POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

Drinking from plastic bottles can raise blood pressure due to microplastics entering the bloodstream, study suggests

"Suggests" is the word. The study was based on the responses of only EIGHT people and there was NO measurement of microplastic intake at any point. So no evidence that microplastics caused the differences observed. And the results were highly variable with men mostly not affected. What a heap of steaming manure! The journal article is

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-8929/3/3/26

Drinking from plastic bottles can raise blood pressure as a result of microplastics entering the bloodstream, a study suggests.

Microplastics have also been found in fluids in glass bottles, according to other research, and experts say the associated higher blood pressure can lead to an increased risk of heart disease.

The latest study found blood pressure went down after participants stopped all fluid intake, including water, from plastic and glass bottles, and drank only tap water for two weeks.

Researchers in the department of medicine at Danube Private University in Austra said: 'We concluded, after extensive research, that beverages packaged in plastic bottles should be avoided.

'Remarkable trends were observed. The results of the study suggest, for the first time, that a reduction in plastic use could potentially lower blood pressure, probably due to the reduced vol-ume of plastic particles in the bloodstream.

'The changes we observed in blood pressure suggest that reducing the intake of plastic particles could lower cardiovascular risk.'

Research shows that microplastics – microscopic fragments that are the result of plastic degradation triggered by UV radiation or the result of a bottle being knocked about – are ubiquitous.

Microplastics have been found in saliva, heart tissue, the liver, kidneys and placenta. Several studies have found high concentrations in water in plastic bottles.

In the new study, reported in the journal Microplastics, the researchers had eight men and women get their daily fluid intake from tap water and told them to abstain from drinks stored in plastic or glass bottles.

Several blood pressure measurements were taken at the start and during the study. The results showed a statistically significant decline in diastolic blood pressure – the pressure in the arteries when the heart rests between beats – after two weeks.

The researchers said: 'Based on the findings, indicating a reduction in blood pressure with decreased plastic consumption, we hypothesize that plastic particles present in the bloodstream might contribute to elevated blood pressure.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13706389/Drinking-plastic-bottles-raise-blood-pressure-microplastics-entering-bloodstream-study-suggests.html

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JD Vance versus Kamala Harris: He is the Real Deal

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Since this week’s announcement that Donald Trump has chosen J. D. Vance as his running mate, media outlets have been speculating about the 39-year-old hillbilly prodigy. In spite of his candid – and hugely popular – memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2016), a certain mystery surrounds Vance. At only 39, with a history of criticizing Trump (not uncommon among Republican politicians), Vance has not yet created a stable image for himself. One thing is clear, however. He is quite different from the more establishment Republican alternatives Trump might have chosen to be his prospective Vice President.

We’re going to build factories again … together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.

Vance’s friends and intellectual influences include several figures of the “Online Right.” He has cited the influence of Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, Catholic convert and journalist Sohrab Ahmari, “neo-reactionary” thinker Curtis Yarvin, and Catholic philosopher René Girard, among others. Girard in particular is important, for he not only educated Vance through his books, but is a favorite of Vance’s billionaire backer Peter Thiel, who studied under Girard during his time at Stanford. Vance’s conversion to Catholicism in 2019 is an important aspect of his political character, which blends conservative intellectualism with advocacy for Middle Americans. In an article written for the Catholic magazine The Lamp, he quotes St Augustine’s City of God, the philosopher of religion Basil Mitchell, and Girard: “Christ is the scapegoat who reveals our imperfections, and forces us to look at our own flaws rather than blame our society’s chosen victims.”

Put briefly, Vance encountered this understanding of Christianity in the work of Girard, and then proceeded to look at his own flaws. He soon found that he had lost touch with virtue in his ambitious quest to leave behind the poverty and addiction which shaped his Ohio hometown:

I had immersed myself in the logic of the meritocracy and found it deeply unsatisfying. And I began to wonder: were all these worldly markers of success actually making me a better person? I had traded virtue for achievement and found the latter wanting. But the woman I wanted to marry cared little whether I obtained a Supreme Court clerkship. She just wanted me to be a good person.

