James Delingpole
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Erudite but accessible; warm and witty; definitely not woke
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Cock Up or Conspiracy?

Every Monday I do a podcast with my chum Toby Young called London Calling. Really, though, it ought to be renamed ‘Cock up or conspiracy?’ because that is the essence of the debate we play out ad nauseam to the surprise and delight of our many listeners each week.

The Team James view is that the war on farmers, the vaccine shenanigans, the looming Central Bank Digital Currencies, the proxy war in Ukraine, the transgender movement and so on are all part of a well co-ordinated conspiracy, planned over decades, by a diabolical Predator Class which wants to kill most of us ‘useless eaters’ and turn the remainder into slaves.

And Team Toby’s view is that it’s all perfectly innocent and well-meaning: just a bunch of bumbling politicians and excitable trillionaires trying to make the world a better place but making a few perfectly excusable mistakes on the way, like, say, killing children with experimental mRNA therapy they don’t need, reinventing the Holodomor in Sri Lanka and transforming Canada, Australia and Ireland into North Korea.

Because the scale of the evil ranked against us is now so blatant I find it increasingly difficult to take Tobes’s version of events seriously. And he doesn’t really help himself when, as he did recently on his free speech website the Daily Sceptic, he cites in support of his argument the phrase ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.’

The phrase, Tobes tells us, is known as ‘Hanlon’s Razor.’ I presume that by giving it a label he wants to persuade us that the phrase has the properties of an axiom - one of those handy rules-for-life which, though unprovable, is so self-evidently true to most reasonable people that it is capable of making a case without the need for complex supporting argument.

But ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ is arrant bollocks. One reason you can tell that it is arrant bollocks is that the phrase makes just as much sense if you reverse it to mean the opposite.

‘Never dismiss as stupidity that which can conceivably be explained by malice.’

Though I’ve adjusted the phrasing slightly to give it a more epigrammatic feel, I think you’ll agree that the axiom - let’s call it Delingpole’s Razor - is no less plausible a proposition than Hanlon’s.

And just who was Hanlon anyway? Was he, perhaps, a philosopher/theologian like William of Ockham, the 13th century Franciscan friar who gave us Occam’s Razor? Was he a great philosopher/scientist in the traditions of Sir Francis ‘Knowledge is Power’ Bacon? Was he a distinguished historian and poet like Robert Conquest, who gave us the still-apposite ‘Law’ that ‘Any organisation not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing’?

Why no. Turns out - at least so Wikipedia says - that he was just some random bloke, Robert J Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who submitted the statement to a 1980 joke book called Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong. It was later popularised when in 1990 it was included in the Jargon File, a glossary of computer programmer slang.

So: a flippant contribution to a toilet book sequel by someone from the town most famous for being the home of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company has, in the space of four decades, somehow magically acquired the status of a lapidary truth so powerful that merely to brandish it in a sentence is instantly to prove your point.

Hmm. Something fishy here, don’t you think?

Let us, for a moment, conduct a thought experiment. Suppose that this global conspiracy I keep banging on about really does exist: it would require a quite spectacular amount of deviousness and cunning on the part of the people responsible, right?

We can also, I think, agree that the kind of people capable of such a conspiracy would be unimaginably wealthy (as you would be if, say, you’d been quite literally printing your own money from the Federal Reserve every day since 1913) and that they would consequently have more than enough power and influence at their disposal to shape popular discourse via think tanks, advertising, Hollywood, TV, the media, activist pressure groups and so on.

Indeed, we have evidence of this. As Exhibit A, I present the phrases ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’. These originate from a 1967 CIA document, classified ‘Secret’, circulated by ‘Chief, (CA Staff)’ to ‘Chief, Certain Stations and Bases’, headlined ‘Countering Criticism of the Warren Report’. Though its existence has been questioned by the usual suspects as yet another ‘conspiracy theory’, you can read the document here. https://ia800705.us.archive.org/30/items/COUNTERINGCRITICISMOFTHEWARRENREPORT/COUNTERING%20CRITICISM%20OF%20THE%20WARREN%20REPORT.pdf

The document was circulated in the wake of the Warren Commission Report into the assassination of John F Kennedy. It begins: ‘Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy’s assassination there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission’s published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticising the Commission’s findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved…’

It goes on to propose ways of countering this supposed misinformation. ‘Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organisation, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.’

Among the proposed methods are: ‘to discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors'); ‘to employ propaganda assets to answer and refuse the attacks of the critics’ [by smearing them as ‘politically interested’, ‘financially interested’ ‘hastily and inaccurate in their research’ etc.]

