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First Thoughts on the Israeli Strikes

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Yesterday I posted an article saying Trump told Netanyahu to hold off attacking Iran. Israel did it anyway. This says a lot. Israel has never been subservient to the U.S. Indeed it’s the other way around, with the powerful Israel Lobby dominating Congress and often the president, with the result of thousands of American lives and many billions of dollars spent in the region. I should have known that.

Predictably there is the usual chorus of pro-Israel voices in Congress and the media praising the attacks. And as always, the U.S. is in fact deeply involved whether Trump wants it or not. From Tucker Carlson’s daily email:

While the American military may not have physically perpetrated the assault, years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the U.S. at the center of last night’s events. Washington knew these attacks would happen. They aided Israel in carrying them out. Politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it. Our country is in deep.

Carlson, as a leading member of the mainstream anti-war right, also notes the obvious: there is no way this is in America’s interests.

Donald Trump admitted he had prior knowledge about Israel’s attack on Iran on Thursday, telling Bret Baier he knew of the Netanyahu government’s plan to conduct the preemptive strikes and that the assault came as no surprise.

Despite being complicit in the act of war, the president hopes last night’s events will help his ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. Steve Witkoff was scheduled to participate in the next round of talks on Sunday, but whether that will still happen is up in the air.

“Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table. We will see. There are several people in leadership in Iran that will not be coming back,” Trump said following the strikes.

It’s worth taking a step back and wondering how any of this helps the United States. We can’t think of a single way.

And, more pointedly:

“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first. America first.”

That’s a direct quote from Donald Trump’s first inaugural address, and it’s the same sentiment that thrust him back into the White House in January. Now, the world will find out if he really meant it.

Now that Benjamin Netanyahu and his war-hungry government have executed their long-awaited assault, the president faces a legacy-altering decision: to support, or not to support?

We’d like to take this opportunity to state our position as clearly as possible. The United States should not at any level participate in a war with Iran. No funding, no American weapons, no troops on the ground. Regardless of what our “special ally” says, a fight with the Iranians has nothing to offer the United States. It is not in our national interest.

If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America’s backing. At an absolute minimum, the United States continuing to insert itself in this conflict will further whip up the radical Islamic world’s hatred for the West and fuel the next generation of terrorism. The worst case? Thousands of immediate American deaths, all in the name of a foreign agenda that has nothing to do with our country.

It goes without saying that neither of those possibilities would be beneficial for the United States. But there is another option: drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars. 

No matter how many bogus antisemitism allegations neocon ghouls like Mark Levin hurl at Americans who advocate for that path, opposing destroying the United States in the name of the Netanyahu government has nothing to do with Israel. It’s about America. We reject the idea of involving the U.S. in an Israeli war for the same reason we would stand against doing the same thing on behalf of Eritrea, Suriname, Cambodia, or any other random country you could close your eyes and point at on a map. It is not America’s fight. Engaging in it would be a middle finger in the faces of the millions of voters who cast their ballots in hopes of creating a government that would finally put the United States first. What happens next will define Donald Trump’s presidency.

Fox News adds that Trump “noted that the U.S. is ready to defend itself and Israel if Iran retaliates. In recent weeks, the U.S. has replenished Iron Dome missiles.”

Trump is likely unhappy with what Israel did but will make the best of it and will defend Israel if it comes to that. As the supreme leader of the most powerful country in the world, he likely thinks everyone else has to listen to him. How’s that working out with the trade deals? China with its stranglehold on rare earth supplies clearly holds the upper hand, so Trump will have no choice but to once again try to save face.

He is encouraging Iran to stand down “before there is nothing left.”

Mr. Trump’s social media post attempted to put pressure on Iran to continue negotiating. “The next already planned attacks,” he wrote, would be “even more brutal.”

He added: “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.” In his often-used capital letters, he concluded, “JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Israel has already killed top military leaders and nuclear scientists.

So far Iran has done nothing in retaliation and I doubt they have the ability to do meaningful damage to Israel. If so, Israel will be the unchallenged dominant power in the Middle East and will further degrade the Palestinians.

 

Do the New LA Riots Signal the Ethnic Breakup of the United States?

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Serious riots broke out in Los Angeles in the second week of June 2025. Supposedly triggered by ICE agents apprehending illegal immigrants, they were, in reality, set off by their arresting extremely dangerous Hispanic criminals, quite independent of their immigration status.

Protests, effectively encouraged by Hispanic Democrat local councillors and other ethnic activists, promptly broke out; police cars were set on fire, rocks were thrown at them from bridges, and public buildings were torched. The left claimed that Trump, who sent in the National Guard to quell the disorder because the state’s Democrat governor had abjectly failed to, incited these riots by enforcing the law and, of course, made them worse by trying to quell them.

I am afraid, in a sense, the leftist media are correct, though, naturally, they don’t want to admit why they are correct. Conservative media outlets have ridiculed the way in which rioters strongly object to being returned to Mexico yet wave Mexican flags and burn the Stars and Stripes. If they think this is a contradiction, then they are misguided. They are not looking at what is happening through the correct lens: the lens of evolutionary psychology; the idea that humans are, in essence, an advanced form of ape.

With this in mind, what is happening is Los Angeles starts to make sense fairly quickly. At the most basic level, chimpanzees operate in troupes — in essence, small tribes — who are held together by relatively recent common ancestry. Numerous experiments have shown that humans and animals can discern genetic similarity and are more likely to cooperate with the genetically similar because doing so raises their “inclusive fitness;” it permits them to indirectly pass on more of their genes if their kin flourish. An ethnic group is a highly extended tribe and a race is a number of related ethnic groups; a highly extended ethnic group. Although the word “Hispanic” is confusing — it sometimes refers to people whose native language is Spanish even if they are completely White — in general it refers to people from Central and South America. They range from totally European to totally Native American. On average, however, they are a “cline” — a mixture of two races; groups genetically separated for many thousands of years — between European and Native American. As Genetic Similarity Theory predicts, they are generally sexually attracted to each other, so we have the Hispanic Cline and they are, on average, half-European and half-Native American.

Due to a combination of factors — proximity to Mexico, the fact that California was briefly part of Mexico, Woke California’s status as a “Sanctuary State” and LA’s as a “Sanctuary City” which is prepared to welcome illegal immigrants — Mexicans have, in effect, established enclaves of the Mexican Nation within Los Angeles. Returning to our discussion of chimpanzees, it is basic, in terms of evolutionary psychology, that you establish territory. The more territory you control then the more access to resources — to food of various kinds — you have and, so, the more likely are to out-compete other troupes, leading to the triumph of your genes. Also (all else being equal), the larger your group is then the more likely you are to out-compete your rivals in wars over territory.

If you are, as an individual, not at the top of your pack hierarchy in the territory that you hold, then you often gang together with other middle-ranking males and you strive outwards to take the territory, and the females, of another group; to expand your group’s territory. Naturally, if the other group returns you to your territory then you are a failure and you will fear having few resources, which, in our prehistoric polygamous mating systems in which females sexually select for status, means that you don’t pass on your genes. So, you must fight to maintain the territory you have eked out and you must fight to maintain your numbers. Trump symbolises the most warlike Europeans — the ethnic enemy of all the different ethnic groups that have come to occupy the  U.S.  So, of course, his going into “Mexican” territory is going to provoke a violent reaction.

That these rioters are patriotically Mexican but hate America and don’t want to return to Mexico is no more a contradiction than settler Americans disliking Native American tribes, not wanting to return to England, and yet seeing themselves as truest form of Anglo-Saxon. You can come up, to solve your cognitive dissonance, with reasons why your country is poor and you are relatively poor and have had to leave: God is punishing our country for its decadence, God has called me to expand his holy nation or even “We Native Americans must take the land back from the Europeans and especially California as it was once part of Mexico.” Their low average IQ will not be part of their explanation for why their country is poor.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is groups who are high in positive and negative ethnocentrism who tend to triumph. Los Angeles has been invaded, in part, because the Europeans were low in negative ethnocentrism. They were individualists who covertly played for status by signalling their concern with the marginalised and runaway virtue-signalling led to their favouring foreigners over their own. They identify with the genetically dissimilar as this allows them to collaborate better with foreigners and treasonously gain power over their own people, as the California governor has. Typically leftist, they are high in Neuroticism and so, bubbling with resentment, they want to see everything which symbolises power — for which they are so ravenous — torn down.

