Weasel Communities and weasel identity

Just a couple of days after the police let rioters destroy a statue of the 17th century philanthropist and slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, I saw on the BBC website that the Canal and River Trust, apparently under instruction from the Museum of London Docklands, removed a statue of Robert Milligan that it owns in London, outside the museum.

Milligan died 211 years ago, and was a Scottish Merchant brought up in Jamaica who owned (but did not trade) in slaves, and was commemorated for establishing the West India Docks which made “London Docklands” a thing at all, and London the major 19th century port of the world.

What caught my eye was the statement by the Canal and River Trust:

Milligan’s monument was removed to “recognise the wishes of the community” said the Canal and River Trust.

Note that popular word “community,” emotionally redolent of everyone living together in societal harmony. That subconscious emotional effect is, of course, the whole purpose of all weasel words. The recent riots got all the great and good here in Britain, for the first time I remember, referring knowingly to the “BAME Community,” meaning “black and minority ethnicities.” Who would have thought that all non-whites live together and have the same outlook on life? Does my Christian Indian Dentist really have more in common with Somali Islamists than he has with me, another Christian health-professional living in the same town?

Anyway, as regards “the community” whose opinion condemned Milligan (scarcely a household name, unlike Winston Churchill, William Gladstone and Francis Drake, all of whom are on the Black Lives Matter hit-list) it has been in socially-distanced community-busting lockdown for three months, and so I find it wonderful how the Canal and River Trust managed to organise a democratic vote, count its results, and accomplish the statue’s removal, all in the course of a weekend. Or could it be that by “recognise the wishes of the community” they really mean “capitulate to the mob to avoid trouble”?

I gather that an alternative explanation is doing the rounds on Twitter – apparently Lord Sainsbury (like Milligan and Colston a stinkingly rich businessman and philanthropist) is a major liberal donor to the Docklands Museum. It is at least plausible that he dropped the hint that the statue was ideologically unacceptable to him: “the community,” in that case, should be read as “a rich and powerful individual calling the political shots.”

Now, in reality, communities are not of one mind on any issue, which is why humans invented both democracy and rule-by-consent as alternatives to mob rule. The latter always leads directly on to rich and powerful individuals calling the political shots, whether they be strong men like William the Conqueror and Vladimir Lenin, or the rich philanthropists who fund them, as J. P. Morgan and other Wall Street financiers funded the Russian Revolution, and profited mightily by their benevolence.

To demonstrate this simple fact about real communities, look at the major ways people in your church disagree. Or even consider your own family and its disparate views on politics or religion or climate change, and you can’t get a more basic “community” than that. Margaret Thatcher was deliberately misconstrued when she said that “There is no such thing as society,” meaning (I have no doubt) that bland phrases like “society is to blame” are ways of avoiding the truth that it is individuals who do right or wrong, and whose collective wills and attitudes are the only way of changing society’s ills.

In the same way, I can’t think of many exceptions to the modern use of “community” being yet another example of a buzz-word used by the few to exert power over the many. Hence a black woman who opposes Black Lives Matter, such as Candice Owens, is regarded as outside the “black community” rather than as being a legitimate voice within it. Likewise, an intellect as great as Thomas Sowell, who disputes the simplistic narrative of slavery now fed to us all, is decried as an “Uncle Tom.”

Yet in contrast, as the BBC’s Jon Snow notoriously said of the London pro-Brexit march last year, as I look at the pictures of the Oxford Black Lives Matter demonstration to tear down Cecil Rhodes’s statue in Oxford, “I’ve never seen so may white faces.” White activists may, it seems, force issues on behalf of the “BAME community,” whilst actual ethnic minority members receive death threats for disagreeing (like the Conservative commentator Mahyar Tousi over here).


It may seem that the answer to spurious “communities” claiming to speak on everyone’s behalf is to stress the importance of individual identity. But the activists are trying to tie that up too. Another obscenely wealthy philanthropist, Bill Gates, got some press recently not just for being a major funder of the WHO (supposedly a world “community” venture rather than a tycoon’s instrument), but for pressing the case both for universal COVID vaccination, and for universal digital identities for every person in the world. He’s made a 100% financial return on his vaccination charities, so there is undoubtedly a big potential bottom line to digital identity as well.

Gates is part of a group (of rich and powerful philanthropists – need I even mention it) forming ID2020, whose entirely beneficient aim is to microchip everyone in the world community with an ineradicable identity, “as a basic human right.”

Google it, and you’ll find as many references to the Mark of the Beast as to “human rights,” but it’s not just fundamentalists who want such a “right” as much as they want a one way ticket to a Gulag. That is why peaceful demonstrators in Hyde Park were arrested last month under lockdown regulations that don’t , it seems, apply to violent iconoclasts in Bristol, Oxford or London.

