By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 11/12/18]

Imagine Winston Churchill abdicating leadership right at the moment when the miracle of the Dunkirk evacuation was achieved…

“Right... now England, I’ve gotten our soldiers back for you, here Halifax, you man up and organise them to fight the Nazis, I’m taking a well-earned break."

Nobody knew more than Nigel Farage how poisonous the snake pit of the EU parliament was, yet he prematurely chose the portentous moment of the Brexit referendum victory to resign his leadership of UKIP – knowing full well that the future negotiations would be, to say the least, devilishly difficult. I found this almost unbelievable at the time when he did it. I find it utterly unconscionable now that the mess has been borne out.

Theresa May has proved herself completely incompetent to negotiate a good deal for her citizens to exit the EU. She has lost the confidence of the House of Commons and her position as prime minister is now practically untenable. Tonight is the eve of the Parliamentary vote on May’s negotiated deal with the EU. Will her deal go through or will the British parliament say “no thanks!” One can only hope that Parliament will find May’s deal unacceptable and opt for a hard Brexit rather than a deal which gives the EU authority over Britain exiting the single market in the future. No deal is better than a deal which leaves the British without their own sovereignty; wasn’t that the point of Brexit after all?

Which brings me back to Farage, who has reverted to a career of constant sniping from the sidelines instead of taking an active role in leadership.  He has spent undue time deriding Tommy Robinson’s involvement as an advisor to UKIP – hell, Farage has gone out of his way to make life even harder for Tommy, by publicly declaring him to be nothing more than a thug, as if Tommy needed that while having Muslims defecate in his food when, yet again, he served time in prison. Farage should’ve been Robinson’s greatest ally – but Farage betrayed him, just as he betrayed Brexit. For what? I’d really like to know the answer to that question.

Tommy has since been vindicated of those trumped up, false, hate-speech crimes by the highest courts in the UK, but has anyone heard Farage even whisper an apology to him?
Farage took a vicious set against Robinson because of Robinson’s stance against the Islamification of Britain.  Yet this was an issue that, once upon a time, Farage was concerned about too.  It is also an issue which, as Farage knows full well, carried huge weight with the British people when it came to their vote on Brexit in 2016.  There was the economic factor coupled with the Muslim migration factor, and UK citizens, mainly from outside of London, said to their overlords in Brussels (and in their own country), “No more!  Not here.  This is our country and we want it back!”

Now would be a great time for Britain’s leaders, and Farage, to remember the words of England's most patriotic writer – Rudyard Kipling:

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
​
Whatever takes place tomorrow, I am going to extend to Nigel Farage exactly the same level of courtesy that he extended to Tommy Robinson, while Robinson faced despair in prison on the front lines of this battle for civilisation. If one single factor could be surmised that helped the betrayal of the Brexit vote, it was Nigel Farage’s abdication from leadership, just at the very moment when the British people needed him the most to take their referendum result and turn it into a much needed British victory over the dark forces which seek to bring England to her knees.  Farage dropped the ball catastrophically.  What will he do now to redeem himself?  Keep ragging on Tommy?

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​ ​​​​​

By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 5/12/18]

In 1776 the American Revolution fought and overthrew the governance imposed by the British monarchy, inspiring the French Revolution on the other side of the Atlantic to throw off its own monarchy just 13 years later.

Yet the French Revolution was an epic failure which brought about the unprecedented butchery of many, including France’s greatest Enlightenment thinkers and scientists, such as Antoine Lavoisier.  The end result was a military dictatorship and a new monarchy: an autocracy under France’s greatest general, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.  That led to a war which England and its allies won in the climactic battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Why was the American Revolution such a monumental success in comparison to the French Revolution? Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had strong opinions about the French Revolution. Jefferson was for it because he thought it was an extension of American democracy for Europe; Adams was against it because he was horrified at the brutal regicide of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by the common rabble.

The American Revolution’s rallying cry was, “Give me Freedom or Give me Death!” This stands in striking superiority to the French Revolution’s slightly flaky and somewhat gay cry of, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!”

Everybody who knows about rhetoric and propaganda knows that a piercing and single-minded slogan is better than a watered-down, 3-pronged formulation.

However, aside from this important detail of declared impetus, the American Revolution chose just one noble goal – liberty – with its corollary of ‘self-governance’. The French Revolution failed partly because it tried to marry at its inception two very incompatible ideas, liberty for the people and the sovereign authority of a people’s State. Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, an early elected deputy of the French National Convention who spearheaded the movement to execute King Louis, expressed this dictum:  

"The Republic consists in the extermination of everything that opposes it."

That was the epitome of a totalitarian formulation for a revolution.

Compare that sentiment to the words of Thomas Jefferson at his first inaugural address in front of the citizens of America: 

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

Liberty cannot stand as a noble ideal when it’s forced to hold hands with prescribed equality and brotherhood.  In fact, true brotherhood, if we take that concept to mean brotherly love or camaraderie, cannot exist at all when force is its forefather.

More than two centuries after both revolutions were fought, one won and one lost, we are looking today at two very different types of leaders in President Trump and President Macron. Yet I cannot help but surmise that they are two archetypal offshoots of their respective countries’ different revolutions.  President Trump is still fighting hard for the national sovereignty and personal independence for the citizens of his beloved America, while President Macron is still fighting hard for the forced egalitarian, socialist state power he wields over the citizens of his beloved France. 

Getting ideas right is worth everything. 

The American Revolution was the equivalent of a romantic epic for all revolutions to follow, though none have managed to do so – it was just too rare both intellectually and historically.  The French Revolution was a slice of ugly, kitchen-sink realism – without strong character development and devoid of a great plot.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer" ​ ​​​​