Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that today celebrates its 60th iteration. Issue 11 has arrived in the warehouse and will be launched at 7pm this evening. This provides you with a unique window: if you subscribe in the next three hours, then you will receive Issue 10 and Issue 11 at the same time – a magazine for free, in essence.
Now, over the next month, we’re going to be launching a cavalcade of promotion for Issue 11, and we would like to solicit your help. If you don’t already follow us on Twitter, or its more beautiful cousin, Instagram, then we encourage you to do so today. If you’re active on social media, please do share photos and articles online. It’s taken three months of graft to put the latest magazine together, and our merry team of editors, writers and illustrators would love to be lavished with your praise.
It’s not a novel observation that British society has become steadily more unhinged in recent years. The pandemic has encouraged new, vigorous departures from sanity across the political board. Joe Molander went undercover into a group who are at the forefront of conspiratorial thinking, and we lead with his investigation.
The Tin Foil Hat Tea Party
In the early 1940s, the White Rose emerged as a non-violent resistance group which tried to whip up internal opposition to the Third Reich. Now, the moniker has been taken up by an altogether different group of actors, namely anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.
In Nazi Germany, membership in the White Rose of yore could be a death sentence. Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were executed after they were caught disseminating pamphlets at the University of Munich.
The new gang of faithful apparatchiks plays a lower stakes game: they post stickers around shopping centres.
You may have seen some of this agitprop yourself, on a bench or above a pedestrian crossing button. ‘FEAR IS THE REAL VIRUS’, one reads, in all-caps conviction.
In smaller font on the bottom or side, there is usually a link to a Telegram chat, a more secure form of WhatsApp. One cheap burner SIM card later, and I was in.
At the time of writing, the main Telegram chat is closing in on 10,000 members, while the channel itself boasts over 62,000 subscribers. Local groups are legion, including dozens across the UK and US, to say nothing of the organisation’s wider presence in Europe. Members keep the flag flying in South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Israel and Uzbekistan, with a separate chat to translate stickers into other languages.
The subjects discussed within are overwhelming. I find myself in chats promoting everything from cryptocurrency, pornography and the uniqueness of Northumberland heritage. Some common themes do emerge, though.
‘The puppet masters under no circumstances will allow the UK to thwart its plans for a new world order!!!’ someone in the Norfolk chat declared.
Coherent ideology is rare, beyond distrust of the official narrative. As it turns out, this is a versatile mission statement. Across chats, I was told of a planned Ebola epidemic, a ‘cyberpandemic’ and, perhaps most confusingly, Project Blue Beam. As someone on the main chat put it:
‘It’s a theory that the government will use hologram technology to simulate an alien invasion, the second coming of Christ, and the appearance of many religious figures to meld into one and promote a one world religion/government.’
Naturally.
When I gingerly pushed members on what they were planning to do to foil these schemes, besides vandalising the Tube, I was met with defeatism. I asked the person who explained Project Blue Beam to me if the White Rose should adapt to stop it.
‘The problem is, how can you stop something like that, assuming that’s what happens,’ they replied.
Their minds were similarly made up over Russia. When I asked the main chat about the invasion of Ukraine, I was sent a meme with ‘The current thing is probably a psyop’ written in text encircling a ‘clown Pepe’.
The White Rose has a local group for both Russia and Ukraine. One member, who is in the Russian chat and lives in Ukraine, called out Russian propaganda, but put it on par with how the media ‘sold’ the vaccine. In the Ukraine chat, someone claimed the country is home to ‘American bio-laboratories’, a reference to the conspiracy theory concerning US-funded bioweaponry labs supposedly in Ukraine.
Also commonplace is antisemitism. A member on the Canada chat gave a slur-laden description of the ‘slave caste’ Jewish people want to create. Several stickers compare authorities in one way or another to the Third Reich. Conspiracy theories concerning a shadowy, hand-rubbing cabal running the world also give shrewder observers pause. On the main chat, members bemoaned the presence of Nazis and white nationalists in their ranks.
White Rose members are not necessarily impassioned antisemites, according to Hannah Rose, a research fellow at the Institute for Freedom of Faith and Security in Europe, whose work has touched on the White Rose. The group does inculcate them with ideas tied to Jew hate, though, which may stick around long after the White Rose itself closes shop, she told me.
When I left the group, they were doing what they do best. Someone on the Isle of Wight chat claimed 5G towers are being hidden inside fake trees. A member on the Edinburgh chat was pontificating on why mercury is added to vaccines (a derivative of ethylmercury is added to some, but does not share a chemical structure with methylmercury, which is the one that causes health issues).
‘Either they have been wanting us all to go mad as a hatter for a very long time or it does have some sort of healing property they won’t admit it has.’
Not to be outdone, someone else on the Edinburgh chat explained: ‘Someday, we’ll all learn oil isn’t made from fossil fuels. It is naturally produced from within the earth, like the blood within our bodies. It is a renewable resource which can never run out.'
‘ASTRAZENECA KILLED MY HUSBAND,’ read a protest sign sent to the Northern Ireland chat.
