Political dominance or hegemony is sustained, according to Paul Piccone, in part through something which he called “artificial negativity”. To cut a long story short, a governing framework permits – and even, to a certain extent, generates – ritualistic episodes of opposition that paradoxically help it to strengthen itself. While they may appear threatening, these quasi-challenges really just work the muscles of the dominant paradigm.
Look up the phrase ‘artificial negativity’ in the dictionary, however, and you will probably just see a picture of Martha Spurrier, director of the U.K. human rights campaigning group Liberty.
Two days ago, I received an email from Spurrier informing me that “worrying threats to freedom of expression have emerged”. What could she possibly have been referring to? Perhaps the fact that a Member of Parliament had a show cancelled at the upcoming Edinburgh Fringe festival due to her having expressed gender-critical views? Or the fact that another MP was recently disinvited from a discussion at Reading University because of his views about the importance of limiting immigration? Or, maybe, the recent case of Adil v GMC, in which a surgeon lost his appeal against a Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal decision to suspend him for six months for having expressed some kooky opinions about COVID-19?
Of course not. Liberty “challenges injustice, defend[s] freedom and make[s] sure everyone in the U.K. is treated fairly“, but it defines “everyone” in a certain way. Gender-critical feminists, people who want secure borders and Covid conspiracy theorists fall outside of its rubric. No: Spurrier’s concerns were, it turns out, letters that were sent to anti-monarchist groups by the Home Office in advance of the King’s coronation to inform them of recent changes to the law and which were purportedly intimidating; those recent changes themselves, which are designed to stop Just Stop Oil and other environmentalist groups causing public disruption; and the arrest of a man who had made anti-monarchist comments at a proclamation ceremony last year.
I don’t wish to be misinterpreted, so let me make clear that I basically support the right of anti-monarchists to express their views, and of environmentalist groups to protest (though the devil is naturally often in the detail). But let’s not beat around the bush: anti-monarchists and environmentalists simply do not routinely face threats to their freedom of expression in the U.K. in 2023. Policing may have been a little heavy-handed at the time of the Queen’s death and the King’s Coronation, but aside from these (very rare) events one can say what one likes about the monarchy in Britain. And when it comes to climate change, it would be more accurate to say that environmentalists enjoy almost limitless privilege when expressing their views. Climate change is indeed one of the few subjects about which BBC editorial guidelines do not insist on impartiality, and the only difference between all four major political parties – Conservative, Labour, Lib Dems and SNP – is the pace at which they intend to transition to a ‘Net Zero’ economy. Pretty much the only people who face any realistic constraint on the expression of their views are in fact climate change sceptics (or ‘deniers’) – though they of course go into the basket alongside the gender-critical feminists, immigration hawks, Covid ‘conspiracy theorists’ and other people whose rights don’t really matter.
If Liberty seriously believes that the issues it flags in its email are “worrying threats to freedom of expression”, then it is living in a fantasy. Doubtless its members are sincere in holding to that fantasy, and one shouldn’t normally concern oneself with figments of the imagination of strangers. But this one has systemic consequences – and this brings us back to artificial negativity. The minor fuss currently being made over freedom of expression for anti-monarchists and climate change activists can be understood as having three basic functions within that framework.
The first of these is that it wrests control of the narrative concerning freedom of speech away from what I will fashionably refer to as modern ‘subaltern’ groups. Put bluntly, beliefs that women are women and men are men, that high levels of immigration are undesirable, that COVID-19 was the brainchild of Bill Gates, and so on, are popular among people of lower socio-economic status. These views may have their occasional ‘class-traitor’ defenders within the intelligentsia, but by and large they are most commonly perpetuated amongst members of the old working and lower-middle classes. Freedom of expression could be used as a tool, therefore, for these ‘low status’ people to challenge the nice, settled orthodoxies of their purported betters – but, crucially, not if their betters have meanwhile co-opted it into a phantom struggle (like the brutal oppression of anti-monarchists) that dominates the cultural airwaves. In this sense, this is a story as old as the hills, in which fine legal principle ends up being a tool by which the upper middle-classes keep the nice things to themselves and exclude riff-raff.
