The desire to continue to feel yourself guilty arguably finds its endpoint in modern European liberal societies: the first societies in human history… - Douglas Murray

[Friedrich Nietzsche] said somebody must stand over the life of the person of resentment and say to them at some point: 'You are right. You have reason to be resentful. There is somebody who has ruined your life. There is somebody who has held you back. The person is you.' Now, that is probably the least pleasant thing to hear and probably one of the hardest things to ever say. How can a politician, should a politician, say to certain people 'You know, you have screwed up your life, and it's been your responsibility and your fault. You can turn it around, but if you don't want to, you'll still be the only person to blame.'

There is also a reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU. These include Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes 1984 by George Orwell.
So in general, I begin to feel in good company. If government agencies are going to compile lists of suspect books, then I am very happy to stand condemned alongside these fine people, both living and dead.

One of the strange habits of our time is the one in which a self-appointed class roams the land, hands cupped to their ear, hoping to discern something they can identify as a ‘dog-whistle’... One oddity of the whole business of trying to hear dog-whistles is very basic: if you can hear the whistle, you must surely be the dog. It is the nature of the analogy that a non-canid cannot hear what the dog hears. So to be able to hear on a whole different aural wave-length to everyone else – to be peculiarly attuned to the tones of the time and to be able to explain to everyone else – is one heck of a power to bestow upon yourself.