Vance’s memoir secured him a following more among intellectuals seeking to understand Trump’s popularity than among the people he grew up among. But it is the latter’s interests he now champions: the industrious factory-workers whose jobs were exported to China, and whose sons and brothers were killed, wounded or traumatized in “global war on terror” after 2001. In this respect, Vance is the anti-Kamala Harris. He was not picked simply because he checks certain boxes. He was picked despite the fact that he was “another white guy.” A living breathing example of the American Dream, Vance can be held up as a role model for children – regardless of their skin color or gender – exemplifying that the circumstances of your early life don’t need to be your destiny.

Kamala grew up in comfort. Her parents were academics, her father a Jamaican economist, her mother an Indian biologist. Her political career was not distinguished. Yet, thanks to the prevailing identity-based DEI mindset prevalent within the Democratic Party, she was picked as Biden’s running mate because “he wanted to make history by picking a woman of color…” If we want children – of every race – to aspire to hard work and virtue, Vance is the ideal role model. If we want to teach children – of every race – to play the grifting game, Kamala is the Platonic form of the DEI hustler.

Harris has recently been the subject of online mockery after a video compilation was released which shows her repeating the same asinine, grammatically dubious phrase on dozens of different occasions: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” DEI hides mediocrity, but only to a point. She went to law school at University of California Hastings. By contrast, Vance got into Yale Law School as an Appalachian white male veteran – without a doubt the worst thing a person could possibly be if one wanted to appeal to the New Haven Diversicrats. Yale Law, for all its faults, is the most competitive in the nation; Hastings, while perfectly respectable, comes in 85th.

As he has progressed from autobiography to the Senate and now to the brink of the second-highest elected office in the land, Vance has been supported by his good friend, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel. This, coupled with his endorsement by Elon Musk, has caused some to doubt the sincerity of Vance’s brand of “Maganomics.” One of Vance’s most striking policy aims is to shift the U.S. economy away from the big tech companies, whose wealth is highly concentrated along the coasts, and to reinvigorate the “real economy” of manufacturing. However, a closer look at Thiel’s work reveals that there is no tension between Vance’s vision of a revitalized Middle America and his close partnership with Thiel. As Vance writes in The Lamp:

[Thiel] argued that his own world of Silicon Valley spent too little time on the technological breakthroughs that made life better – those in biology, energy, and transportation – and too much on things like software and mobile phones. Everyone could now tweet at each other, or post photos on Facebook, but it took longer to travel to Europe, we had no cure for cognitive decline and dementia, and our energy use increasingly dirtied the planet.

Thiel even “defied the social template I had constructed – that dumb people were Christians and smart ones atheists.” Having experienced conversion myself, I can’t stress how important it is to abandon this stereotype of Christianity.

It can be difficult for the adult convert not to compromise on the tenets of his new faith by holding onto secular platitudes and liberal pieties. Vance’s pro-life stance, which seems considerably stronger than that of Trump himself, reflects his genuine belief in the sanctity of life. By contrast, Harris, who is a Baptist, has insisted without justification that “to support a woman’s ability – not her government, but her – to make that decision [to have an abortion] does not require anyone to abandon their faith or their beliefs.” This ignores that the General Board of American Baptist Churches officially opposes abortion as a means of evading responsibility for conception, and that many Baptists, especially those in the Southern Baptist Convention, do not believe in its permissibility at all. But then, argumentative rigor is not Harris’s strong suit. Another of her incomprehensible statements made the headlines recently: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The divergence of the two likely vice-presidential candidates on the question of America’s place in the world is perhaps the most political important difference between them.

Harris’s recent “forceful case” for American interventionism is a typical expression of liberal interventionism. I have no trouble imagining her sending Vance’s friends in rural Ohio abroad to fight in ruinous misadventures until the trans flag flies over Tehran. (Look out for my upcoming article on Iran for more warnings about the difficulty of dealing with that problem.) Nor can we expect competence, if the scattered, lurching withdrawal from Afghanistan a few years ago is any indicator.

Admittedly, it does remain true that the democrats did take U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. No, not well. No, not prudently, nor at the right time, nor with the right preparations. But they did it. On the other hand, the Biden-Harris administration has not shied away from intervening indirectly in foreign conflicts, even if the aid it has given to Ukraine and to Israel has been too little to give those countries victories in their wars against, respectively, Russia and Iranian proxies.

Trump and Vance offer something different. There are two foreign policy futures one could reasonably foresee under a Trump-Vance administration. The first is blockheaded isolationism and geopolitical naïveté. Today’s Republicans leaders are not likely to blunder into any stupid “forever wars,” but they do risk abandoning Europe to Putin, the Middle East to Islamism, and East Asia to an ascendent China.

America has real enemies, and they cannot be ignored. That is why Vance must never repeat his comment about how he “doesn’t really care” what happens in Ukraine. If something bad enough happens there, it won’t stay in Ukraine, and he should know better.

But if you look more closely at Vance, it seems likelier that the new Republican Party will uphold America’s role as a great power, but do so more wisely than the Democrats have since 2020. Vance, in his acceptance speech, railed against the Chinese fentanyl coming up through Mexico, where there was once a border before Biden destroyed it. Vance understands deeply the threat posed by an aggressive China, particularly economically: “We’re going to build factories again … together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.” That is not the rhetoric of someone who is going to abandon our Taiwanese allies (and their crucial semiconductor factories) to China. It’s the rhetoric of someone who understands Chinese subversion.

It was Trump, not Biden, who imposed tariffs on key Chinese goods, and it will be Trump, not a Democrat, who will keep their poison out of American heartlands by restoring a well-policed southern border. Vance, whose own mother suffered terribly with drug addiction, understands the importance of supporting Trump in this fight.

The Democrats deserve some limited credit for supporting Israel’s fight against Hamas, albeit haltingly and grudgingly. Vance, in a telling CNN interview, does much better, for he would let the Israelis take the lead without constantly fiddling with the flow of necessary American aid: “I think that our attitude vis-a-vis the Israelis should be, look, we're not good at micromanaging Middle Eastern wars, the Israelis are our allies, let them prosecute this war the way they see fit.”

Finally, we can cautiously hope that worries about Trump or Vance abandoning Ukraine are overblown. The terrible war there has revealed Putin’s many weaknesses. The Russians have repeatedly embarrassed as well as incriminated themselves. Vance is less concerned about Eastern Europe than East Asia or the Middle East, but he says himself that he has no intention of abandoning Europe. My hope is that he approaches the Putin problem seriously. Some of what he says indicates that he will:

https://www.restorationbulletin.com/p/jd-vance-versus-kamala-harris-he

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How supporting Trump became cool

For the past decade, the basic lines of conflict in American public life seemed clear. Donald Trump was pitted against the establishment, the ‘basket of deplorables’ who supported him against the elites. The reality was more complicated. Yes, plenty of rich and powerful Americans supported Trump and plenty of poorer Americans on the fringes of society were against him. But in a certain section of society the disdain for Trump was unequivocal. Among the country’s elite – at Harvard and Stanford, at Google and Goldman, near the beaches of the Hamptons and the mountains around Aspen – anyone who defied the anti-Trump consensus could expect swift consequences for their social standing.

There have been constant melodramas over this form of social ostracism. Two years ago, Alan Dershowitz – a formerly pro-Democrat lawyer who went from representing Mike Tyson and O.J. Simpson to arguing a key case for Trump – complained bitterly that the Chilmark Library on Martha’s Vineyard had failed to invite him to deliver a talk to well-heeled local vacationers, something he’d done annually for decades. ‘I’ve been cancelled, basically, by the Chilmark Library,’ he lamented to the New Yorker.

Zuckerberg called Trump’s reaction to the assassination attempt ‘one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen’

Supporting Trump could also have consequences far more serious than upsetting local librarians. As the tech publication the Information recently acknowledged, it could cost careers too: ‘It wasn’t so long ago that being a supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy in Democrat-leaning Silicon Valley – or even having a loose affiliation with him – was the kind of thing that earned you dirty looks, a pink slip from an employer and stern advice to rethink your life choices.’