The second function this all fulfills is to get the juices flowing for the hegemon. The strange kind of Left-progressive managerialism-cum-authoritarianism of our ‘new’ governing elite is deeply opposed to freedom of expression of any kind, but it sustains itself by, and derives legitimacy from, an insistence that it is fundamentally interested in enshrining freedom broadly understood. Being against freedom of expression is therefore simply not a good look, and indeed at times even threatens to contradict that basic claim on legitimacy. This is nowhere more evident than the gender-critical feminist issue, where the fundamental contradiction between claiming to be for freedom while acting against the rights of women to express themselves is just too obvious to be explained away or hand-waved. How handy, then, to discover that actually it is the evil Tories who are against freedom of expression after all, and that Left-progressives can reclaim that rhetorical high ground for themselves once more.
And the third, related function is that it perpetuates the important myth that, because Left-progressivism is currently not in political power in the strictest sense in the U.K., it therefore lacks cultural – and, indeed, political – dominance. That the Conservative Party is in government and is apparently acting to suppress freedom of speech is crucial to that worldview, because it reassures those who hold it that they are fighting the good fight and that that fight needs to continue to be fought. Because the Tories represent the old establishment and are apparently acting to constrain the rights of anti-monarchists and green activists, there remains a pressing need to regain power – and exercise it. And thus the hegemon energises itself and strengthens its resolve – by finding reasons why it is not in fact the hegemon, and seeking justifications to reassert itself.
In a sense, of course, none of this should be surprising. That human rights activism should basically reflect the imperatives of the hegemon is really just the old Marxian critique of human rights law writ large: rights exist to produce the human subject upon which the economic base of society is predicated. Why would anyone be so naïve as to expect that human rights, such as that to freedom of expression, would be permitted to change the dominant paradigm?
And why indeed would anybody expect anything from Liberty other than an interest in the pet causes of the hegemon, which sustain its economic model? Take a look at its website. What Liberty is basically interested in is protecting the rights of migrants, protecting online privacy and shoring up social welfarism – the cornerstones, in other words, of what (again, to channel old school Marxists) one might call ‘late stage capitalism’. Its activities are completely transparent when viewed through that lens. All they are really about is providing enough artificial negativity for the system to sustain and reinforce itself. And thus human rights law, including the right to freedom of expression, is consigned increasingly to irrelevance.
Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. This article first appeared on his Substack page. Subscribe here.
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“Black Political Commentator Calvin Robertson”
Ah, but you see Robertson ain’t black:
Biden: “you ain’t black”
So he wouldn’t count towards the Church’s diversity scores and in fact it would be racist to give him the post. All conservative promoting actions are racist.
Tucker: Inflation is proof the people in charge are reckless and stupid
Biden can talk!
“He ain’t President!” He told us himself that is Kamala Harris.
She talks more gibberish he does.
Everyone makes lousy speeches during their lifetime, god knows I’ve delivered some howlers but, whilst they barely raised a titter, they at least made sense.
Harris, perhaps even more than Biden, just leaves people bewildered.
You talk crap all day every day on here!!
And now he’s facing a backlash from you with your deep and insightful and well argued observations is he? Err… that would be a no from me.
I am devastated not to have your total backing
I’m sure you are and rightly so.
She was not well-known and “popular” for her speeches.
And that shows that the church of England is no longer Christian, commies I suggest!
Maybe, if you’re referring to the Bishops. The laity is far from being communist.
“Ah, but you see Robertson ain’t black”
True: he’s mixed race.
I see you’re using the same definitions that the apartheid era South Africa used.
Is it inaccurate to call him mixed race?