There’s one paragraph that might have been especially written for Toby Young and his fellow ‘Nothing to see here’ cock-up theorists: ‘Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc.’ How many times have you heard Normie poo-pooing the notion of massive conspiracies because there’s no way the participants would be able to keep them secret? And how many of them are aware that they are simply parroting the talking points laid out for them in a CIA document marked ‘DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED’?

But perhaps the most germane parts of the document are the ones concerning ‘friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors’ and ‘propaganda assets.’ Here is clear evidence that the CIA (and similar intelligence organisations) uses the mainstream media and exploits tame journalists (whether unwitting or otherwise) to advance its propaganda narrative. It has hardly beyond the wit of man to infer from this that, besides the phrases ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘conspiracy theory’, the CIA also succeeded in introducing into popular parlance phrases or concepts like ‘Given the choice between cock-up and conspiracy, I’ll always plump for cock-up’ or, indeed, the one Tobes cites as some kind of unimpeachable authority, ‘Hanlon’s Razor.’

Having been a mainstream media journalist myself, I know how these things work. Journalists and columnists are like magpies: if a handy new phrase catches our fancy, we’ll soon start employing them in our own articles even to the point of cliche. One of the more benign examples of this is ‘virtue signalling’, a phrase first used in The Spectator by James Bartholomew which subsequently went global. Then there are established classics, like, ‘As the old Chinese curse has it, ‘May you live in interesting times!’’ Ideally, these phrases should exude an air of dispassionate authority or homespun wisdom; also, it helps if they can pithily sum up in a single sentence a concept that the author can then enlarge on in the course of his well-honed think piece.

Columnists are naturally drawn to variations on the ‘I prefer cock up to conspiracy’ for at least two reasons. One, it makes them sound worldly, amused and nobody’s fool. Here they are laughing at the absurdity of humanity, the incompetence of bureaucracy, the unintended consequences of the best laid plans. And two, it positions them comfortably within the confines of the Overton Window - demonstrating to their editors and their readership that they are not some crazy crank but reliably mainstream.

Again, I know this because I have been there myself. If, for example, you go back through my old Spectator columns, you will surely find cases where I distance myself from conspiracy theorists like ‘9/11 Truthers’. Did I dismiss ‘conspiracy theorists’ because I’d looked carefully into their arguments and found them wanting? Why no! Which busy mainstream media journalist has time to do that? No, I dismissed them for much the same reason as a very right-wing MP might alight on some liberal cause in order to rebut the charge that he is a rabid extremist. ‘Sure I may be a bit out there and eccentric,’ my rejection of ‘conspiracy theories’ would have signalled to my editor and my readers, ‘But I’m not one of those tin-foil hat nutcases who thinks 9/11 was an inside job!’

One of the biggest logical errors made by Cock Up Theorists is to assume that the people who really run the world - The Powers That Be; the Predator Class; what you will - have managed to amass all that money and power while yet somehow remaining at once benign and incompetent. This logical error is grist to the Predator Class’s mill. That’s why they inserted the phrase ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity’ into popular discourse. They know that a lie repeated often enough soon acquires the status of a self-evident truth.

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James and Dick’s CHRISTMAS Special 2025

Featuring Dick. And James. And Unregistered Chicken. And possibly some other special guests.

Not included in ticket price but available so you don’t starve/die of thirst: nice pizzas out of wood-fired ovens; street food.

VIP Tickets - £120 including bell-ringing lesson, walk with James, front row seats, church tour

Location is: My neck of the woods. Northants. Nearest stations, Banbury/Long Buckby. Junction 11 of M40.

Friday, 28th November 2025. Starts at 5pm

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/?section=events#events

00:02:47
Big Birthday Bash

James Delingpole’s Big Birthday Bash August 1st. Starring Bob Moran, Dick Delingpole and Friends. Tickets £40. VIP Tickets (limited to 20) £120

Venue: tbc Central England/East Midlands - off M40 and M1 in middle of beautiful countryside with lots of b n bs etc.

Buy Tickets / More Info:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Live/bob-moran.html

If you have any questions regarding the event - please contact us via our website:
https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/#Contact

00:04:15
Nick Kraljevic

If you had to escape to another country which would it be? James runs through some of the options with Aussie cybersecurity guy and entrepreneur Nick Kraljevic. Nick - a Delingpod addict since Australia’s crazy lockdowns - talks about how to claim dual citizenship (handy if your family originates from somewhere like Croatia, as Nick’s does) and which countries are currently the most welcoming. His two top choices may come as a surprise. Nick is the founder of Societates Civis - www.soc-civ.com - which can help you make the move.

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How environmentalists are killing the planet, destroying the economy and stealing your children's future.