Yet this seems to be changing. If a number of American commentators are to be believed, the country is undergoing an unexpected ‘vibe shift’. Coined in 2022 by Sean Monahan, a self-described trend forecaster, the idea of a vibe shift originated in the fashion world. It was meant to denote the confusing and often unexpected transition from one paradigm of cool to another. One day, smoking and wearing plaid shirts may be seen as fashionable but – vibe shift! – a few months later the inverse becomes true.

Of late, commentators argue, a political vibe shift is under way: suddenly, supporting Trump seems to be much more socially acceptable than before – in some elite circles, perhaps even a little cool.

Take Silicon Valley. The biggest tech entrepreneurs and the hordes of programmers and HR professionals at large firms like Google and Meta were once staunchly progressive. Yet this year, a growing number of the tech world’s rich and famous, from Elon Musk to David Sacks, the founder of a large venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, are endorsing Trump. Even longtime Democrats are suddenly on the fence; Mark Zuckerberg said he wouldn’t endorse either candidate in a recent interview, and called Trump’s reaction to the assassination attempt ‘one of the most badass things I’ve seen in my life’.

The transformation on Wall Street may be just as consequential. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan, for example, has been outspoken in his criticisms of Trump in the past; this year, he used the annual global elite gathering at Davos to signal he’d changed his mind and intended to support Trump’s re-election bid. Dimon isn’t alone. There’s also Bill Ackman, a Democratic donor and notable hedge-fund manager. This year, he picked a series of fights with university presidents who, in his estimation, weren’t sufficiently protective of Jewish students on campuses; a few weeks ago, he announced he’s supporting Trump.

Even some celebrities from traditionally left-leaning fields are donning proverbial – or literal – MAGA hats. 50 Cent, the New York rapper, recently said ‘many black men identify with Trump’. After Trump’s attempted assassination, he tweeted a picture of one of his albums, featuring lyrics about being shot, with Trump’s face replacing his own. Others who’ve publicly embraced Trump include the influencer Amber Rose and singer Azealia Banks.

The vibe shift goes beyond America’s wealthy, extending to many groups once viewed as solidly Democrat. As polls show, non-white voters, especially young black and Latino men, have rapidly moved towards the Republicans. And they’re increasingly vocal in their support. Some of the most fulsome arguments I’ve heard for Trump recently came from a Puerto Rican cleaner and a Mexican-American Uber driver.

Even now, polls show Trump remains deeply unpopular among most Americans; according to a New York Times poll, about 55 per cent of registered voters hold a negative view of him. But the same poll suggests the intensity of that unpopularity has diminished in recent years; the number of Americans who have a ‘very unfavourable’ opinion of Trump has declined by five percentage points since the summer of 2022.

This isn’t a huge swing. But I wonder whether even those Americans who continue to have an unfavourable opinion of Trump have come to fear him less than before. In my own social circle, concerns over his presidency were palpable in 2016 and many actively opposed his campaign. This year, the same people think Trump is likely to win, claim they would be extremely worried about him getting a second term but shrug in embarrassed resignation when I ask what they’re doing to stop him. The dislike for Trump might run deep. But the palpable concern about what he might do – and, with it, the social taboo against his supporters speaking their mind – is diminishing.

Political scientists like to say American public opinion is thermostatic – it moves in the opposite direction of policy. It would be tempting to think the assets of the presidency – with its political power, giant bully pulpit and ability to influence a press obsessed with access – would help the incumbent move public opinion towards their own views. But presidential influence has historically done the opposite. If the incumbent is liberal, American political opinion becomes more conservative (and vice versa). This helps explain why America moved right when Barack Obama was president; why it tacked to the left after Trump’s 2016 victory; and also, perhaps, why it’s been trending in a conservative direction since Joe Biden won in 2020.

This thermostatic swing has been reinforced by Biden’s declining mental acuity. Biden remained sufficiently salient in public for voters to blame him for their frustration, from inflation to the growing influx of illegal migrants, whether he was responsible or not. But once his team felt forced to hide him away, he couldn’t defend his record. Consequently, public views on topics such as border security have moved right.

