Holocaust Allegations over King Leopold’s Rule in the Congo
In the Congo the real death toll from the exactions of the Force Publicque was largely confined to one section of this vast, sprawling country and consisted of 18,000 people. This was largely the result of tribal warfare, not deliberate policy by Leopold himself. The severed feet and other bodies shown in photographs of alleged colonial atrocities were the result of the traditional way the tribes in the area showed that they had killed their victims. Leopold had taken over the country with the specific intention of eradicating the slavery and cannibalism which plagued the area. The photographs of people with severed limbs were staged recreations of mutilations resulting from these atrocities, and not of horrific punishments visited by Leopold and his servants on those who failed to meet the rubber quotas. These photographs were then taken over by British missionaries and the anti-colonialist British press to show the supposed horror inflicted by Leopold over the people of his private empire. One notorious photo showed a man looking down forlornly at severed feet and an arm. This has been presented as limbs hacked off by the Force Publique on those rubber workers who had failed to meet their set targets. But the original photograph states that the man was looking down on the remains of his wife and daughter after they had been eaten by cannibals.
Black Anti-Slavery Activists Embrace of American Constitution
Another chapter presents the positive case for enslavement in America. He does not seek to present slavery itself as a positive institution benefiting its victims, although that was one of the arguments of its supporters. Instead he notes that in America slaves could, surprisingly, have the benefit of the law. In 1791 in Newport, Connecticutt, a slaver was tried for murder for throwing an enslaved woman with smallpox overboard as a threat to the health and lives of the rest of the ship. The trial lasted five years before the man was acquitted on the grounds that he had acted to protect the others on board against the contagion. Moreover, Black anti-slavery activists were well aware of the anti-slavery implications of the American constitution and its enshrinement of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. They sought to widen its application beyond White Americans to themselves, in alliance with Whites, writing hymns and other texts supporting this view.
British Attempts to Supply Food to Famine-Struck First Nations in Canada
The book also rehabilitates British rule on the Canadian prairies, stating that they were not indifferent or complicit in a 19th century famine of the indigenous peoples that has now been described as a Holocaust. The British had scant resources in this corner of Canada and did what they could to provide food. They were also seeking to provide the Indians with modern, industrial education in the now notorious residential schools at the Native Canadians own request. They were hampered by distance and the problems of farming in that section of Canada which stumped even season agriculturalists from Ontario and was only solved ten years after the famine. And the same problems afflicted White Canadians. One man, who moved west, suffered from the loss of vital equipment en route. When he arrived, local people, including the Indians, borrowed his equipment but did not return it. The environment itself proved to be too challenging and after sticking it out for three years he finally gave up and returned home.
Erasure of the History of White Farmers in America
White farmers in colonial era America are also being erased from official history through a movement that claims that the piles of stones they left in their fields are really Native American cairns. This started with a group of old, White men. The founders of the movement were interested in pseudo-history, like finding Atlantis. Farmers in 19th century New England, when clearing their fields of stones, used to pile them up in the centre of the field. They were given to children to play with or sold to workers building roads. When such piles have been excavated, they reveal underneath rusted farm equipment and White American domestic refuse. The indigenous peoples then adopted the idea, passionately claiming that the piles were indeed cairns left by their ancestors. They gained this knowledge after visiting the stones and a few minutes of sacred contact with their gods and spirits. From there it moved on to be adopted by state and county authorities, sometimes as a means of preventing building development of these areas. Yet the fake history presented by this movement damages real colonial history. The stones themselves are the physical remains of the agricultural settlement and abandonment of these areas as the farmers moved to fresh lands further west. Another chapter takes apart this misrepresentation of Malayan colonial rule during the Emergency, stating that most Malayans actually supported British rule against that of the Communist guerrillas.