The poor of the world may have no birth certificate, but even they have the true identity of a self, that is known to the other poor people who matter to them as well as to God. They can pick up a coin in the street, bless their Creator, and spend it on staying alive.

The more sophisticated we become, the ultimate sophistication being a digital identity within our own bodies, then the less secure that identity actually is. It is only a matter of time before criminals learn how to reprogram their chips to pass themselves off as as you – and the bank will insist by all that computes that it was you who sent all your life savings to Lagos. Worse still, it only takes a Civil Servant, or a rich and powerful philanthropist who questions your right to membership of “the community,” to delete the central record of your identity. The poor beggar may be invisible on the street, but the deleted digital identity will mean you cannot even exist if the powerful – or the mob – take a dislike to you. There are no coins to pick up in a cashless society.

And so just as the buzz-word “community” is all about subverting the messy human business of living with individual differences and dividing us into power-blocks that may be controlled by the few, so the buzz word “identity” lumps us all into crude categories like “black,” “white,” “cis-male,” “Islamophobe” and so on ad nauseam and elides the complexity of human life. But in its most sophisticated ID2020 form, it provides the means to erase human identity altogether, if the powerful few so decide.

Use such words very carefully, if you have to use them at all. The weasels are all around.

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About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.
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7 Responses to Weasel Communities and weasel identity

  1. Robert Byers says:

    Just from here i heard they are destroying English/british heritage. Well whose country is it? Once again it shows the world is run by forceful people and not the common people or house of commons. A peoples heritage, history, fellow citizens fame etc, should be defended by the people against all foreigners or natives . So democrazy really does not matter to forceful people. In fact the rioters etc know what they doimg.
    I see this as the fault of immigration of foreign people to your country. They are bringing thier own national complaints and hurt pride to change the past. In fact very little in britain would remain if this premise was followed.
    Once again a Winston churchill is needed to be smart and moral enough to defend the country from foreigners . They only may bring up complaints for a discussion of all. Yes the community is the country. brits must take back the country and in every way.
    Otherwise the new invaders, like the old Anglo-Saxons or Normens, will morally and intellectually and politically, legally, impose thier will.
    Remember the bas guys fight with the tools of moral accusation. Then physical force.
    So what is the moral rights of a people to thier history and heritage and statues? Its a perfect moral claim. The foreignor has no claim even if birthed in the country. They are breaking contract with the man/people they immigrated/allowed into.
    In other words demand the return of the statues etc etc and only then talk about them being removed. Then refuse. Its not important to remove them but important they no be removed. Can the English be men or is it all over for poor old england? (also a heritage now and then) i predict thier victories will bring more and more and more.

  2. Elizabeth B. says:

    Thanks for this. I check your site periodically for updates and always appreciate your writing. Don’t know what to think, let alone say, about all that is happening in these bizarre times. Many people I speak with here the Southern U.S. feel the same. Bewilderment at Covid lockdowns and now the violence. Universal ID chip to boot. Several people I know say they have begun tuning out all news in order to have peace. The alternative is constant fear and anger, I am trying to do the same. I have your new book and intend to read it as soon as I can.
    Very much appreciate your insights. Keep writing!

    • Avatar photo Jon Garvey says:

      Elizabeth – Hi, and welcome to the Hump Community 😉

      I began the blog on the eternal verities of science, faith and origins, and Generations of heaven and Earth is about that, of course. Thanks a lot for getting it – hope it blesses you.

      But it would be hard to avoid comment on the strangeness of the times, even if I hadn’t incidentally been writing on sociology, propaganda and so on for several years, intermittently.

      The danger of people, especially Christians, simply withdrawing from engagement with the troubles is that of being deceived through ignorance instead of through propaganda . I was impressed by a UK commentator (actually a Russian Jewish stand-up comedian!), whose recent warnings are well summarised on a US channel here.

      The American commentator at one point asks if maybe that’s what happened in Europe between the wars, and I fear it is, as I wrote in a chapter of a book that I can’t get anyone interested in endorsing. Weak government in Germany after 1918 allowed Communist gangs to flourish and claim territory for the Internationale: “patriotic” groups of veterans formed to control them, and before long to ordinary people trying to keep their heads down, Hitler looked like the best option to preserve family, faith and tradition from the bloodbath that had occurred in Russia.

      You’re not there yet (despite Trump doom-mongers), and neither are we – but both a majority of people, and especially the churches, are trying to stay “moderate and non-political,” the very situation which allowed Hitler to flourish and for which the German Evangelicals of the thirties are criticised by all and sundry.

      We need the men of Issachar, who understand the times, to speak powerfully within the churches… but that requires church leaders open to their prophetic voice.

