“What do you call your ideology”
I’m a Wickermanist.
Conservative? Classical Liberal? Libertarian? Anarcho-Capitalist?
All of these got immediately diluted by moderates and blackmail curious boomer compromisers.
Conservative … “but leave the blackmailed pedos alone.”
Classical Liberal … “but let us just have totalitarian surveillance.”
Libertarian … “but what do you mean ‘taxation is theft’ and IRS agents should die in work camps … We’re Socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”
Anarcho-Capitalists … “But like private violence to enforce natural law doesn’t mean YOU should shoot criminals and state enforcers.”
I’m a Wickermanist.
I’m naming my ideology after the execution method I want to see practiced annually either by governing entities, private paramilitaries, or radicalized individuals.
Pedos. Corrupt politicians. Traitors to foreign governments. Would-be tyrants. I want them burnt alive in giant Wickermen every year.
Not one time during the revolution, not once everyone agrees, but irrespective of any institutional authority save the match lighter. That ongoingly every year to appease the sun or whatever.
If it’s formalized and good governance is actually achieved and they didn’t find suitably corrupt politicians one year, they can draw lots or an extra old one can volunteer and be remembered as a hero. but I want wickermen burning.
I’m tired of having to constantly rebrand as somehow every ideology becomes “Pay your taxes, don’t ask about Epstein, don’t enact private vengeance no matter how precedented or implied by the ideology or demanded by the founders and the entire western cannon.”
Even “Nazi” has become something Elon, Trump and Grok are …
“MechaHitler” is a popular product by a Fortune 500 and somehow IT got lame within 24 hours.
I’m naming my ideology after an execution method so you moderate losers can’t poison it.
“But muh mass appeal!?”
Democracy is old women and the hormonal equivalent, who can’t commit violence, betraying their kinsmen who can so that the enemies of their nation will tell them their opinions matter.
No change that has ever mattered has been spearheaded by the Median voter, and no great person in history has ever paid them any note.
The only tragedy is that there is neither the time nor the lumber to burn the average voter.
Kulak, Substack Notes, 2025-07-12.
October 17, 2025
QotD: Wickermanism
April 9, 2025
QotD: Legitimacy and revolution
But though the English Civil War produced the first truly revolutionary regime, they were able to effectively co-opt most of the old regime’s symbols …
Let’s back up for a sec: As you recall, a revolution seeks to replace a people’s entire mode of living, whereas rebellions are just attempted changes of government. England had faced many rebellions before 1642, some of them successful, by which I mean they replaced one ruling faction with another. The usurpation of Richard II’s throne by Henry IV was extremely problematic, political theory-wise, but nobody was openly challenging the institution of monarchy as such. So too with the Wars of the Roses, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and so on: Those were all about the person of the king and his methods of rule, not about the legitimacy of his government.
The English Civil War was different. Charles I wasn’t the first English king executed by rebels (the aforementioned Richard II was starved to death; Henry VI died under extremely suspicious circumstances in the Wars of the Roses), but he was the first one found guilty of treason. To the kingdom he was king of. That’s a far different thing than “oopsie, I guess we forgot His Majesty’s lunch for two months running” or “we sent a whole bunch of goons with knives to the Tower, only to find His Majesty dead of melancholy”. A king who is guilty of treason is necessarily somehow inferior to his own kingdom, which forces us to confront the questions of 1) what, exactly, IS the kingdom? and 2) where does its legitimacy come from?
That’s why the rule of first the Council of State, then Lord Protector Cromwell, was a true revolution. In both cases, it was all too obvious where their legitimacy came from: out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao would so pithily put it 300 years later. And thanks to that power, they were free to remake the “lifeways” (as anthropologists say) of the people how they saw fit. Puritan England was as close to a totalitarianism as 17th century technology and information velocity would allow …
… but that wasn’t very close at all, as it turns out, and so most people in most places could get on with their lives pretty much as before. And even for those people directly under the State’s gaze, the Protectorate looked enough like the old monarchy that if you squinted and tilted your head sideways, you couldn’t really see the difference.
Severian, “Repost: National Symbols”, Founding Questions, 2021-10-27.
June 17, 2024
For want of a security clearance, the (potential) traitors escaped scot-free
In the free-to-cheapskates section of this week’s Dispatch from The Line, we get a summary of the state of brain-freeze in Parliament over the NSICOP (National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians) report, that in a functioning state would have triggered much more action than it has in the dysfunctional Dominion:
The cover of the NSICOP special report on foreign interference (PDF – https://nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2024-06-03/special-report-foreign-interference.pdf )
The lead story this week, clearly, was the continuing fallout from the NSICOP report last week. Because of this report, even though there is much that we do not know, there are absolutely some things that are clearly established. Let’s run through some of the key points that are uncontested and draw some very modest and safe conclusions from them.
Here are facts.
- There are multiple parliamentarians, meaning members of the House of Commons and the Senate, who have been deemed by eight of their colleagues to be engaged in activities with hostile foreign powers on either a witting or semi-witting basis.
- The prime minister and the PMO have been aware of who these individuals are for at least a month, if not longer. That is when NSICOP filed its unredacted report to them for review, as required.
The above facts are unchallenged. Now let’s draw a few conclusions.
The phrasing of the NSICOP report, as well as both Elizabeth May’s and Jagmeet Singh’s press conferences this week, led us to believe some of these individuals are still sitting in both the House of Commons and the Senate. We acknowledge that Elizabeth May and Jagmeet Singh differ considerably on the severity of what these individuals are alleged to have done, but both seem to agree that the relevant parties, in at least some cases, remain in Parliament.
The prime minister, as the person responsible for the administrative and legal apparatus of government, could call the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Director of CSIS, the minister of public safety and others as necessary into his office today, and inform them that he would be making the names public, and that it would be the responsibility of those individuals to figure out how that could be accomplished while protecting intelligence sources and methods. At this time, there is no indication that he has done so, or has any interest in doing so.
So we got the grotesque theatre that was the House of Commons this week. The government has spent the last week and change challenging various opposition leaders to obtain security clearances so that they could view information that the prime minister has had for at least a month, and perhaps longer, even though both the Security of Information Act and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act (depending on the auspices under which their security clearances were issued) prevents them from disclosing what they read.
And, therefore, doing anything about it. Because to remove a caucus member would be to reveal it, and if a leader has no caucus members that are implicated, there is no urgency to their reading the report.
Protecting the national security of Canada, and the democratic institution of parliament itself, is the prime minister’s job before it is anyone else’s. And the prime minister has had this information for at least a month.
It’s worth repeating that because we want you to envision something. Imagine there are three U.S. Senators accused of aiding and abetting a foreign power, and Joe Biden knew about it for a month.
When do you think impeachment proceedings would start?
Boris Johnson was unceremoniously dumped by his party for lying about throwing a party during COVID lockdowns (and we have no problem with that). Our prime minister has known that there are people currently sitting in parliament that have turned themselves into intelligence assets for hostile foreign powers for a month, and …
… the government would like you to know that it thinks Pierre Poilievre should get a security clearance so that he can read the documents.
We think Poilievre should, too. Because here’s the thing. The Security of Information Act says right there in Section 24 “No prosecution shall be commenced for an offence against this Act without the consent of the Attorney General”.
That reads to us like so: Pierre Poilievre can read those documents, release the names, and then dare Justin Trudeau to prosecute him. Indeed, anyone with the names could.
Your Line editors have raised this before on the podcast, but it bears repeating. Canada’s international reputation has taken a lot of hits lately. So imagine if you would, gentle reader, a situation where Justin Trudeau’s Attorney General signs off on having his political opponent arrested for revealing that hostile foreign powers have coerced sitting MPs into becoming intelligence assets … especially if one or more of those MPs is revealed to be a Liberal.
That’s a front page international news story. We’d look like a banana republic. Our international reputation would take decades to recover.
Spoiler: we already do look like a banana republic and our international reputation is lower than it has ever been. Trudeau isn’t a dummy: he figures that our reputation literally can’t get much worse no matter what he does, so he’s choosing to protect … someone … and what’s Poilievre going to do? He proved during the lockdowns that he’s not willing to get arrested on a matter of principle (unlike Maxime Bernier), so he’s likely to just posture endlessly until something new pops up in the silly season news rotation.
June 13, 2024
Fun new family game – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
In the National Post, Tristin Hopper presents the rulebook for an exciting new family game literally “ripped from the headlines” – Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
“To simulate what it’s like to go to work in a national parliament secretly housing foreign agents, the National Post presents a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual to play this group game: Who’s the Parliamentary Traitor?
