Moving on
I’ve been writing articles online since 2004, primarily for Butterflies & Wheels. Last year, I started blogging as well and exposing the racist bigotry of the British far-right quickly became a central focus. I’m sickened by the rise in racist sentiment and by the way the British National Party has managed to creep out from the shadows and into the public eye and I wanted to do something to try to show that beneath the shiny new exterior, the old hatred lives on. I hope I have contributed something of value through doing this, and my CSC report is a culmination of that work.
David T asked me to join the Harry’s Place team on the strength of my anti-fascist writing and as you know that has continued to be the primary focus of my writing here. However, for me enough is enough. There are many good writers and websites working to expose the far-right, including Searchlight, the Unity blogs, Seismic Shock, Richard Bartholomew, and Eric the Fish. After a number of months immersed in the twisted blogs and websites of the far-right, I feel it’s time to move on.
Despite many recent claims about my supposed ‘ideology’, my central commitment, and the inspiration for all my writing, is to Enlightenment values, rationalism, secularism, and humanism. Harry’s Place is a website of the Left and it is deeply concerned with the future of the Left. I’m not. I’m concerned with the future of Enlightenment values, freedom, and liberal democracy, and support all those who defend those values. I think the ‘decent Left’ is a fantastic ‘movement’, but I’m quite happy to say that I also see much of value in neo-conservatism.
Harry’s Place is also a website whose driving conviction is that it is not religion itself, but rather politicised expressions of religion that represent a threat. I’m sceptical of this, as my writings on religion elsewhere show. To my mind, for example, Islamism isn’t the only problem, the Qur’an is a problem. Likewise, the Christian Right isn’t a problem that can be disconnected from its devotion to ancient religious texts, the values of which are largely opposed to the values of the Enlightenment.
So, I’ve decided to move on from Harry’s Place, and indeed from blogging itself, and to return to writing articles on rationalism, secularism, and atheism. I’ve greatly enjoyed my time here and have the utmost respect for the entire Harry’s Place team. I wish to thank them for giving me the opportunity to write for such an excellent and prestigious website and will continue to follow the site with interest.
Thanks also to the many commenters who have supported and inspired my work here and my blogging elsewhere, and no doubt I’ll continue to see you all in the comments section as I pop by from time to time.
Edmund