      • Elizabeth B. says:

        Jon, thanks. I watched the video and understand better the argument about how this could lead to far right governance. Before, I could not see it for multiple reasons. One being that the true far right does not appear to be very well organized in this country. It is not like post-Reconstruction era, at least as far as I can tell. After watching that video, it makes more sense, though still hard to fathom. My Conservative friends and acquaintances, and myself, are fearing that the control will be by the leftists.

        You are right that ignorance of the situation will ultimately help no one. Unfortunately, it seems that being informed won’t help anyone either. We can vote, yes. But look where that has gotten us. So we try to tune out. I say that and here I am. Today, I’ve also checked Rod Dreher on The American Conservative, the Wall Steet Journal, a glimpse at Fox News website ( I don’t like it but where else to find so called balanced news) and a glimpse at the New York Times (to balance Fox News). That is on a day of trying to pull back. I talked to several people last week who all said essentially the same thing. They were angry. Woke up angry. I felt it too. I’ve been that way since week 1 1/2 of the lockdown. So, now my strategy is trying to do what Friar Stephen Freeman writes about on his blog, Glory to God, https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/
        His latest is excellent and has helped me to look at this a different way. For now.

        Yes, I have read a lot of your earlier science posts. Truly, some of the more scientific things can be hard for me to follow. I can follow a lot, but get overwhelmed with some of the more technical details. I try to keep up with the ID podcasts in this country but fall behind because it takes a lot of attention to understand all that they discuss. Definitely is a market for intellectual creation science simplified for the lay person!
        I have been reading here for prob about 2 years. I don’t often reach out to comment on sites but want to say thanks for your writing.
        Elizabeth

        • Elizabeth B. says:

          “ The American commentator at one point asks if maybe that’s what happened in Europe between the wars, and I fear it is, as I wrote in a chapter of a book that I can’t get anyone interested in endorsing.”

          By the way, to what book do you refer? Is it published?

          • Avatar photo Jon Garvey says:

            Elizabeth, thanks for making contact – it’s much appreciated to know that ones words are read.

            Maybe this is a good time/place to explain the (so far) abortive Seeing Through Smoke project, which began last year when a sudden capitulation to LGBTQ “wokeness” by the Baptist Union here brought those issues into practical relief in my own church, of which I am currently an elder.

            The net result was a lot of focused reading and drawing together of things I’d touched on here, to examine how our society has become governed by competing propaganda from states, oligarchs and idealists over our lifetimes (or at least, mine!), and how that impacts everything from the sexual revolution to climate change. There is little truth in the public sphere – only competing PR.

            I tried in the book to address particularly the naivete of Christians in UK, who in general have no inkling that anyone is lying to them, let alone everybody, though I sense an increasing number of people waking up to that truth, but not understanding what it means. None of us does, until we begin to join the dots.

            I tried to link the ideas to the important biblical concept of end-times deception, whilst trying to avoid too much of “The End is Nigh” doom-mongering.

            Nevertheless, with every day bringing more instances of the churches being threatened externally and internally by the new moral and political agendas, I also suggested some survival strategies, drawing both on modern writers like Rod Dreher and Clifford Hill, and on the historical experience of my own church, which was founded at a time of persecution and heresy during the English Civil War. As it happened I’d just researched that history for a privately produced book for our local people.

            Anyway, to attempt pitching for publication I needed some endorsees, ideally from UK church leaders as that was my target readership. But having spent a decade blogging largely to a US audience, I had few contacts to draw on – I know lots of American Origins Science folks, but that’s scarcely relevant.

            I kept finding that bishops or theologians I have known for years over here had, in fact, bought into the “woke” narrative already. In itself that’s disillusioning.

            One Anglican leader well in tune with these things declined to endorse as he was converting to Catholicism and had his hands full.

            Another prophetic leader, with whom I used to work, blanked me for reasons unknown.

            And the principal of a theological college thought the book a good idea but quibbled that “Cultural Marxism” is actually a right-wing thing and so wouldn’t endorse.

            At that stage I took the slamming doors as divine guidance (whether or not also satanic impediments!) and shelved the project, since which time Brexit, COVID, and BLM have all happened, demonstrating that any book on this subject will need updating every five minutes until the Antichrist comes and closes the presses!

            Maybe at some stage I’ll put the book up on this site, as I did with God’s Good Earth for several years until someone kindly offered to publish it. Somehow samizdat publication seems par for the course in these days of censorship of non-compliant thought. So far my web-host hasn’t shown any inclination to control my content, which is more than can be said for those using social media, or trying to get funding or advertisers.

            And maybe that’s the only answer to the “What to do” question. I think one can only use whatever means one has to point people to truth, especially biblical truth, with eyes fully open to the knowledge that it will probably cost your reputation, your friends, and more. That’s called “taking up your cross,” I guess.

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