So, Los Angeles becomes a sanctuary city and Mexicans are more likely to take it over if they feel love for their own people and despise the Europeans: hence, they wave Mexican flags and burn American ones, despite not wanting to return to Mexico. Those who see this as a contradiction are missing the point. They must examine the situation via evolutionary psychology.

I suspect that what is happening in Los Angeles is a harbinger of the future: the South Africanization of the United States; its violent break up along ethnic lines as non-Europeans carve out more and more territory.

 

Toy-Boys and Goy-Boys: Some Heinous Hate-Think for Pride Month

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After Gay Liberation in the 1970s, the Glorious Gay Community (G.G.C.) got one big thing it didn’t want. At the same time, it didn’t get one big thing that it did want. The big thing it got but didn’t want was AIDS, which was a product of the gay genius for brewing butt-busting bugs by energetically practising unnatural sex. As the hate-scientist Gregory Cochran puts it: “Homosexual men are nature’s Petri dishes.”

Cruelty to chickenhawks

And what was the big thing the G.G.C. didn’t get but did want? Simple: it was the legalization of sex with children. The recent eulogies for the great gay writer Edmund White haven’t discussed some interesting lines from his bestseller States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980):

I’m not in the business of recommending guidelines for sex with youngsters; I simply haven’t gathered enough information about the various issues involved. But one proposal that seems reasonable to me would be to lower the age of consent to twelve for boys and girls, regardless of whether the sex involved is straight or gay and regardless of the age of the older partner. (“Boston and Washington, D.C.,” ch. 9, p. 286)

White also revealed in the book that “One of my dear friends is a convinced but discreet chickenhawk” (ch. 8, p. 254) — that is, a pedophile who pursued boys (“chicken” is gay slang for a partner who’s hairless, like a plucked chicken). Later, he interviewed another chickenhawk and committed “cruelty” against him:

From Joy to Oy!: First Silverstein celebrates sodomy, then AIDS slaughters sodomites

“Sometimes,” I said, “I think gay radicals have made a mistake to take up the cause of pedophilia. There’s been so much about pedophilia in the radical press — Fag Rag’s special supplement; the Body Politic’s ‘Men Loving Boys Loving Men.’ There’s no way society is ever going to accept man-boy love. And it’s not as though there are very many boy-lovers.” I was aware of the cruelty of what I was saying. (“Boston and Washington, D.C.,” p. 286)

How many people today know that “gay radicals” took up “the cause of pedophilia” in the 1970s and ’80s? Or that “Gay Leftists in the United States and abroad” were “debating the issue of gay pederasty and pedophilia with considerable energy”? (p. 283) All that has gone down the memory-hole. It’s an aspect of Glorious Gay History that the mainstream media don’t want to discuss, just as the mainstream media doesn’t want to discuss some current aspects of the disease Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox). It’s sexually transmitted and prevalent among homosexuals, so why does it sometimes affect children and animals living with homosexuals? Amid their incessant celebration of homosexuality, the mainstream media don’t want to ask that fascinating question, let alone answer it. Gay is Good, after all.

“How did monkeypox spread from men to boys?” A fascinating question that the mainstream media are failing to ask

But that by no means exhausts the fascinating questions the mainstream media are currently failing to ask about the Glorious Gay Community. For example, in Britain three members of the G.G.C. will “face trial in April of next year” over “arson attacks on two properties and a car.” The men are allegedly rent-boys, that is, male prostitutes. Two of them, Roman Lavrynovych, 21, and Petro Pochynok, 34, are Ukrainian, while the third, Stanislav Carpiuc, 26, is a Romanian born in Ukraine. That’s already a very interesting story. Why might rent-boys from Ukraine be setting fire to houses and cars in London? But what makes the story even more interesting is that the arson-attacked houses and cars are all “linked to Sir Keir Starmer,” as the BBC discreetly puts it.

Starmer’s Charmers: the three alleged rent-boys who will go on trial nearly a year from now (image from BBC)

That’s the only mention of Starmer in the BBC story about the upcoming trial of the alleged arsonist rent-boys. However, can you imagine what the BBC and rest of the mainstream media would be saying if alleged Ukrainian rent-boys were accused of arson in Washington against property “linked to” Donald Trump? I can certainly imagine it. The mainstream media would be going nuts. They certainly went nuts over an entirely fictitious sex-story about Trump and female prostitutes in Russia. And over an entirely fictitious sex-story about David Cameron, the former British prime minister, and a pig’s head at Oxford University. For left-wing Starmer there’s discretion; for right-wing Trump and not-so-left-wing Cameron there was hysteria.

Averting the Gaze from Gray Gays

So was Starmer having sex with the rent-boys? Did they fall out with him for some reason and seek revenge by committing arson on his property? Those are the obvious questions that the mainstream media aren’t asking. If Starmer is secretly gay or bisexual, then he’s an obvious candidate to join the club possibly established by Blobamacron. That’s my collective name for Tony Blair, Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron, who are all rumored to be secretly gay or bisexual and who may all have been blackmailed over it by the Israeli spy-agency Mossad. If so, they aren’t toy-boys but goy-boys, gentile males performing services for Israel under threat of exposure. Perhaps Jewish Israel — or Jew-run Ukraine — turned Starmer into a goy-boy by threatening to expose his pursuit of toy-boys, which may date back decades.

Definitely gray, possibly gay: the power-hungry leftist lawyer Keir Starmer

But now Starmer’s latest toy-boys are in “the high security Belmarsh prison in south-east London,” awaiting trial on charges of “arson with intent to endanger life.” Or so it appears. Then again, who ever got a gay vibe off Starmer? Instead, people got a gray vibe — he always seemed a paradigm of the gray leftist bureaucrat, as dull and dreary on the outside as he was hungry for power and privilege on the inside.

We were obviously being blinkered bigots. Why shouldn’t a member of the Gray Community also be a member of the Gay Community? And there is something suggesting strongly that the current British prime minister is indeed both Gray and Gay. It’s the failure of the mainstream media to pursue all those fascinating questions about the fire-bug fairies, the Ukrainian rent-boys now charged with arson against property “linked to Sir Keir Starmer.” Silence is a sure sign of significance.

When the World Says No, Kenya and Nigeria Say Yes to Israel

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As international opinion sours on Israel, Kenya and Nigeria emerge as rare bastions of pro-Zionist support.

A recently-published Pew Research Center polling paints a stark picture of negative global sentiment toward Israel in response to its military campaign in Gaza. In a survey of 24 countries conducted from January to April 2025, most respondents—spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America—expressed negative views of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 20 of these nations, around half or more of adults hold unfavorable opinions of Israel, with overwhelming majorities in Australia (74%), Greece (72%), Indonesia (80%), Japan (79%), the Netherlands (78%), Spain (75%), Sweden (75%), and Turkey (93%) expressing negative views. Even in the United States, historically a strong supporter, 53% now view Israel unfavorably, marking an 11-point increase since 2022.

Amid this global backlash, Kenya and Nigeria stand out as notable exceptions. In both countries, around half or more of the population views Israel positively—50% in Kenya and 59% in Nigeria—making them among the few places where Israel retains net favorable ratings. This divergence from the global anti-Israel norm is not accidental but reflects a convergence of security concerns and religious demographics.

Both Kenya and Nigeria face persistent Islamist insurgencies: Kenya contends with al-Shabaab, while Nigeria grapples with Boko Haram and affiliated groups. These insurgencies have resulted in significant violence against Christian communities and have heightened Christian-Muslim sectarian tensions. The rise of evangelical Christianity in this context has fostered a highly receptive climate for pro-Israel narratives, offering a new set of shabbos goyim that Israeli diplomacy can readily mobilize in the Jewish state’s campaign to justify its ethnic cleansing agenda and its geopolitical skullduggery abroad.