Would you describe someone with one black and seven white great grandparents as black?
“Would you describe someone with one black and seven white great grandparents as black?”
To whom, the police?
Why is it wrong of me to call him mixed race when he clearly has both sub-Saharan African and European ancestry?
How do you know that? based on his appearance he could be an Arab.
He’s called Calvin Robertson.
That strongly suggests he’s not an Arab.
As does the fact that he’s described as black.
Err… He’s not called Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu either.
Why are people who are half-white labelled ‘black’ instead of ‘white’?
Could be ‘racism’? Default towards the currently dominant model?
It isn’t
Would you describe me as “mixed race”? Or would you describe me as some irritating commenter on the Daily Sceptic, named after the hero of an Anglo Saxon poem?
I have absolutely no information about your ancestry, so why would I use any racial term to describe you?
Precisely, but apparently you have complete access to Calvin Robinson’s DNA.
My DNA indicates that I have English/Irish/Welsh/Scottish and Norwegian ancestry. So am I mixed race or do you judge race by skin pigmentation only?
“Precisely, but apparently you have complete access to Calvin Robertson’s DNA.”
No, but I have his appearance and name.
All I can tell about you is that you’re not very bright and not very well read (you think English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish are 4 distinct ethnicities, FGS.)
His name means nothing. Is Eddie Murphy from Dublin? And regarding his appearance, he looks like he could be the Egyptian actor Emad Hamdy’s son.
As for your rebuke questioning my IQ, and the depth of my reading, are you claiming that blond-haired blue-eyed Norwegians are ethnically identical to the Celts? Clearly you’re not or you would have said “…you think English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Norwegian are 5 distinct ethnicities…”. The late Chancellor of the Third Reich had his doubts, like you, and the very fact that a DNA test is able to identify genetic traits that are not common to the four home nations and to the Norwegians supports that view.
I await your next insult.
NB You wrote: “He’s called Calvin Robertson.” Well, no he’s not, his name is Calvin Robinson. I guess you haven’t read widely enough to know that.
Wow, two downticks for correctly pointing out Nearhorburian’s obvious and inexcusable mistake of referring to Calvin Robinson as Calvin Robertson.
Six downticks now. I wonder if the conviction of some you on here that Calvin Robinson’s surname is actually Robertson has anything to do with a jam manufactures logo and a barely supressed racial prejudice?
Would he be from the Swiss Family Robinson by any chance?
I don’t believe that he’s featured in any Disney movie, why do you ask?
I’m new to this. But to me you sound like a silly, shallow, self-absorbed, arrogant, posturing dimwit. Of whatever colour or ethnicity. Mine is a ”mixed race” family and it’s people like YOU who are the root of all divisive evil in this present world from which families like mine may suffer.
No. I think the word ”plonker” springs more readily to mind. Or even ”tosser” if you think it more appropriate. (You may have to look up the word ”appropriate” – it’s nothing to do with ”heroic”, by the way.)
Why would anyone want to work for the current “Church of England” ?.
Is it even a Church any longer? What does it actually believe in ?
What is even ‘English’ about it?
How long before it changes its name to the ‘Church of Diversity Training’?
I do respect Calvin Robertson but isn’t his wish to become a C of E vicar just nostalgia for something that no longer really exists – as this blocking of his ambition so clearly illustrates?
“Schism” used to be a useful resort to allow and project differences of religious interpretation – its return to fashion is long overdue and Calvin might find himself among like minds rather than in permanent conflict with the Woke.
Britain is not ‘racist,’ but those who claim that it is often are!
What does it actually believe in ?
Marx worship
Does it even believe in that ?
No, the CofE’s principal beliefs are:
Perhaps he has an ambition to restore it to its former glory.
‘Archbishop of Canterbury, Calvin Robertson’ has an attractive cadence.
It does indeed.
just nostalgia for something that no longer really exists
That could apply to people joining todays Conservative & Labour parties to become MPs. Both husks of their former selves.