Achebe and Naipaul on the Benefits of Colonialism
There are two chapters given to the positive appreciation of colonialism by Chinua Achebe and the British Asian writer, V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul believed very strongly that British colonialism had benefited its peoples around the world. For him, it was a universal civilisation that promoted benign values applicable to all humanity. He was sharply critical in his novels of the dictators that took over these countries, plunging them into corruption and horrific bloodshed, and their left-wing White European supporters who followed them around, turning a blind eye to the horrors in the belief that something great and genuinely African would arise. He is also scathing of the hypocrisy behind the critics of British colonialism, who all seek its benefits in London or the West. These include Fazlur Rahman, who led the campaign to the Islamise Pakistan in the 1960s. When this provoked opposition, he fled to a nice tenured academic position at an American university. Vijayamprada Gopal, a professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature at Cambridge University and a favourite with Novara Media, also gets it for her snobbery. She stated that she would no longer teach working class students after the university porters called her by the university’s accustomed form of address of ‘madam’ for all women, rather than calling her ‘doctor’ as she wanted. This conforms to Naipaul’s comment that Oxbridge educated Indians were worse petty tyrants than the Indian landlords, who insisted that their tenants bow and touch their feet.
Criticism of Gandhi
Naipaul was also critical of Islam in Among the Believers, and had scant regard for Gandhi. Gandhi had the right idea when he started out, but then transformed himself into a Hindu holy man, after which he had nothing positive to contribute. It’s controversial, but there have been books and articles written arguing that Gandhi was not the benign figure he’s been presented as. Rabindranath Tagore, another great figure in Indian nationalism, dislike Gandhi because of his tactic of whipping up mobs until they were on the edge of rioting and violence and then pulling back. His sudden embrace of the Dalits in the 1920s was provoked, not by genuine concern for them, but because the British were planning to add an extra clause protecting their voting rights. Gandhi feared that this would lead to them supporting British rule, not Indian nationalism. He also knew absolutely nothing about the Second World War and the nature of Nazism. He wrote a letter to Churchill urging him to make peace with Hitler as ‘he is not a bad man’. On the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he recommended that the Czechs and Slovaks should meet the Nazis with passive resistance. When someone pointed out to him that this would simply result in the Nazis exterminating them, he acknowledged that this would happen, but ‘it would have been glorious’. India today is an emerging industrial and technological global superpower, quite contrary to what Gandhi himself would have wanted for his country. Gandhi hated modern technology with its trains and airplanes. He would have liked India to return to its traditional Vedic social and economic structure. And it is precisely by rejecting his vision that India has developed and become the global force it is today.
Gilley’s View of the Handing of Hong Kong to China
The last chapter is Gilley’s own personal observations of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1991 under its last governor, Chris Patten and an article he wrote for the final edition of a magazine devoted Asian affairs when this magazine finally folded. Patten comes across as trying to do his level best for Hong Kong and its people despite almost insurmountable opposition from the Chinese. Beijing did not respect the original treaty and simply regarded it as an opportune time to take over the colony. They warned Patten not to introduce democracy just before independence, as the British had done elsewhere. Patten defied them and gave it to Hong Kong anyway. He was very keen to soothe local feelings about colonialism, and so appeared in a lounge suit rather than traditional gubernatorial garb. As for the magazine, based in Hong Kong, this was very much a product of the colonial age in taking a broad view of the politics and economic affairs of the region. But it lost readers with the retreat of colonialism. Instead of a broad, regional view, magazines now presented the specific views of the individual nations, such as India or China, and the broader view was now being lost.
Genocide and Butchery by Post-Independence Dictators
The book also describes the horrors and carnage perpetrated by the colonies’ various dictators, who seized power after independence. Guinea-Bissau’s dictator wanted to destroy the legacy and infrastructure left over by the Portuguese, and so tore his country apart, butchering its people in the process. The British in Zanzibar had set up a multi-party system which sought to balance the interests of African and Arab Zanzibaris. A year after Prince Philip had formally handed power to them, however, it was invaded by anti-colonial forces backed by the Soviet Union and East Germany. Only one in ten indigenous Zanzibaris supported the invasion. The invaders set up a regime of massacre and repression, driving out the Sultan and the Arab and South Asian Zanzibaris. In one massacre, they invaded and slaughtered the tribespeople in one of the islands, whose children were then required to sing suitably patriotic songs celebrating their parents’ deaths.
