The acrid smoke of flares mingled with shouts of “Send them back!” and the soaring strains of William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’. It was a scene as jarring as it was profoundly, bewilderingly ironic. Protestors railing against asylum seekers, their faces shadowed by the orange glow, bellowed forth a hymn whose very genesis and author stands in stark opposition to their hateful ideology. Have they lost the plot? Not merely a scene or a narrative, but a fundamental grasp of history, compassion, and the very symbols they so clumsily co-opt.
Let’s unpack this astonishing display of cognitive dissonance. ‘Jerusalem’, with its rousing melody and evocative lyrics, has become an unofficial anthem for England, often sung with fervent national pride. Its fame rests on the myth of Jesus having visited ancient England, walking upon its “green and pleasant land.” This is where the plot begins to unravel for the protestors. The figure of Jesus, whose teachings form the bedrock of Christian faith, espoused principles of love, charity, empathy, and welcoming the stranger. His parables consistently champion the marginalised, the outcast, and those in need of succour. To invoke his supposed presence in England while simultaneously railing against vulnerable people seeking refuge – people often fleeing persecution, much like Jesus’s own family in their flight to Egypt – is not merely hypocritical; it is a profound desecration of the very message they implicitly claim to uphold. It strips the sacred text of its core meaning, twisting it into a hollow echo of exclusionary nationalism.
Then there is William Blake himself, the visionary poet and artist who penned those powerful words. Blake was no jingoistic nationalist. He was a radical nonconformist, a mystic, a social critic who railed against the oppressions of his age – the “dark Satanic Mills” being a metaphor for industrial exploitation and the spiritual degradation of humanity. He saw society steeped in hypocrisy, its institutions corrupt, and its spirit deadened by materialism. To imagine Blake, a prophet of universal brotherhood and the divine spark within every individual, endorsing the hateful xenophobia of these protestors is to misunderstand his entire philosophy. Blake’s Christ was a revolutionary figure, a champion of the poor and the downtrodden, not a symbol to be weaponised against the dispossessed. He would have been far more likely to stand with those seeking refuge than with those who sought to deny it. His ‘Jerusalem’ asks for a spiritual transformation of England, to build a new society founded on justice and divine love, not to seal its borders against suffering humanity.
The flares, too, speak volumes. Their aggressive, performative anger contrasts sharply with the serene, almost melancholic beauty of Blake’s verse. Flares are for signalling distress, for creating a spectacle, for momentarily illuminating the darkness with an artificial, often blinding, light. Here, they seem to symbolise the blinding rage and the deliberate obfuscation of truth that underpins the protestors’ message. They are a desperate attempt to draw attention, yet they only serve to highlight the intellectual and moral darkness of their cause.
So, yes, they have unequivocally lost the plot. They have lost the plot of Jesus’s teachings, transforming a message of compassion into a weapon of exclusion. They have lost the plot of William Blake’s radical, inclusive vision, twisting his call for spiritual awakening into a narrow, hateful ideology. They have lost the plot of what it means to be human, to empathise with the plight of others, and to recognise the shared humanity that transcends borders. Their contradictory tableau of flares and ‘Jerusalem’ is not just a sign of ignorance; it is a tragic, self-indicting performance that exposes a deep-seated spiritual and ethical vacuum at the heart of their protest. The irony is so thick it chokes the very air.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 