The mix of innocuous speculation with vitriolic misinformation takes a toll. When I see the White Rose’s stickers out and about, their QR codes are now met with a sigh, and a lot of Sharpie.
You should follow Joe on Twitter here.
All Above Board
Following an investigation by the Metropolitan Police, it has been revealed that the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer broke the law. But this might prove to be a mere taster of legal issues for Rishi Sunak. Given that he maintained his American Green Card for six years as an MP, he was compelled to file US tax returns. He claims to have done so dutifully, but the American federal authorities are not people to stand on ceremony. Might the IRS be following in the footsteps of the Met and digging into Sunak’s activities?
Vino, Veritas
Exciting news for Henry Jeffreys, whose wine column for this very newsletter has been nominated for the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards. It’s also the very first time we’ve been put forward for a prize, which is exciting news for us too. We’re now part of the legacy media! We’ve collated Henry’s pieces into one article online, and we encourage you to read it here, if you’re an impecunious would-be wine connoisseur.
State of Contentment
You’ve clicked on it, you’ve read it, had your entire algorithm shaped around it: content is everywhere. In this article, fresh to our website this week, Dan Brotzel explains exactly how it is that content became king and marries the lost world of Grub Street and Trollope to the ever-widening sphere of search engine optimisation. Traditional editorial skills meet postmodern ends in a riveting guide from someone who spent years at the content mill. It’s a must-read for anyone who has ever clicked on any link, at any time, ever.
A Vittle Bit of What You Fancy Does You Good
We’re especially proud of our partnerships with other up-and-coming outlets for good writing. As such, it’s a particular joy to announce the fruits of our first partnership with the peerless Vittles: a food newsletter for novel times. Mina Miller gives us a gloriously funny and profoundly revealing deep dive into the world of luxury smoked salmon after her stint at H. Forman & Son who provide ‘the world’s finest smoked salmon’ right here in London.
If you enjoyed it, there’s plenty of extra portions being served up by Vittles. There’s the only guide you’ll ever need to eating well and cheaply near Oxford Circus and this Proustian tour de force on the food culture of the North Circular. If you don’t subscribe already – and you should – there is the option to read these and other food related masterpieces on the basis of a free trial.
By George, I Think He’s Lost It!
It’s been another good week for watchers of the former Labour and Respect MP and all-round dignity vacuum, George Galloway. Having conquered both the normal spheres for British narcissism –Parliament and reality television – Galloway is now going through something of a late renaissance via the medium of Twitter. Perhaps his finest moment came when he implored Pope Francis, to make a direct intervention in a spat with noted other self-respect-phobe, Alan Sugar. The Bishop of Rome, regrettably, declined to get involved.
However, Galloway’s use of the world’s worst website has reached a bit of a hitch. He has been such a regular on Russia Today and showed such enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, that the website has now designated him as ‘Russian state-affiliated media’. He has taken this with his usual calm and dignified demeanour. Indeed, after his success with the Supreme Roman Pontiff, he sought intervention from another higher power and yesterday asked for Twitter’s newest majority shareholder, Elon Musk, to intervene. Whether Uncle Elon comes up trumps where Papa Frank failed remains to be seen.
In Case You Missed It
‘The journalists during my time were very tough people who were able to say shit if they wanted. Today, they can’t because certain brands will cancel advertising. Now in the front row you have little girls with silly blogs without any culture.’ – just one of the great quotes in this absolute firecracker of an interview with French fashion legend Christian Lacroix.
The greatest ‘podcast’ of all time? About one of the greatest books of all time? John Phipps celebrates the 1982 RTE dramatisation of Ulysses.
Back at the Old Bailey to try and keep his sources secret, Chris Mullin looks back at his part in one of the largest miscarriages of justice in British history in a compelling diary entry.
The End of History, Part Two: a masterful essay by Adam Tooze in the New Statesman.
Just another journo echo chamber – Arielle Richards digs into the truth behind the indie sleaze revival.
And Finally
While everyone knows that the French are good at wine and existentialism, their world-leading contributions to rap music are sadly less heralded. The rhythms of the language lend themselves naturally to the genre, creating flows that English-speaking rappers can only dream of. But what if you could rap in French and English at the same time? Congo-born, Peckham-raised Omo Frenchie can. His new track Toleka is going to be this summer’s slammer, and by the autumn he will be heralded in the Guardian as the contemporary London’s answer to Charles Dickens, or something like that, but in the meantime you can just enjoy a great tune for what it is.
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We’ll be joining you next Monday with a very exciting feature. We’ve been digging around the parliamentary lobby to find out more about MPs and social media. Who’s the biggest memelord in Whitehall? Who’s the most boring texter in SW1? And why has a certain Tory MP started to deploy the auto-delete function on WhatsApp? The answers to all these questions are only a week away.
In the meantime, please do share the snaps of the mag when it comes through your letterbox, and if you would like to speak to a member of the editorial team about any subject – trivial or vital – then you can reply to this email. As ever, you can secure some archive jewels from the back catalogue at the link below. Speak soon.
All the best,
TF
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