Frantz Fanon’s Glorification of the Shooting and Murder of Whites
He also attacks Frantz Fanon, the Caribbean psychiatrist whose text on Algerian war of independence, The Wretched of the Earth, is now a classic of the decolonisation movement. Rather than being some kind of benign text on the necessity of Black liberation, Fanon’s book is bloodthirsty, revelling in the genocidal massacre of French colonists and White Europeans, and endorsed with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre. Gilley is harshly critical of the western left-wing intellectuals, safely ensconced in their Paris cafes, supporting people who can only be described as monstrous tyrants. No positive view of French rule in Algeria is permitted in the mainstream French press, but there is a large, self-published literature by the Pieds-Noir, the former French colonists, arguing that the mainstream view is incorrect. He also criticised the modern anti-colonial crowd, who angrily denounce America as a colonial power while demanding the right of Africans and Muslims to immigrate there.
Independence Not Expected or Wanted by the Majority of Colonial Peoples
Against this, and attacks on western notions of democracy and human rights, Gilley argues that the independence came unexpectedly and was not wanted by the mass of the colonised. In the Belgian Congo, only 27 per cent of the population supported it, but they were given it anyway, like it or not, by the departing Belgians. The real forces behind decolonisation was European exhaustion following the Second World War. Europe no longer had the ability to afford to run the former colonies and there was pressure from both America and Russia to open them up and decolonise, plus the politics of the Cold War. The countries that did best following independence were those that retained the most of their colonial legacy and infrastructure. This is recognised by many of the former colonies themselves. While colonial rule is hated by the people of most of the former colonies, their rulers are seeking to reintroduce elements of the colonial legacy in order to improve their countries.
Colonialism Preferable to the Alternatives
This all runs counter to what has been taught for decades, at least since the 1970s, about European colonialism, which is still being blamed for the many failures and troubles of the former colonies today. It will certainly not be popular with the Guardian and the other left-wing papers and magazines that hold the view that colonialism was uniformly bad, oppressive and exploitative. But Gilley makes a very strong and clear case. As well as the known facts that contradict the received narrative, it also argues from counterfactuals. What would have happened in the absence of colonialism? There are three possibilities. One is a continuation of tribal warfare and indigenous slavery. The second is the penetration of these colonies by western mercenaries and companies seeking concessions. The third is colonisation by a rival power. None of these would necessarily benefit the indigenous peoples.
As for the brutality of the British and other Europeans, the indigenous rulers and imperial powers were just as ruthless, if not more so. Nader Shah, the Persian emperor, was preparing a common currency for Persia and India, suggesting he planned to invade and annexe the country. During his time in Delhi he massacred 30,000 people. On his return to Persia he gouged his son’s eyes out, castrated one of his generals and had six merchants buried alive for the crime of buying a rug belonging to the imperial court. The British and other colonial powers, on the other hand, erected laws against the exploitation and brutal treatment of natives, sending reports back to the home countries and investigating and prosecuting offenders. This provides the basis for the many works of history denouncing colonialism, which is rather hypocritical in the absence of similar concerns by the indigenous powers presented as being somehow innocent of these crimes.
Arguments for Forced Labour
Gilley also seeks to rehabilitate the system of forced labour the British and other Europeans imposed on their African colonies. Gilley argues that this was indeed to make the colonies pay for themselves in the absence of monetary taxation. He states that the arguments against it are economically illiterate. Perhaps, but in Malawi and no doubt other African countries it was resented as a new form of slavery. He also points out the contradictory arguments against colonialism. For some, it underdeveloped its colonies. For others, it interfered too much. And there is the attitude among many of colonialism’s critics that the British should have provided free education and healthcare to their colonial subjects. In fact, Britons themselves did not have free healthcare until the establishment of the NHS and welfare state by the Labour government in 1948. Education in Britain wasn’t compulsory until the 1870s, and even if it was supposed to be free, the poverty of many working class Brits meant that some were unable to afford items such as school uniforms, pens and pencils and other equipment. It’s a case of presentism, the imposition of modern attitudes on to the past, in this case the expectations of the modern welfare state at a time when it did not exist.
