1,650 words

Bad chemistry

I wrote in Counter-Currents in 2021 about Professor Kathleen Stock, a philosophy lecturer hounded from her post at my alma mater, the University of Sussex, by student activists for her comments and writings on gender identity. She has recently been “deplatformed” by Oxford University, and has now come under attack from a curious source: the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

You might assume these eggheads would be busy publishing peer-reviewed papers on enzymes, salts, and various reactions in test-tubes, but their remit seems considerably wider in these heady days of woke kangaroo courts. The RSC’s new journal, Digital Discovery, has as its mission statement to publish “theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of chemistry, material science and biotechnology.” A recent paper by Professor John Herbert, however, was entitled “Academic free speech or right-wing grievance?” and singles out Professor Stock for more chastisement. And this is not a politically-correct aside — the paper is 37 pages long.

The document, presumably peer-reviewed by drag queens, is peppered with the language of diversity and inclusion rather than any actual chemistry and, while it might be brushed off by telling the RSC to stay in lane, is indicative of the gradual creep of woke ideology into the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Next week the Royal Society of Engineers may tell you why your children need puberty blockers, and the Confederation of British Industry will ask, “Which tuck bikini should trans women wear on the beach this summer?”

Theater news

To Drury Lane, cabbie! Drury Lane is traditionally London’s Broadway, although not as glitzy. London’s theatrical season looks interesting this year, although not so much for what audiences will be seeing as what they won’t.

John Cleese is involved in a stage production of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and the censor has moved in early. Many of the film’s scenes are famous, particularly the one featuring Eric Idle claiming he no longer wants to be called Stan but is now a woman called Loretta, and it’s because he wants to have babies. Reg, played by Cleese, is completely bemused by this and tells him he can’t have babies. It is decided that the People’s Front of Judea will support Loretta’s right to have babies. This, say the censors, has got to go.

Given that this scene predicts the diktats of trans enforcers today, this seems curious, but the problem is that the context is mockery. Yes, say today’s gender police, men can have babies, menstruate, lactate, and so on, but you must proudly affirm this anti-biological voodoo, not laugh at it. A later Cleese line from the same scene sums up the trans agitators of today, when it is suggested that fighting for Stan’s right to have babies is “symbolic of our struggle against oppression.” Cleese replies,

“It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

Let’s catch up on black theater. Tambo and Bones are traditional American minstrel characters, and a play of the same name is now playing in London, updated to include hip-hop and, of course, America’s racist past, without which no black play would be complete. In the racist present, however, there is another twist. For the performance of the show on July 5, white people are being requested not to attend. This is to save both the audience and actors from something called “the white gaze.” I wonder what might happen if the evil white gaze of the white devils stayed away from all black theatrical events, as well as cinema, and throw in music and art while you’re at it. I suspect it might adversely affect revenue.

Cardiff Arms

Cardiff Arms Park is a famous rugby venue in the Welsh capital, but there was a different call to arms this month in a country which usually keeps its displays of violence on the rugby field. Two boys, 15 and 16, were killed in an accident in which they were both riding an electric scooter. Social media lit up with the rumor that this was the result of a police chase, and a riot ensued that would have garnered applause from the Portland antifa. Traditionally, the only things burnt down in Wales are English holiday homes and the occasional wicker man, but there was a regular carbeque on Cardiff’s streets, including missile-throwing which left 11 police officers hospitalized.

Malicious police involvement is the default position for the death of any miscreant youth anywhere in the West, and the Cardiff police denied the presence of any of their vehicles on the roads at the time of the accident. The problem is that closed-circuit TV tells a different story.

The British police have to tread very carefully in the United Kingdom at the moment. In the United States, although Democrats want to defund and shackle the police, most Republicans still respect the badge and the job it does. In Britain the police have achieved the unique feat of being despised by both sides of the political divide, the Left because it is their default position and the Right because the police are more likely to visit your home if you have tweeted that you’re not sure about drag queen story hour than if your house has been ransacked. Summer is almost here and, now that Black Lives Matter is nearing bankruptcy amid rumors of serious embezzlement, its British chapter may not have the stomach to do much rioting. But it seems others might. The police may find out that the public are not overly sympathetic to their pride flags, and would do well not to antagonize them further.

