Activists From England

"I want to speak up about representation in the industry because it is important. My experience has been hard coming up. I was naive and didn't know about the systemic stuff that still continues today and having experienced it, I know there's a need for change and I want to be a voice for that."

"You have people like Marcus Rashford who is part of our generation. He's seen a need and is using his voice. A lot of us are rising up to create change for ourselves.""

"The Grand Lodge Masonry of the present day is wholly Jewish."

"If Carey Mulligan reaches the Oscar podium on April 25 with her by turns thrilling and devastating lead performance in Emerald Fennell’s subversive feature debut Promising Young Woman, her win would cement her status as one of the most consistently brilliant actors in the industry today. Over the past 16 years, the 35-year-old Londoner has worked with quiet precision, bringing depth, complexity and intelligence to every part she takes on. While she’s still best known for playing strong-willed heroines in lyrical period dramas, it’s her contemporary roles... that are a true testament to her talent."

"Variety magazine’s first review of Promising Young Woman, a black comedy in which Mulligan plays Cassie, a woman who fools men into believing she is too drunk to give consent for sex, read: “Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale – Margot Robbie is a producer here, and one can (perhaps too easily) imagine the role might once have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.” ...Mulligan first took issue with the article in an interview with the New York Times in December, after which Variety updated its review with an editor’s note, which reads: “Variety sincerely apologises to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimised her daring performance.” Harvey’s original point remains in the text. The response from critics has largely sided with Mulligan... thrown him under the bus.”"

"I don’t want people... to form an attachment to me or my personality or my family or my life because that’s not healthy... When I started working, I was often the only girl in a roomful of men... I’d either try to please people by being lovely and sweet all the time — being polite and nice and getting the job done — or going in quite lad-ish and acting tough. Making ‘Suffragette’ made me realize I don’t have to do either of those things. I can be a woman... confident in my ideas... and I can get my voice heard without having to manipulate the situation."

"The thing about awards season that gives it value is celebrating film, obviously, but also highlighting films that might not otherwise have had an audience. When I read the Promising Young Woman script, I felt... I had to do it... My favourite way of working is having really long conversations with the director. When that relationship is solid, and you can talk for hours and figure this person out, and do that to a degree with the other actors, it feels like such a human thing... I have not had to experience what Cassie has gone through in this film and I wanted to make sure that it felt accurate, so that it didn’t sit wrong with people who’ve got real pain... I would never ask someone to relive something terrible for the sake of a film... the truth is that this situation is so common and what happens in the film is such a sad reality. You want it to be really clear about that. [During the pandemic] I haven’t worked much. I did a few audiobooks... A Matt Haig book called The Midnight Library and a kids’ book called The Worst Warlock, which was really fun, with trolls and wizards. And the EM Forster short story The Machine Stops. Published in 1909, it’s about an apocalyptic society where everyone lives in their own bubble and nobody has any human contact and everyone communicates through what are essentially iPads. It’s just nuts."

"I think in criticising or bemoaning a lack of attractiveness on my part in a character, it wasn’t a personal slight. It didn’t wound my ego, but it made me concerned that in such a big publication an actress’s appearance could be criticised and it could be accepted as completely reasonable criticism. I feel it’s important that criticism is constructive. I think it’s important that we are looking at the right things when it comes to work, and we’re looking at the art and we’re looking at the performance... It’s important to call out those things, because they seem small and they seem insignificant... People around me at the time said, ‘Oh, get over it. People love the film.’ But it stuck with me, because I think it’s these kind of everyday moments that add up.... We start to edit the way that women appear on-screen, and we want them to look a certain way. We want to airbrush them, and we want to make them look perfect. Or we want to edit the way that they work, the way they move and the way that they think and behave. And I think we need to see real women portrayed on-screen in all of their complexity. I felt that it was one small thing to point out that could be helpful.... I was really sort of surprised and thrilled and happy to have received an apology... I kind of found it moving, in a way – to draw a line and know that had an impact. (speaking about Variety magazine’s first review of Promising Young Woman, a black comedy in which Mulligan plays Cassie)"

"Watching Cassie regain this power over these odious men is a deliciously giddy thrill... Scenes like Cassie tearing apart a college dean for her inability to protect and believe women or her surprisingly charming romance with a guy who might not be as toxic as the rest of them, there’s a lot here to recommend... First and foremost is Mulligan who is sensationally good as Cassie, showing hitherto unseen comic abilities, the kind of performance that never relents, it just builds and builds until finally it explodes. She’s always been good but never this flooring and with her headlining almost every scene, the film is forever compelling as a result as it’s impossible to drag your eyes away from her, curious to know just what she’ll do next. There’s also a magnetic turn from Bo Burnham as her love interest and the pair have genuine chemistry, enough to fill an entirely separate romantic comedy."