Photo by Brice Hall”
WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAY:
- One large writing surface, such as a chalkboard, whiteboard or flip chart (THE ORDER PAPER)
- 20-70 note cards
- A timer
SETTING UP PLAY:
Gather at least five of your closest friends and have them sit in a line facing the ORDER PAPER. They will be divided into two categories: The WITTING AGENTS and the CREDULOUS NAIFS.To choose who among them will be the WITTING AGENTS, prepare a stack of IDENTITY CARDS equal to the number of players. On every fifth card, mark the symbol for the Chinese yuan (¥). In the case of five players, mark a single card, for 10 players, mark two, etc.
Shuffle the IDENTITY CARDS and distribute them among the players. Anyone receiving a “¥” is now a WITTING AGENT.
Set aside another stack of note cards to serve as MANDATE LETTERS. The text for each card is below. Shuffle the MANDATE LETTERS and place them face down.
RULES OF THE GAME:
Each round begins with a CANADA IS NOT BROKEN phase in which all players close their eyes, put their thumbs in their ears and bury their face for two minutes (the elapsed time to be marked with a timer). During this phase, the WITTING AGENTS open their eyes, stride over to the ORDER PAPER and write down a piece of binding public policy that damages Canada to the advantage of a hostile government (suggestions below).Once this act of treachery is done, the WITTING AGENTS return to their seats will pretend to wake up alongside them as if nothing happened.
Now begins the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phase. First, players must pull a MANDATE LETTER card that will determine conditions of discussion. Now, the parliamentarians must decide who among them is the foreign cat’s paw who has defaced their ORDER PAPER with disloyal policy. Uncomfortable questions are asked, accusations are made, and at the end of the round the players vote on who among them will be ejected as a traitor.
Only after the accused traitor is exiled will they show their IDENTITY CARD, revealing whether the accusations have been true, or whether they have been unjustly maligned.
Ejected players are then exiled to THE SENATE, a separated area of chairs where they are served port, ginger ale and black liquorice. They continue to participate in the CANADA IS NOT BROKEN and the CONCERNED FOLLOW-UP phases, but they no longer have a vote.
June 12, 2024
“Treason never prospers” … except in Canadian politics, apparently
Justin Trudeau and his unindicted co-conspirators in Canada’s federal parliament don’t think the names of Members of Parliament who have been acting as enablers or actual agents of foreign powers — that is, possible traitors — should be made public. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) Even the least cynical may be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t what a mature country would do in similar circumstances:
The cover of the NSICOP special report on foreign interference (PDF here)
… MPs have an obligation to protect the institution that is the House of Commons. Every MP is required as a condition of taking their seats, to swear the following oath: “I, [name], do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third, King of Canada, his heirs and successors. So help me God.”
The violation of that oath, or the suspected violation of that oath, is absolutely arguably contempt against the House of Commons. We don’t have a ton of precedent for that, because MPs who have been alleged to have collaborated, even unwittingly, with a foreign power in the past usually have the good sense to resign. But MPs should absolutely be allowed to pass judgment on the actions of their colleagues, with the express intent of expelling from the House any members who have transgressed against their oath to King and Country. This isn’t just their duty, it is a duty that they are uniquely positioned and obligated to perform. Until we know exactly which parliamentarians we’re talking about, a spectre hangs over all 400-plus of them. That very much compromises the public’s opinion of Parliament and has a demonstrable impact on their ability to do their jobs as parliamentarians.
Once upon a time, children, ministers of the Crown would offer their resignations for mistakes made by members of the civil service in the ministry for which he or she held responsibility, never mind mistakes of their own. In modern times, of course, it’s rare to find a minister resigning voluntarily until the RCMP is literally knocking on the door, and sometimes not even then.
Second, we are a large and multicultural country. MPs are expected to represent members of any diaspora community which may exist in their constituency. If you’re a Tibetan or Uyghur activist, how can you be represented by an MP who’s demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the government of the People’s Republic of China? If you’re an Iranian democracy and reform activist, how can you be represented by an MP who has close ties to Iran’s diplomatic and intelligence operation?
The answer, of course, is that you can’t be. The government has a greater responsibility to the democratic rights of those Canadians than it does to protecting the identity of any single unscrupulous or otherwise compromised parliamentarian. With every day that passes, Ottawa looks more like it has an interest in partisan butt-covering than it does in maintaining the long-term faith that democracy requires for our institutions to survive.
