Mick Hume

This book is for people who are looking for answers and understanding about how we are controlled today and what decisions we can still take to influence what happens to us, after a long trend toward public disempowerment. You may wonder why is it that the institution of the European Union is beyond any possible doubt the most hated organisation in the world from a British perspective and has been every single day since 1993. What did they do that was so bad? Why is it that every Prime Minister of the UK from 1993 until 2016 has sided with EU domination and set themselves against the majority will of their own population? Although its first fan Ted Heath (paedophile) predated membership of the EU and Tony Blair (alleged war criminal) wasn’t squeaky clean either, why would an act like signing the Maastricht Treaty by John Major, exactly replicating the action of Quisling, seem to be rational, common sense and for the good of the people to an educated national leader? I think that why leaders and political parties believed this course was right and the public were wrong can be answered, as can the question of why they ignored majority public opinion for so long. I think it can also be understood why it was reacted against so decisively by the population when they got their only chance to be heard in their 23 years of membership.

An important issue to consider is that of revolt itself. What does it look like? We have modern systems such as democracy and the law so our disagreements can be solved without any violence. When an institution like the EU overrules your law and cancels democratic decision making, leaving no lawful way to oppose it, do you really think that’s safe? Does anyone want the situation where the only way for your country to become a democracy and for the majority to be listened to is over dead bodies? Seriously? We need a civilised way to protest safely and lawfully, which was what the referendum was. If the referendum is overruled or staged again until they get a different result, a very serious and dangerous problem will exist, which I hope no one thinks is a good idea.

Over the last few years I’d come to most of the same conclusions as the author without any guidance, so Revolting was always going to be an easy sell as I understood most of the problems already, from a UK perspective, although the concern should be common to all EU populations. An author told me that a Conservative candidate and niece of a former well known cabinet minister in conversation with them had said to their face “What’s so special about democracy anyway?” – and they wished they’d taped it. As I come from what should be a traditional conservative background, it troubles me to know the professional party has diverged so far from what I thought were conservative core values. I am confident that people from traditional Labour backgrounds think the same. What has happened to these politicians? Why did they stop representing us and go to work for a foreign regime? This dangerous thought, “What’s so special about democracy anyway?”, isn’t confined to one party, as Labour, Liberal and Conservative policy since 1993 has been identical: The UK must be ruled by a government that no one has ever voted for, based in a different country. This must be imposed, against the will of the population. Indeed Hillary Clinton said the United Kingdom cannot be a democracy because our choices are different [to those of the US]. Bitch.

I hope you don’t mind but I’m in a mood to hijack this book review and add to what the author has said. I would define democracy as when the members of your highest law making government have been elected, voted for by someone, anyone at all. By this definition, all EU member countries cancelled democracy in 1993, as the European Commission proposes and makes our laws. Their directives pass into national law without even being debated, which is totalitarian.

The questions the people face became: Is that a problem or is it ok, if it’s more efficient? Have we been left with any lawful options to stop unelected government if it gets bad? If cancelling democracy is a problem for you and all democratic and legal methods of reversing it have also been blocked, IF the majority of the population feel the same about this, should they succumb quietly or should they take an opportunity to revolt? When you’re not a Marxist and you’re asking questions like that, isn’t it a sign you’ve been pushed too far?

This is a powerful book, whether you are aware of this stuff or not, written by a fair-minded journalist and composed in a very readable and accessible way. It is a balanced assessment but because it has been written about a problem that disgusts the public, it will naturally look bad for the established order of politicians. This book logs the institution of the European Union’s systemic bypass and nullification of democratic representation for the people of Europe everywhere except at the state/local level. National law is over-ruled automatically by EU legislation as it is superior. It’s all true. The unification of the continent under a single unelected body has been the goal of dictators through the ages and, in the institution of the EU, this has finally been achieved. Hurrah?

Here’s how I understand what’s going on, i.e. the reason why national leaders and the European Union thought it was right to do, what went wrong and why becoming democracies instead is the correct solution.

The EU was designed to bring the benefits of Group Theory and to provide the most efficient political form of population control (the path of least resistance to getting things done).

In Group Theory, what’s best for the individual (originally survival etc.) is not necessarily what’s best for the average member of the group. People might prioritise their own needs and think that being an individual is their optimal strategy (seen by others as selfish, ignorant and backward) or they can submit themselves to a group/society (optimal strategy for the average member of the group, which is seen as enlightened and progressive). “The good of the many outweighs the good of the one” (Spock), the collective economy (Marx). This is reasonable and makes good sense. With the EU so far?

