‘Why Can’t We All Get Along?’ would have been my preferred title. But that ship has sailed, unfortunately. There has been so much dissent, bitterness and division in the Awake Not-a-Community of late that I fear we are doomed never again to enjoy that wonderful we’re-all-in-this-together feeling we experienced in the heady days of those Covid resistance marches.
One of the reasons for this division I addressed in a piece titled Everyone Is A Baddie.The resistance has been heavily infiltrated from the start, I argued, even - or perhaps especially - in that era where we thought we were all friends and honest brokers. This isn’t paranoia: merely a rueful observation based on a reluctant acknowledgement of how our enemies roll. Control of the narrative has always been very important to them, not just of the Normie mainstream, but also of the dissenting minority.
But I don’t think it’s the case that literally everyone currently pointing the finger at other people in the Awake Not-a-Community and calling them out as Wrong ‘Uns is himself a Wrong ‘Un working for one of the Enemy’s recently activated divide-and-rule sleeper cells. They might be, I suppose: never underestimate the Enemy’s deviousness or reach. I just think it’s more likely that they’re doing what they are doing in good faith, in the conviction they are helping the cause of truth, beauty, goodness, etc.
The problem is that the victims of their righteous zeal may also be people who are doing what they’re doing in good faith, in the conviction they are helping the cause of truth, beauty, goodness, etc.
I say this with some feeling because I’ve been taking quite a bit of this friendly fire myself in the last few weeks and months. And while I have deep suspicions about one or two of my assailants, in the case of most I suspect our disagreements owe more to unacknowledged differences in temperament and outlook than anything more culpable or malign.
That ‘unacknowledged’ part is, I believe, at the root of this problem. You see one or two people in the Awake Not-a-Community swaggering around as if they own the place - as if it’s their right to set the rules on everything from whom you should and shouldn’t trust to what you’re allowed to say to how you personally should be adjusting your behaviour in the war against the Enemy. What this hectoring arrogance suggests to me is a regrettable failure to grasp at least two basic facts about the truth movement: 1. We don’t like being told what to do by ANYONE. That’s why we’re here and 2. We’re not a one-size-fits-all collective with the same goals, values, interests and preferences but a gigantic cat herd of very opinionated and eccentric individuals whose motivations and personalities may not conform to each others' prejudices of what is and isn’t normal.
Puritans v Cavaliers
Well I’m a cavalier, obviously. And not just because I like prancing about on horses in amusing outfits but because I’m cavalier in my spirit. I know we’re in a war against an implacably evil foe and that we’re all going to die but I’d like to go down fighting with a big smile on my face and with a degree of dash and elan. Also, hateful though our enemies are, I’m not in the business of No Quarter.
From the puritan perspective, I can see this makes me a bit of a liability. I’m too squeamish about unearthing potential traitors in our camp. I lack the necessary killer instinct. But I suppose my counter to this is that, to me, the puritan faction carries more than a whiff of that ghastly chap with the scar on his face in Dr Zhivago; of struggle sessions under the Red Guard; of the Terror in the French Revolution. I thought we were supposed to understand that behaviour like this - where everyone is assumed guilty and until they have proven themselves innocent to the satisfaction of the Revolutionary Committee - was a warning from history, not an instruction manual.
Comedians v Grown Ups
I’ve never wanted to be a grown up and hope I never will be. This, I know, puts me at odds with some of the more serious-minded researchers in our field. Occasionally I’ll get the impression, when I’m chatting to someone who has devoted years of study to an important topic, that they’re thinking: “I do wish James Delingpole wasn’t quite so puerile. This is the future of our civilisation at stake!” It’s true, though I listen very carefully and concentrate hard, a lot of my mental energy is devoted to finding a cue for a silly joke. My view, though, is that I’m not doing them a disservice but a favour. My jokes are the delivery mechanism for their message.
Also, people who are funny are often very clever and intellectually serious underneath. Owen Benjamin is a classic example of this. I’ve found more deep wisdom in his jokes than in many a more serious podcaster’s earnest pieties. And I don’t buy the line, advanced by a Grown Up in my Substack comments the other day, that when Benjamin says stuff like “Pandas aren’t real as described” it undermines our cause. [For a full explanation of why I think it doesn’t, read my eloquent apologia]. Maybe pandas ARE totally legit, though I have my doubts, for reasons similar to those outlined by Benjamin to Tucker Carlson. But is the idea that the Chinese are paying dwarves to dress up in black and white furry outfits and fall over in zoos or bioengineering mutant species really so unlikely, given what we know about how the world works?
