I Had a Dream

Wee Owen Jones and his merry band of revolutionary Marxists must be covering themselves in each other’s jizz, circle jerking to the beat of jungle drums. This is all their dreams come true; the noble savage, who they command, roused to anger and set against the enemy; the world which gave them everything they have. Powerless against their own nature, the mob enters a trance-like state where anything they can legitimise as a target becomes the focus for their destructive urges.

When a plague of locusts descends on the crops and in one concerted attack devours everything in sight, what do we call it? When an army of ants, organised into strict roles for which they have evolved, builds vast and intricate underground structures, what do we call it? Do we have a word to explain why starlings swoop and dive in their spectacular and intricate murmurations? We do have a word, as it happens; instinct. On the right cues, sometimes unfathomable to outsiders, crowds behave instinctively, driven by a madness which looks like a plan.

Generally, there is no commander in chief, no master, no single architect and the way people behave in normal life is more down to social economics than organisation. That is, people make their own decisions to buy to save, to participate, to vote… and by those many small actions a consensus is formed. But every now and then a perfect storm of circumstance arises which has the appearance of organised insurrection. The left – for this is straight out of their playbook – has seen and exploited the opportunities of the moment.

Over several decades, fear of offending has become an actual criminal matter. Meddlesome malcontents have busied themselves in identifying ever more subtle ways to be offended and angry and this has filtered through our increasingly restricted speech. Even simple descriptors such as black, brown and white have become insidiously charged with ill intent and a millennia of linguistic evolution in an almost entirely white population has resulted in a lexicon which recent incomers find, often after very detailed scrutiny indeed, offensive.

In order to disrupt the present, they have decided it is necessary to eradicate the past. You may want to reflect on other regimes which have done this. Mao’s cultural revolution, ISIS’s sacking of Palmyra… and every invading, subjugating army in history, many more of which were of what we call ‘minority ethnic’ origin than of whites. Anger over historic injustice is an impossible anger to maintain except by an enormous application of hypocrisy.

And where do you stop? Libraries are full of the works of people who had views which today some find objectionable; should we burn them down? The whole world of work is predicated on some people working hard for other people, often for insufficient reward; is this redolent of slavery; should work be abolished? And what of sport, where athletes openly display their physical superiority? The entire equalities thesis is moribund.

Tear down all the statues you like; the toppling of a statue does nothing other than satisfy a post-facto bloodlust. But why stop there? What of the schools, hospitals, universities, railway stations, public squares and other edifices endowed by people who may once have profited from a trade that was started by the ancestors of the very people who are now so aggrieved? Why not destroy every last piece of modern civilisation just in case there is any possibility that somebody, somewhere, however long ago, suffered some injustice?

There is no sense in your rage, no reason in your riotous assembly. Did you want to so disrespect the legacy of Martin Luther King Jnr that you would simply disregard his words? In that speech from 1963, which few of you have read, he implored: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” You have been led on by people who are using your confected anger for their own destructive purposes. By people who want the overthrow of the very law and order that gives you your rights.

The only part of King's speech which any of you are likely to recall – although I sincerely doubt that the majority of you even know who he was – is this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color_[sic] of their skin but by the content of their character.” Well the content of your malicious and destructive character has been noted. And it will not quickly be forgotten.