A good Member of Parliament recognizes the responsibility to the constituents — whether they voted for that particular MP or not — and would keep that responsibility as faithfully as possible. On that reckoning, we have fewer good MPs than we should have … and if the intelligence turns out to be fully supported upon full investigation, there should be a lot of open seats to run by-elections for (even if no formal charges of treason are ever laid).
Finally, I accept that intelligence is not evidence. I also accept, as noted in the Globe by Philippe Lagassé and Stephanie Carvin, that we must be cautious to not compromise intelligence sources and methods, or compromise ongoing investigations. Parliamentarians should not replace the criminal justice system or undercut our defence, but they what they are capable of doing, and indeed are required to do because no one else can do it for them, is broadly defining what the acceptable behaviour for parliamentarians should be. If an MP or a senator has engaged with a foreign power’s diplomatic or security services and they do not believe they have crossed the line for what we deem to be acceptable behaviour, they will be more than welcome to go on Power and Politics, or take to social media, or show up at what I’m sure will be many committee hearings, and make their case.
It is not a hardship to ask them do so. They are not being hard done by. The question here is not whether what they’ve done is criminal. It wasn’t criminal when Bev Oda billed the taxpayers for her juice. It wasn’t criminal when Bill Morneau forgot to leave a cabinet meeting where a decision was made that was a perceived conflict of interest. But both of those parliamentarians were forced to accept that their behaviour had failed the people they were sworn to represent. They resigned.
And the idea that orange juice crosses the line, but aiding a foreign intelligence service — even “semi-wittingly” — does not, will fail to pass the smell test with a very large number of Canadians. And that is entirely correct. The public is well ahead of the politicians on understanding this.
Public trust in politicians has been ebbing for quite some time and was fading even before the pandemic exposed so many of them as would-be dictators, poltroons, and idiots. There is no deep reservoir of respect for politicians that can be drawn on at this point. Swift action is the only thing that Parliament can do and by “swift”, I don’t mean setting up a Royal Commission with a multi-year remit to bury the issue until after the next federal election.
May 2, 2024
When Malcolm Muggeridge investigated P.G. Wodehouse for MI6
Alan Ashworth explains the circumstances under which the great P.G. Wodehouse became the subject of an MI6 (Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service) treason investigation near the end of the Second World War:
P.G. Wodehouse, circa 1904.
The American Legion Weekly, 24 October, 1919 via Wikimedia Commons.
[Malcolm Muggeridge:] “I first made Wodehouse’s acquaintance in circumstances which might have been expected to shake even his equanimity. This was in Paris just after the withdrawal of the German occupation forces. As Wodehouse well understood, the matter of his five broadcasts from Berlin would now have to be explained; and in the atmosphere of hysteria that war inevitably generates, the consequences might be very serious indeed. It would have been natural for him to be shaken, pale, nervous; on the contrary I found him calm and cheerful. I thought then, and think now more forcibly than ever, that this was due not so much to a clear conscience as to a state of innocence which mysteriously has survived in him.”
Muggeridge explains that he was attached to an MI6 contingent and a colleague “mentioned to me casually that he had received a short list of so-called traitors who cases needed to be investigated, one of the names being PG Wodehouse”. Muggeridge readily agreed to take on the case, “partly out of curiosity and partly from a feeling that no one who had made as elegant and original a contribution to the general gaiety of living should be allowed to get caught up in the larger buffooneries of war”. He duly visited Wodehouse at his hotel that same evening and the author described what had happened to him from the collapse in 1940 of France, where he was living with his wife Ethel, to his internment at a former lunatic asylum in Tost, Poland.
“The normal wartime procedure is to release civilian internees when they are sixty. Wodehouse was released some months before his sixtieth birthday as a result of well-meant representations by American friends – some resident in Berlin, America not being then at war with Germany. He made for Berlin, where his wife was awaiting him. The Berlin representative of the Columbia Broadcasting System asked him if he would like to broadcast to his American readers about his internment and foolishly he agreed, not realising the broadcasts would have to go over the German network and were bound to be exploited in the interest of Nazi propaganda.” [Here are German transcripts of the offending items.]
Muggeridge goes on: “It has been alleged that there was a bargain whereby Wodehouse agreed to broadcast in return for being released from Tost. This has frequently been denied and is, in fact, quite untrue but nonetheless still widely believed.”