In Nigeria, evangelical Christians now number approximately 58 million, making it the world’s third-largest evangelical population after the United States and China. Pentecostal and evangelical churches have grown rapidly, with Pentecostals alone estimated to make up to 63% of Nigerian Christians. This growth is particularly notable in northern Nigeria, where despite ongoing persecution and violence, Christianity is expanding “astronomically,” according to local church leaders.

As for Kenya, evangelicals make up about 20% of the population—over 10 million people—and Pentecostals an estimated 30–35%. This demographic surge has been accompanied by a rise in evangelical influence in politics and society, with Kenya’s current President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Chebet Ruto both closely aligned with evangelical leaders.

This expansion of evangelical Christianity is fortuitous for Zionist activism. Evangelical theology often emphasizes biblical prophecy and support for the state of Israel, and evangelical leaders have become vocal advocates for Israel in both countries. Their influence extends into politics and public discourse, reinforcing pro-Israel narratives and shaping national policy.

As I have highlighted in previous articles, Israel is actively seeking new allies in the Global South as its traditional Western support base erodes. My earlier analysis of the emerging Hindu nationalist-Zionist alliance in India and Guatemala’s strange relationship with Israel underscores Israel’s strategy of cultivating relationships with countries where religious tensions or even high degrees of philosemitism can be leveraged for geopolitical gain. In Kenya and Nigeria, Israel can exploit the ongoing sectarian violence between Christians and Muslims—exacerbated by Islamist insurgencies—to forge alliances with their respective governments. Moreover, the significant presence of evangelical Christians in these countries makes pro-Zionist advocacy efforts much easier.
Israel’s outreach is not purely altruistic; it is a calculated effort to build reliable blocs of support at the United Nations and in international forums, where it finds itself increasingly isolated. By cynically positioning itself as a partner to Christian communities under threat, Israel secures diplomatic and security cooperation, while evangelical leaders frame this alignment as a spiritual and national imperative. This dynamic is evident in both Kenya and Nigeria, where evangelical growth and Islamist violence have created a unique environment for pro-Israel sentiment to flourish.

In a world of shifting loyalties, Africa’s evangelical boom and Islamist insurgencies are Israel’s unlikely lifeline. By aligning with Israel, Kenya and Nigeria have chosen complicity over global resistance.

History will not look kindly at these Uncle Toms of the House of Zion.

 

 

Booklet review: “Islam and Judaism,” by P Curzio Nitoglia (1996)

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Booklet review: “Islam and Judaism,” by P. Curzio Nitoglia. 1996

The booklet is a summary of a massive book by P Théry (aka Hannah Zacharias) published first in 1955 with the title From Moses to Mohammed and now not available. Théry was a Catholic priest, member of the Papal Academy, professor at the Catholic Institute in Paris and a member of the historical department of the Holy Congregation. He died just before the second Vatican Council. The book was written as part of his priestly duties. It seems to be the case that his work has never been contradicted by the Pope or other princes of the church, so it stands that the official Catholic historical view of Islam is that it is a golem religion invented and pushed by devious, Jesus-hating Jewish rabbis. Wouldn’t it be good if more of the world’s billion or so Catholics became aware of this aspect of their faith?

Nitoglia sums up the work of Théry in five points:

1.Islam is nothing other than a post-Christian Jewish religion as explained by a rabbi.

2. Mohammed was pushed towards Judaism by his Jewish born wife Khadidja and helped by the rabbi of Mecca.

3. The Koran was put together by the rabbis of Mecca.

4. The original Koran was a shortened Arabic translation of the Pentatuech – the first five books of the Old Testament. It was lost after Mohammed’s death! If true, this is remarkably suspicious. After conquering all of Arabia with this new religion, how could the orginal Koran just go missing? He offers quotes from the new Koran as proof of the existence of the previous Koran: Sura 20,112 speaks of an Arabic translation and Sura 15, 86-87 mentions two previous written teachings.

5. The Koran is noticeably anti-Christian, precisely because it was written by a rabbi.Add Post

There were lots of Jews in Arabia back then, in the oases as well as the three cities of Mecca. Medina and Taif. In Medina, Jews were the majority. Most people were pagans and there were some Christian groups. It is suggested that a clever rabbi, well versed in Talmud, devised Islam as a simplified, Arabised Judaism to control the pagans and also prevent them converting to Christianity. Mohammed was selected as a plausible speaker.

He suggests that Mohammed broke with Judaism on ethnic grounds and absolutely not on religious grounds. “The historic place of the Revelation was moved from Jerusalem to Mecca.”

He notes that constant Holy War against the unbelievers is one of Islam’s holiest duties, but omits to draw the comparison with the Talmud’s similar injunctions to Jews.

“Why shouldn’t one be concerned given the increasing millions and millions of Muslims settling in (formerly) Christian Europe who want to islamize it?” He notes that some foolish Christians seek to find friendly references to Christianity in the Koran and he urges caution.

The writer lists a dozen or so other writers, Jews and non-Jews, who support the conclusion of a very intimate link and friendship between the two wings of the Judaeo-Islamic bird.

He quotes Israel Shahak: “Judaism is permeated with a deepseated hatred of Christianity […] In contrast, Judaism’s attitude to Islam is relatively benevolent.”

Omissions include the remarkable Judaeo-Islamic similarities with regards to lying, stealing, raping and murdering non-believers. Israel Shahak details the enthusiastic encouragement the Talmud gives for such activities. The Koran details numerous occasions where Mohammed, blessed be his name, personally engages in war crimes, as part of his day job as a war lord and treasure enthusiast. If you ever want to tease a Muslim friend, ask them what happened to Marwan’s daughter? She wrote some satirical poems about Mohammed, blessed be his name, and you can probably guess what happened to her… Perhaps the author did not want to attract extra controversy?

He says the Israel-Palestine conflict is not a Jewish-Muslim conflict. He quotes Lebanese christian militia leader Jocelyne Khoueiry as saying that the US and Israelis agreed to solve the Palestinian problem by giving them Lebannon and allowing the Lebanese Christians to emigrate to the US. Yassir Arafat and Hamas spokesman Mahmud El Adhar are quoted as saying the Muslims have no problem with their Jewish “cousins”.

“Judaism and Islam are always ready (even today) to band together to destroy Christianity.”

He ends by warning of Judaeo-Masonic infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church and the Judaisation of the Christian milieu.

Notes:

First published in French and Italian in Sodalitum (1996), magazine of Institut Mater Boni Consilii, Italy. Translated by Johannes Rothkranz and published as “Woher stammt der Islam?” by Verlag Anton A. Schmid (1998).

The Jewish Islam theory is not a fringe belief: The authors below include professors from Princeton and other halls of learning and the father of former British prime minister Boris Johnson.

Bernard Lazare, Antisemitism 1969, Bernard Lewis “la Rinascita Islamica” 1991,V Messori “Pensare la storia” 1992, Abraham Geiger “Was hat Mohammed agus den Judenthume aufgenommen?” 1833, P Crone/M Cook “Magarism:The making of the Islamic world” 1977, Rosenthal “Judaism and Islam” 1961, Katsh “Judaism in Islam” 1962, Gotein “Studies in Islamic History” 1966 and “Ebrei e Arabi nella storia” 1980, Cohen “The Jewish self government in medieval Egypt, P Johnson “History of the Jews” 1987, L Sestrieri “Gli Ebrei nella storia di trí milleni”1980, J Bouman “Il Corano e gli Ebrei” 1992, S Noja “Maometo profeta dell’islam” 1974

 

White Rites: Meditations on Mathematics and Materiality

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Ὅ τι ἄν σοι συμβαίνῃ, τοῦτό σοι ἐξ αἰῶνος προκατεσκευάζετο.[1] That was how the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius put it nearly two thousand years ago: “Whatever may befall thee, it was ordained for thee from everlasting.” He was elegantly and eloquently expressing a core tenet of Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy that taught dogged devotion to duty, tireless pursuit of virtue, and unshaken courage in the face of illness, oppression and disaster.