What’s more, the cultural progressivism that conquered America’s institutions, including the Democratic party, inspired a thermostatic response of its own. This includes popular disaffection with a constant emphasis on equity; with attempts to punish anyone perceived of committing some ill-defined form of political wrong-think; and with the smug and pretentious linguistic register which characterises much of public life today.

Take a recent example of the progressive sensibility overreach. When SpaceX successfully launched a rocket into space a few weeks ago, the New York Times responded with a breaking news alert pushed to millions of phones. Rather than celebrating the historic launch, the article attacked Musk’s company for not sufficiently protecting birds’ nests it might damage. Leaders in Silicon Valley – many of whom have long felt personally aggrieved that they have become the whipping boys of their former allies in the left-leaning establishment – were furious.

If one part of the story behind the vibe shift is about a growing rebellion against the progressive ecosystem most Democrats inhabit, another part of the story is about how Trump’s image has changed – starting with the way in which his temporary absence from mainstream platforms helped divert popular attention away from his failings.

If I had been advising Trump in January 2021, I’d have told him to go to Mar-a-Lago, stay off Twitter, give Biden a chance to screw up and let Americans forget about how much they blamed him for the violent assault on the Capitol. Trump is far too enamoured with the limelight to heed such advice. But because Twitter banned him in January 2021, and major TV channels made a concerted effort not to platform him, he was effectively forced to adopt this strategy.

As the memories of Trump’s presidency recede, public revulsion at him has subsided. This process was speeded along by two sets of developments that played into his hands. First, the only judicial case against him that led to a conviction was weak. Other cases would have addressed very serious misconduct, such as his alleged attempts to pressure election officials to do his bidding. The case successfully brought by the elected Manhattan district attorney, however, used an unusual legal theory to punish him for the tawdry – but ultimately inconsequential – decision to pay a porn star he slept with for her silence.

Then there was the attempted assassination and Trump’s courageous response. After he survived, Trump shrewdly claimed he was a changed man, promising in an acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that he would demonstrate his desire to heal political divisions. The first minutes of the speech emphasised the need for national unity in tones that could have been uttered by Ronald Reagan, or even Obama.

For the next hour of the speech, however, Trump went beyond the lines on his tele-prompter, returning to soundbites that work brilliantly at campaign rallies – extreme statements and partisan barbs against opponents. In other words, Trump isn’t a changed man. And yet his position on many policy issues – which partially explain the intensity of the revulsion against him in 2016 – has softened. There have been no hostile calls to ban Muslims entering the US.

There’s a final reason why a vibe shift has been taking place – and why it could end as quickly as it began. Most Americans believed Biden was too old. Kamala Harris, who is set to succeed Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate, is also deeply unpopular. Her vulnerabilities, personal and political, are real. But she seems with it, at least. She should be better able to motivate the Democratic base, and will likely spend much of her campaign prosecuting a rhetorical case against Trump. If she succeeds, claims of a political vibe shift may turn out to be premature. But that remains a big ‘if’.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/how-supporting-trump-became-cool/

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What did you expect? Britain's protests reflect DECADES of elite failure

Matt Goodwin

I am angry. I am upset. And I am deeply disillusioned with the direction of Britain.

I’m writing this post after a horrific mass stabbing at a children’s dance group in the town of Southport, which left three children dead and another eight injured.

These poor children thought they were going to a Taylor Swift themed dance class; they ended up being murdered.

And who murdered them? The son of immigrants from Rwanda.

I’ve thought about many things since.

But the one thought that keeps coming back to me is this.

When a nation cannot protect its own children something has gone terribly wrong.

And something has gone terribly wrong in this country.

We can all see it, we can all sense it, even if we dare not say it out loud.

The creeping sense of lawlessness. The overwhelming sense of hopelessness. The now inescapable conclusion that we’ve simply let too many people into our country who hate who we are.

And a growing sense of desperation, rooted in the knowledge that nobody in power has any serious control over the country —over its streets, borders, future.