Heaven forbid – Bishop Robertson is, it is claimed, married to a Mr. Mohan Sharma.
Archbishop Calvin Robinson would sound much better, what with him actually being a Christian, unlike the Canadian heretic, Kevin Robertson.
And perhaps he doesn’t aspire to those heights. Perhaps he just wants to make a difference. Or doesn’t the idea of honour and decency register with you?
Perhaps there are some noble people who still think they might save it. Perhaps that’s to be admired – or is there nothing left in this world that is admirable and selfless? Is everything and everybody corrupt and selfish?
Robertson!!!??? This whole article is a micro aggression!!!
YJCMTSU
“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that Britain is institutionally racist.”
I have been saying for two years now that the Church of England is finished and that Welby will be the last Archbishop of Canterbury.
Unless Welby comes to new wisdom, this is it.
Well, we are told that miracles can still happen. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
A shoe-in by the Deep State…. no ” new wisdom” possible.
The one before him was nearly as bad – Rowan Williams wasn’t it? He was a Blair appointment…..
I suspect that Welby is from the wef….. a traitor brought in to bring down what is left of the CofE. He is doing rather well!
I was once a Vicar in the Cof E but left because a divorced woman was consecrated bishop in direct defiance of St Paul’s instructions. It led to 10 years on the dole but I have never regretted it. I am now, like Bishop Nazir Ali, a Catholic and relish the faith, the brotherhood and the sacramental life.
Nice to hear from someone of principle.
Mmmmmmmm, not sure that this displays principles? Hasn’t Stroflex displayed the Groucho Marx maxim, “if you don’t like my principles then I have others!”
He’s left the CofE over one issue & joined another who have quite a pile of fundamental differences to the Cof E.
I hold no brief for the CofE but he did. I’m not saying he was wrong to swap but it wasn’t over a principle.
The Church of England is dead, dead and rotten. We need a new church, a church for Christians. Calvin Robinson is pointing the way.
Well said, Annie.
Black political commentator, and white bishop. Why is the colour of someone’s skin their defining attribute? It’s incredibly divisive.
The CoE is making it a race thing, not Robertson.
Why would a Church have a ‘race policy’?
I was thinking more generally, concerning comments in the MSM such as ‘the first black … this’, or ‘the first black … that’, or so-and-so ‘… is a black actress …’. In fact ‘black’ is a euphemism for ‘non-white’. No wonder racial tensions are increasing in society, if in fact they are.
They definitely are. Straight white men have had enough of all this crap
The CoE seems to have forgotten Christs teaching about forgiveness and restitution.
What sin cannot be forgiven..? What soul cannot repent..?
What doesCalvin Robinson need to repent of?
Calvin doesn’t need to repent anything. The CoE are taking fixed positions on social not spiritual matters, and if you don’t agree, you are a heretic and damned without recourse or hope of redemption.
Of what does Calvin need to repent? Why, nothing more than not toeing the Establishment line.
Welby is terrified Calvin will launch into some Jackson Five numbers and actually make the CoE fun.
“Can’t you see that ray of hope,
Somebody finally saw the light,
They’re gonna send our brothers home.
It’s gonna be all right yeah”
Calvin wants to wear a frock,
To push his profile higher,
He’ll get the job he wants for sure,
God help the young boy’s choir
So what you’re saying is [insert anti-clerical cliché here]?
He looks creepy. Mark my words he’s a bad ‘un
Why not get God to put in an appearance and put an end to all this divisiveness.
Oh forgot he, she, it, them don’t exist and the world, galaxy, universe will one day end forever and forever amen.
Your arguments are so compelling you ought to debate William Lane Craig, or John Lennox.
Why do you believe that the universe came into existence?
Why do you believe that it will cease to exist?
Because the hydrogen will run out.
OMG! It’ll be all those hydrogen powered cars Renault built in order to save the planet.
