When Daniel James was growing up in Cornwall in the South West of England, his attitude was common to a lot of young men – in his own words, he was fundamentally “rebellious and anti-authority.”
“I was very into music as a teenager,” he said, in an exclusive interview with Gript.
“I was very into punk music, metal and rap.”
And therefore, when he moved to London by himself at 16 to study music, he quickly found himself caught up in the city’s punk scene, followed by what he calls “some very extreme far-Left activist groups.”
“FRANKLY TERRORISTIC TACTICS”
“I joined a group called SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty),” he said.
“We were campaigning to shut down Huntingdon Live Sciences, which is one of the biggest animal testing laboratories in Europe.”
SHAC – a now defunct group as of 2014 – was a radical environmentalist organisation which operated in the UK, mainland Europe and America through the early 2000s.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) accused the group of using “frankly terroristic tactics,” and in 2005 the FBI referred to their activities as domestic terror threats.
This was the movement which a young Daniel James ultimately found himself caught up in around his teen years, so much so that he “started living with the founders in the campaign headquarters” and travelling all over Europe to be involved in various “Antifa” causes.
And it ultimately led to him being convicted of “conspiracy to blackmail” at the age of 21.
Aged 21
“I SPENT SEVERAL YEARS IN PRISON”
“I ended up spending time in prison for my involvement with the SHAC campaign,” he said.
“Pretty much everyone involved in the running of that campaign was put in prison for conspiracy to blackmail. So I spent several years in prison.”
However, after his stay behind bars, with some time to reflect, he went to university to study graphic design and started his own business, leaving his far-Left life behind.
He described his old views as a “warped and twisted ideology.”
“BRAINWASHED BY A PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS CULT”
Reflecting on his experiences, he said that not everyone involved in such groups are fundamentally bad people.
“There definitely are bad actors who don’t care about anything or anyone,” he said.
“There are nihilists who want to cause destruction and chaos. But for the majority of people I was involved with, I would say they do genuinely believe the ideology that they’re espousing. It basically gets to the point where you become brainwashed into this pseudo-religious cult, and you essentially believe that what you’re doing is good.
“I genuinely thought that damaging the property of innocent people and businesses was a good thing to do, because I thought it would lead to those businesses severing ties with this animal laboratory, and then the lab would have to close.
“A person who thinks that they have moral righteousness on their side can be very dangerous when they have a warped and twisted ideology.”
He added: “I wouldn’t say everyone involved in Leftwing extremist groups are outright evil – though I would say that the ideology is outright evil. It is literally just the worship of the self. But those involved are often good people who are just misled, brainwashed and indoctrinated.”
“THE RADICAL LEFT HAS MOVED INTO THE MAINSTREAM”
He told Gript that he found it “quite concerning” that radical-Left ideology seemed to be entering the public discourse in a way that it hadn’t when he was active.
“It seems to me like the radical far-Left has moved into the mainstream, and into the institutions,” he said.
“When I was involved with far-Left activism about 15 years ago, we all felt like we were fighting against the institutions of power – the government, the media and so on. We felt like they were all these big organs of power allied against us. But it doesn’t really seem to be the same way anymore. You’ve got very very powerful and prominent politicians that openly support extremely far-Left radical groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. – it’s quite concerning.”
“IT REALLY BRINGS OUT THE WORST PART OF YOU”
He went on to speak about his view that the human desire to fight for a cause drives a lot of people towards political extremism.
“It really brings out the worst part of you. It really brings out the evil that we all have the capacity for,” he said.
“I felt like my life had meaning and purpose because I was fighting for what I perceived to be a just cause. And that feeds into your ego because it lets you think of yourself as this brave, selfless warrior, when really you’re just insane and attacking innocent people for a cause that isn’t worthwhile at all.
“I do think that young men crave some sort of excitement and danger, something to fight for – that’s why I really believe that getting young men involved in martial arts is a really positive thing. And that was definitely part of it for me – being able to dress up in military combat gear, and go out at night, and sneak around doing terrible things – I thought that this was being brave. When in reality it was just being extremely wrong and selfish.”
He added that he thinks human beings on some level have a destructive tendency, where they crave a fight even when things are going well.
“We live in the most luxurious civilisation in the history of the world. But I think even if we had a perfect society, we would just tear it down so something interesting could happen,” he said.
“I WAS BAPTISED INTO THE CATHOLIC FAITH”
While he was an atheist during his political activism years, James ultimately found himself converting to Catholicism as an adult.
“Just this past December I was baptised into the Catholic faith. So a bit of a turnaround,” he joked.
“I always believed that Christianity was just a fairy tale. That they were nice stories that had a certain moral value to them that people used to tell each other, but that there was no truth or anything more significant to it than that. And I didn’t believe for one second that there could be a God. I didn’t understand how there could be a God when there’s so much pain and suffering in the world.
“But that worldview completely shifted when I became a father.”
“MY WORLDVIEW SHIFTED WHEN I WAS A FATHER”
James said that after becoming a Dad, he suddenly couldn’t understand how there could not be a God.
“I couldn’t articulate it, but I had this extremely strong sense of meaning, and a sense that my son was not just some random accident of biology,” he said.
“Nobody could look at their own son or daughter and think “This is a random accident that means absolutely nothing, and one day won’t exist anymore.” That worldview – which you have to believe if you’re an atheist – just didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.”
He said that he believes having a family is a natural barrier against going down dangerous political rabbit holes – and may be why “the far-left attack the traditional family unit at every opportunity.”
“WHEN YOU HAVE A FAMILY, YOU’RE NOT THE STAR OF YOUR OWN MOVIE”
“When you have a family, you’re not the star of your own movie,” he said.
“You have to start thinking about others and stop being selfish. So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the far-Left seem to want to destroy the traditional family – that they want to subvert it, and turn it upside down.
“The family is the cornerstone of a community, and the community is the cornerstone of society. So I think instilling in young men the value of being a good father and a good husband, and providing for a family – I think that could give young men the sense of purpose and meaning that they lack. And in many cases I think that would stop them going down the road of trying to find that meaning in evil ideological causes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the majority of the people involved in these movements are young, single people without families.”
“THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS THE CHURCH THAT JESUS CHRIST FOUNDED”
Asked why, as an Englishman, he gravitated to Catholicism rather than Anglicanism, he said “When I started learning about the history of the Church fathers and how Christianity grew, to be honest, choosing Catholicism was fairly easy for me.”
“The Catholic Church is the church that Jesus Christ founded,” he said.
“If you’re going to have a founder for your church, you don’t want it to be some guy in the 16th century. You want it to be Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
He also added that Jordan Peterson’s Biblical series played a role in influencing his conversion.
“When I listened to Jordan Peterson’s Biblical series I thought “hang on a minute – why has nobody ever said this before? Why is the church not saying this?” And when I looked into the history and writings of the Church fathers, it was a real shock,” he said.
“I’m no scholar, but I considered myself an educated person. And I realised that I literally don’t know anything about the civilization that I’ve grown up in. And I think in part it’s a failure of the Church, but it’s also a concerted effort by the secular education system to actually keep a lot of this tradition from us.
“I went to a really good school throughout my childhood and teen years, and throughout that entire time, I never once heard the name G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis, despite the fact that these are two of the most important British writers of the last century. And I hadn’t even heard their name. It wasn’t just that we didn’t study them in depth – I’d never even heard of them.
“There’s a lot of focus in schools on the crimes and the bad parts of Western civilisation, but we don’t learn about what good it’s done for the world. The idea that racism is bad, slavery is bad, every human being has inherent dignity given to them by God – this is an idea that came from Christianity.”