In Watermelons, an updated edition of his ground-breaking 2011 book, JD tells the shocking true story of how a handful of political activists, green campaigners, voodoo scientists and psychopathic billionaires teamed up to invent a fake crisis called ‘global warming’.

This updated edition includes two new chapters which, like a geo-engineered flood, pour ...

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Posted by Tom Woods this morning. I concur! Breakfast is for farmers.

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James's Big Birthday Bash - August 1st. Be There!

Because I love you all and want you to be happy, I’d like few things more than if you were ALL able to join me at my James Delingpole Birthday Bash on August 1st.

Unfortunately, numbers are strictly limited. So please don’t be one of those people - I’m the procrastinating type myself, so I know whereof I speak - who sends me a pleading message a few days before the event saying: “Can you squeeze me in?” Because tragically I might not be able to help.

Here’s why I think you’ll enjoy it. The main event is me doing a live Delingpod with Bob Moran and the conversation is going to be great. You know it is. Apart from my brother Dick - who’ll also be appearing, obvs. - there’s probably no one with whom I have a greater rapport than Bob. And, gosh, do we have a lot to talk about: chemtrails, death jabs, dinosaurs, Satanists, the New World Order etc. All the stuff, basically, that you can’t discuss with your Normie friends, but which here we’ll cover freely and frankly because, hey, you’ll be ...

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Christianity 1 New Age 0

If you haven’t already - I’m a bit behind the curve here - I urge you to watch this car crash encounter between Christian apologist and scholar Wes Huff and ‘ancient civilisation’ researcher Billy Carson.

It’s an excruciating experience - probably best to watch it on double speed - for a couple of reasons. First, the hapless podcast host/debate moderator Mark Minard is somewhat out of his depth and is also clearly embarrassed at having one of his guests (Carson, sitting right next to him) eviscerated in front of him by his other guest. This causes him to interrupt the debate at intervals and expound well-meaningly but not very interestingly on his own half-baked views on the mysteries of the universe. You feel a bit sorry for him but you do rather wish he’d shut up.

Second, and mainly, it’s painful to watch Carson being outclassed and outgunned by someone who knows and understands his purported field of expertise so much better than he does. Carson was reportedly so upset by the encounter that he ...

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I Wish I Weren't a Christian

No, not really, obviously. I’m just venting my frustration on how incredibly hard it is sometimes.

For example, if you read your scripture regularly you will notice that time and again Jesus enjoins us to forgive our enemies. This is emphasised in Matthew where He tells us that there’s only one prayer we really need and that’s the Lord’s Prayer.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus leaves us in no doubt that for followers of the way forgiveness is not an optional extra.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.

There’s an implicit contract here. If you want to be worthy of God’s forgiveness then you must do likewise.

I say the Lord’s Prayer every day, from the moment I wake till the moment I’m about to go to sleep - and lots of times in between.

The first parts are easy. What’s not to like about hallowing the Lord’s name and celebrating his eternal kingdom and being assured of all that daily bread He provides?

But the forgiving trespasses part can be a bit of a stumbling block because it seems so onerous - and unfair.

Surely if someone wrongs you, especially when unprovoked, the proper and proportionate response ought to be to smite them sevenfold? At the very least.

How can it not be right to retaliate when you’ve got right on your side?

How can it especially not be right when you happen to have been blessed by God with a mind that can produce the kind of next-level invective, weapons-grade cattiness and implacable, Daisy-cutter bomb logic that utterly obliterates anyone foolish enough to cross you?

Not only would the revenge be just - but fun too!

I’ve tried these arguments, over the years, on my morning walk with the dog, which is one of the occasions where I go through the Psalms and commune with God. But I can never quite get my point past the goalkeeper.

I’ll say stuff like: “C’mon, God. Give me a break. I’m not St Francis of Assisi. Can’t you just give me a bit of leeway, just this once, to satisfy my baser urges? I’ll be good afterwards, promise.”

Or: “But taking out wrong ‘uns in an amusing way is my brand. It’s how I make my living. You surely don’t want me to starve, do you?”

Resisting the temptation to deploy my powers is tough. It’s like being blessed with a huge penis only to discover “No sorry. The Lord has decided that your path is to become a monk. So I’m afraid that magnificent appendage is for peeing, only.

Why, God? Why?

The problem is that the Bible doesn’t really offer many get-out clauses. It’s not just the Lord’s Prayer that enjoins forgiveness. There’s that possibly even more annoying bit where Jesus tells us - say what? Really?? - that we should ‘Turn the other cheek.’