Bright bubbles on black water

But how and why was courage any more admirable than cowardice? Why was virtue worthier than vice? Or devotion to duty better than dereliction? Stoicism is a noble edifice that, in truth, collapses at a pin-drop. Or so some would claim. This is because that core tenet of the philosophy was determinism, the doctrine that the universe is bound by iron and immutable chains of cause and effect, operating from eternity to eternity. If determinism is true, we are bright bubbles on the black river of fate, born willy-nilly, bursting willy-nilly,[2] swirled this way or that between birth and bursting by currents over which we have no control and which hasten us or hamper us at their whim, not ours. Shakespeare said: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”[3] The Stoics said: “All the world’s a machine, and all the men and women merely cogs therein.” As Aurelius went on: καὶ ἡ ἐπιπλοκὴ τῶν αἰτίων συνέκλωθε τήν τε σὴν ὑπόστασιν ἐξ ἀιδίου καὶ τὴν τούτου σύμβασιν — “and the coherence of causes wove both thy substance from everlasting and all that happens thereto.”[4]

Slime-mold and Stoic: Physarum polycephalum on left Marcus Aurelius on right (images from Wikipedia)

But the elegance and eloquence of Aurelius can’t silence a simple and possibly lethal question. If Stoicism is true, where does that leave the Stoics? Surely they were sawing, not sowing. They thought they were sowing true doctrine into the minds of men; they were in fact sawing off the branch they were sitting on. It was the branch of epistemology, of truth and reason, and determinism is, on some readings, fatal to those weighty things. In a deterministic universe, why should brains and logic have any higher status than stomachs and digestion? Why should the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius have any greater claim to truth and insight than the song of a blackbird in a bush? If everything we humans think, say and do is indeed fixed ἐξ αἰῶνος — “from everlasting” — then we might seem to have the same status as a sunset or a slime-mold. We’re phenomena, never philosophoi.[5] After all, cogs can’t cogitate. And Stoicism tells us that we are cogs in the world-machine. If so, it’s ludicrous to adjure cogs to be calm, courageous and good. Cogs have no control. Cogs do whatever they are compelled to do by external forces.

The whirl of the world

And so crashes into ruin the noble edifice of Stoicism, self-sapped, self-exploded, self-destroyed. Or so some would claim. But does determinism indeed destroy epistemology and the search for truth and insight? That’s too big a question to tackle here and in such a sordid setting. Nevertheless, I want to look at one aspect of it and to argue that, in one way, determinism is vital for epistemology and is, indeed, the only known guarantor of fixed and reliable truth. I also want to emphasize something strange and sublime about human beings. Or about some human beings, at least. I started this essay with a memorable line from the great Marcus Aurelius. I’ll continue it with a memorable line from the great Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930): “He shook his two fists in the air — the poor impotent atom with his pin-point of brain caught in the whirl of the infinite.”

Universe — Pin-point — Brain (images of Fireworks Galaxy et al from Wikipedia

That’s from a story called “The Third Generation” (1894), one of Doyle’s “Tales of Medical Life.” It describes the mental agony of a patient diagnosed with hereditary syphilis. The grandfather had sinned; the grandson would now suffer. Doyle himself was steeped in Stoicism and had undoubtedly meditated on The Meditations, thinking deeply about determinism and free will, about the mind and its relation to matter and the body. And he compressed his ideas into a highly memorable metaphor: the human brain is indeed a pin-point by comparison with the Universe. Or far, far less than a pin-point. By comparison with the Earth alone, let alone the Solar System or the Universe, a human brain is considerably smaller than a pin-point is by comparison with the human body.[6] And yet that “pin-point of brain” is, in a sense, far mightier than an entire universe of inanimate, unconscious matter.[7] Our pin-points of brain can contemplate and conquer infinity. Which is a strange and sublime thing. How can mere matter do that?

Primal Potentate

I’m talking about mathematics, a discipline that clearly proves human beings to be philosophoi, not mere phenomena.[8] And it’s not a coincidence that all those abstract polysyllables — mathematics, philosophoi, phenomena — come to us from ancient Greek, the language in which the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius composed his Meditations. As the oft-remarked dichotomy goes: The Greeks were thinkers; the Romans were doers. The Hispanic Hellenophile Marcus Aurelius was both. And just as Doyle must have read Aurelius, a contemplator of infinity, Aurelius must have read a conqueror of infinity. The Greek mathematician Euclid conquered infinity in his Elements, a textbook of mathematics composed in the third century before Christ and still studied in the twenty-first century after Christ. Here is that conquest of infinity set out in modern English, as Euclid demonstrates[9] the infinitude of prime numbers like 3, 17 and 101, which are evenly divisible only by themselves and 1:

Euclid’s proof that there are an infinite number of primes

(by reductio ad absurdum)

  1. Assume there are a finite number n of primes, listed as [p1, …, pn].
  2. Consider the product of all the primes in the list, plus one: N = (p1 × … × pn) + 1.
  3. By construction, N is not divisible by any of the pi.
  4. Hence it is either prime itself (but not in the list of all primes), or is divisible by another prime not in the list of all primes, contradicting the assumption.
  5. q.e.d.

For example:

  1. 2 + 1 = 3, is prime
  2. 2 × 3 + 1 = 7, is prime
  3. 2 × 3 × 5 + 1 = 31, is prime
  4. 2 × 3 × 5 × 7 + 1 = 211, is prime
  5. 2 × 3 × 5 × 7 × 11 + 1 = 2311, is prime
  6. 2 × 3 × 5 × 7 × 11 × 13 + 1 = 30031 = 59 × 509 (“Euclid’s proof that there are an infinite number of primes,” Susan Stepney, Professor Emerita, Computer Science, University of York, UK)

Euclid conquers infinity in Book IX, Proposition 20 of the Elements (see text at Wikipedia)

That’s simple but sublime. And supremely significant. I think that the proof above was a rite of passage for the human race — an intellectual rite of passage that dwarfs physical achievements like landing on the Moon or splitting the atom. Euclid, with his pin-point of material brain, proved the existence of an infinite number of immaterial entities known as primes. And we, with our pin-points of material brain, can understand and accept his reasoning. Indeed, if we understand his reasoning, we are compelled to accept it. That is the marvel of mathematics. Or one marvel among many. Mathematics is a deterministic system for generating truth. It’s the closest human beings have yet come to infallible knowledge, which is precisely why it doesn’t claim infallibility. That’s the paradox of infallibility: those who overtly claim it thereby prove that they don’t possess it. As Bertrand Russell said:

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. (“On avoiding foolish opinions,” Bertrand Russell)

Yes, there is persecution in theology — and in politics. And there are claims of infallibility in both. The Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski wrote in his magisterial Main Currents of Marxism (1978) of how Stalin “laid down the rules of Soviet historiography once and for all: Lenin had always been right, the Bolshevik party was and had always been infallible.” Meanwhile, Stalin’s rival Trotsky “imagined that he was conducting scientific observations with the aid of an infallible dialectical method.” If all art aspires to the condition of music,[10] then all epistemology aspires to the status of mathematics. But never achieves it, because mathematics enjoys the twin advantages of ultimate abstraction and insurmountable incomprehensibility. It’s incomprehensible to non-mathematicians, at least. That’s why mathematicians didn’t suffer under Stalin in the way that many scientists did. As Kołakowski also wrote: “Mathematical studies were scarcely ever ‘supervised’ ideologically in the Soviet Union, as even the omniscient high priests of Marxism did not pretend to understand them; consequently, standards were upheld and Russian mathematical science was saved from temporary destruction.”

Molded by matter

Like Popes and Ayatollahs, Marxists claim infallibility precisely because they don’t have it; mathematicians don’t claim it precisely because they do. Or so I would say. I’m not infallible, of course. Nor am I a mathematician or a philosopher. But I am two things that seem to be of great importance in mathematics and philosophy. That is, I’m White and male. Those are statements about my genetics, that is, statements about my materiality. But mathematics and philosophy are about mind, not matter. How can genetics be important in cognition? It can’t, according to orthodox leftists, who denounce as abhorrently racist and abominably sexist any claim that White men are especially or eminently suited to any field of intellectual endeavor.