You obviously don’t know about nuclear fusion and how stars function. Nice to see how ignorant you are.
Yes that’ll be it, I’m just not up to date with The Science. But I’m trying hard to understand. So let me see if I get it – there will come a time when hydrogen will no longer exist because the stars will have used up every hydrogen atom in the Universe. And if hydrogen doesn’t exist then nothing at all exists. Is that right? Is that what you’re claiming will happen according to our present understanding of physics, cosmology and psychohistory? Well I never. You learn something every day. Now tell me about AGW and how a bloke with a todger can give birth.
All the big organized religions committed suicide during the Corona panic. Religious leaders right up to the pope have essentially admitted that they neither believe in their own deities nor their teachings by simply becoming vessels for whatever highly invasive, non-medical miracle cure Corona’s witnesses wanted to try today. This is especially true for the so-called Christian ones. Forcing people into social isolation, separating children from their parents and pressuring people into getting potentially harmful injections of no conceivable value to them are not acts of love and an archbishop of X or pope of Z who claims otherwise is no Christian.
God bless Calvin Robinson. May his message of a spiritual Christianity be heard far and wide, and may the woke moneychangers (in the sense of being obsessed with temporal values) be cast out from the Church.
“denying institutional racism”
First of all, define “institutional racism.”
Which institutions? All of them? And exactly how are they racist? Be specific, and give exact details.
presumably, this Bishop would have a problem with Zuby, a black rap artist who called out BLM as a scam, and doesn’t believe the UK is “institutionally racist.”
Such blanket accusations are completely non-specific, and are impossible to argue against, precisely because no specific details or examples are ever given.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R1GS0SR5Y5s
Yep, white people telling black people that they are wrong about racsim – white people are racist and they don’t get it because they’re black people, and as white people they absolutely know – is about as good an example of how far left society has fallen. The left are a cancer on society.
Someone will correct this with the right numbers but Robinson put out a Christmas message that had an order of magnitude more views than Welby & about 10 orders of magnitude more views than the various Bishops. This is the issue, he would represent a power across the water.
Punishment for being on GB News.
Oh the irony- the liberal left is engaged in what we might call cultural imperialism – white European people telling black people, and other ethnicities, how to live and what to think.
“We like black people in the church but we do insist that they agree with our view of them.”, a spokesman may or may not have added.
That White Bishop must be a KPMG employee. He’s rid himself of all his unconscious biases, leaving only the conscious ones.
I struggle with the Church of Scotland for the very same reasons. I have seen the Rev William Phillips from the Tron Church in Glasgow on Neil Oliver’s show and I have attended a service. Delightful.
Yes, let’s keep dividing the nation and others with this racist theme. For it to reach the level of the C of E getting involved, you know it is a con job. Just in Essex for a few days. Multi ethnicity kind of a place. Got the impression this is how things were meant to be. Anyone else sick and tired of those attempting to divide. It is a false narrative. Recognise it for what it is, a fraud.
These C of E “Archbishops” and “bishops” won’t be happy until the C of E has no congregations and the great cathedrals are all mosques.
White Bishop to Black Pawn – obviously no contest
“Shut up and stop saying that you’re not oppressed” about sums up the lunacy of the church’s position.
Robinson is a good egg, and would do much better in a more evangelical church. You know, one more concerned with souls than property values.
On the Church of England:
Indeed. Number 1 is part of their general accountability-avoidance strategy – which they are very successful at, having had hundreds of years’ experience!
The only people who can reign in this self-serving organisation are MPs, and none of them seem remotely interested as it’s not seen as a vote-winner. This, in turn, is largely because most people in the country are largely apathetic – they aren’t religious, and regard the CofE as having no power or infliuence (incorrect), and being unworldly and bumbling but well-meaning – all also incorrect, but it’s an image which the CofE appears to intentionally cultivate.
The C of E demonstrating that it understands irony.