And then there are all the Psalms - which Jesus quoted more than almost any other book, so they must be on point - urging us to be patient and to let God take care of all the smiting.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-08-13-psalm-37-pooyan-mehrshahi

For example, there’s Psalm 37:

Leave off from wrath; and let go displeasure. Fret not thyself else thou shalt be moved to do evil.

Time and again you find the psalmist - usually David - asking, in so many words, “How much longer am I going to put up with this injustice? It’s so unfair!”

And God’s reply is always: “Fret not. I’ve got this!”

In Psalm 73, another of my favourites, the psalmist gets so frustrated he wonders why there’s any point being good when behaving badly seems so much more profitable.

Yea, and I had almost said even as they. [ie the Ungodly] But lo, then I should have condemned the generation of thy children.

But then he goes into the sanctuary of God and learns the fate of the ungodly.

Namely how thou dost set them in the slippery places and castest them down and destroyest them.

O how suddenly do they consume, perish and come to a fearful end.

Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh, so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Archive/show.php?slug=2025-12-09-james-is-joined-by-preacher-stephen-white-to-unpack-the-beauty-and-depth-of-psalm-73

The language and imagery of the Psalms is so magnificent that I could spend all day reciting them. But if you’re reciting them merely for the great poetry then you’re surely guilty of the kind of vainglorious burbling Jesus warned us against in Matthew 6. You need to imbibe the meaning also - and accept that if Jesus took this stuff seriously then you probably should too.

Not, by the way, that I am remotely wasting any time fantasising about my enemies consuming, perishing and coming to a fearful end. On the contrary, I feel sorry for them because choosing the wrong path, away from God, is punishment in itself.

I prefer to take my example from one of the extraordinary monks featured in Archimandrite Tikhon’s Everyday Saints. [Unfortunately I can’t look up his name because I gave my copy to ortho bro Dick].

This monk was sent to the Gulag by the Soviets - but not before being cruelly tortured by a sadistic NKVD man who broke all his fingers. Many years later, the monk was reunited with his torturer, now so thoroughly ashamed he became an ardent Christian.

Please don’t think for a moment that I am comparing my feeble attempts at forbearance to that of this saintly monk. I’m sure I will fail to meet the exacting standards of saintliness on many, many occasions in the future, which will be my loss and your gain. After all, I’m sure my articles are SO much more fun when I’m putting the boot in rather than when I’m turning that other cheek.

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James and Dick's Christmas Special - Don't Miss Out!

I was about to start writing Part Two of my piece Most Journalists Don’t Realise They Are Working For Satan, when a thought occurred: “Hang on, James. Shouldn’t you be plugging your show?”

It’s this Saturday, on the off chance you are interested. I quite understand if you’re not: you’re probably busy, this miserable weather doesn’t make you feel like venturing away from home, and anyway, it’ll just be me and Dick on a stage talking rubbish as usual.

You’re right. Dick and I sitting on a stage talking rubbish is indeed what you’re going to get this Saturday evening. As usual we won’t be at all prepared. Well, Dick might but I won’t because I’m lazyI like to keep it real.

The only thing I will have to do in advance is wrap Dick’s present which I got him from Russia. He’s going to really love it because it is about as Dick a present as you could possibly imagine and I want to watch his little eyes light up as he tears off the wrapping.

But to be fair, I do have roughly in my mind some of the few things I want to talk about. One of them is ‘Who Really Runs The World?’, which obviously for us batshit-crazy tinfoil hat loons is one of those ongoing conversations which keeps changing the more we learn. Another is ‘Was Churchill more evil than Hitler?’ We’ve talked about this stuff before but my take on these issues in 2025 is going to be subtly different from the ones you heard in 2024 or 2023, let alone in say 2019 when I was about 90 per cent Normie. (I’m allowing myself 10 per cent off because I did at least know back then that climate change was bollocks).

Will we play the “Yes/No” game? I doubt it because the answer always “No” these days. But you never know. Perhaps Dick might surprise me. Or perhaps he might introduce a wild card game he has invented for the occasion.

There will be no Christmas decorations. Sorry but it’s too early.

Nor, likely, will I wear my Christmas jumper. Too hot.

But we will do the Lords Prayer at the beginning - inter alia, to ward off any demons and because it makes everyone feel amazingly uplifted - and Jerusalem at the end.

Also, you get to see Unregistered Chickens, who just get better and better. Or so I’m told by one of the band members. Dick and Andy the lead singer keep making bitchy remarks about the fact that even when they’re playing at my events I never come to see them. Or only for a few minutes. I try to explain, honestly, that this isn’t because I’m too grand or because I think they’re crap but because before you do a show the very last thing you want to be doing is hanging out with the audience because it drains all the energy you need for the show.