"It's devastating news... A promise has been broken, we upheld our side of this deal and sadly the government are choosing to go back on their word... we feel it’s really important to be transparent with the public and with our donors specifically about where their money is going.... We need to be honest about it, and it's so important that public trust is there... It is a time-sensitive project and it would be an utter tragedy if one child was trafficked ...But we know that actually it will be thousands"

"Sarah Gavron, who directed ‘Suffragette’ says, “She works very hard and takes life very seriously. … I’ve heard people say that she’s wise beyond her years, and there is something about that I think right.”...When she was younger, Mulligan recalls, she had “visceral dreams” about being in films with Judi Dench. Then, when she landed a small part in her first film, 2005’s “Pride & Prejudice,” Dench was her co-star."

"What I really love about the (Suffragette) film is that (her character) has a little boy and she doesn't have a girl... Because she has a son, it's sort of reflecting the idea that this fight isn't for women... It's for human rights and equality and that serves men as well as women and that was something watching the film and talking about the film now is really important: That feminism isn't just for girls. It's something that is everyone's issue."

"While I stayed at the Ashram, I spent many hours a day with Mira behn.... Even today at this distance, I remember her with great affection in my heart. ... She gave me the impression that she had found what she was looking for."

"[On Choudary's membership of the internationally proscribed Islamist group Al Muhajiroun (The Emigrants)] Choudary ... is the group's former leader. He frequently appears on cable news, as one of the few people producers can book who will defend the Islamic State vociferously, until his mike is cut. He has a reputation in the United Kingdom as a loathsome blowhard, but he and his disciples sincerely believe in the Islamic State and, on matters of doctrine, speak in its voice. Choudary and the others feature prominently in the Twitter feeds of Islamic State residents..."

"In London, Choudary and his students provided detailed descriptions of how the Islamic State must conduct its foreign policy, now that it is a caliphate. It has already taken up what Islamic law refers to as "offensive jihad," the forcible expansion into countries that are ruled by non-Muslims. "Hitherto, we were just defending ourselves," Choudary said; without a caliphate, offensive jihad is an inapplicable concept. But the waging of war to expand the caliphate is an essential duty of the caliph."

"Choudary took pains to presnt the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict."

"Our sensationalist and irresponsible media has, in fact, been deeply complicit in the rise and rise of this fanatic, devoting quite disproportionate and counter-productive coverage to his various rantings. Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever. So what gives him the right to pontificate on Islam, British Muslims or "the hellfire"? Or proclaim himself a "sharia judge"? Will he even manage to round up enough misfits to carry the 500 coffins with him? I doubt it – Choudary and co couldn't even persuade enough people to join a "march for sharia" that they had proudly planned to hold in central London in late October, and, at the very last minute, had to humiliatingly withdraw from their own rally. Pathetic, eh? The fact is that Choudary is as unrepresentative of British Muslim opinion, as he is of British anti-war opinion."

"For people who have had adultery committed against them, people who have had their wives taken, a lot will say "I think stoning to death is appropriate". I was like you, I was completely oblivious to Islam and the Islamic civilisation because I was educated in this system. But when you look at the rationale and benefits of it, you realise that it is, in fact, superior."

"There should be the removal of all borders and an invitation to all Muslims to become citizens of the new Islamic State with the aim to unite the Muslim land of the Indian sub-continent to begin with, to be the precursor of greater unity under the Khilafah [caliphate]."

"[On the men responsible for the September 11 attacks] Those individuals are Muslims, they were carrying out their Islamic responsibility and duty, so in that respect they were magnificent, and the Muslims worldwide hope that they are accepted as martyrs in the eyes of God."

"[After the 7 July 2005 London bombings] Al-Qaida are not targeting people arbitrarily. There are specific targets [...] The time for talking is over. You can't sit down and negotiate while you are murdering Muslims in Iraq."

"Transhumanism makes a great conspiracy costume. There's always a lot of tech news so you can rip stuff straight from the headlines about Elon Musk putting computers in monkeys and it'll get clicks. It's also not explicitly religious or racial. If you just come out the gate and say "Jews are planning to exterminate Christian white people!" then a lot of folks will go "Yeah? Allreet, on your bike Adolf!" but if you frame it as 'Elites are planning transhumanism', then at least some people will go, 'Wait, really?' and you can always add the hardcore stuff later once you've got their attention."

"When you leave the classroom, politics and metaphysics will come at you at the same time. We're not just doing philosophy for the hell of it. We are tinkering with the engine of the world here."

"Art isn't a statement or a question. If it was, the artist would just write it down. Art isn't philosophy with pictures. It's art!"

"It's always good to squat over the mirror and take a good, hard look at your own ideology sometimes. 'Cause if you don't do the thinking someone else will do the thinking for you."

"Ideologies are like arseholes: everyone's got one, we use it every day, but you very rarely look at your own unless something's gone wrong."

"If you ask three philosophers how social constructs work, you'll get four theories."

"Masculinity is a subject about which I know more than I should, but less than some of you may think. I studied it for a number of years but I never quite had the natural talent."