Wodehouse came under virulent attack, particularly from Cassandra, the Daily Mirror columnist William Connor, who denounced him as a traitor to his country. Public libraries banned his books. Wodehouse wrote to the Home Secretary admitting he had been “criminally foolish” but said the broadcasts were “purely comic” and designed to show Americans a group of interned Englishmen keeping up their spirits. But the damage was done and the stigma stuck. After the war he spent the rest of his life in America.
In words that resonate half a century after their publication, Muggeridge says: “Lies, particularly in an age of mass communication, have much greater staying power than the truth.
“In the broadcasts there is not one phrase or word which can possibly be regarded as treasonable. Ironically enough, they were subsequently used at an American political warfare school as an example of how anti-German propaganda could subtly be put across by a skilful writer in the form of seemingly innocuous, light-hearted descriptive material. The fact is that Wodehouse is ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict. He just does not react to human beings in that sort of way and never seems to hate anyone – not even old friends who turned on him. Of the various indignities heaped upon him at the time of his disgrace, the only one he really grieved over was being expunged from some alleged roll of honour at his old school, Dulwich.”
[…]
Muggeridge records that, when the war ended, the Wodehouses left France for America. “Ethel has been back to England several times but Wodehouse never, though he is always theoretically planning to come. I doubt if he ever will [he didn’t, dying in 1975 at the age of 93]. His attitude is like that of a man who has parted, in painful circumstances, from someone he loves and whom he both longs for and dreads to see again.”
April 8, 2024
Beecher’s Bible: A Sharps 1853 from John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 8, 2024On October 16, 1859 John Brown and 19 men left the Kennedy farmhouse and made their way a few miles south to the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. They planned to seize the Arsenal and use its arms — along with 200 Sharps 1853 carbines and 1,000 pikes they had previously purchased — to ignite and arm a slave revolt. Brown was a true fanatic for the abolitionist cause, perfectly willing to spill blood for a just cause. His assault on the Arsenal lasted three days, but failed to incite a rebellion. Instead of attracting local slaves to his banner, he attracted local militia and the US Marines. His force was besieged in the arsenal firehouse, and when the Marines broke through the doors they captured five surviving members of the Brown party, including Brown himself. All five were quickly tried and found guilty of murder, treason, and inciting negroes to riot. They were sentenced to death, and hanged on December 2, 1859.
Most of Brown’s 200 Sharps carbines were left in the farmhouse hideout, to be distributed when the insurrection took hold. These were found by local militia, among them the Independent Greys, and some were kept as souvenirs — including this example.
There is an intriguing historical question as to whether Brown’s raid was ultimately good for the country or not. It was extremely divisive at the time, and it can be argued that the raid was a major factor leading to Lincoln’s election and the Civil War. Could slavery have been abolished without the need for a cataclysmic war if John Brown had not fractured the Democratic Party? To what extent is killing for a cause justifiable? Do the ends always justify the means? John Brown had no doubts about his answers to these questions … but maybe he should have.
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December 27, 2023
The never-settled “Pétain question”
Theodore Dalrymple reviews a new book on the trial of Marshal Pétain after the liberation of France in WW2:
François Mauriac, the left-leaning, Nobel Prize–winning, Catholic novelist, said of the trial of Marshal Pétain that it would never be over: a sentiment more or less echoed by General de Gaulle. And certainly, the figure of Pétain continues to divide opinion in France, at least among those with opinions on such matters. Was he a traitor to France, or its savior, or perhaps something in between the two?
Professor Julian Jackson has written a superb book about Pétain’s trial, its circumstances, and its aftermath. I would like to say that I read it in one sitting, but it was too long for that; but I looked forward impatiently to picking it up again, all else being but a regrettable interruption.
The continued salience of what might be called the “Pétain question” is illustrated by the fact that one of the candidates in the last French presidential election, Éric Zemmour, claimed that Pétain was the savior of the French Jews. This was all the more startling because Zemmour himself is Jewish (his parents emigrated from Algeria to France not long before independence), and because, if Pétain is exonerated in the matter of the deportation of seventy-five thousand Jews during the war to Germany, there to be murdered, his reputation is all but saved: for it is in this matter that his record is most excoriated.
