Replacement Theory, Terror and Unease – Infiltrating CCRAP

CPAC UK ran this past July 16 – a disconcerting day for many, including myself. 

Having worked on a start-up magazine for some time with a media veteran – and resultantly used to a diverse but nevertheless objective array of politicians’, professors’, and authors’ viewpoints – I had been surprised to learn of my partner’s contacts attending CPAC, whom he swore weren’t all right-wing loons, and even more shocked to learn he knew people speaking on the main stage, too. 

I was a foreigner among a sea of suits, in a faux-Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and Reform UK blue (The Simpsons) socks.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is an American export and features a veritable panoply of right-wing activists. In my hours at the conference I found it a mix of excruciating, exciting, and downright outrageous. The heavy police presence, security high in the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, was impossible to miss. After the security scanner, and having duly sipped my water so as to prove it’s not any other more dangerous liquid, I scoped out the schedules, secure in the knowledge that I am not a terrorist. 

CPAC is, as described by Politico, MAGA’s United Nations, an excellent form of words for obscuring its malevolence. It is a stain on democracy that capitalises on the weak-willed and looks to big tech to finance it. In the media hall, among the Talk TV and GB News newsstands, merchants hawk the Taxpayers’ Alliance wares and those who genuinely believe in the cause.

I speak to the Chairman, Rory McGregor, who appears entirely affable, but the whole appearance of the organisation seems seedier than the media perspective, which is saying something, with the leaflets and pamphlets handed out looking little more than they were designed using Microsoft Word, made by someone with more political than design nous.

The optics problems persist as I wander through the room filled with generic ads that are supposedly corporate sponsors of the event. The three-day fest is costing them and attendees a pretty penny. While I managed to amble in as press, standard attendance fees can go as high as £10,000 for the privilege of hobnobbing with the shortest-serving prime minister of all time, the haunted pencil Rees-Mogg, and others of such disrepute. Numerous speakers, including wannabe MP Matt Goodwin, mention or pay homage to the Great Replacement Theory. The idea that Matt Goodwin introduces to the conference is that it is a “radicalised fringe minority … who hate this country so much they want to replace it with something else entirely”.  George Simion, the failed Romanian Presidential candidate, is more bullish about his views, stating Romania is for Romanians, Europe is for Europeans and that “this is not diversity, this is replacement”. 

However, there was a greater theme at the heart of this conference. The Deep State, for me, was the overarching topic on every speaker’s lips, and it makes the whole idea of this gathering even more farcical. The sponsors for the said sad event include the far-right John Birch Society, the Bitcoin Collective, obscure AI companies, various fossil fuel entities, and, to show there is still a bit of political sensibility in even the most bizarre of organisations, one or two Net Zero advocacy firms. Who are these societies if not the Deep State, controlling things behind the scenes? Quite what the Net-Zero, energy efficiency firms had to gain from appearing at a conference with numerous climate sceptics appearing is anyone’s guess. I spend quite some time at the venue, The Intercontinental Hotel, drinking in the atmosphere and vibe of the attendees; these are not individuals hard up for cash, and they know this. After speaking on the main stage at the conference, speakers had the opportunity to try their hand at virtual golf in the main expo room, and one speaker, I believe from the aforementioned Taxpayers’ Alliance, came on to the main stage, with his golf club in hand, and gives it a swish to the delight of the audience. As some walk off the stage, they go into the Intercontinental’s Clipper Bar and Terrace and order cocktails to close off their arduous day. This new right-wing attitude and sense of ceremony, which has ironically migrated to the UK, is a weird mix of gimmicky politics, loudmouths such as Mike Graham of TalkTV, who was also in attendance, and the down-to-earth everyman they wish to appeal to. This is despite the main proponents and backers of these events being completely contemptuous of poverty and the impoverished themselves.

So what of CPAC’s first fully-fledged UK outing? Failure or success, and should it become a fixture on our political circuit? I would state decidedly that it should not, as it muddies democracy in a way that is more overt than the Russian interference in the Brexit referendum and, as a result, unfortunately, more celebrated. This is not an export we require from the great US of A.

Image: Eliot Lord

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