"One of the advantages of facing the overwhelming, grief-like nature of climate change, is that once we realize it’s all one problem, we have a lot more allies than we thought. If you campaign for migrants’ freedom of movement, you are fighting climate change. If you support indigenous people’s rights to self-determination, if you support your local antifascists and people fighting police brutality, if you support demilitarization and nuclear disarmament… it’s all one planet."

"Trauma isn’t always like a lightning bolt where you know that you’ve been hit. Sometimes trauma is like poison that someone slips into your food in little doses and you sit down every night and you eat that poison and you don’t realize that it’s building up inside you until suddenly you stop functioning."

"I look inside myself and I ask, "Do I feel like a man or a woman?" And the answer is... I feel happy."

"The other problem with saying that people like that are just a product of their time is that not everyone at that time did think like that, and it kinda lets them off the hook. A lot of people thought that slavery was okay, but you know what: The slaves didn’t. And they said so, pretty loudly and often. So if other people thought that slavery was alright, it wasn’t ‘cause they didn’t know, it’s because they chose not to listen to that. They chose not to know."

"Racism is a full-blown normative theory in its own right. Writing it off as just “hate” which needs “love” to combat it can be a little bit reductionist; it can stop us from understanding it."

"The real meaning of the text, or at least one possible meaning of it, is given by something that is not present in the text itself. Basically, meaning is like jazz. It's about the notes you don't play."

"The question I began this investigation with was, is security ever gonna go back to the way it was? And the answer I think I’m flying towards is: No, it isn’t. Unless you demand it."

"It’s not so much that I need a reason not to have my privacy invaded, it’s that somebody else should have a reason to do it. That’s kind of the point. That’s surely what it means for something to be “none of your business”. And yet, to refuse the search is to immediately mark oneself out as suspicious, as concealing something that is in fact somebody else’s business, because of the security-logic presumption that everyone is guilty until proven innocent."

"Since the position of the transphobe is that trans people don’t really exist, as trans people, and the position of trans people is obviously that they do exist, immediately we can see that no compromise is possible. Things either exist or they don’t, there’s no middle ground. So in any debate on this issue, it’s gonna be winner takes all. The trans person then is in the impossible situation of having to prove their own existence to someone who’s every response is gonna be, “How do you know?”"

"On Philosophy Tube, I call all the shots, I do all the writing, I do all the research. I plan it all out, and it's my show. I miss the feeling of being at the bottom and having to climb up again."

"The reason I left [my pre-transition videos] up is because I don't see Philosophy Tube as being about me, it's a bigger mission about education and people's relationship to knowledge that I am trying to live up to."

"Security might never go back to the way it was. It can’t. The surveillance and the paranoia and the invasive measures can only ever expand, because it’s not actually grounded in any presently knowable facts about threat or safety. The whole game is about risk-managing the possible future, and since what might happen in the future is infinitely imaginable, the justification for more security becomes infinite too."

"It’s perhaps unsurprising that many though not all people would decide that faced with an opponent whose entire position is the total denial of your humanity as the kind of human being that you are, the only winning move in such a game would be not to play."

"The nature of being raised in the way that I was, it's like, you get told you will be the future leaders of the world and then you get there and you find out the world is not enough."

"I did kind of construct a masculinity out of the best bits of every man that I could find, like the best bits of my brothers and my dad and the best bits of the Bond movies. I tried to do the man of the 21st century thing and, absolutely on it and woke but also compassionate and fun and charming and sexy and all the rest of it and with the muscles and the beard and, I tried to do all of it and it all made me sort of miserable really."

"Harry Potter is a bit of a bourgeois fantasy."

"Vegetariana is the name of an island where nobody ever kills animals for food or "sport." It is easy to guess how pleased the animals are in countries where the inhabitants decide to make the land a Vegetariana."

"Food is bought, So is drink, by a sort of intuition, With no heed of waste or malnutrition. Lambs are slaughtered, calves are bled, That our young may be ill-fed. Fruit, nuts and cereals which might save man Scarce find a place in his dietic plan. In robbing birds of plumes and beasts of fur We, charges of inhumanity incur. Fed with flesh meats and clad in skins of beast, Life and art suffer, and our health not least. The price, not the art of our dress, Is the anxious concern of our Press Which will praise all that pays, But denies its great prize, To a beauty which won't advertise."

"Truth is not always fair, or soft of speech, Nor can all minds grasp all that it can teach; But if despised, by men rejected now, The future's dawn illuminates its brow."

"No system can ever relieve us of our personal responsibility, and it is essential that we all recognise the need to change the way we live."

"Whatever you do will change the world. If you take the most default option, you follow the most mainstream, down the line, ‘just keep your head down and get on with what they’re telling you to do’, approach, then that’s the world that you’re helping to create. There is no way that you can not change the world."

"The more one learns about Earth and her Earthlings, the more paradoxical the notion of a *Universal* Declaration of *Human* Rights appears..."