I Got This Wrong About The English
Englishness, Woke Right & Holding My Hands Up
Shit Show
The last few weeks have been a shit show.
Actually, they have been alright, because I changed my notifications on X to only show me posts from people I follow. My followers have grown quicker than usual on social media, as YouTube marches towards one million.
From time to time, a friend has shown me the odd bit of hate and anger directed at me over things I said about ethnicities in my debate with remigration leader Steve Laws.
This was my first real debate with someone to the right of me. I am far more familiar with the tactics and instincts of the Woke Left. It was a learning curve.
I want to focus this article on what I got wrong. I should also note that Laws did not come out well either. Plenty of people who had been on his side got in touch to say they were shocked at quite how badly thought-out his ideas are. His plan to get governments to check medical records to decide who is English enough is as creepy as it is authoritarian. I should have focused more on the impracticality and callousness of his proposals rather than the complexities of ethnicity.
But that is YouTube. You learn as you go.
A few things I said offended large swathes of the online right. I have no interest in clarifying myself to people who simply scream Jewish slurs at me. Even if I wanted those people to follow me, we know from the Woke Left that such extremists do not accept clarification or nuance. They double down, go repeatedly ad hominem, and criticise the speaker for immutable characteristics.
The Woke Right
Let us start here.
I have always been specific that I am talking about a fringe part of the online right that mirrors the behaviour of the Woke Left. I am not talking about smart, nuanced people such as my friends Connor Tomlinson and Carl Benjamin.
Whether you agree with them or not, they engage in debate, remain calm and importantly refrain from ad hominem attacks or insults based on immutable features. That is the antithesis of woke behaviour.
This is a complex debate because there is no single agreed definition of “woke”. Connor argues that it has a precise meaning and that meaning is “gay race communism”. I see that as one strand of wokeness, but I am primarily describing behaviour. Cancelling one’s enemies, attacking them personally and framing oneself as a victim.
One might accuse me of doing something similar by using the phrase “Woke Right”. The difference is this. When someone engages me in debate, no matter how far-fetched I consider their ideas, I engage back in good faith. I do the same with the Left.
There is nowhere to go from someone simply screaming “JEWWWWW”. I have since come to realise that many commentators in that space privately agree with me about the problem posed by the Woke Right. But as with the Woke Left, it would be career suicide for them to confront their own followers. Some even refer to them as “spergs”, referring to the Asperger’s that detractors accuse the Woke Left of comprising.
That said, a number of people have engaged politely and thoughtfully, explaining why some of the things I said in my debate with Steve Laws were wrong or hurtful. I think they may be right. That alone shows that calm, rational debate is the best way to move people politically. It moves me.
So here is what I got wrong, and where I changed my mind.
English as an Ethnicity
Obviously, English is an ethnicity. I do not want that ethnicity to disappear, and I do not think people are wrong to care about its continuity.
Ethnicities are complex, and I spent too much time focusing on that complexity instead of stating the obvious upfront. That was a mistake.
Yes, Israel is something close to an ethnostate in the sense that it prioritises a right of return for Jews. But even there, things are not simple. My own ethnicity, Ashkenazi Jews, are a minority among Israeli Jews, who themselves make up only around seventy percent of the population.
Do I have more in common ancestrally with Ethiopian Jews than with Europeans? What about culturally? And if culture matters, given that converts to Judaism can move to Israel, should culture not matter elsewhere too?
I think I have been overly defensive here, partly because I consider myself English. There has been a recent trick, whereby people tell those who are not ethnically English that they are simply not English. But this is actually new and deliberate. Dating back hundreds of years, people have been described as English Jews - including Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli - or English blacks. By telling people they are not English without specifying ‘ethnically’, we are erasing their national and cultural identity.
Carl Benjamin talks about communal clusters that form around shared goals and values, sometimes cutting across ethnicity. I find that framework persuasive.
Still, by focusing so heavily on how difficult ethnicity is to define, it felt to some people that I was proud of my own ethnicity while denying others the right to value theirs. I hear that criticism. It was not my intention, but I understand why it landed that way.
I do not believe in ritualised apologies. But I do believe in acknowledging when I have let down people who engaged with me in good faith. To those people, I am genuinely sorry.
I do not mind losing debates or looking foolish. What I do mind is disappointing open-minded listeners who expected better clarity from me.
“You’re Living in the Past”
This line has been used repeatedly as proof that I am dismissive of English identity.
The truth is that I do not believe countries belong to ethnicities. This makes me a civnat, as opposed to an ethnat. I prioritise citizenship and shared civic life over bloodline.
I do not think Jews “own” Israel any more than any other citizens do. If Israel were legally defined as belonging to Jews as a racial group rather than its citizens, we really might be talking about apartheid.
In reality, non-Jews in Israel are politicians, footballers, judges and celebrities. At the same time, minorities there are sometimes treated unequally, and I find that appalling. I hate the idea that anyone should feel like a second-class citizen in the only country they have ever known. I recently made a documentary about the treatment of Christians in Israel for exactly this reason.
There are, of course, counter-arguments. If Jews were given no priority at all, might they dwindle to the point where Israel ceased to be recognisably Jewish? And if that happened, where would Jews go when the world turned on them again?
This logic applies just as much to the ethnic English, whose numbers are clearly declining. In debates with reasonable right-wing people, not the Woke Right, I have struggled to explain why Jewish continuity should matter while English continuity should not.
When I was growing up, the English ethnos made up a much larger share of the country. I did not fully appreciate how far that has shifted.
I oppose treating people differently based on ethnicity, but I also understand the anxiety that comes with demographic decline. That anxiety is not inherently racist. It is human.
I do not yet have a perfect answer for how cultures rooted in ethnicity can be preserved humanely and without coercion. But I am thinking about it more seriously than I was before.
“The English Will Go Extinct, Who Cares”
This is the main claim circulating on X, and it is false.
In the video, I explicitly say that I would find this outcome sad and undesirable. I include myself when talking about white people. On the census, Ashkenazi Jews have historically been counted as white.
I even joked in the moment that the line would be clipped and taken out of context. In the weeks before publishing the video, I considered cutting it. I chose not to, as it wouldn’t be fair. I’d rather take the flak.
The idea that I gleefully celebrated the extinction of the English is a grotesque distortion.
That said, I may still have been wrong in my assumptions. I had in mind an article I read years ago suggesting that in ten thousand years, globalisation and intermarriage would lead to a broadly homogenised humanity. Since the debate, I have learned that this is far from settled science. It may well be that white ethnicities, Jews included, can preserve continuity over the long term.
Where I Stand Now
I still believe the best way forward is positive rather than punitive. Pride matters.
In Israel and the United States, national flags are everywhere. Children are taught to feel pride in their country. Britain has lost that confidence.
I am not a policymaker, but at a basic level I would support significantly reduced immigration, schools teaching positively about British history and culture, and a cultural shift that makes having children feel valued and supported. One reason Israel maintains its demographic balance is that family formation is culturally encouraged.
That is not about supremacy. It is about continuity.
If you want people to care about a country, you have to give them permission to love it.
Anyone who really thinks you said/meant and believe “ The English Will Go Extinct, Who Cares” has not listened to a single word out of your mouth over the past few years. You are doing more than most to keep this conversation alive, thriving, and healthy, and I am grateful for that. Thank you.
You have real integrity. Ignore the woke right's insults. I've grown up partly on 4chan and it's always been obvious that there's a "woke right" of sorts (just not called by that term back then) and I find it foolish to pretend otherwise. If the response to your video with Steve doesn't prove that for someone, then I guess nothing will, because they don't want to face it. Sending you support from Germany.