Christians v the Rest
I love non-Christian Awake people as much as I do Christian Awake people. But we’d be deluding ourselves if we imagined that there weren’t irreconcilable differences in our world view. Mine is undoubtedly coloured - biased, if you prefer - by my Christian perspective. I believe that God created the world; that He made man in His image; that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ to die for our sins. I also believe what Genesis 6:4 tells us about the Nephilim; and what 2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us about Satan being the god of this world. This, for me, goes a long way to providing the most coherent explanation as to what’s going on in the world (ie an epic struggle between good an evil), what the baddies’ motivation is (they’re working for Satan, who tosses them a few material world baubles in return) and how it all ends (God wins). And because I genuinely believe that all this stuff is real and true - it’s not just some whacko position I adopted because I’m crazy - I’m not in the business of giving equal weight to opposing world views which I think are plain wrong.
This is what I tried to explain to Slavlander (formerly Rurik Skywalker) on my recent podcast. “Your geopolitical theories about what’s really happening in Russia seem well researched and plausible,” I said, more or less. “But I never know how far I can trust your overall picture when you also think that the creature with horns and a forked tail and the face and legs of a goat is the team we should back?”
I exaggerate, somewhat. Slavlander insists he is not a devil-worshipper. But under cross examination he did give me the strong impression that his philosophy is essentially Luciferian. This is a problem for me, as it would be I think for any Christian, in the same way that it’s a big problem for me that David Icke’s metaphysics are essentially those of the New Age. There’s no point kidding ourselves that because we’re all Awake we can just fudge this issue. We’re talking about fundamentally oppositional religious philosophies.
Big Picture Fliers v Details Nerds
Some people like to focus on the fine detail. I don’t, unless I really have to. I can do it (as I did in my book Watermelons) but my preferred entry method to any new and unfamiliar conspiracy theory is pattern recognition. The Enemy uses the same tricks again and again and once you know what they are it’s a bit like identifying a serial killer’s work by his trademark tells. It means when there’s yet another fake ‘terrorist’ attack, you’re in a position to call out the psyop in those very early stages when your more cautious conspiracy theorist brethren are saying “Too soon! We don’t have all the facts yet. This one might be real…”
Despite the name I’ve given them I have great admiration for details nerds. I read the essays of people like Escape Key, Iain Davis, Paul Cudenec, and Simon Elmer and am overwhelmed with gratitude for the time and effort they have put into their research because what it means is that I don’t have to bother. They’ve done all the hard work. I just have to precis it and repackage it and maybe sprinkle a bit of glitter on it in order to bring it to the attention of a wider audience.
The problem with details nerds - not all of them and I’m not accusing any of the names mentioned above of this - is that sometimes they can’t see the wood for the trees. That is, they’re so obsessed with minutiae that they sometimes misunderstand the data in their possession - (Empiricism, in my view, is massively overrated: I think it was a con trick foisted on us by the Cabal as part of their Enlightenment war against God) - and draw inaccurate conclusions. And because they are so receipts-bound, they are reluctant to make the imaginative and conceptual leaps with which Big Picture types are so comfortable. Details nerds are sniffy about conspiracy theories for which there is no ‘hard evidence.’ A Big Picture type might counter that the whole point of conspiracies is that most of the ‘hard evidence’ is so heavily suppressed that sometimes inference or educated guesses are all you’ve got. Just because we haven’t seen the death certificate doesn’t mean that Paul is not Dead.
Pitchforks v Deckchairs
Let me honest (as I always strive to be): I’m supremely relaxed about who is and isn’t ‘Controlled opposition.’ This isn’t because I’m pro-spy, or pro-infiltration, or pro-lying, pro-deception or pro any of the other evil practised by the Enemy. It’s because I’m pretty confident that God will do a much better job of judging these people than I ever could; because I feel more disappointed and sad for them (What if they’re being blackmailed? What if they’re desperate? How hard must it be for them to sleep at night?) than I am angry or vengeful; and because I don’t feel as threatened by them as perhaps I should.
