United Kingdom of Babylon

When you are in the act of speaking truth to power, you are not capable of understanding the scope of future consequences, and rarely are you ever contemplating anything beyond the need to alleviate what you know needs to be said.

I cannot believe the distance I have traveled in five years, but as I watch aghast at the scenes in the UK in this past week across social media, I have thought about my voice in 2024 versus my voice in 2019. And I remember the moment I stepped off the edge. I was sitting on the couch I am writing from now, talking on WhatsApp with my oldest friend, who was living in Hong Kong at the time. Ben and I went to different high schools but we used to communicate after school on MSM Messenger (it was the early 2000s), and the conversation was then what it became in 2019 one fateful night for me, and still now in 2024. The funny thing is that for the majority of the past (gulp) 25 years, Ben and I have had one consistent theme of discussion: the world has gone mad, and we’re the only ones who see it.

I recall asking Ben to put words to the discomfort I felt around UK Labour ahead of 2019’s General Election, and specifically around the party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Ben helped me find a language to match my gut response, and it wasn’t so much a lightbulb that came on for me but a siren – I knew I had to speak out. I wrote something, and had Ben read it, and swiftly started pitching it to The Guardian and TIME Magazine and NPR. But nobody would take a piece expressing concern about antisemitism in leftist politics by a liberal British Jew ahead of the 2019 election. I had never met such disinterest in editors for my work. I had never been discriminated against in publishing before for wanting to express my Jewish perspective. And I decided that I wouldn’t be silenced. I took a deep breath, I found out how to get a WordPress account, and I self-published, then I tweeted the link, and I remember that I felt very, very afraid. I knew that this was a dangerous thing to do, but I could never have anticipated the far-reaching consequences of beginning on this path.

I recall the response. I received support from people I respected. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Lord Ian Austin. Simon Schama. Oddly I remember that Alex Kapranos, the lead singer of Franz Ferdinand publicly applauded me. But, of course, there were others who didn’t share in the enthusiasm, and a lot of them white middle class elitists who work in media, politics, and law (it has to be noted that many of these people still consider themselves working class despite graduating far beyond their initial means, which I guess is their prerogative). To those people it was as though I had spat in the cup of tea I had just brewed for them. I was no longer one of them. I was no longer safe. I remember one of the It Girls of the era - a VICE documentary talking head and model, who used to party with Bob Geldof’s kids – scathingly attacked me on Twitter, making some sort of comment that I shouldn’t aim higher than my station of writing hit pieces on Taylor Swift. I thought that was quite rich coming from someone who five minutes prior to becoming a self-appointed political journalist was only famous for blagging her way into NME events (usually via me) and becoming engaged to boys in bands. I was good for getting her on the guestlist until I said nasty things about her idol Jeremy Corbyn.

Those early months were severe, learning just how ignorant the left in the UK can be, and just how remarkably thick my so-called friends were. Shandy and pints of bitter will do that to you over time. So too will a white saviour complex, which they all had and still have. That’s why in the past week, you’ll have seen British elitist liberals post pictures of mosques in the sunshine or retweet Muslim MPs as part of their commitment to “anti-racism”. Nothing wrong with supporting moderate Muslims, of course, but there has been a sordid double standard. You haven’t seen them say a word about British Jews who have been gaslit, intimidated and attacked during “peaceful protests” for the past ten months since October 7. There’s between 200-300,000 Jewish people living in the UK. But according to the white liberal saviours of the UK, the Jews are not a minority worth advocating for. These smug righteous arseholes are sowing the seeds of division between minorities and they are doing it to feel better about themselves in their Hackney bubbles. How nice for them. How cushy.

Let’s just catch up on what’s happening in the UK. On July 30, the far right in England gathered outside a Southport mosque because as a result of misinformation they mistakenly thought that a Rwandan man who murdered young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class was a Muslim immigrant. These far right thuggish mobs have been attacking Muslims in various cities in the UK, and inciting counter riots from Islamist mobs, who are also brandishing weapons and behaving in a criminal manner towards the other side. Extremism on both sides is an ongoing problem in the UK, and neither is being adequately handled.