Yet it’s obvious in a broader sense that genetics is decisive — indeed, deterministic — in mental matters. Humans can be philosophoi and not mere phenomena because they aren’t sunsets or slime-molds. No, they’re humans, which is a statement about genetics and material bodies. Humans and slime-molds are both products of DNA and the blind forces of evolution, but there has never been a Euclid or an Aurelius among the slime-molds, which are barred for ever from mathematics and philosophy by the mere materiality of their junk-jammed genetics.

Damning Derbyshire

That form of genetic determinism can’t be denied by leftists, who often protest too much in their denial that race and sex have been decisive factors in intellectual fields. This is the Black mathematician Jonathan Farley waxing indignant in the Guardian about the bigotry of a White mathematician:

John Derbyshire, a columnist for the National Review, wrote an essay last week implying that black people were intellectually inferior to white people: “Only one out of six blacks is smarter than the average white.” Derbyshire pulled these figures from a region near his large intestine. One of Derbyshire’s claims, however, is true: that there are no black winners of the Fields medal, the “Nobel prize of mathematics”. According to Derbyshire, this is “civilisationally consequential”. Derbyshire implies that the absence of a black winner means that black people are incapable of genius. In reality, black mathematicians face career-retarding racism that white Fields medallists never encounter. Three stories will suffice to make this point. … The second story involves one of the few black mathematicians whom white mathematicians acknowledge as great — or, I should say, “black American mathematicians”, since obviously Euclid, Eratosthenes and other African mathematicians outshone Europe’s brightest stars for millennia. (“Black mathematicians: the kind of problems they wish didn’t need solving”, The Guardian, Thursday 12nd April, 2012)

Like Euclid, Cleopatra was Greek and White, not a Black “African” (image from Wikipedia)

Guardiancaption: Euclid and other African mathematicians outshone Europe’s brightest stars for millennia.’

Farley was being dishonest in that last line, pretending that geography equates to genetics. Yes, Euclid and Erastothenes were “African mathematicians” in the sense that they lived and worked on one corner of the continent of Africa. But they were not Black Africans. They were White — and worse still, for a leftist like Farley, they were White colonizers, part of the Greek diaspora in the conquered land of Egypt. They cannot accurately or honestly be described as “African mathematicians,” because that suggests that they were something they weren’t, namely, indigenous to Africa and Black.

Euclid’s city of Alexandria, part of a Greek colony on one corner of Africa (image from Wikipedia)

And although Blacks can certainly be good mathematicians, Blacks have never been essential or important in mathematics or any other intellectual field. As I said at the Occidental Observer in 2022:

Here’s an astonishing fact: the White mathematician Claude Shannon (1916—2001) contributed more to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) than all Blacks who have ever lived. But then so did the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887—1920). And the Jewish mathematician Emmy Noether (1882—1935), which is even more astonishing. Jews have always been a tiny minority of the world’s population and men have always dominated mathematics, yet one Jewish woman in a short lifetime outperformed the teeming masses of Africa and the Black-African Diaspora over millennia. Blacks have never mattered in math or any other cognitively demanding field. But Jews have mattered hugely, in both good and bad ways. (“Rollock’s Bollocks: Interrogating Anti-Racism and Contemplating the Cargo-Cult of Critique,” The Occidental Observer, 13th May 2022)

But it’s in fields invented by goyim that Jews have mattered for good or ill. The words “mathematics” and “philosophy” are ancient Greek, not ancient Hebrew. And although there is some evidence that Black brains were pondering prime numbers 70,000 years ago,[11] it took the White brains of men like Euclid to prove that astonishing and awesome fact about prime numbers — that they never end, that the digits of an infinite number of them could not be written down if all the oceans were ink and all the sky papyrus.[12] I called Euclid’s conquest of infinity a rite of passage for the entire human race. If so, then it was a White rite in some significant way. But I’m not seeking to deify Whites when I say that, only to recognize an important fact that applies to intellectual history just as much as to active history: that Whites have been outliers and achievers there in ways that other races haven’t. Whites are the all-star all-rounders of the human race, capable of great achievements mentally and physically, musically and mathematically, abstractly and athletically.

And so, while mathematics might have been created in Mesopotamia, it burst its chrysalis in ancient Greece, where White men, with their “pin-points of brain,” proved things beyond all bounds of materiality. Men like Euclid weren’t “impotent atoms” “caught in the whirl of the infinite.” No, they were conquerors of the infinite. You’ve seen one marvellous proof by Euclid, one rite of passage for the human race. Now here’s another of his White rites — a stronger and stranger and subtler proof that should captivate and compel everyone capable of understanding it:

An irrational number is a real number that is not rational, that is, cannot be expressed as a fraction (or ratio ) of the form p / q , where p and q are integers.

[Proof] that the square root of 2 is irrational

Pythagorean proof, as given by Euclid in his Elements

proof by contradiction:

  1. Assume that √2 is rational, that is, there exists integers p and q such that √2 = p / q ; take the irreducible form of this fraction, so that p and q have no factors in common
  2. square both sides, to give 2 = p 2 / q 2
  3. rearrange, to give 2 q 2 = p 2
  4. hence p 2 is even
  5. hence p is even (trivial proof left as an exercise for the reader); write p = 2 m
  6. substitute for p in (3), to give 2 q 2 = (2 m ) 2 = 4 m 2
  7. divide through by 2, to give q 2 = 2 m 2
  8. hence q 2 is even
  9. hence q is even

(1) assumes that p and q have no factors in common; (5) and (9) show they they both have 2 as a factor. This is a contradiction. Hence the assumption (1) is false, and √2 is not rational. (“Irrational number,” Susan Stepney, Professor Emerita, Computer Science, University of York, UK)

One consequence of that proof[13] is that the digits of √2 never end and never fall into any repeating or regular pattern. In short, they’re entirely random[14] (while also being entirely deterministic). And one consequence of that randomness is that, represented in suitable format, the digits of √2 somewhere encode the entirety of this essay. And the entirety of the website on which it’s hosted. And the entirety of the internet and of all books in all languages in all libraries that ever existed. But √2 doesn’t just encode all that, it encodes it infinitely often. √2 is Borges’ Biblioteca de Babel, Borges’ infinite “Library of Babel,” with a single, simple, two-symbol label: √2.

If you aren’t awed and astonished by that, I’ve failed in what I’ve written here. With their pin-points of brain, humans haven’t merely contemplated and begun to comprehend the Universe: they’ve transcended the Universe and burst the bonds and the bounds of mere materiality. That’s certainly food for thought and maybe also food for theism. But that’s where, for now, I’ll conclude this White write on White rites, leaving the last word to Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950):

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,

And lay them prone upon the earth and cease

To ponder on themselves, the while they stare

At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere

In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese

Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release

From dusty bondage into luminous air.

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,

When first the shaft into his vision shone

Of light anatomized! Euclid alone

Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they

Who, though once only and then but far away,

Have heard her massive sandal set on stone. — “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare” (1923)

[1] The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Book X, 5. See translations at Gutenberg and Internet Classics Archive.

[2] “What good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?” Meditations, Book 8, 20.

[3] As You Like It, Act II, scene 7, line 139.

[4] The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Book X, 5. See translations at Gutenberg and Internet Classics Archive.

[5]  Philosophoi is the plural of Greek philosophos, “lover of wisdom.”

[6] The Meditations makes a related point: “the whole earth too is a point [by comparison with the Universe].” Book VIII, 21.

[7] But what matters, of course, is not relative size but absolute complexity. The human brain is tiny by comparison with the Universe, but is the most complex object yet known there.

[8] Theories like that of the Jewish physicist Max Tegmark, stating that matter is mathematics, don’t (and aren’t intended to) solve the problem of the relationship between math and matter, or mind and matter, because “mathematics” is used in two different senses: the abstract system used by conscious human minds and the apparently unconscious and extra-rational entities that inspire and underpin that system.

[9]  Or, more precisely, sets out the demonstration of an earlier mathematician. Euclid was a compiler of math, not a creator.

[10] Walter Pater said this in The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877): “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.” See Gutenberg text.

[11] See discussion of the “Ishango Bone,” an ancient African artefact with proto-mathematical markings that may symbolize prime numbers.