As Jackson reminds us, this was not always so. In the immediate post-war period, and during his trial for treason, the fate of the Jews of France was not much emphasized. According to Éric Conan and Henry Rousso, in their book Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Vichy, a past that does not pass), the Jews of France themselves were not anxious that their treatment by Vichy should be emphasized, for they had had more than enough of being treated as a population apart. They wanted their suffering to be subsumed under that of the nation as a whole, and it was only later, by the subsequent generation, that the deportation assumed its great historiographical importance. It is not that nothing about the deportation was known before, it was merely that less emphasis was placed on it. There is an analogy with the historiography of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn revealed nothing that was not, or could not have been, known before, with all its human and moral significance; the difference was that the world was now ready or willing to believe it.
But what of Zemmour’s claim, which is precisely that which Pétain’s defenders, when they are not outright anti-Semites, make on the Marshal’s behalf? It is certainly true that a far higher percentage of French Jews survived than, say, of Belgian or Dutch Jews (the figures are seventy-five, fifty, and twenty-five percent, respectively). But how much of the difference was attributable to the alleged relative decency, and cunning, of Vichy and its marshal?
Allow me a personal anecdote. Above my mother-in-law’s flat in Paris lived an old Jewish lady whose brother had been deported on the last convoy of Jews from Paris before the end of the occupation. She, however, had been saved by having been sent out of Paris to the care of nuns, who disguised her identity. Hence, she survived.
One day my mother-in-law was traveling on a bus and started to talk to an old lady next to her, who asked her where she lived. She gave the street, then the number, then the number of the flat, whereupon the lady next to her, who was Jewish, burst into tears. This was the very flat in which she had been hidden by family friends during the four years of the occupation, being careful never to appear at the window because opposite was the German Kommandantur, formerly and afterwards a police station. Four years of claustrophobic terror during adolescence: it was like something from a novel by Patrick Modiano.
The survival of these two old ladies owed nothing to Vichy or Marshal Pétain, but this does not settle the historical question. What percentage of the survivors owed their survival to the bravery of individuals, and what to policy decisions? We shall probably never know with any certainty. If one compares the survival rates of France and the Netherlands, what part did the relative geographies of the two countries play? France is much larger and less densely populated, and has many landscapes more conducive to concealment than the Netherlands.
Again, what of the pétainiste claim, repeated by Zemmour, that Vichy sacrificed Jews of non-French origin in order to save those of French origin? The former, however, were more conspicuous, with much smaller networks of potential defenders, than the latter. This might explain the large difference in the survival rates between the French-born and foreign-born Jews, an explanation which would hardly redound to the regime’s credit.
November 5, 2023
Guy Fawkes and The Gunpowder Plot 1605
The History Chap
Published 4 Nov 2022The story behind Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, the audacious plan to kill the king of England. It is also the complicated story behind our annual Bonfire Night celebrations.
In 1605 a group of dissident Catholics came within a whisker of one of the greatest assassination coups in history — blowing up the King of England, and his government as he attended parliament in London. 36 barrels of gunpowder (approximately 1 tonne of explosives) had been placed directly under where he would open parliament. Experts estimate that no one within 300 feet would have survived.
Had it succeeded it would have rivalled 9/11 in its audacity and would have changed English (& arguably world) history forever. But who were the plotters, what were they trying to achieve and how close did they really come to success? Were they freedom fighters or 17th century terrorists? And why is only one conspirator, Guy Fawkes, remembered when he wasn’t even the brains behind the operation?
After years of persecution by England’s Protestants, a small group of Catholic nobles under Robert Catesby (aka Robin Catesby) decided to take matters into their own hands and blow up the king (King James I of England / James VI of Scotland) whilst he attended parliament in London.
Guy Fawkes (aka Guido Fawkes) smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar directly beneath the hall where parliament would meet in the Palace of Westminster. In the early hours of 5th November 1605, he was arrested by guards who had been tipped off about the gunpowder plot. After three days of torture in the Tower of London, Guy Fawkes finally broke and named his fellow conspirators.
The conspirators, under Robert Catesby, had fled London for the English midlands where they hoped to abduct the king’s daughter and organise a catholic rising. Both failed to materialise and Catesby’s small band were surrounded by a government militia at Holbeach House, just outside Kingswinford in Staffordshire. A brief shoot-out resulted in the death of some of the Catholic rebels (including their leader, Catesby) and the arrest of the others.
The surviving gunpowder plotters (including Guy Fawkes) were executed in London at the end of January 1606, by the grisly execution reserved for traitors — Hanged, drawn and quartered (quite literally a “living death”).