Two Phases of British Colonialism
It is noticeable that Gilley begins his treatment of colonialism when it had entered its paternalistic, liberal phase after 1824. In Britain’s case this followed the abolition of the slave trade in 1809 and the introduction of progressive legislation for the improvement of the slaves’ lives in preparation for their eventual emancipation. The previous phase of British imperialism, such as the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, James VI’s/I’s plantations and the horrors of the Cromwellian campaigns, in my view cannot be justified. Nor can the conquest of the Caribbean and the New World with the extirpation of the original Amerindian populations and the establishment of transatlantic slavery. Which is, no doubt, why he doesn’t and is silent on this phase of western colonialism. Some anti-imperial historians have written about European colonialism as if it was consciously proceeded according to a pre-set plan. But his was not the case. There was no uniform plan and European imperialism was the result of different economic, political, social and religious forces at different times. The lost of the American colonies and their slave holdings made it easier for the British to ban the slave trade and eventually slavery in theirs. Historians have long recognised that there were two phases of British imperialism, the first in America and the Caribbean, the second in the conquest of India, Africa and Asia. It may well be high time that anti-imperial historians and activists took on board the fact that the nature of colonialism itself changed in these two periods.
Imperialists as Colonies’ Real Nationalists
The book is part of a growing mass of literature seeking to present a positive case for colonialism, such as Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Gilley goes further than Biggar, who merely argues that there were certain aspects of British colonialism that were deeply amoral and oppressive, by presenting this phase of imperialism as benign and positive, and takes friendly issue with Biggar on this point. There are even a very few positive facts in favour of Apartheid. One of these is that under it, 100,000 Black Africans a year sought to immigrate to South Africa. But this probably says more about the horrific state of the other African countries than anything really positive about Apartheid. Despite the barrage of abuse and threats Gilley received for his article, the book also reproduces the positive and supportive comments he received from other academics and activists from Africa and Asia, some of whom said that they and their families had greatly benefited from the institutions, especially schools and universities, left by the British. He also claims at one point that the British and other colonialists were these countries’ true nationalists, in that they had a deep interest in the indigenous cultures and their arts and literature that were often being neglected by the indigenous peoples themselves. Naipaul quotes an Indonesian Muslim as saying that his countries’ historic mosques are now preserved by the West, as previously the Indonesians themselves wanted to pull them down.
Necessity of Proper Academic Debate
This is a powerful counterblast to the received narrative about the evils of colonialism. Whatever one feels about it – and looking at the current state of political corruption and creeping authoritarianism in Britain, I am extremely doubtful about the ability of my country to act as a new, benign imperial force – I strongly believe that it and similar books have a place in academic education and discussion. The attempt to silence Gilley, and indeed Biggar on this side of the Pond, with denunciations, personal abuse and death threats is deeply authoritarian and oppressive in its turn. Gilley at one point states that it may take national legislation in America to restore genuine free speech to campuses. And free speech and genuine academic debate are the cornerstones of genuine democracy. Without it, you just have authoritarianism and indoctrination.
David, today is International Women’s Day. A global day to celebrate women’s achievements and to advocate for equality. [1] As one of our trusted supporters, you’ll know that the 38 Degrees community is about lending our voices to issues that make the UK a fairer and more equal place, even if they don’t impact us personally.
While our NHS is one of the best healthcare systems in the world to give birth, unfortunately some benefit from this more than others. [2] Black women are four times more likely to die within six weeks of childbirth than white women. [3] This is unacceptable. Some of the main reasons include a lack of education and data on the differences about the difficulties and challenges Black women may face, or a lack of funding in maternity care. [4]
A cross-party committee has labelled the Government’s inaction on maternal health as ‘shameful’ and ‘short of acceptable standards’. [5] They, alongside mothers and activists have been raising the alarm bells for years. But the Government has outright refused to take significant action to correct it. [6]
David, I know we say it a lot, but there is an election coming up, and it’s true that right now we have a real chance of making our MPs, present and future, pay attention to the issue.
Every woman, regardless of race, should be able to give birth safely and without fear for their life. Will you add your name to the petition demanding politicians give this issue the attention and action it deserves? It only takes 30 seconds…
38 Degrees supporters come from different backgrounds, we are of different creeds, different geographies, and even different social classes. But, we all believe in fairness and we know that we’re at our most powerful when we act together – we can make a difference when we fight for each other. From keeping prescriptions free for over 60s to stopping Channel 4 privatisation, together we can win. [7] We have done it before, let’s do it again.