Black mischief

Victorian Britons paid a small fee to enter Bedlam, the lunatic asylums which were then common, to watch the inmates’ grimacing, shrieking, and contortions. Now that the asylums are all gone and the contents are to be found on the streets, we have TikTok as an equivalent freak show. Most of the exhibits are state-of-the-art: piercings, bad hair-dying, transitioning, and similar signs of mental illness. But British YouTuber Mizzy represents a far nastier side to this platform.

Mizzy is 18 and black. He and his crew film themselves “pranking” people — always white people. They walk uninvited into someone’s house and sit down, only leaving when the husband tells them there are small children in the house. One walks onto a taxi’s roof. A woman is approached at a tube station and asked if she wants to die, as is a guy with his girlfriend, who is then followed into a restaurant and harassed. In a park, Mizzy steals a woman’s dog and runs off with it. These stunts are malevolent, aggressive, and utterly brazen, as are the perpetrators.

Mizzy got himself the airtime he wanted, and when Piers Morgan called him an idiot, he naturally blamed all the fuss on racism. The line was crossed, as it often is, when Jewry became involved, in this case Mizzy hassling a Hasidic Jew in north London. He was finally arrested — doubtless only when the police feared negative publicity – but, predictably, was given merely a derisory fine and ordered to post no more videos for two years. If young blacks, who are not constrained by the police in any event, escalate these “pranks” it will become a vicious new chapter in the urban terrorism they already perpetrate.

There’s one warm note, however: Mizzy has recently had a child, so we have much to look forward to in the future.

MiniTru 2.0

I have tried my best not to mention Orwell’s 1984, but there is no escape. It is well known that Orwell based the novel’s Ministry of Truth on the BBC, where he famously worked. His statue — rather a good one — stands outside BBC House today. But, to wheel out once more that tired truism that the book was intended as a novel and not an instruction manual, the BBC have fulfilled Orwell’s prophecy.

The corporation often referred to as the “state broadcaster” has now introduced a new initiative: BBC Verify. This will be a fact-checking arm of what the British call “Auntie” or “the Beeb.” The new “misinformation Czar” (although strictly speaking a Czarina), Marianna Spring, explained that the new initiative would, among other things, be fact-checking conspiracy theories and connecting them back to “far-Right figures.”

Counter to its specific Royal Charter requirement to remain politically impartial, the BBC is as impartial as a fanatical soccer supporter at a game, and it particularly despises those it describes as “far-Right” (a catch-all phrase meaning anyone not exactly in step with the prevailing ideology). So, we can expect a large slice of its investigative resources to be aimed at such Hitlerian figures as Nigel Farage.

Turn Right at the next available opportunity

But we have an optimistic note on which to end. Americans will be familiar with RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. The British have an equivalent, and it’s called the Conservative Party. There are very few actual conservatives in the party, and those that do exist are shunned by those who know their place. In the case of rogue Member of Parliament Andrew Bridgen, they are hounded out of the party, and Mr. Bridgen joined Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party — giving them their first MP — for the sin of retweeting a tweet deemed anti-Semitic, always a step too far, as we saw above.

It feels hopelessly optimistic to say that the National Conservatism Conference 2023 might offer a gleam of hope to the conservative position in the UK, but if the featured speakers were the actual rump of the party itself, it is hard to believe Britain would be as mired in socialism as it is under the current Tory regime. I haven’t had time to watch them all, but I can recommend the speeches by Matthew Goodwin, Melanie Phillips, and the always-excellent Douglas Murray. Perhaps, when the current decline finally bumps along the bottom, these conservatives might salvage the sunken ship of state.

Eyes to the Right!

The Union Jackal.

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