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was a complete failure but the event is still celebrated on the 5th November every year on Bonfire Night.
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July 24, 2023
QotD: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor after the abdication
We are reminded that the king’s much-rehearsed coronation speech was a success. “Millions of his subjects sat at home listening to the broadcast, willing him to succeed whilst knowing of his stammer and the difficulties that even speaking a few short sentences publicly had caused him … Yet fortunately for the coronation ceremony, the king’s nerves seemed to vanish on the day, aided by his sincere religious faith: another characteristic absent from his brother’s life.”
[…]
One trait that runs through this important book is the personal weakness of the Duke and the compelling strength of his bride. Larman makes it plain that both Baldwin and Chamberlain were aware that it was Wallis who was passing state secrets to German intelligence, although her husband also expressed sympathies for Hitler’s regime. Cecil Beaton, photographer of the David-Wallis wedding in France, noted in his diary that the Duchess “not only has individuality and personality, but [she] is a strong force”. Even as he praised her intelligence and admiration for the Duke, Beaton offered the judgement that she “is determined to love him, though I feel she is not in love with him” — an interesting reflection on the woman for whom her husband had abandoned his throne. In 2015, Andrew Morton dwelt in great detail on Wallis’s treachery in 17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up.
Throughout Larman’s compelling read, we are offered evidence of how tone-deaf the Duke was to international protocol, the interests of Britain and the sufferings of others. Anthony Eden, as Foreign Secretary, observed how the pair felt they should be “treated abroad by ambassadors and dignitaries, rather as they would a member of the royal family on a holiday”. This came to a head when friends of the Duke organised a visit to Germany over 11–23 October 1937. They met several leading Nazis, including Hess, Goebbels (who called the Duke “a tender seedling of reason”) and Göring, as well as renewing their acquaintance with Ribbentrop, still then ambassador to Britain. It was Ribbentrop, according to Morton’s book, who had sent Wallis 17 carnations daily “each one representing a night they had spent together”.
On the penultimate day, the Windsors met Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Larman reasons that the visit was as much to show that the Duke and his bride were still relevant in the wider world, as to form a bond with the Führer to avoid future war. As with many public figures of the era, David feared communism far more than fascism, for which he saw the best antidote in an alliance with Germany. We are left wondering whether the Duke observed in Hitler’s authoritarian state all that he admired and wished for Britain, but was now denied.
A subtext to The Windsors at War is just how much anxiety David caused the King, his younger brother, during the run up to war and during it. For most of the period, the Duke badgered for money, confirmation of his status and a royal title for Wallis. Whilst the first was forthcoming, amounting to a financial settlement of £25,000 a year (generous by any standards, considering the Windsors spent their days sofa-surfing and sponging off their rich friends), neither of the latter were. Chamberlain was forced to write that “in addition to letters of protest he had as Prime Minister … all classes stood against him. In addition to the British not wanting him to return, residents of Canada, New Zealand and America wished him to remain in exile”.
Yet, writes Larman, the Duke would not simply “languish in exile and be denied the opportunity to contribute his thoughts on the international situation. This arrogance made him both unpredictable and, with the outbreak of war drawing closer, dangerous. At a time when it was crucial that the loyalties of prominent public figures were transparent, his inclinations remained opaque”.
Peter Caddick-Adams, “The other one”, The Critic, 2023-04-18.
July 28, 2022
The Posh Brits Betraying Their Country – WW2 – Spies & Ties 20
World War Two
Published 27 Jul 2022Being allies does little to discourage Moscow from recruiting double agents in the British establishment. The most famous of them all, Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, penetrate deep into MI5, MI6, and Bletchley Park. With friends like the NKVD, who needs enemies?
(more…)
June 3, 2022
QotD: Snobbery and spying
Oxford and Cambridge became notorious hunting grounds for the Soviet Union, as they sought out clever young lefties who they might convince to go full retard into communism and then spy for the Motherland.
They had some success with some dapper young gentlemen called Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt and Cairncross – that’s a story for another day.
It was notable that during the whole affair, British intelligence simply refused to believe that one of their own had been corrupted. They could not entertain such a notion, and so the Cambridge Five remained able to betray their country over and over again.
Alex Noble, “Hero Of The European Union”, Continental Telegraph, 2019-04-15.