Too many selfish individuals will crash the group, so that’s a threat and these people have to be stigmatised as uneducated and backward, to encourage compliance, which is a catch-all to be used even when the group’s opponents are clever and selfishness was not their motivation. Stigmatising people unfairly is like doing a bad thing for the right reason, to make the group cohesive. The idea of allegiance to nation and culture has to be painted as similarly negative, associated with racial prejudice, because when people have been conditioned to believe in something alternative to the supra-national group, they have to understand this is no longer available. The old flags must go in the bin or people won’t believe in the need for a skin graft over the top of their healthy skin. Preferably, they apply it and don’t even ask. It’s all about means to an end, optimal strategy for the new group over the individual. Still supporting the EU?

However, the leaders of the group (a sub-set) soon realise their own optimal strategy is to run the group for their personal benefit (exploit the mindlessly submissive followers and keep the group going, so they can keep unelected power and loot more for themselves over a longer period). Being a group member but not simultaneously being a member of the leadership set is no longer optimal at all, as the population only work to ensure the leadership set are enriched, retain unchallenged power and aren’t required to pay any taxes on their income. The population of Europe have then become the only threat to the leadership set’s lifestyle and taking the necessary action to exclude the public from decision making and remove their influence on appointments and retentions becomes the leadership of the group’s priority. Still supportive, or are you wavering?

Ordinary members of a group who realise they are being exploited under undisguised parasitical leadership (the intelligent members will notice first) naturally end their support for the group because the system is broken and again believe the selfish strategy is optimal, which it now is for the majority of the public. The leadership set stigmatize them with illogical connections (anyone who believes in elected government, equality and freedom must be a racist, fascist and ignorant – does that sound familiar?). This only works for a while because it’s unconvincing and people see through it, the group then crashes. That’s independence. The leadership set then moan and blame the rebellion for being ignorant and selfish, which is exactly what they themselves were doing on a larger scale. The leadership set has made group strategy sub-optimal to individual strategy for the average member by their own greed (you are a victim of the EU, unless you're one of them). This is what the EU has become today as it and most of the Western world has entered the final stage of decline and fall according to Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb’s classic book The Fate of Empires: Decadence and Corruption.

In summary, for group theory to work across the EU, it is essential to remove representative democracy in Europe. The public must be disconnected from decision making.

To institute the most efficient political form of population control (least resistance to getting things done), you can imagine it would be difficult to agree on anything unanimously and take all countries down the same path if at the individual or national level anyone had any say in what happened and could oppose it. For supra-national decision making to work efficiently and quickly across many regions without exceptions, decisions must be imposed without the possibility of opposition. To put this system in place, again done for the good of the group, it was essential for the EU design to remove representative democracy from Europe.

Have you changed your perception? Can you understand why the public think they’ve lost something?

In the UK, elitist politics is where a small minority of people, who usually define themselves as intellectual liberals, come to the conclusion that their beliefs are right. They then impose their decisions on everyone and treat the general population's opinion (the majority contrary view) as irrelevant, primitive and to be ignored. They see the public having the vote as the main problem in society, so work to disempower millions and millions of people, for their own good. The political elitists started with a liberal and enlightened intention but have moved full circle and become oppressive, anti-democratic and dictatorial. Anti-human-rights, from open minded to narrow minded and then just plain wrong. They wonder, amazed, why anyone would disagree and resist as they and their small circle of the blessed are ideologically faultless. To do so would be (insert stigmatizing insult word here), as words are soon all they'll have left to use in their epic fight against the humans.

The 500,000,000 citizens of the EU have no way at all to appoint or remove any member of their senior government, the European Commission. In contrast, the European Parliament does not propose or enact laws and is simply intended to be a distraction from where the power of law creation is held and allowing people think they’ve voted for something.

This book describes “implied approval”, the way the organisation takes away our freedom in stages under their self-serving assumption that you agree to give up your rights unless you openly state otherwise – and then they allow no possible opportunity, democratic or legal, for you to make that contrary statement.

There is a positive conclusion that I reached after finishing this book which has given me real hope for the future. The thing is, I’m pretty sure I don’t share the author’s political affiliation and might even be his diametric opposite as I quite like capitalism and think incentive to try harder works, yet I found I agree with almost every point he’s made about democracy, the EU’s actions and the public rejection of their control in this book. Think about this: If the Left and Right, who previously accused each other spitefully of being Marxists and Thatcherites, can completely agree on this most essential of all political issues, the importance of being a Democracy, and unite against a common enemy to demand its return, doesn’t that suggest they are correct? The struggle between Left and Right or between social classes has been put on hold to save something more essential: Freedom. There are just two sides now, today, those who want to live in a democracy vs those who don’t.

Tony Benn advised that when you meet the powerful, ask these five questions to see if they are right for you. Here they are, with answers added for the role of a member of the European Commission:

WHAT POWER HAVE YOU GOT?
Absolute power. I can make any law I like over you and apply it without fear of opposition. If I make a law, it over-rules the law of your country. My court will consider your objection and will always rule in favour of me.

