I did my best to listen to as many talks as possible from this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship forum, which was attended by PN MPs Alex Borg and Eve Borg Bonello. The talks have been published online and the Forum has also published a collection of essays.
The ARC Forum is not organised by an international or political entity: it’s the initiative of Tory, House of Lords Member, (Baroness) Philippa Claire Stroud. Her husband, David Stroud is the founder of a sect called “Christ Church London”. Her father was a banker and she was involved in various charitable and religious activities throughout her life. She describes herself as a “Think Tanker”.
The ARC Forum is not representative of right-wing politics or its many shades, but rather a platform for the loony right to gather and regurgitate their talking points among themselves. Most of the conference seems to have been composed of brief 15-20 minute talks about some of the most bizarre and obtuse ideas you may hear from today’s brand of MAGA-far-right politics: that kind of politics that pretends to like free speech but has no respect for human rights or the rule of law. This is the far-right version of Ted Talks.
I listened to various talks including the discussions chaired by Jordan Peterson (Dollar Store Nietzsche) and the speakers made great efforts to posture political ideas with religious metaphors and Biblical stories. Jordan Peterson himself closed the conference with what was supposed to be an emotional appeal to build the new state, comparing this mission to the Biblical story of Noah, all the while orchestral music played in the background. It all looked incredibly bizarre and hilarious if were it not for the Ted-level-brain-rot.
Many speakers had words of praise for President Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk. Niall Ferguson even praised JD Vance’s speech at The Munich Security Conference, and described the European Union as the Soviet Union. Vivek Ramaswamy himself chipped in via video conference with a speech against DEI. All the usual talking points of the far-right were there. Transgender people were mentioned various times with some speakers saying that the identity of the human sexes was being threatened and someone called Erin Weinstein went as far as to say that there is an ongoing holocaust on humanity by liberals and transgender people which is lowering the birth-rate (he is a Jew himself so I was surprised he would use that word so easily to describe his opinion on demographics). To my further surprise, the American working-class singer, Oliver Anthony made a comeback at the conference by playing “Rich Men North of Richmond” for them.
There was also the usual climate change denial, along with arguments that we shouldn’t adopt renewable energy sources because they are inefficient. However, these calls were made without any actual expertise or defined plans, and this is also why these people are not rational or reasonable but simply obtuse dogmatists. You can acknowledge the facts and science and admit that we have a climate crisis whilst also acknowledging that current energy policies are not efficient.
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to find Peter Thiel’s speech, and I will try and further look for his contributions. Peter Thiel used to be the eminence grise of the Paypal Mafia and still holds significant influence in the elite fringes of US politics. He’s also capable enough of wielding and pushing his influence and agenda in secret and with discretion (apart from destroying press and media outlets).
Zizek was right when last week on the BBC he said that the right had successfully taken the fire from the left by posing as the anti-system alternative, but they have also taken from the left its most loony aspects of it fringe to now adopt them to the mainstream, and it’s both gut-wrenching and hilarious to watch at the same time.
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