[12] “If all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean were ink, refilled by seven other oceans, the Words of Allah would not be exhausted.” — Qur’an, Surah Luqman.

[13] The proof is attributed to Euclid but possibly or even probably not by him. See “Square root of 2” at Infogalactic.

[14] Mathematicians assume that √2 is “normal” in all bases, that is, it contains all possible sequences of digits with the same frequency and probability.

Oligarchy of the Unfit: Governance in the United Kingdom and the Downfall of Corbyn

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The UK has a severe structural crisis in leadership:  each of the two main parties have defects that do not usually occur in tandem, but, when combined, are highly destructive.  Each is oligarchic, not democratic.  But, in contrast to most oligarchic regimes, each lacks the benefit of stability usually associated with oligarchic regimes — in other words, each are also extremely unstable.

Their oligarchic nature deprives each party of legitimacy with the broader electorate.

The instability derives from organizational defects which set each party literally against itself, and, once in power, sets the Government against itself and the other MP’s of the governing party.  This explains, in part the vacillating and ineffective leadership UK governments have shown in recent years or in times of stress.

A close examination of the electoral and organizational structures of the parties shows the wide gap between the U.S. system and the British system.  From a British point of view, a difference from   the U.S. is not always viewed as bad.  However, the “gap” here is in something crucial:  elections.  From an American point of view, there aren’t any.

Instead of “representative democracy, the term “oligarchy by quango” (with each of the parties’ central administration being the “quango”) might be a better descriptor.  In fact, an American might justifiably conclude that elections for Parliament are far less democratic today than in the times of Henry IV or Charles I.

Structural Instability.  Each party has, to an American eye, a (I) bizarre, convoluted, and highly centralized method of local Parliamentary candidate selection; and (II) since 1980 (in the case of the Labour party) and 1998 (in the case of the Conservative party) Parliamentary party leadership selection:  namely, the Parliamentary leader of the party (think Tony Blair, Boris Johnson) is selected  not by the Labour or Conservative members of Parliament but, rather, in each case by a vote of the “members” of the relevant party at annual conferences or special elections.  Thus the situation could easily arise (and has recently arisen) where the elected head of the Parliamentary party — the Prime Minister, if in government, the Leader of the Opposition, if out of government — could be despised by a large majority of his or her “fellow” Parliamentary party members.  The spectacular destruction of Corbyn, nominally the Parliamentary party leader from 2015–2017, by his own Parliamentary party and the Labour central executive at Southside or Brewers Green (take your pick),1 is a glaring example.  This goes to the “war against itself” point.

However, the main issue is that none of these actors are elected in any meaningful sense.  So much for “much representative democracy”.

Oligarchy.  Stunning as it may be to an American, the UK voter at large has virtually no say in the selection process of Labour and Tory candidates or party governing officials.  Unlike the U.S., where (in the old days) there were locally organized caucuses which morphed into (in the now days) full scale primary elections, the local voters, even by representation of intermediary bodies (e.g., the state legislature, or, in the UK, local councils) have virtually no say.  The bottom base of each party is not, as in the U.S., those members of the voting public that identify on caucus or primary day (or a few months before via registration) as a Republican or Democrat and can number in the millions or tens of millions.  Instead, it is comprised solely of the “membership” of each of the two parties.  Becoming a member is not an easy process.  It is quite a bit like the process of admission to a good lunch club.  Roughly speaking, “candidates” for membership in each of the parties are proposed by the local constituency but are approved only by the central party leadership in London.  (For the Labour Party, see Rule Book, Appendix 2, Section 1 A. and C. Labour Party Rule Book [skwawkbox.org].   For the Conservative Party, see Section 17.7, Part IV, of the Conservative Party Constitution (amended through 2021), Conservative Party Constitution as amended January 2021.pdf [conservatives.com]). This membership, so selected, has for most of the history of each party, been a miniscule fraction of the population of the United Kingdom.  The Labour party currently boasts about 550,000 members and the Tory party about 350,000 members — a total of 800,000 members for the two main parties that comprise most of the seats in Parliament, compared with a potential UK voting public of 32 million that turned out in the 2019 general election.

Even if these members, through so-called local “constituencies” could freely select their candidates, about 2% of the full potential electorate would be choosing the candidates.  In a sense, one could say that these constituencies “represent” the great voting public of the U.K. in making party selection.  As a comparison, even at its most restrictive, in the 1790’s, the United States permitted (via property qualifications and the like) about 12% of its electorate to vote — directly for the House of Representatives, and indirectly, through popularly elected state legislatures or the Electoral College, for the United States Senate and President, respectively.

But that is not the half of it.  In fact, the constituencies cannot freely elect candidates.  Since the candidates themselves are also subject to central party approval, no one even gets to run before a constituency unless pre-approved by London Central.

And even if the constituencies were able to freely elect any candidate of their choice, since none of the constituancy are elected by the greater voting public, but are chosen by a “lunch club” admission process, one could hardly call candidate selection “democratic” in any case.

Due to the membership selection process, one can see that the idea that anyone could be a member — so that, in theory, millions could pack the membership rolls and democratize the process — is unrealistic.  Careful selection procedures ensure no risk exists that the rabble holding distasteful opinions will be admitted .

To make things worse, each member, once admitted, is subject to expulsion by the central authorities of the party for violating the vague specifications set out in the governing rules of the parties.

In detail, the structure each party, described in seriatim, appears to work as follows.

Labour.

Until the “reforms” instituted by the Right Honorable Sir Anthony Litton Blair (aka, at his own surprising wish, “Tony”) as leader of the Party starting in 1997, the previous method of party control  giving the Trade Unions a virtual veto was changed to reduce significantly the role of organized unions.

As currently constituted, after Blair’s reforms, the Labour party is no more democratic, but, from the capitalist point of view, is in better shape since it is subject to less direct Trade Union control.2

The party is an unincorporated association governed by a “Rule Book”, see Labour Party Rule Book (skwawkbox.org)  that, in turn, sets forth in 15 Chapters the “Constitutional Rules” of the party.  Id.  Appended to this as part of the Rule Book are nine Appendices each with, one presumes, sad to say (given their contents), the force of the main body of the text.

The Labour party has the crippling defect that (I) the head of the party is technically a separate position from that of head of the Parliamentary  party and (II) the head, the Executive, and the National Executive Committee to which the Executive reports, the National Committee, are not selected by the head of the Parliamentary party or by the Parliamentary Party leader, but partly by the Annual Conference vote (theoretically at least the members at large of the party) and partly by certain interest groups (such as trade unions) and the Parliamentary wing of the party.  The Parliamentary wing of the party comprises a minority on the National Committee.  One might almost point to a new Constitutional concept when Labour are in power: “King in Trade Union”.

Tory.

The organization of the Tory party — technically “The Conservative and Union Party” — is somewhat less at odds with itself than that of the Labour Party but is, nonetheless, baroque.

The Constitution of the Conservative Party, as amended through 2021 (the “Tory Constitution”) provides for what appears to be a dual leadership structure.

The “Leader” of the Tory party (a) must be a member of the House of Commons but (b) is elected by the members of the Conservative Party in accordance with the provisions of “Schedule 2” of the Tory Constitution.  When so selected, he is the Prime Minister when in office; out of office, the leader of the opposition.  His principal duty is to “determine the political direction of the Party having regard to the views of Party Members and the Conservative Policy Forum.”  Tory Constitution, Part III (Section 11).

The selection of the Leader operates via a behind-the-scenes process, although less “behind the scenes” than it used to be.  Since 1998, the so-called “1922 Committee” — so named since it first formed in 1922 to defeat the incipient Leadership candidacy of the unfortunate Nathanial Curzon, then Foreign Minister and formerly (and famously, the Viceroy of India) nominates pursuant to its own procedures a slate of nominees — or only one nominee, if it wishes — for the position of Leader.  This slate is then put forth to the Conservative Party membership for a vote, and possibly a run-off vote if no candidate achieves a majority on the first round  (Tory Constitution, Schedule 2).

