Écoute

s’il te plaît

There was one reason and one reason alone that we decided to sally out against Restore, and that was to ensure that Elon Musk would understand that Rupert Lowe’s political vehicle is not necessarily the solution for Britain, and that there are criticisms of the organisation which do not boil down to complaining that it is too right-wing. As far as we can tell, this outcome has been achieved. Musk has not tweeted in support of Restore since this article addressing him was published.

His mind may change, but we have done what we can to ensure that our side of the argument has been heard. Coincidental to this effort has been the attention of a section of Restore’s online support towards J’accuse. We have now spent the better part of a week diligently cataloguing all of the connections that outfit has to the Conservative party. We have even pointed out that Lowe was telling Sky News (and others) that he was considering joining the Tories, and that senior Tories were even inviting Lowe to join their party, last year, that Lowe was given a position on the Public Accounts Committee by the Tories – which is clearly an attempt to raise his profile at the expense of Farage. We have shown, to those who want ‘remigration’, that Lowe is very queasy at the prospect of deporting legal immigrants.

What I realise now is that trying to engage with these people constructively is a Sisyphean task, because they do not reach positions on the grounds of evidence, or quality of argument, but from watching videos of their favourite streamers who they have parasocial relationships with, and support slavishly. It is apposite that the tie-clip mafia are all Catholics, because in a sense this dynamic is similar to that of the Medieval church, with priests translating the Word of God for a semi-literate laity, whilst we are firm believers in the perspicuity of scripture.

Ultimately the clashes of the past week, and the lack of understanding in both direction is the result of two media forms coming into conflict. Most of the people who subscribe to this Substack, and the wider community on X, will primarily get their information from reading, and because reading in the modern world is becoming an elitist pursuit they will not be the sort of person who watches hours of streams by half-Iranian men who have tied themselves to a political project which wants to deport them. The most common complaint we are receiving about these articles is that, at around, 1000-1200 words, they are simply too long to read. Other responses make it very clear that the person has not read what we have written carefully. The horses can be led to water but they cannot be made to drink.

There is also the issue that many Restore fans understand the world ‘only’ as a series of conspiracies. That is not to say that conspiracy theories have no value, or that none of them are true. The fact that the North Korean used to kidnap Japanese people from coastal areas was denied by the Japanese government and written off as a conspiracy theory for decades. Grooming gangs in Britain have been called a far-right conspiracy since they began in the 1950s and 60s, etc, etc.

So I would never dismiss people who believe in conspiracy theories out of hand. But it is not possible to have a constructive conversation when one side of the ‘debate’ believes that the other has been paid by the Zionists to launch a smear campaign against a politician who went on GB News on Holocaust Memorial Day to say that that we have to ‘stand up early on to this kind of evil’ in reference to antisemitism.

I have done everything within my power to convince you that Rupert Lowe is a right-wing Tory who has launched a political party, with the assistance of a cadre of other right-wing Tories, once they and he realised that Kemi Badenoch would be leading the Tories into the next general election, and so a ‘reformed Conservative Party’ would not be possible. This, amongst other contradictions within the party, would be exposed in about ten minutes if Lowe would submit himself to a live interview, but his team are instead reposting his old videos on his feed.

There may not be a decisive ‘end-point’ of this project. It may drag on until the next election, functioning as a way to promote various podcasts. There may also be a fiery showdown when Rupert finds out that much of his ‘base’ have disagreeable views about Israel. In any event, I cannot see a path to Rupert Lowe becoming Prime Minister, and no number of streams or edits is ever going to change that. It will be unpleasant when you realise that you are back to square one, with no plausible democratic route to changing the world in the way that you would like it to be changed. I can see why this is painful and I do not take any pleasure in your pain.

I am especially unhappy to think about people in their early to mid 20s believing that their life is over because they cannot find work because of controversial remarks they have made. I have written before on why young politically radical people should avoid being overly edgy online so that the parameters of their lives do not get shrunk to only politics. It is my hope that one of the changes of the next two decades is that there is a general swelling of tolerance towards youthful indiscretions.

I cannot be sure of that happening. It seems likely now that the British economy is about to head into recession and we are three years away from an election where the choices will be between Reform and the Greens, two political parties which are for the most part untested in government.¹ Whoever wins, they will have to contend with a broken economy whilst bearing the millstone of Covid era lockdown debt which will make fiscal stimulus impossible. This, as your GCSE History will have taught you, are the classic ingredients of Populism. The country is already ungovernable whilst being stagnant, in decline we may see real political violence in Britain. The stakes will then be a lot higher than being fired. I say that not to discourage anybody, but as fair warning before you inveigle yourself with that world.

If any Restore supporters would like to discuss this the comments on this post are open and I am happy to answer your points at length. This is not a campaigning Substack and we’ve had complaints from paying subscribers about this Restore business becoming repetitive. We’ve said what we feel needs to be said. You now have all the information that you need to make an informed decision about Restore. Best of luck to you.

---

On an entirely separate note: The campaigning group Looking For Growth, another entity which J’accuse has an unprofitable enmity with has released a new post clarifying their campaign on LEO data, which we wrote a negative article about last week.

In brief, LFG has started campaigning for more data to be released about the ‘graduate premium’ that the government collects on various educational institutions. We said that this was already available online through websites such as the Discover Uni. LFG now says that whilst some data is available, the government is only making a ‘fraction’ of the records they hold public, pointing out that the government is publishing figures by broad subject area. We follow with interest…

Correction: Horses can be ‘led’, not ‘lead’, to water.

1. Caveat that Reform have some Tory MPs and the Green will likely pick up Labour defectors in the coming months