This past weekend the riots erupted in blazes across England and Northern Ireland. And what has been reported is a stark difference between the policing of the far right (who Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly condemned) and the policing of the Islamist extremists (who Starmer has failed to acknowledge). Hence the nickname Two Tier Kier. The policing of one side is softer than the other. Why is that? Don’t we understand that without adequate and equal policing the tensions will perpetuate?

To my feminists in the house. I’ll remind you: male violence is male violence. I don’t care if you’re white English or a British Muslim. It cuts the same way. As you watch this violence, whatever side it comes from, do you think you should be supporting ideologies that promote male dominance and violence? Such as - Hamas? Remember in 2021, a cavalcade of Muslim men drove through North London with Palestinian flags on their cars, screaming into loudspeakers: “Fuck the Jews, rape their daughters”? Well, the men who were identified as the perpetrators of that attack had their charges dropped a year later. They got off. Why isn’t this a problem for you? Why do you only care about the thugs with white skin on the far right?

Personaly I condemn all violence and believe that it must all be policed equally, with the full force of the law. Keir Starmer’s commitment should be to safeguard all communities and all minorities. Pandering to the perceived greatest victim in society (ie, the Muslim immigrant community) is not doing anyone favours. It is the racism of low expectations. It is intellectually dishonest, insulting, and infantilizing. Aggressions by all communities towards all communities must be condemned.

What we have seen among the British white savior elite liberals, however, is a refusal to express as much condemnation on both sides. If they cannot, they are either idiots or they are clinging onto their own bias for dear life. They have been stuck in an ideological hamster wheel refusing to come up for air for far too long, and even where some may see the double standard, the price to be paid for speaking truthfully about this has become too high. It’s left to outliers like me to speak candidly. And by the way I am still British, but I no longer feel at home in Britain. I love summer evenings on Primrose Hill as much as the next person, but I feel safer knowing that there’s a return ticket elsewhere once I’ve paid the old stomping ground a visit.

As for the British media, it has done everything to try and avoid exposing the Islamist rioters, instead pretending in some cases that they’re covering far right white English rioting scenes. The camera, however, has not lied.

Which brings us up to speed. Today across the UK, protests took place to “take back the streets” in solidarity with immigrant communities, but these anti-racist protests in certain places either specifically banned one group from attending (“Zionists”) or featured the usual Palestinian flags and keffiyehs. So while the white liberal elite are crying with pride at the scenes of their United Kingdom, I am asking why we’re taking back the streets while winking heavily at… the Islamic Republic of Iran?

For ten months ago, I have identified that the UK’s “peaceful protests” against the war in Gaza have at times escalated into riots and have featured extremists, rendering parts of London unsafe for Jews on weekends. That is because we need to establish a standard. Words matter. For ten months, Islamist led mass protests have cheered for terrorist organizations, rape and an attempted genocide of Jews, and the police have not reacted. Something’s amiss.

I know you’re not fooled by the white savior complex but to drive the point home:

These anti-racists are inconsistent. They don’t care about minorities. If they did, they’d care about Jews too. They care about having power and control, and they know that if they pander to Muslim extremists they can keep it, while painting their opposition in the far right as the sole bad guys. Well, by those metrics, who is good?

I have to admit that my patience is growing thin, and sometimes I think - to hell with them all. They deserve what’s coming to them. In 2019, I thought naively that I could appeal to them, but they are too self-important to hear a different perspective. They are too interested in speaking with volume but not with compassion.

I never knew in 2019 what I know now. I never saw what I would lose. I never understood that these anti-racists would want to attempt to destroy me. I never knew that a sea of opportunistic lying wankers would take every chance they have to poison my most treasured allies against me. But what I do have as a prize is foresight, common sense and a sober view of the terrain.

America, take note. This is coming to a venue near you soon too. The white saviors say they safeguard human rights. No. They are gatekeeping human rights discourse. There is a difference. It’s a power play, and they have no idea who they’re up against.