So, David, on this International Women’s Day, will you sign the petition, demanding equality for all mothers present and future? It only takes 30 seconds to sign…
I got this message earlier this evening from the Stop the War Coalition giving the details of their forthcoming events against the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But in many ways the most important piece is the top the article giving an entirely different perspective on the Labour Party’s motion for a ceasefire in Gaza which prompted a walkout by the SNP. I put up a message I’d received this afternoon from Karin Smyth, which stated that the amendment went further than the SNP’s motion. This strongly gives the impression that the motion was made in good faith. However, according to the STWC, Starmer only tabled it after making a phone call to Herzog, the Israeli prime minister. This indicates that it was made in bad faith in order to prompt the SNP to walk out, and thereby scupper the amendment. If that is the case, then it’s another object lesson in why Starmer shouldn’t be PM: he’s a deceitful schemer who lies, and, like the Tories, engineers the lies so that they appear to be the opposite of what they actually do.
Newsletter – 23/02/24
A Smokescreen to Hide the Genocide Behind 🫣
Following Wednesday’s disgraceful scenes where Keir Starmer, after a phone call with Israeli PM Isaac Herzog, colluded with the Speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle to sabotage the SNP’s motion calling for a ceasefire, it appears that both the government and its loyal opposition have decided to aim their fire at peaceful protestors.
It is obvious that the current attempt to equate the right to protest with intimidation is an attempt to deflect from the horror in Gaza and the British political establishment’s support for it. The millions of people in this country that have taken to the streets for Palestine over the past five months represent majority opinion in this country. In the words of YouGov last week: “public desire for Israel to stop and call a ceasefire stands at 66%”.
We issued a statement earlier today strongly condemning any proposals to ban protest outside parliament, council buildings and MPs’ offices with a commitment to campaigning energetically against them:
“The recent cycle of protests calling for a ceasefire have seen record numbers of people protest. Despite bizarre attempts to demonise these huge marches for peace and an end to mass killing as threatening, ‘hate marches’, they have been entirely peaceful with less arrests per person than at major music festivals.
Calls to limit the right to protest from centres of decision making are an attempt to insulate politicians from public opinion. As such, they are an attack on democracy not a defence of it.”
There is a massive movement in support of the Palestinians across Britain and real anger that politicians have, for the most part, stood by as we witness a genocide in Gaza. We will continue to campaign and mobilise until there is a ceasefire and justice for Palestine. The next National Demonstration will be on Sat 9 March. Make sure you’re on the streets.
Ukraine: How To Stop This War – Online Meeting Tomorrow
Two years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands are dead, countless more injured, homes and infrastructure destroyed and millions displaced – and the risk of nuclear war has increased. This war must end.
Stop the War is pleased to be co-hosting an online rally with CND to discuss the disastrous impact of the war and the crisis it has created with an outstanding line up of speakers including Jeremy Corbyn, Lindsey German, Vijay Prashad, Kate Hudson, Yurii Sheliazhenko, Tom Unterrainer and Medea Benjamin. Don’t miss this important event tomorrow.
Stand With #PalestinianWomen in Your Workplace on #IWD24
Our next Workplace Day of Action which will coincide with International Women’s Day 2024 is just two weeks away! On Friday 8th March we are calling on workers across the country to take action in their workplace or trade union in solidarity with Palestinian women. Women and children have been forced to bear the brunt of Israel’s genocide in Gaza so it’s vital that we highlight their plight on #IWD24.
We hope you will join us as the push to take the struggle for justice for Palestine into the workplace continues. We must puncture the enforced silence around Palestine that many people find in their places of work. Can you organise a lunchtime rally, canteen meeting or a ‘wear a badge for Palestine day’?
We’ve had a stream of events coming through already and we’ll be compiling a full list in the run-up to 8th March – Let us know what you are organising by emailing: office@stopwar.org.uk
It is with regret that we’ve decided to postpone our Trade Union Conference on 2nd March due to the weight of activity currently taking place. We will be rescheduling the conference for a date in April/May. We will be in touch as soon as the date is confirmed. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. All ticket-holders have been refunded.’