Take Whitney Webb, Candace Owens, Catherine Austin Fitts, James Corbett and Tucker Carlson. All these characters have been accused of being Controlled Opposition but that would certainly not put me off having them on my podcast or indeed going on theirs. Where Awake podcasts I’m a great believer in Caveat Emptor: take what you find useful, discard what you consider useless, always listen with a degree of scepticism. Use your discernment, in other words.
So I guess that would put me into the Deckchair category. Pitchfork types would hate me for my dangerous complacency and probably - because paranoid suspicion tends to go with the territory - see it as evidence that I too am part of The Conspiracy. I know they would because a fellow truther, who shall remain nameless but whom hitherto I had considered a friend and ally, totally threw her toys out of the pram when she saw I had recorded a podcast with Charles Malet of UK Column (another organisation which has accused of being Controlled Opposition). She actually brandished this as evidence, in a very heated Telegram exchange, that this was all the proof she needed that I was myself compromised.
Now if you are yourself one of those mad Pitchfork fuckers then I suppose you’ll agree with her. But I prefer to see it like this: I do not like making enemies of people unless they’ve first made an enemy of me; I do not like confrontation on my podcasts. Famously, I do not. My approach, to use a Normie analogy, is more Graham Norton than Jeremy Paxman. I do not grill or interrogate my guests a) because I don’t particularly enjoy the tension it generates and b) because I think people can often be more revealing when they are relaxed and not on the defensive. You can listen for yourself and decide whether you think it worked with Charles Malet. [I’m biased, obvs, but I think it made for a fascinating conversation. Much more than if I’d gone: “So, evil controlled opposition Cabal operative Malet: how do you defend yourself against the charge that the Chinese government now runs UK Column?”]
Ascetics v Hedonists
Some people in the Awake Not-a-Community were born for this moment. They’ve risked prison in order to fulfil their moral duty not to pay their taxes to the criminal enterprise that is The Gubmint; they live off grid and are now experts in milking goats and pickling home-grown cabbages; they’ve protected their wealth with elaborate trusts or hidden gold caches or self-custody Bitcoin stashes; they home school their kids; they’d rather not travel if it means they have to provide biometric data at the airport; they never use smart phones; they always pay in cash and because they’ve made so many sacrifices for the Cause they feel that everyone else should do the same. They’ve got no time for fair-weather Awake types who won’t fully acknowledge how dire and urgent the situation is, nor how imperative it is that we all take action now.
I totally agree with these Ascetic types. (Or Essenes, as I was tempted to call them.) My problem is that like perhaps most of us in the Awake Not-a-Community, I lack the self-discipline, rigour and, frankly, the masochism needed to follow their example to its fullest extent. I feel a bit like St Augustine: “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” There are some areas I’ve been pretty good at: standing up to all the mask nonsense during Covid; ruining any chances I might have had of continuing my career as a mainstream journalist. But in other areas, I’m definitely not as self-denying as I could be. For example, I could have taken the principled position that, since Russia insists on biometric data at the airport I wouldn’t go there. My view, though, was: do I really want NOT to see Moscow?
It’s the same with stuff like friendships. Though I hardly I ever see any of my friends and colleagues from my Normie days as a journalist, I certainly wouldn’t cut them dead on principle - or even diss them publicly. Partly, it’s a manners thing: I am a creature of my middle-class education and upbringing. Partly, it’s temperamental: I’m loyal and trusting by nature - and though on several occasions I have been burned as a as result - I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and not live in a state of constant paranoia and suspicion.
I Wish We Could All Be Friends
I really do. I find it very dispiriting when I see people in the Awake Not-a-Community turning on one another and splitting into factions, especially when I’m sympathetic to people in both opposing camps and I feel I’m being forced into a position where I have to take a side. And it does, I’m sorry, seem to me a bit navel-gazing and self-indulgent when there are surely so many bigger, worthier targets to aim at. There’s nothing I can do to stop it - not least because, as Miri AF argues here, it’s inevitable. But it’s something I prefer to avoid, as much as I possibly can, because I don’t much like the smell of burning witch any more than I like the priggishly self-righteous glee of the mob who brought her to book. Maybe she did have it coming to her; maybe she didn’t. Either way, the entity who stands most to benefit from the misery and suffering and division and bitterness these unedifying spectacles engender is not one with whom I have any sympathy.