WHERE DID YOU GET IT FROM?
I took it without your approval. I was not elected and your population were never asked if they wanted to convert to this system. I am not answerable to any national leader.

IN WHOSE INTERESTS DO YOU EXERCISE IT?
In the interests of the leadership set of the EU. I do not represent the people or nations of the EU.

TO WHOM ARE YOU ACCOUNTABLE?
No one. There is no electorate. I have the same powers as a king and rule by royal prerogative.

HOW CAN WE GET RID OF YOU?
Ha ha. You can’t. There is no legal or democratic way to remove me from power. You can only try to remove me by breaking the law; and then you will be arrested. Terrorists are always wrong, so we will all call you that if you take this course. What a good idea! If a single person ever tries anything violent, even if they have been left with no other recourse, any future member of the public who gets caught saying they think that politicians should be elected to their jobs can be arrested as a terrorist sympathiser. If you want to replace a European Union Commissioner, you can forget it now.

Then in 2016, when the EU had never been as popular in the UK, the Prime Minister permitted a referendum to ask for the very first time (after 33 years inside) whether people wanted to be part of it. He only did that because he was sure the answer would be Yes, if he threatened people enough with consequences. The answer was ‘No’. The establishment thought that asking the question had been an expensive mistake, rather than joining the EU itself being the expensive mistake, and, as in Ireland (2009), they began looking for ways to reverse it.

The EU believes that the scourge of populism must be removed by design from Europe. Unfortunately, democracy and populism are the same thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re from the Left, Right or the Middle, if you want to live in a democracy, in the EU’s and the political establishment’s eyes, that’s utterly REVOLTING.… (mais)

A comprehensive and timely polemic about the various threats to freedom of speech waged by political correctness in the last few years. Mick Hume's book lays into safe spaces, trigger warnings, no-platforming, victimhood, virtue-signalling, and myriad other contemptible cancers on modern life, but the strength of his book is not in 'rah, rah, political-correctness-gone-mad' rantings but in an intelligent libertarian response to often well-meaning but extremely damaging societal trends.

Hume's central argument is, funnily enough, that free speech should be free. When people say 'I believe in free speech, but…' or 'rights come with responsibilities' or that you have 'no right to offend', then they are not supporting free speech. As Hume says on page 28, "Once you forget the meaning of 'freedom' and start cherry-picking which people or what type of speech might deserve it, free speech ceases to be a right." Imagine if we did this with other rights. Imagine if we said, 'you have a right to vote… but only for the right party' or 'you have a right to a fair trial… but only if you're innocent'. Try it yourself: try to apply a 'but…' to any other right we claim in Western society and marvel at how stupid you sound.

Quoting the American judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hume champions the need for 'freedom for the thought that we hate'. To do otherwise – to limit or silence speech that is deemed offensive, racist, sexist, or so on – is to open up a Pandora's box. For taking offence is an entirely subjective state: if someone says they are offended, then they are and no one can prove otherwise. It removes all objectivity and principle from the equation and replaces it with emotion and how you 'feel'. It is open-ended because any combination of people could be offended by any combination of things, and therefore any thought could, in theory, be banned if the right emotional justification was found. The only way to stop this rot is to reject it completely, not hope it reforms or 'evens out in the end'. And it also raises the question of who decides which thoughts are socially unpalatable? Once, society considered it intolerable to think that the Earth revolved around the Sun, that kings had no divine right to rule, and that surgeons' unwashed hands caused infections. Where would we be now if the people who make such believers feel 'unsafe' by suggesting otherwise had been silenced? So you're offended. So what? That doesn't give you right to limit or remove other people's fundamental rights. Emotions pass; rights are enduring. Grow up. Get a tissue if you have to. But if you feel 'unsafe' because of what someone has merely said, well – the world's going to be a very hard place for you, precious.

Hume also shines a light on the "creeping culture of conformism" (pg. 17) in our society, of the "self-censoring 'sorry majority'" (pg. 63) who because of the successful campaign of you-can't-say-that are tailoring what they say or do almost as a reflex. Ordinary people who look over their shoulders before they say what they are thinking. What is this if not thought-crime? It is a crime to surrender so meekly to these charlatans and virtue-signallers (Hume rightly points out that "the –ism at work here most powerfully is not sexism or racism, but narcissism" (pg. 194)). It impoverishes our society when any argument or debate can be "short-circuited" (pg. 224) by shouting "That's racist!" or "I'm offended!" or "You're oppressing me!"; people are therefore spared the "awkward necessity of having to come up with an argument of [their] own." (pg. 188). Ideas should be exposed and destroyed, not reputations, but why do this when it is so much easier to do the latter? It forgets or ignores that science and progressive politics would never have broken through without free speech (pg. 238) because free speech is what enables the challenging of prevailing orthodoxy, and this is why the right to be offensive is at the heart of it (pg. 41). Our society is therefore going through a form of intellectual poverty and, to our eternal discredit, our universities are at the forefront of this development. "Once upon a time we had political, historical and scientific debates. Those with alternative views were seen as intellectual opponents to be argued with and defeated." (pg. 223). What a curious idea! When was the last time anyone had a proper debate? How can our society decide whether an idea is right or wrong "unless [we] are allowed to hear it in the first place?" (pg. 169).