This is why many ordinary people are now taking to the streets to vent their anger and frustration over not only the senseless murder of children but over the general direction of the country, with some —wrongly in my view— taking this anger out on police officers and emergency service workers

In response, these protestors are being widely criticised by much of the media and political class as ‘far right agitators’, ‘violent thugs’, and ‘extremists’ who have been swayed by ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, and irresponsible ‘populists’.

And I certainly have no doubt there will be violent thugs among them. I will say again —violence against police is never justified.

But here’s my question. What did you expect? Seriously?

What do you expect ordinary British people to do given the deeply alarming things that are now unfolding around them, in their country, on a daily basis?

Just look at what’s unfolded in the last month alone.

On July 4th, at the election, several Muslim MPs were elected to the House of Commons after a campaign of abuse, harassment, and intimidation, displaying zero respect for our political institutions and ways of life.

On July 11th, the new Labour government announced it would release 5,000 prisoners early in September, with most having served 40% of their sentence.

On July 15th, we learned London’s Metropolitan Police had not solved a SINGLE petty crime -burglary, car theft, phone theft- in three years, across 166 areas.

On July 17th, it was reported that a Jordanian refugee, Mustafa al Mbaidan, who had assaulted a female police officer in Bournemouth, was spared community service on the grounds that he cannot speak English.

On July 18th, two asylum seekers, Yousef Garef and Amin Abdelbakar, who stole a Rolex worth £25,000 from a tourist, were spared jail.

On July 18th, that same day, mass rioting in minority communities broke out in Harehills after social services took four Romani children into social care.

On the same evening, rioting broke out in East London’s Bangladeshi community, following political unrest in Bangladesh, with rocks thrown at police officers and cars smashed in communities that are majority Muslim.

On July 23rd, it was announced that Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most famous Islamist, was to be sentenced for directing Islamist terror on Britain’s streets.

On the same day, a British Army Officer was repeatedly stabbed outside his home by Anthony Esan, a member of a minority community.

On July 26th, protests broke out after footage emerged of Greater Manchester Police taking action against Fahir and Amaad Amaas —two brothers who were later revealed to have severely assaulted armed officers.

On July 27th, six arrests were made after a drive-by shooting in the town of Watford.

On July 29th, reports emerged that a man had been stabbed to death, with two others injured, following a knife fight in a park in East London.

On the same day, there was the mass stabbing and murder of children in Southport.

On July 30th, a mass brawl involving machetes erupted on the streets of Southend.

On the same day, it was reported that a homeless Kurdish migrant had pushed a man onto the tracks at a London Underground station after feeling ‘disrespected’.

And, also on the same day, it was reported that another 3,000 migrants have entered Britain illegally on small boats since Labour took power less than a month ago, taking the total number of crossings by mainly young male migrants from countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, and Syria to around 130,000.

What do you expect?

When we see individual stories like this, in isolation, there is a very real risk that we become desensitised and accustomed to them. It becomes the ‘new normal’.

It’s a classic case of boiling the frog. If you want to boil a frog in hot water, as the saying goes, then start by turning the temperature up slowly. Get it right, and the frog won’t even notice it’s getting boiled.

But when you see all these stories together, side by side, the sheer scale of the lawlessness, the chaos, the breakdown of social order, and the glaring loss of control becomes impossible to ignore.

And all this against the backdrop of many other things that reflect the fact that the country is not really a country that we recognise anymore.

A string of Islamist terrorist attacks.

The murder of an MP, police officer and soldier by radicalised Islamists.

The mass grooming of young white girls by Muslim gangs up and down the country.

The imposition of mass immigration.

The total collapse of our borders.

The rise of double-standard policing, where ever since October 7th radicals and extremists who hate who we are, who hate the West, have been allowed to parade up and down the country while anybody from the white working-class who dares to do the same is automatically branded a ‘far right extremist’.

Again, what do you expect?

Two or three decades ago, these shocking incidents would have sparked a national conversation about the declining state of law and order and how to regain control.

