đ§ââď¸ Hope Against Hope: Recruiting Conservatives
(This article was recently rejected for publication by Unherd, a social conservative media group focused on preserving traditional values of culture and power. It is dedicated to Chris Skidmore, who resigned this week in protest against new oil and gas licences, making him the only true conservative in the House of Commons).
The second most depressing moment in recent years was receiving an interview invitation from a journalist at Unherd (1). He merrily said to me before the recorded conversation, âletâs not talk about scienceâ. Which is like talking about Attila the Hun without mentioning the killing. The fact that a supposedly serious conservative political media organisation has no interest in âwhat is actually going onâ sums up the mess of our times.
In many ways the interview went well as it opened a few doors. Firstly, I surprised them by suggesting the end of civilization might actually upset conservatives. Secondly, it led to a few nice chats with a Tory MP and a bigger chat with a bunch of conservatives at the Houses of Parliament. Predictably, when I mentioned that the bullet of deadly carbon emissions had already left the gun but not yet entered the head, I was told that being negative was bad for getting votes.
The Tory MP told me afterwards I was the only true conservative in the room, and for a moment I thought I might have finally found the Churchill of my dreams. But as soon as things heated up, he ignored me. He cut himself off when Insulate Britain blocked the M25 for the ârevolutionaryâ demand of better housing insulation. He has since refused to answer my occasional emails along the lines of - âHi, remember me? The science doesnât go away just because you are playing hard to getâ (2).
Iâve just been found guilty of Conspiracy to Cause a Public Nuisance (doesnât the English ruling class always have a pleasing way with words?) by a hung jury for flying toy drones at head height. By breaking the airportâs drone safety procedure we aimed to stop arguably the biggest crime in UK history - the building of the third runway. The conservatives in the room - the judge and the prosecutor, both of a certain age and a certain class - displayed an inability to think which arguably surpasses the banal evil of Adolf Eichmann. The objectivity of mass death was reduced to âyour passionate viewsâ and the tool of the mass death is described as âthose wicked carbon emissionsâ.
I was subjected to six hours of interrogatory nonsense around my intentions, while the judge did the classic bystander routine. The jury stared into space in bemused boredom. They listened to those representing our failing politicians, the prosecution lawyers, trying to convince them that flying a toy drone below head height and a bit of enthusiastic messaging constitutes a jailable offence. Meanwhile, the crime of destroying British society through the biggest carbon infrastructure in Europe cannot be spoken of. It made 1984 look like kidsâ play. From on high we were all informed that âdefence of necessityâ is ânot permittedâ. Can you imagine that being said to the French resistance?
I donât know why I am writing this other than to hopelessly fail to express my utter horror and despair. It is not possible to convey the intensity of feeling signified by those two words, ânot permittedâ. For some reason I am comforting myself by listening to Mike Duncanâs History of Rome podcast in the evenings. Itâs all happened before of course - you start off with semi decent Augustus, pass onto a paranoid Tiberius, and end up with the cesspit of Caligula. And so it was and ever will be, as social conservatives should know. Except this time round the pit is bottomless, the suffering infinite, the end final.
Maybe writing this is like the man on an island, half-starved, who lights a last fire to try to attract a passing ship. Itâs pathetic, I know, but something in my soul holds onto the idea there is a real social conservative out there who is not totally morally and spiritually dead. Hope against hope.
Notes:
1. The most depressing moment was meeting Katharine Viner - editor of The Guardian. Less said about that the better.
2.
Climate science in two sentences.
â Roger Hallam (@RogerHallamCS21) January 7, 2024
A) We are heading over 2C in the next 15 years which will create around 1 billion refugees, the end of the world economy, and a lot of resultant secondary horrors.
B) That is just the beginning.
Global Online Q&A and Leadership Zoom - Jan 14th
During 2023 I have recorded over 40 episodes of the Designing the Revolution podcast and it is finally coming a close.
I thought it would be good to have a live session so that people who have listened to podcast, and those who want to find out more, can come to this international zoom session.
The situation is that we all know (deep down!) the present political regimes are not going to last now that climate breakdown is locked in. So given that revolutions are inevitable how do we design social transformations that are pro-social and save what is left to save? That is the key question I address in this session.
Sign up for nonviolent civil resistance with Just Stop Oil in the UK or via the A22 Network internationally. Alternatively, you can now join for my new project called Humanity which is aiming to build the new world ahead based on deliberative democracy.
