It was, I suppose, predictable that, in the light of the gaslighting on MSM about the Unite the Kingdom rally on Saturday, Elon Musk’s dramatic interview with Tommy Robinson would be spun by Labour as a call to seditious violence. Once I would have marvelled at their crass incomprehension of what he actually said, but now I see it as quite deliberate misdirection of the majority of people who didn’t actually hear the interview.
That’s much the same as all the MSM journalists hanging round the area between free speech marchers and the small Antifa counter-protest in the expectation of getting material for their pre-prepared “violent thugs” headlines. (Incidentally, a policeman told one marcher that 16 of the 24 arrests were of the Anti-racism lot – you won’t hear that on the Beeb.) And, of course, it’s like their downplaying of the number only partly visible on the aerial coverage to 110,000 people. I liked Isabel Okeley’s observation that if that figure is correct, the vast crowd is only twice the number of illegal immigrants who have entered the country since Labour took power – not a good look for Starmer. To avoid general panic they’d be wise to own up to the higher estimates of 1 million plus, though that is still “bad optics” as it is just twice the net influx of legal immigrants last year alone.
In fact, because many independent outlets have re-screened the Musk interview, one can easily ascertain that what he actually said was that because of the current crisis, an election should take place before the usual time to vote in a new government. Only after laying that foundation did he call on sleepy citizens to wake up and facilitate it, because “violence is coming to them,” not so that violence could come from them. He spoke truly, the week that such violence came to Charlie Kirk. And clearly his call to “fight” was intended no more literally than Keir Starmer’s subsequent claim that we face “the fight of our times,” and probably less so, given that the government is now working for all police to be armed with real guns forbidden to citizens.
Still, it’s also the case that those “moderate” free speech advocates who like to distance themselves from the sweaty masses on the streets, and say that Tommy Robinson “could have been avoided,” like the Labour politicians said Elon Musk had gone too far. One example is, of course, Nigel Farage, who seemed to be forced by the huge turnout to avoid his “that lot” style of pejoratives, but has long said that in England we have always brought about change via the ballot box, not by uncouth demonstrations organised by unsuitable activists. I’ve heard the same idea voiced by other respectable folk at The Spectator and elsewhere..
But there is a flaw in the “ballot box only” argument, or rather more than one. In the first place, it has only been the case that calm and collected voting in elections has made England what it is since the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Then, an army raised by William of Orange caused James II to flee, and a new constitutional settlement to be reached that, until recently, has kept the uniquely British system operating reasonably well.
Not long before that, of course, we had a full-blown civil war actually called by Parliament because Charles 1 had tried to rule without it, meaning that even the more limited ballot-box franchise of the time was irrelevant. Only when Charles had to recall a Parliament to raise money was it in a position to take the unconstitutional step of voting to wage war on the king.
What this tells us is that our democratic parliamentary system only enables voters to change what other voters have enacted. Parliament is supposed, under our system, to be sovereign. But if some non-parliamentary actor has subverted the power structures of the nation, then the people can vote themselves blue in the face without achieving anything.
One small, but telling, example of this is the recent cases of elected Reform leaders of councils ordering the removal of Palestine or LGBTQ+ flags, and being flat out ignored by unelected Chief Executives, whom it is inordinately difficult to sack. On a larger scale, we have seen in America how Deep State actors have consistently refused to give requested information to their elected overseers. Over here, former ministers have reported similarly autonomous civil servants blocking policy changes whilst being more or less immune to replacement.
In America, with the most formally perfect written constitution in the world, voting is indeed changing the landscape. But it took the rise of a unique maverick President, not part of the system, to change things that everybody else said could not be changed without destroying democracy. And what has enabled him, especially in this second term, to undertake such radical reform even with his relentless personality, is the presence on the streets and at vast rallies of grass-roots supporters. What persuades Republican senators and congressmen to go along with fundamental changes rather than play the old pseudo-democratic games is not simply the size of Trump’s electoral mandate. Rather, it is the sight of a myriad red hats on the streets and on alternative media, reminding them that they are being watched by people who outnumber them, and whose compliant behaviour cannot be completely assured.
Also independent of voting is the role of other trend-bucking individuals like Elon Musk, who failed to act like a proper oligarch by buying out Twitter and making it a free-speech platform. Without him it is quite possible that the control of information by the non-elected would have kept Trump out of office. And it is certainly true that without Musk’s platforming of Tommy Robinson’s actual voice, a million ordinary people here would not have been out on the streets supporting him, and giving politicians from Starmer to Farage the warning that they cannot carry on business as usual.
There are great dangers in mass-movements. In 1917 widespread popular disorder in Russia enabled a well-organised Bolshevik party to grab power and oppress the country for seventy years. In Weimar Germany, my understanding is that the elected government’s failure to control internationalist revolutionary communists’ violent intimidation led to populist anti-communist vigilantism. The baleful result of that is well-known, and was actually enabled by the ballot box. But the reason for disadvantaged Germans’ impatience with voting was that power was being wielded against them that had not been electorally sanctioned, and therefore they saw that elections would not remedy it. In our nation, all our institutions have been captured by a stealthy ideology, not by popular vote, and therefore it will take more than the time-honoured means to dislodge that ideology.
As I said in my last post, though, the current mass-movement in England is not comparable to the rise of historical fascism. It is governed by a national character formed by Christian values and three centuries of successful democracy, and by the surprisingly high profile of Christianity and Christians on the marches and among the speakers (few of whom, to refer to my previous warning, were Seven Mountain Dominionists). To a large extent, this is indeed a reaction to the unveiling of Islam as a religion of violence and perpetual rage. It’s a reaction both at the secular level, of folk finally appreciating what side England’s bread has been buttered, and at the spiritual level we are witnessing, as a good many of those folk come to saving faith.
And so if Trevor Phillips were indeed correct to say that Tommy Robinson only hired a black gospel choir, to close Saturday’s march by singing Jerusalem, as a tactical move, it would not matter much (even though I’m sure Trevor is mistaken – there have been non-white speakers at every rally of his since the EDL days)). Robinson is not Hitler, not least because he is not even a politician. There is simply no way that he would even be able to incite a regime of racial attacks, even if he were a racist, from a movement defining itself in terms of refuting irresponsible charges of racism and violence.
Those millions at the march or watching on livestream, or who are sympathetic but were otherwise engaged will, without a doubt, be following Elon Musk’s call by voting in what they hope will be a radically reforming government. And if they are fighting to bring that election about sooner, it will be through being annoyingly visible as embodying the prevalent mood of the voting public. There might be a bit of Gandhian civil disobedience on view as well, which lies outside the cricketing traditions of those who see the ballot-box as the only legitimate tool of change, but which renders bad governments unable to govern.
It’s the ballot-box that legitimises democratic governments. But it’s the discontented crowds in the street that keep elected governments focused and honest.