Still I think the thing you’ll enjoy most about the event is hanging out with like minded folk. You’ll be able to put faces to the names of some of the fellow Awake people you know from online. And you’ll be able to talk about all the things - Michelle Obama’s big swinging lunchpack; hybrid creatures bioengineered in the same Antartica DUMB where they breed the children for adrenochrome, were the Thunderbirds puppets actually devised as a result of remote viewing technology which enabled Gerry Anderson to see into the future from the 1960s and watch Konstantin Kisin and the other one presenting Triggerpod? etc - that you will probably avoid bringing up with family round the Christmas dinner table.

It’ll be fun. You’ll really, really enjoy it.

It will be no skin off my nose if you don’t. But I just think if you don’t come you’ll be missing out.

https://www.jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/Events/james-and-dick-s-christmas-special-2025

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All They Want Is Your Soul

One of my unlikely podcast guests this week is Nick Griffin.

I say ‘unlikely’ because I’m always slightly wary of people who have been involved in mainstream politics - even if, like Griffin, it was only at the margins.

https://locals.com/jamesdelingpole/feed?post=7481845

Griffin - or Nick, as I suppose I should call him, now he’s my new mate - used to be the leader of the notorious British National Party (BNP). Like the party from which it splintered, the National Front, the BNP was and is one of those outfits which the mainstream media likes to brand as ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ and ‘basically a bunch of Nazis.’

This would be why, in my days as an MSM journalist, Nick never crossed my radar. He wasn’t the sort of character of whom you could say to your editor “How about we hear what that Nick Griffin has to say for himself?” It would be tantamount to career suicide because, imagine, what if you quite liked him or he said something people agreed with? Far better not to take the risk - and to ignore him - as all self-respecting media folk did.

Anyway, now that very belatedly I’ve had chat with him I’ve discovered that, yes, I do quite like him. And also that he says lots of things I agree with. Many of the people who’ve listened to the podcast share my pleasant surprise. Here’s a typical comment:

“I was brought up believing the BBC hype - NickG is equivalent to Satan […] Please do bring Nick back on. Even some of my ‘awake-ish’ friends still recoil in horror at the mention of his name. This exposure can right this wrong.”

My main reservation about inviting Nick onto the Delingpod wasn’t that he’d be too controversial but that he might be a bit too conventional in his outlook, a bit Normie.

But on this, too, I was pleasantly surprised. As an example of how interesting his conversation is - and perhaps as an incentive to encourage those of you who aren’t already paid subscribers to sign up for an early listen before the podcast goes out free - I want to share with you one of his best anecdotes.

It was prompted when I asked him about whether any attempts had ever been made by shadowy forces to buy him off.

Yes, Nick said. Attempts had been made on a couple of occasions, one of them when he was a member of the National Front.

Representatives of an ultra-orthodox Jew in New York called Rabbi Schiller offered the National Front a large sum of money, on one somewhat surprising condition, which I shall reveal in a moment.

In Italy, meanwhile, on another occasion, some of Nick’s ‘far-right’ fellow travellers were made a similarly generous offer by a wealthy Jewish outfit. Again, the money was dependent on the fulfilment of one surprising term.

Then, Griffin went on, there was the example of his friend in Northern Ireland, a social marketing genius who was offered a blank cheque by Jewish interests, but only on one condition.

Here’s the interesting part. Perhaps you thought - as I certainly did - that in all three instances the Jewish donors would have made the same request: talking more about the Holocaust, maybe; toning down the anti-Semitism; avoiding criticism of Israel; something like that.

But no. The things that were requested were all very different - and also quite unexpected.

In the case of the National Front, the request was that they should stop griping about the perils and iniquities of the banking system.

With the Italians, the request was that they cease to sing the praises of Corneliu Codreanu, a Romanian fascist leader - founder of the Iron Guard - assassinated in the 1930s.

And in the case of the Northern Irish marketing guru, it was that he should stop talking about the evils of abortion.

The three very different provisos only had one thing in common: each was very dear to the heart of the people to whom the money offer had been made. To the National Front, banking was the key plank of their economic argument. To the Italians, Codreanu was a beloved romantic hero and role model. To the Northern Irishman, crusading against abortion was a moral imperative.

“They offer you everything you need,” explained Griffin. “But in every case they are only prepared to give it to you on condition that you sacrifice the thing closest to your heart.”

Perhaps experts in the Kabbala, or the Babylonian Mystery Religions, or the occult generally can explain to me what is going on here. But clearly these offers have great ritual significance - and also go some way towards explaining the nature of a world whose temporary god, according to the scriptures, is Satan.

Yes, you will be granted whatever you want. But not until you’ve first sold your soul.

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