There was some kind of upset in parliament Wednesday night. From what I gather the SNP tabled a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Labour party tabled an amendment, which some people say the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, was bullied or tricked into upholding, and the SNP walked out. There have therefore been demands for Hoyle’s resignation, while Labour has been accused by the anti-Islam right of cowardice for supposedly caving in to ‘Islamist’ demands. There was indeed a demonstration outside parliament, and while I don’t doubt that Islamist firebrands were out there, it was a demonstration in support of Gaza and the Palestinians, not a demand for sharia law. But you wouldn’t think that by some of the ludicrous videos put up by GB News. Patrick Christys, a particularly horrible right-wing sprog, has called for sharia law to be banned in Britain. Well, sharia law has no legal standing. I haven’t noticed people having their hands amputated for theft, or being whipped for other offences as prescribed by Islamic law. If they were, the people involved would be arrested for assault of various degrees of severity, and hopefully convicted and imprisoned. But that’s another issue. From what I’ve read of the amendment, not only does it call for a ceasefire, but it also demands a halt to the construction of Israeli settlement and a two-state solution to the problem. Corbyn, I feel, would also have demanded a halt to the expansion of Israeli settlements. Which is ironic, as according to Starmer and his faction, he was a terrible anti-Semite and threat to Jews. I think, however, that most pro-Palestine activists feel that a two-state solution is unworkable and that what should happen is that the Palestinians should be integrated as genuinely full and equal citizens of Israel.
Here’s what Karen Smyth said:
‘Dear David,
On Wednesday, Parliament resolved to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, agreeing the text of the Labour amendment to the Scottish National Party motion without a division.
Like all of us, I have watched the events of the last five months in the Middle East with horror and sadness at the abominable loss of life. I know members of Bristol South Labour Party are extremely concerned by the continuing conflict.
This Labour amendment was much stronger than the original motion brought by the SNP, which failed to address violence elsewhere in Palestine and the need for a massive, unimpeded relief effort in Gaza. Not only did our motion definitively call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, it also called for an end to settlement expansion and violence in the West Bank. In addition, it re-stated long-standing Labour policy on a two-state solution.
It was gravely disappointing and saddening to see this important decision by Parliament being overlooked due to events in the chamber that night.
The fighting must come to an end. The UK must now work with our international partners to bring about that immediate ceasefire, and provide a credible plan to end this conflict. Statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people alongside a safe and secure Israel.
Please see below for the full text of Labour’s amendment.
Yours sincerely,
Karin Smyth
Labour amendment in full
“That this House believes that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences and therefore must not take place; notes the intolerable loss of Palestinian life, the majority being women and children; condemns the terrorism of Hamas who continue to hold hostages; supports Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s calls for Hamas to release and return all hostages and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which means an immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides, noting that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October 2023 cannot happen again; therefore supports diplomatic mediation efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire; demands that rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza; further demands an end to settlement expansion and violence; urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures; calls for the UN Security Council to meet urgently; and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state, including working with international partners to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to rather than outcome of that process, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour.“
Last week I came across a video from the New Culture Forum in which a Pakistani-British journalist talked about the possible threat to British secular democracy from Muslim radicals and considered that the Pakistani grooming gangs may ultimately have had their origins in the rape culture of the Punjabi region of that country, amongst a number of other issues. The New Culture Forum can be reasonably described as the culture wing of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the militantly free market, pro-privatisation think tank behind much of Thatcherite ideology. I find their discussion and critique of the contemporary attacks on traditional British culture, values and identity interesting. However, Jim Round, one of the great commenters here, has pointed out that they need to be treated with more than a grain of salt. He’s found that they’re connected to various conservative think tanks in America, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s right. The emerging National Conservative strain in British Conservatism also has its origins across the pond. But their video last week seemed to be more moderate than some of the frantic scaremongering about Islamism from GB News and right-wing YouTubers like Mahyar Tousi.
Thanks to Starmer’s refusal until very recently to back a ceasefire in Gaza, support for the party among British Muslims has collapsed. A number of Muslims have therefore taken to standing against sitting Labour MPs as Independents, although they all have the same policies. Patrick Christy, a horrible sprog at GB News, claimed that this followed the Electoral Commission’s refusal to permit the establishment of a Muslim Party of Britain. Christy’s video claimed that one of the people behind the Muslim Independents was a former member of Hisb-ut Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned by Tony Blair for terrorism offences. Hisb-ut Tahrir called for the establishment of a caliphate and preaches separation between Muslims and non-Muslims. The man in question states that he is no longer a member of Hisb-ut Tahrir, and has no connection with the Muslim Independents beyond doing some initial research for them. Christy and others have been rather keen on pushing the idea that the Independents are a threat to British democracy, and stated that they could be a real force in parliament if they gain as many as 50 MPs. Farage posted a video talking about sectarian parties in Westminster, while another YouTube asked if we were three years away from a sectarian civil war in Britain.