This is why Hume's book is so important, because whilst there are voices making themselves known in opposition to intellectual fascism it is usually in the form of occasional op-ed pieces in the newspaper or casual remarks by a prominent figure which are blown out of proportion by a hysterical media and usually result in a hasty retraction, or even the loss of one's job, once the self-righteous mob descends. (Curiously, this public hounding means Britain – and the West in general – now fails Sharansky's famous town-square test about what constitutes a free society). Rarely is the fight codified as thoroughly as in Hume's book. It's not always the most forceful of polemics – Hume repeats his arguments and key phrases quite a lot, and his writing style often lacks the anger and indignation that the subject demands. Hume is always restrained but never a quiet storm in the way that, for example, the great polemicist Christopher Hitchens would be. Furthermore, flavour and variety is often lost in the relentless proselytising and theory. On one occasion, Hume notes how Rangers football fans can be prosecuted for singing 'God Save the Queen', despite it being the national anthem, as it aggravates rival Celtic fans (pg. 142). Hume's book could have benefited from more of these farcical anecdotes. Yahweh knows there are plenty of them. But the book is always muscular and uncompromising, yet fair and lucid, which is what you want any guardian of the good to be.

One of the book's finer qualities is that it emphasizes the "other side of [the] free speech [issue] – the right of the public to hear and see whatever we want, judge for ourselves, and make our own choices." (pg. 247). There is a certain condescending paternalism to go alongside the afore-mentioned narcissism: the belief that the rest of us are all too stupid to make the 'right' choice and need to be soothed and mollycoddled. 'You can say what you like, but only if it's something we agree with.' It forgets that the only way an idea can gain strength and resilience and dignity – and indeed, acceptance – is if it is tested and battle-hardened and seen to be good. Preventing criticism and stifling debate means ideas "risk losing their intellectual dynamism without being tested" (pg. 273). And some of these ideas which are pushed on us are worthy ones – racial equality, gay rights, and so on – but unless they are allowed to grow in a free market of ideas they will never be resilient enough to weather the storm of prejudice they will face. They lose their power to really enact change. Indeed, they gain many unwanted and unsavoury characteristics, such as infantilism, victimhood and tunnel-vision.

It saddens me that a book like this is even necessary in this day and age, and in this country particularly. Once, people who were discriminated against fought for the right to be accepted into all walks of life; now they demand 'safe spaces' where only people 'like them' can be admitted. Once, Martin Luther King had a dream that his children would one day live in a nation where they would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character; now affirmative action policies bump you to the top of the list if you're the right colour to match their diversity quota. Once – remarkably – people fought for what they thought was right; now, people complain they are made to feel 'unsafe' if they are even exposed to a contrary idea – that is, if they are even made aware that other people think differently. People, once, fought the battles that mattered; perhaps the immature agitators now stamping their feet in student unions are annoyed that they missed the boat when all the grand and righteous battles were going on. They missed the March on Washington. So, to compensate, they manufacture their own little indignations: more Blank Panthers than Black Panthers.

Against the cascade of sewage which comprises political correctness, it seems that libertarians and other pro-free speech advocates like Hume are essentially King Canute trying to turn back the unrelenting tide. It might seem cynical, but emotion often triumphs over reason, comfort often triumphs over struggle, and the heart often triumphs over the head. But, personally, I am not too cynical because there is an emotion and an integrity in the idea of free speech too; despite the lure of social conformity, the desire for the freedom to think one's own thoughts without shame or stricture runs like a thunderous whisper in the blood. It might sound high-falutin' for what is essentially a short polemic, but Hume's book, whilst not perfect, speaks to the core of what it is we are and what our society is, has been and could be. The cognitive ability to think individually and uniquely separates us from the animals, and the freedom to communicate those thoughts is what makes a society develop (pg. 36). Society's raison d'être, beyond collective security and opportunity, is to safeguard that individuality. A better class of people than the modern-day do-gooders and virtue-signallers fought for centuries for the hard-won liberties we enjoy, and the old prejudices and constraints died hard. When we forget that – when we talk about free speech using the word 'but…' and temper our thoughts so as not to appear 'offensive' – then we dishonour them with our ignorance and our cowardice.… (mais)