Historically, before 1965, the Queen selected the party leader, presumably with the informal advice of party “grandees”.  From 1965–98, the parliamentary party controlled.  From 1998 to now, the parliamentary party runs ballots until down to the last two; then the last two go to the party members.  But the “last two” rule is per the 1922 Committee rules, which can be changed.  It would seem under the Constitution that the 1922 Committee could bypass the Parliamentary party members totally and just directly propose a slate of 2, 3 or more.  It could also change its rules so  that the Parliamentary MPs names which the Parliamentary MPs would be whittled down, say, to 5.  The candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote becomes Leader (Tory Constitution, Schedule 2).  It is notable that, although the slate is all of the MP’s selected by “establishment folks” (who are also MP’s), the vote among the candidates is made by a membership some — or in an extreme case — all of whom are not even resident in the United Kingdom and are not UK citizens (Join Us | Conservatives Abroad).   One wonders if the Right Honorable Rushi Sunak, the previous Leader and “one-year” Prime Minister, could have better spent his time recruiting his fellow Gujaratti Indians in the northern subcontinent of India for Tory Party membership, since those in the UK don’t seem interested.  After recruiting a couple hundred million of those (with Hindustani translations on the ballots of course), he could remain Tory Leader for the rest of his life.  He would of course have to tweak the Constitution to provide that the current Leader must always be included on the 1922 Committee’s slate..  But with 200 million adherents….

The Leader, in turn, selects the “other” head of the Conservative Party — the “Chairman” of the Board of the Conservative Party.  The Board is the supreme ruling body of the Conservative Party.  It consists of 19 members, none of whom is the Leader.  The Leader selects at his own discretion 3 members of the Board:  the Chairman (above), one of the two Vice Chairmen, the Treasurer of the Party (who serves as an officer of the Party and as a member of the Board).  In addition, the Leader (a) selects one other person, subject to the approval of the Board and (b) has the right of approval over an additional person selected by the Board, giving the Leader the right to appoint three members and to have a say in the appointment of two more, for a total of five members.  The other members are the Chairman of the Conservative Party Conference, elected by the Membership (he serves as the other Vice President of the Party), the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, the three Chairmen of the English, Welsh, and Scottish Conservative Parties, respectively, and the Chairman of the Conservative Councilors Association.  In addition, a member of the Tory party staff is selected by the Chairman of the Board.  So, essentially, the Board is effectively outside the control of both the Leader and the Parliamentary conservative party.  It is this confusing edifice that has the power of both candidate and membership deselection.

The Board crucially has, under Section 17.7 of the TC, the power in its “absolute discretion” to accept or refuse the membership of any prospective or current member.  The power to “refuse” membership to a current member presumably is a roundabout way of saying the Board has the power to kick out any person from Tory Party membership it wants to, including, presumably, sitting members of parliament.  If that weren’t enough, the TC rubs it in your face.  Under Article 17.22, it has the power over “[t]he suspension of membership or the expulsion from membership of any member whose conduct is in conflict with the purpose, objects and values of the Party as indicated in Part I Article 2 or which is inconsistent with the objects or financial well-being of an Association or the Party or be likely to bring an Association or the Party into disrepute.”  Well, that’s a lot of discretion!

Under  Article 17.5 of the TC, the Board has the power over “the maintenance of the Approved List of Candidates in accordance with Article 19.1 of, and Schedule 6 to, the TC (Article 19 substantially simply refers to Schedule 6).

Under Schedule 6, Sections 14–21, the Board — like its Labour Party counterpart — incredibly has the power to “withdraw” associations — that is, local conservative party constituencies — from membership, thereby disenfranchising all of the members of the local association unless the Board decides otherwise. Schedule 6, Section 20.  In other words, vote the wrong way, propose the wrong candidates, say the wrong thing, yer out, Jack!

The local Conservative “Associations” are no better.  The model rules, attached as Schedule 7 to the TC, state that

[t]he Officers of the Association may move before the Executive Council the suspension or termination of membership of the Association of any member whose declared opinions or conduct shall, in their judgment, be inconsistent with the objects or financial well-being of the Association or be likely to bring the Party into disrepute. Similarly, the Officers may move the refusal of membership of the Association for the same reasons. Following such a motion, the Executive Council may by a majority vote suspend, terminate or refuse membership for the same reason. (Emphasis added.)

Good God.  Even the toniest lunch clubs in New York do not have such discretion to decapitate members.

DISPOSING OF A LEADER

In getting rid of a leader who is Prime Minister, there are two ways:  Parliamentary and Party.

The Parliamentary method is for the Parliament as a whole to vote, apparently by bare majority, that “the Parliament has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government”.  In such a case, there are 15 days in which the existing Parliament can try to find a new government.  If not, a General Election is held.

The second is for the party itself to hold a vote of “no confidence” in the Leader (not the whole government).  In the Tory party, 15% of the Tory members can petition to have a Leader no-confidence vote.  In that case the vote is by the Tory Members of Parliament (not any other Tory party members) only.  If the PM loses, a party election (by party members, not the parliamentary members) for a new leader.  However, apparently under current rules (of the 1922 Committee?), there are preliminary ballots among the Tory Parliamentary party members only (of the whole House, not just the 1922 Committee).  Once the ballot gets down to the final two, a choice between the final two is then put to the Tory party members at large.  If the PM wins, no more “no confidence” votes are permitted for a year.

In the Labor party, there is no such thing as a vote of “no confidence” in the Leader.  One challenges a sitting leader by mounting a candidate to oppose him.  If that candidate gets 20% of the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party ) membership to support him (note that this is higher than the 15% threshold required for a non-removal election), the contest is on, pursuant to rules to be jerry-rigged by the NEC (National Executive Council) of the party.  Which could be anything.  There is a lack of clarity as to whether the incumbent can automatically run, or must meet the 20% threshold in terms of PLP member nominations.  If the latter, a leader like Jeremy Corbyn could be unseated easily, because he probably would not get the requisite number of PLP member nominations, even though, if ON the ballot, he might win by a Corbynist margin of say 57% to 20% to 13% — a crushing victory among the Labor party membership.  (Corbyn in his initial run got the requisite 20% support on a fluke, mainly from members that actually supported other candidates but assumed he would lose but split the vote in an advantageous way.)  When Corbyn was challenged, barely a year into his leadership term, he obtained a ruling from NEC (which apparently by 2016 he controlled, even though he did not control the Executive Director (McDougal) who actually runs Southside) until 2018 when McDougal was replaced (even his replacement we now know worked against Corbyn) that the incumbent had a right to be on the ballot without meeting the 20% threshold, so Corbyn did not have to do what for him at that time would have been the impossible — namely, get the 51 MP’s necessary for a 20% endorsement.  This ruling has now been affirmed by a High Court ruling that now stands as substantive law effective even in the absence of an NEC ruling to that effect. [1]

Even with the incumbent’s right to run, this is madness.  It means that — as literally was the case     with Corbyn — that a Leader could be elected by the members of the party at large (a) that only 20% (or less — see below on Corbyn) support and thus (b) whose leadership could be easily challenged and subjected to re-vote at a new party conference almost on a continual basis.  Effectively, after Southside had “deselected” enough Corbynist Labour Party at large members, this is exactly what happened to Corbyn. See “What role should party members have in leadership elections?.”

DESTRUCTION OF CORBYN

So, with this as the background instability of the system, it is easier to see how Corbyn was destroyed and how, now, the former leader of Labour is no longer even a member of Labour.

However, the particular details of Corbyn’s demise can be traced in good part to his naivety and weakness.

Weakness.  His weakness was that he was hated by almost the entire membership of the PLP’s — the Labor Party MP’s.  In a normal year he would have been able to secure, at most, say 5% of the PLP’s — 15 points short of getting on an uncontested ballot for Leader.  However, for a number of later-to-be-regretted tactical reasons involving other candidates, a number of his Parliamentary adversaries endorsed him despite despising him — enough to get him over the 20% threshold.

Having thus gotten on the ballot by pure luck, the Party membership — clearly, completely out of tune with the MP’s “representing” them — elected Corbyn by a crushing majority at that year’s Party Conference.  Suddenly this reviled backbencher was Labour Party Leader!

