The R: Not Your Vehicle For Malicious Online Extremism

It has become increasingly clear over the last week there had been a network of ambitious bad actors targeting this small, young publication as a platform for their own ends. The intellectual and academic nature of the work – written by well-researched and reasonable minds, for the most part – has garnered some modest attention from curious and educated people. ChatGPT describes the Restorationist as "intellectual, reformist, historical, conservative-leaning." Accurate, and quite complimentary in such a short time.

It's also apparently proved attractive to chronically-online people who believed it could be useful for smuggling poison under the cover of a nice-looking logo, and recruiting similar characters for activities within external online message boards which would disgust ordinary people. One of those pretended to be a barrister and used it to gain access to other influential media who were wise enough to recognise something wasn't right.

Offers of fantasy money from extremely suspect people were rejected outright, but kept returning somehow. Unusual accounts had been quietly created which had to be deleted. Writers now complaining of being historically solicited with extreme pornography on Discord in bizarre attempts to garner their interest. Plans to set up YouTube channels to front unauthorised "media spokesperson" personas with wannabes who would do "anything for power." Claiming to have written articles they hadn't. Messages sent to book appearances on other well-known outlets which were thankfully rejected in diplomatic ways (you know who you are, thank you!). All of these were carried out "off-platform."

According to chat logs, one of these was a senior civil servant who was disciplined by patriotic security officers after he had dinner with the co-editor in London, who had tried to place a porn-addicted homeless friend in his flat.

They've been rooted out and systematically removed. None of them have had access to financial/membership data or donations to the site at any time.

They're not happy about it. At all.

Good.

I am the personal owner of the restorationist.org.uk domain (as i also own quangocracy.org.uk, anglofuture.org.uk, tellsomeone.org.uk etc.) I created the branding, using Photopea. I pay for the servers, software, and infrastructure with my debit card. I have written every word of the Great Repeal myself, which are in a simple Google Drive account. I wrote the entirety of the infamous Hope Not Hate critiques used by others to promote themselves. Many of the articles had a co-editor's name attached as a courtesy, when they had written no words at all. Some of us don't want or need fame, and care about our country. Anyone can email me to discuss whatever they like: politically, i lean libertarian, and believe the state should only serve its biblical role: protecting the good and punishing evil. Nothing more.

All of these things are easily verifiable.

There is no place in the political debate for this kind of mentality. The Restorationist was set up as an intellectual reservoir for the strongest long-form arguments. Not impartial or non-partisan. But also not a front organisation for social-climbing political thugs needing a skin suit to inhabit, or to provide cover for genuine Jekyll & Hyde extremism.

There are legitimately good faith leaders in smaller British parties who are suffering the same, and working behind the scenes to vett and clean up their houses. They deserve credit, but won't get it as their labour is unseen. Lucy Brown has discussed this at length in her excellent book.

All of this is driven by the immense anger felt in Britain towards the Establishment, its policies, and their refusal to listen. People feel desperate, out of control, and helpless.

Being angry or frustrated with the situation your country is in is one thing; being a porn-addicted groyper or inciting others to violence is another. Nationalism is a perfectly valid worldview about sharing the ownership of one's connection to the land; spray-painting racist epithets over foreigners' property and demanding mass repatriation at scales of tens of millions within the next month to establish the white race ethnostate is not.

These people are the reason we can't have rational, reasonable debate in good faith about controversial ideas. There is no debate about "remigration" when its suffocated by the cacophony of online mobs posting memes about dis-intering the bodies of foreigners buried in English graveyards.

None of this is English. We solved this problem with the creation of Parliament. The fact the fireplace of Parliament isn't listening is not an excuse to become an arsonist and start fires elsewhere. Parliament is containment; that's the entire point.

The Restorationist was never "yours" as a platform for spreading extreme pornography, laundering dirty money from Cyprus, inciting online defamation mobs, taking credit for words one never wrote, or climbing the fame ladder as wannabe influencers. Nobody wants to have to contact Hampshire police – for anything, ever.

The R will be back on Monday, with no followers, nor any fetishists or extremists, and it will be far more boring than you wanted.

And in case you're wondering what it's like to deal with the harassment from these people, this message, sent to Andrzej Czapiewski in September, a wannabe "hidden hand" investor figure on the fringes of the lunatic right, should help: