{"id":101420,"date":"2016-07-15T10:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T18:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=101420"},"modified":"2016-07-15T10:36:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T18:36:07","slug":"richard-spencer-banned-in-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=101420","title":{"rendered":"Richard Spencer – Banned In Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Spencer writes in Radix Journal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Like fox-hunting<\/a>, Pit Bull Terriers<\/a>, and psychoactive substances<\/a>, Richard Bertrand Spencer is now banned in the United Kingdom. <\/p>\n

Earlier this month, I received an official notice, packaged in an intriguing manilla envelope labeled \u201cOn Her Britannic Majesty\u2019s Service<\/em>.\u201d The words reminded me of my favorite James Bond film<\/a> . . . and gave me a foolish hope that I had just received a royal invitation for afternoon tea or perhaps been called into M\u2019s office for an assignment. <\/p>\n

In reality, I had been banned from yet one more European country. <\/p>\n

That makes 27. <\/p>\n

The good news is that 26 of these bans will be automatically lifted next year, as they resulted from my Hungarian<\/a>experience<\/a> in 2014. That fall, I was arrested and declared a \u201cNational Security Threat\u201d by the Hungarian government for the crime of attempting to host a conference. My punishment was a weekend in a (not-so-brutal) prison and a thee-year ban from the Schengen zone, the passport-less travel area in the heart of Europe. <\/p>\n

In the case of Britain, my ban might get reviewed in three years, but ultimately there is \u201cno statutory right of appeal.\u201d Thus, quite a bit has to change in British political culture for me ever to set foot in the country again. <\/p>\n

Who is responsible? None other than the then-Home Secretary and newly minted Prime Mistress, Theresa May. A \u201cstaunch conservative,\u201d no doubt.<\/p>\n

The woman herself is a mystery, much in the way that Angela Merkel is a mystery. Both are childless, frumpy, and lacking entirely in charisma, but then strikingly Machiavellian and effective. Certainly, Angela hasn\u2019t maintained the German chancellorship for more than a decade by being a pushover. May, for her part, opposed Brexit and yet has benefited the most from it, more even than Nigel Farage, who made leaving the EU his life\u2019s crusade. <\/p>\n

During last summer\u2019s refugee crisis, Merkel proved to be a self-loathing German of the highest order, even to the point of madness. May, on the other hand, has been hawkish on immigration<\/a> and made clear that \u201cBrexit means Brexit\u201d; that is, there will be no second referendum under her leadership, and freedom of movement within the European Union will end. <\/p>\n

Perhaps, as Matthew Tait suggested on a recent podcast<\/a>, May\u2019s office banned me as a way of balancing the scales of exclusion: for every 100 or so Muhammads, she\u2019ll ban a couple of Richard Spencers, to signal she\u2019s not \u201cracist,\u201d just an iron lady preventing \u201cforeign influence.\u201d <\/p>\n

Her letter reads as follows, <\/p>\n

\n

Dear Mr Spencer
I am writing to inform you about the British government’s measures for excluding or deporting extremists under the Unacceptable Behaviour policy. The list of unacceptable behaviours covers any non-UK national whether in the UK or abroad who uses any means or medium including:<\/p>\n