November 3, 2021
1915 Yorkshire Parkin for Bonfire Night
Tasting History with Max Miller
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July 29, 2021
Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, the Mecca of free speech
In Tuesday’s NP Platformed, Colby Cosh pays tribute to one of the holy places of free speech, Speakers’ Corner:
“Speakers’ Corner – Hyde Park – London” by Manolo Blanco is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
We detect a slightly surprising absence of international media commotion over a dreadful event that happened Sunday: a woman giving a critique of Islam at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park was slashed in the face by a fanatic. The victim, 39-year-old Hatun Tash, is said to be a familiar figure at the Mecca of free speech. And, yes, NP Platformed uses this geographic metaphor intentionally.
Probably every country has sites consecrated to its distinctive political ideals. Speakers’ Corner is different: it represents the ideal of absolute free speech for, and to, the entire world. A non-American visiting the Lincoln Memorial is there to honour the memory of a great man; if he visits the Washington Monument, it’s probably for the purpose of making phallic-themed jokes. But for 150 years, non-Englishmen visiting Hyde Park, from Lenin to Bishop Tutu, have been awestruck by the freedom that radical speakers enjoy at the original among the world’s many Speakers’ Corners.
Few Londoners pay it much mind anymore — not since the 19th century, when the nigh-inviolable freedom of speech enjoyed on the corner actually served to endanger governments and give impetus to liberal social change. Since about 1900, it has mostly been a place, almost a rehearsal space, for the tireless cranks of any given moment: dietary Savonarolas, village atheists, suffragettes, Trots and syndicalists and Maoists. They have been joined by generations of Muslims preaching various Islamic doctrines or far-out varieties of the faith.
Foreigners, however, have often been astonished to discover that Speakers’ Corner mostly lives up to its ideals, or that any place could. The British state really lets those people say those things in public without locking them up. The park has seen plenty of affrays in its time, but fights have become rare as the ritual purpose of the space has become universally understood.
Rare, too, are the United Kingdom’s infringements on its inviolability. After the Bloody Sunday shootings of 1972, three Irish republicans were arrested under the Treason Felony Act of 1848 for having proposed war against Britain in Hyde Park. They were found guilty of lesser charges, sentenced to time served and sent back across the Irish Sea, but Irish nationalists rightly dined out on the incident for many years, and the criminal offence of “treason felony” has never since been heard of in any English courtroom.
July 16, 2021
Do US intelligence agencies only work on domestic surveillance these days?
Matt Taibbi discusses the (recent?) US intelligence agencies’ apparent concentration on domestic “enemies” like Republicans, Jewish organizations, conservative broadcasters, and US Presidents and their appointed officials:
The scene was perfectly representative of what the erstwhile “liberal” press has become: collections of current and former enforcement types, masquerading as journalists, engaged in patriotic denunciations of critics and rote recitals of quasi-official statements.
Not that it matters to [Fox TV host Tucker] Carlson’s critics, but odds favor the NSA scandal being true. An extraordinarily rich recent history of illegal, politically-directed leaks has gone mostly uncovered, in another glaring recent press failure that itself is part of this story.
It’s admitted. Go back to December, 2015, and you’ll find a Wall Street Journal story by Adam Entous and Danny Yadron quoting senior government officials copping to the fact that the Obama White House reviewed intercepts of conversations between “U.S lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”
The White House in that case was anxious to know what congressional opponents to Obama’s Iran deal were thinking, and peeked in the electronic cookie jar to get an advance preview at such “incidentally” collected info. This prompted what one official called an “Oh, shit” moment, when they realized that what they’d done might result in “the executive branch being accused of spying.”
After Obama left office, illegal leaks of classified intercepts became commonplace. Many, including the famed January, 2017 leak of conversations between Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, were key elements of major, news-cycle-dominating bombshells. Others, like “Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin,” or news that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials in foreign intercepts, were openly violative of the prohibition against disclosing the existence of such surveillance, let alone the contents.
These leaks tended to go to the same small coterie of reporters at outlets like the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN, and not one prompted blowback. This was a major forgotten element of the Reality Winner story. Winner, a relatively low-level contractor acting on her own, was caught, charged, and jailed with extraordinary speed after leaking an NSA document about Russian interference to the Intercept. But these dozens of similar violations by senior intelligence officials, mainly in leaks about Trump, went not just unpunished but un-investigated. As Winner’s lawyer, Titus Nichols, told me years ago, his client’s case was “about low-hanging fruit.”