The New Culture Forum’s video came a few days before these developments, which may be why it contradicts some of these assertions. One of the people speaking on it was a British journalist of Pakistani origin, who had emigrated to Britain and taken out British nationality not because he was an economic migrant, but because he admired our country and wanted to be British. He was doubtful that the rising Muslim political discontent would be a threat to British democracy and would lead to a separate Muslim party. He claimed that British Muslims tended to vote for whatever party offered them the most, and this mixed ethnic matters with religion. It had been the Labour party, but it need not be and could just as well be another, which needn’t be explicitly Muslim.
He also said something extremely interesting regarding the cultural background of the Pakistani rape gangs. He stated that they were specifically Punjabi, rather than just broadly Pakistani. This is one of the most backward regions of Pakistan. During the 1960s the Pakistani government constructed a series of dams in the Mirpur region. Harold Wilson invited immigrants from that region in, so the journo claimed, to keep the White working class down. I think Wilson probably did invite immigrants from the affected districts, but probably as a humanitarian gesture as well as solving the labour shortage which had hit industry after the War. It would very definitely not have been done to depress the White working class.
The Punjabi region has its own language separate from Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. And rape is used as a weapon in the clan feuds in the region. He gave an example of a lad, who had been kidnapped and raped by a rival clan as part of such a feud, even though the lad himself had not been responsible for whatever action sparked the feud. The lad’s sister tried to have the rapists prosecuted, but she was also raped by them on her way to court. This case became notorious, so much so that the Pakistani authorities tried to get it hushed up. However, this brutal rape culture wasn’t representative of Pakistanis as a whole. There were groups campaigning against it Pakistan, and the urban sophisticates of the country’s capital, Karachi, looked down on the Punjabis for the primitive customs. He also said that they looked down on British Pakistanis who came to their country boasting of their Pakistani heritage. Thanks to the cultural isolation in Britain, they were more Muslim than Pakistani Muslims and had a weird accent that wasn’t actually Pakistani, so that they got the monicker ‘Plastic Pakistanis’ in the same way that the Irish call Irish Americans ‘Plastic Paddies’.
This sound about right, although the Pakistani rape gangs also included men from a number of other ethnicities, including Whites. I’ve come across other videos that suggest there’s a very nasty rape culture in the Punjab. A few weeks ago I found a video with a British Punjabi woman campaigning against it. She described how she had been used as a skivvy for her family as a young child before being gang raped by her father and his brothers and friends when she was 13. She claimed that this culture of extreme misogyny was widespread in the Punjabi community, but was not discussed, let alone fought. A situation that she obviously wanted to change.
I can see how this tribal rape culture would translate into the horrific abuse the grooming gangs inflicted on their White victims. Back in the ’90s or early part of this century there was a report by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown into anti-White racism among Black and Asian Brits. Some Muslims certainly resent and despise White women for their sexual freedom. The police denied that racism was a cause of the abuse, but a female Muslim councillor, who had done much to uncover and fight it, said that she grew up in that culture and it certainly was. This doesn’t change the fact that the perps were predatory, evil men, but it does seem to me that the rapes and assaults were based in very primitive cultural attitudes towards women and despised outsiders.
The Pakistani journo noted, however, that the multicultural education being promoted did not include the negative aspects of cultures like Pakistan, so that the people who prided themselves on their familiarity and openness to such cultures knew much less than they thought they did. I think here also he had a point. The multicultural education he describes was brought in to tackle White racism against ethnic minorities and their cultures. But these cultures, like all others, have their own negative aspects. If these aspects are behind crime and violence, then it is right that they should be addressed without fear and accusations of racism. And it’s very clear from what the journo said that the gangs were not representative of the whole Pakistani community, nor, I suspect, of the specifically Punjabi community either.
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