The Corrupt Regime’s New Tactic: Banning Foreign Speakers

At the end of August, a group of British traditionalists, nationalists and freethinkers held their annual conference in Bedfordshire in the south of England. “The Witan,” as it is known, with reference to the group of wise men who helped to rule Anglo-Saxon England, attracts an audience that is mainly male, under-40 and “based.” And it is part of a growing rebellion against Woke by the younger generation who have been raised knowing little else. One of the people whom they invited to speak was the Danish independent IQ researcher Emil Kirkegaard, with whom I have written many academic studies. Kirkegaard, who had designed a detailed power-point presentation, made his way to the airport. However, he was prevented from boarding the plane.

As a citizen of the European Union, you require a “visa waiver” (ESTA) in order to come to the UK. Kirkegaard had obtained one of these and it had been confirmed, but upon trying to board his flight it emerged that his visa waiver had mysteriously been revoked and he could not board. He was handed a letter by the airline titled “AUTHORITY TO CARRY REFUSED.” It explained that the UK Home Office had refused the airline permission to fly Kirkegaard to Britain. A Home Office email, which Kirkegaard had missed because it was sent at about 3am on the day of his flight, later gave Kirkegaard the reason, “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.” Kirkegaard was invited to apply for a visa but, naturally, he would almost certainly have been rejected.

All Kirkegaard had planned to do was give a speech about his research; the kind of research he’s been doing since 2013. His presentation, which he had to give via a video-link, was entitled “How much can we boost fertility rates?” Frighteningly, as Kirkegaard tried to work out what had happened, he realised that the previous year he had successfully entered the UK to attend the Heterodox Conference at Buckingham University. The UK’s only private university, it is the country’s only institute of higher education that is effectively anti-Woke. As such, he hadn’t needed to re-apply for an ESTA because they last a number of years and he already had a valid one. However, he didn’t realise this, so he did re-apply, and this was his mistake.

One year earlier, then, the British government had had no problem letting Kirkegaard into the country to attend a conference; in 2026, however, they did have a problem. Hence, despite all the talk of how we have reached “peak Woke,” it appears we are now seeing a counter-reaction against the rise of anti-Woke forces. It is possible that this is merely a coincidence and that an academic conference was acceptable but a more political one, like the Witan, was not. But it seems more likely that the Home Office is infested with Woke civil servants who, between May last year when he got his original visa waiver and now, have decided to make life more difficult for those who question their dogmas.

Not long ago, you had to be relatively prominent on the “far right” to be banned from the UK. In 2018, Martin Sellner, Brittany Pettibone and Lauren Southern were all refused entry, but now, it seems, even an independent academic coming to a small conference is persona non grata. Woke civil servants, in other words, are ramping up the pressure. Civil servants are supposed to be scrupulously politically neutral but, since 1997, there has been a cultural revolution in the UK and a Gramscian Long march Through the Institutions, so everyone knows that this is not the case. The British government openly takes advice from the “anti-racist” group “Hope Not Hate,” a group whose head has admitted to lying about racist attacks and “far right” riots, arguing that it was for the public good that he did so. Kirkegaard is on their list of dissidents; of people whose opinions, for these regime-enforcers, are unacceptable. Clearly, feeling that the dominance of their ideology is increasingly under attack, their sympathisers in the Home Office are getting desperate. And the one thing they can do to make life for their opponents difficult, and demoralise them slightly, is banning foreign speakers from their conferences. Similarly, they can feel a renewed sense of power by stopping foreigners whom they dislike from entering the UK.

It is not only the British civil service that are behaving in this way. The same weekend as the Witan, there was a remigration conference in Canada run by the Dominion Society of Canada. One of their speakers, Austrian activist Martin Sellner, was refused entry to the country, while another, Charlie Downes, who was there to represent the UK political party Restore Britain, was held at the border and subjected to a lengthy interrogation before, eventually, being permitted entry. This is despite the fact that the party which he represented actually has a Member of Parliament and a number of councillors.

Jared Taylor was banned from the Schengen zone for two years but has been traveling freely in Europe lately, much to the dismay of leftist publications like Searchlight. But recently, the Irish dissident Keith Woods applied for an ESTA in order to speak at a forthcoming conference in the US. This was denied, so he went to the American Embassy in Dublin to apply for an actual visa. He was interviewed about his “far right” connections and duly refused a visa to enter the US. (So much for the Trump administration’s fight against DEI which has mainly been focused on opposition to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.)

In May 2026, there was a “Remigration Conference” in Porto in Portugal. German delegates were prevented, by edict of the German government, from boarding their plane to attend this conference, even though the Portuguese government had no problem admitting them and there is free movement within the European Union’s Schengen Zone. Farcically, the delegates were able to get round this by simply driving to Portugal, as there are no land borders within the zone. The German authorities must have known that these delegates could get to Portugal by car, so the only possible reason to prevent them flying was spite and a desire to feel powerful; to make the lives of those you hate inconvenient, to sap their morale.

Clearly, as there is an on-going reaction against Woke, the tactic of the beleaguered Woke civil servant is to corruptly use her power to prevent speakers entering her country, intimidate them if they can find no means of preventing their entry, and even to prevent opponents from leaving her country. This spite is entirely compatible with the high Neuroticism that predicts being left-wing and, it seems to me, it only increases a sense of solidarity and togetherness among her opponents. It will only make the fissioning of Western societies along political lines more likely.