But now, amidst a new ruling class that can no longer tolerate any criticism of the elite consensus, they either pass us by or are reframed so that the ‘real’ story is never actually about the real story.

It’s about ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, ‘populism’, ‘racism’, or anything other than the actual cause.

And in the days ahead, after Southport, we will watch this playbook unfold again.

As after the Manchester Arena bombings and the murder of Sir David Amess, when atrocities committed by outsiders were ridiculously repackaged as warnings to ‘not look back in anger’ and ‘be kind on social media’, the national conversation will be managed and steered to focus on everything and anything except what this is about.

We will hear platitudes about diversity being our greatest strength.

We will be told to be kind and come together, to not look back in anger.

We will read about people joining together to clean up streets.

And we will be told that millions of our fellow citizens, the ones who are protesting, the ones who have had enough, do not represent the ‘real Britain’ or ‘our values’.

But whose values are we talking about, exactly?

Whose values are imposing mass immigration, segregation, communalism, and a broken model of multiculturalism on the rest of the country?

Whose values are eroding free speech, silencing dissent, and stigmatising everybody and anybody who does not rally behind this broken elite consensus?

Whose values are seemingly fine with having no serious control over our own national borders while asking the British people to pay billions for this disaster?

The values of an elite minority.

The values of no more than 15% of the country.

An elite minority that is now visibly losing control of the country and which, in the era of Twitter/X, YouTube, Substacks, and new media, is now also struggling to maintain its dominance over the national conversation.

This is exactly why —as I said last night— millions of Brits feel so concerned about what is unfolding around them. It’s not just about the issues; it’s their growing awareness that the new ruling class has no serious interest in changing direction.

We are now all stuck in the same car, with the doors locked, hurtling toward a cliff-edge with the hands of an irresponsible, unpredictable radical on the steering wheel.

This is why many people feel they are losing their country –their identity, values, rule of law, ways of life, and can seemingly do nothing about it.

To make matters worse, they cannot voice their concerns because, if they do, they too will be branded ‘far right’, ‘racist’, and ‘misinformed’.

Join a protest in your capital city to flag your concerns about what’s happening? That’s far right. Protest after the murder of children? Far right.

Suggest we leave foreign courts so we can actually control who comes in and out of the country? Far right. Call for lower immigration? Far right.

Vote for a party that calls for an end to mass immigration? Far right. Sing a song about England? Far right. Fly the flag? Far right.

In today’s world, where terms like ‘far right’ have been massively expanded by radical progressives to enforce groupthink and stigmatise anybody who does not get on board with the values of an elite minority, it is quicker to list the things that are not far right than list the things that are.

So, to be clear, what’s happening on the streets of Britain right now, in the aftermath of those hideous murders, is not about a single piece of ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, some rogue tweet, or a video by a populist politician.

It is the culmination of decades of disastrous policies by our ruling class, the same class that’s now rushing to discredit anybody and everybody who points this out.

The policy of mass immigration which the vast majority of people in this country neither asked for nor voted for.

The complete breakdown of our borders, allowing tens of thousands of unvetted and often dangerous migrants from high-conflict societies into our country.

And the complete disinterest in thinking about how to sustain a cohesive, integrated, high-trust society.

For decades now, the very same politicians who are lining up to denounce much of the rest of the country as ‘far right’ have been pushing soft-on-crime policies while subjecting the British people to porous borders and mass migration from third-world countries where violence, disorder, and misogyny are the norm.

So, is it any wonder that our social fabric is now disintegrating before our eyes? Is it any wonder that mass immigration and the elite obsession with diversity —as academics warned twenty years ago— are now producing a low-trust society with spiralling crime, social atomisation, and growing division?

Is it any wonder that growing numbers of people are staring at their television screens and smartphones, wondering what is happening to the country they love and whether other people out there are thinking the same?

And is it any wonder that, having watched an assortment of radicals and extremists take to Britain’s streets to sing songs about how much they hate the West and Israel, a minority of British people are now doing the same, trying to exercise their voice in a system that no longer appears remotely interested in it?

No, of course it’s not. What did you expect?

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/what-did-you-expect-britains-protests