Naivete.  For reasons best known to himself, former GMB executive, Toby McNicol, who at the time of Corbyn’s ascension to the leadership of the Labour party, held the extremely powerful position of General Secretary of the Party, despised Corbyn.  McNicol did not wish to serve under him.  Accordingly, McNicol offered to resign (again, for reasons known only to himself — perhaps a last trace of English gentlemanliness).  This was a huge gift to Corbyn and a huge “own goal” for the “New Labour” Parliamentary Labour Party establishment.  Had Corbyn accepted McNicol’s resignation and packed the Labour Party executive with his own people, Corbyn might still today be Party leader.  However, unbelievably, Corbyn did not take up this gift — he refused.  So Corbyn’s sworn enemy — McNicol — remained as General Secretary.

The result was that the Labour Party executive at Brewer’s Green, then moving offices to Southside, continued to be occupied by either New Labour bureaucrats or others — like McNicol — who apparently hated Corbyn just as much as McNicol.  Since, as noted in numbing detail above, the Party executive has the enormous power of selection and de-selection of candidates and entire constituencies and the power within extremely broad guidelines to set the terms of any leadership election or challenge, this was an enormous “own goal” on Corbyn’s part.

From that moment on, McNicol and the New Labour apparatchiks at Brewer’s Green worked as hard as they could to unseat Corbyn, as did the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), which, of course despised Corbyn as well.

The first result came in 2016 shortly after the Brexit vote.  The PLP demanded Corbyn resign.  When he refused, a meaningless “vote of no confidence” was held by the PLP, which, predictably, Corbyn lost be a huge margin.  Then PLP member Owen Johnson then got the requisite 20% of the PLP to endorse his challenge to Corbyn.

McNicol used every trick in the book to trip up Corbyn via the broad discretion granted the NEC in the Labour Party rule book.

First, he convened a meeting of the NEC without informing Corbyn that it was for the purpose of making a determination under the Labour Party rules that Corbyn, like any challenger, needed to get endorsements from 20% of the PLP to appear on the ballot triggered by the challenge.  This would have forced Corbyn out, since he would have been unable to obtain that many endorsements.  However, the Labour unions as a block voted with Corbyn, resulting in a rejection of that proposal.  Although the Executive sued to reverse the NEC ruling, the ruling was upheld by the High Court.  See above.

Second, McNicol convinced the NEC to disqualify any Conference Labour Party (“CLP”) members joining within the last six months.  The result was to disqualify about 20% of the CLP, most of whom were the late-entering Corbyn supporters.  The power of the NEC to retroactively disqualify the voting rights of these members was upheld by the Court of Appeal, after first being rejected by the High Court.  See above.

Notwithstanding these maneuvers, Corbyn won a crushing victory among the general membership and retained his leadership position.

Having failed to unseat Corbyn through “behind the scenes” rule jiggering, the PLP, and the press (who also hated Corbyn) formed a new line of attack.  Corbyn had always been a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of the Israeli occupation of the west bank.  This, and his statements in support of this position were dredged up as evidence of “anti-Semitism”.  Since the Party had foolishly made a rule prohibiting any Member from “anti-Semitism” — whatever that was at any given time — accusations of “anti-Semitism” could be deadly for any Member, including Corbyn.  At first, the Party did not accuse Corbyn directly; rather it attempted to de-select a number of Corbyn’s senior party supporters

As Chris Willimson describes, instead of rejecting these claims out of hand, Corbyn weakly agreed to punish a couple of Party members attacked and agreed to a commission of inquiry to look into these claims.  Of course, the commission would be staffed by the very Brewers Green apparatchiks, including Toby McNicol, who hated Corbyn.  Predictably, this commission was used to smear Corbyn.  In addition, it was used to deselect not only many of Corbyn’s few supporters in Parliament, but to deselect entire constituencies whose statements the Southsde folks did not like, essentially throwing out of the party anyone who supported Corbyn.  This deslection process continued long enough that, by the end of 2019, Corbyn had been fatally weakened in the CLP itself.

So instead of accepting McNicol’s resignation, bringing in a Corbyn supporter at the head of the party, and then ruthlessly expelling from Brewer’s Green its current employees and replacing them with Corbyn supporters, Corbyn now faced a Labor Executive dead set on destroying him through endless “anti-Semitism” hearings.

Notwithstanding all this, Corbyn managed to fend off these attacks to come closer to a Labour victory — in 2017 — than any leader since Blair.  However, after losing the 2019 election, and bloodied beyond belief by the PLP antisemitism war, he resigned as leader under duress.  Very promptly he was literally “deselected” and thrown out of the party, despite being one of the longest serving labor MP’s then in Parliament and having served as its leader since 2015!

Some have blamed Jewish power exclusively for Corbyn’s downfall.  However, although Jewish power may in some sense be blamed for Corbyn’s political demise, the bizarre structure of British politics, in which a man wildly unpopular among the PLP could become leader of the Party due to support by members paying 3 lbs each for the privilege, plus his own naivety and weakness, played even greater roles.

The Sad Conclusion: Support for Israel and Mass Immigraiton by Both Parties

But the implications for the desiccated state of Britain’s vaunted “mother of Parliaments” and its elective representative government albeit under a Monarchy, are dire.  The people who clearly approved Corbyn have no say.  Those who do “have their say” are immediately thrown out of the party.  The result is that, when the 36 million-strong UK electorate gets to choose, they get to choose between two candidates who (a) slavishly support Israel and (b) slavishly support massive immigration, even though polling indicates each of these objects of elite affection are wildly unpopular.

So, no, it’s not “all the Jews’”.  But any time you set up a system so centrally controlled — whether it is with the Tory or Labour parties, BBC, or CBS News, the chance that a small set of anti-social conspirators seize the levers of power for their own ends approaches 100%.

If the conspirators simply want money, then you lose money.

If the conspirators want to destroy the people itself, then the result is the destruction of the country.

That’s where you all are “English-folk”.

_______________________

1/  Brewer’s Green — apparently not Southside — was the labor central party HQ in 2015.  From April, 2012 to December, 2015 the Labor Party hq was at Brewer’s Green.  From December, 2015 to early January, 2023, it was at 105 Victoria Street in Southside, hence called familiarly “Southside”.  See Labour Party headquarters (UK) – Wikipedia .  From January 2023 to today, it has been at a series of two addresses in Southwark — not Southside.  Confusing?  Well, might as well have confusion of addresses to match the confusion in the Rules.

2/  From 1900 to 1978, new leaders chosen by parliamentary party.  In 1978, an “electoral college” method put in, with 1/2rd members, 1/3rd trade unions, and 1/3rd parliammentary members.  That apparently lasted until 2014, in which it went to [all members?}  Well it is parliamentary MP ballots to get to the top 5, then those 5 go to the party members.  That is how Corbyn got through because he was 5th out of 5 on the MP ballot, but then won the party members hands down.

[1]  Nunns, Candidate, at 323 (no citation), OR Books, 2016.  Foster v McNicol and Corbyn, High Court of Justice Queens Bench, Neutral Citation Number: [2016] EWHC 1966 (QB) (July 28, 2016).  The High Court made a substantive ruling that the incumbent need not get any nominations; it did NOT simply issue a ruling affirming NEC’s ruling on either of the grounds (a) that the NEC was the sole judge of the rules or (b) that in this case the vote of the NEC was “reasonable” interpretation of the rules. Ibid. Accordingly, the High Court decision stands as a substantive interpretation of the rules that will bind further decisions of the NEC until if and when the underlying rules are properly amended by vote of the membership.  Note that the court, noting that the Labor Party is an unincorporated association bound solely by a “contract” — namely the Rules — ruled on this as a normal interpretation of contract case.  Id.  Note, in Evangelou v. McNicol, the Court of Appeal (Civil Division), on Appeal from the High Courts of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Neutral Citation Number: [2016] EWCA Civ 817 (August 12, 2016), held that the NEC did have the power to retroactively disenfranchise all constituency members who had joined the party within a period of six months before the date of the NEC ruling, thus disenfranchising about 130,000 new Labor Party members from the vote.