I’d like to think my late step-grandfather represented one of many stories of Cambridge University exceptionalism.

Born poor in Johannesburg’s south, he found a way to one of the world’s most prestigious institutions, probably through a violent aversion to feeling sorry for himself. His time there soothed his edges. He excelled academically, made friends for life, and won a Blue for boxing, a sport he’d loved since childhood.

Upon graduation he joined the Royal Air Force and ended the war as a decorated Air Commodore in his forties. A successful business career followed, before he retired in his sixties as a gentleman farmer in the Natal Midlands.

The insult of Jason Arday, the plagiarist who has resigned from his professorship at Cambridge on account of intellectual fraud, must therefore be felt beyond the immediate ridicule. It's been a dump for some time now, much of the damage inflicted between 2017 and 2022 by a Canadian vice-chancellor called Stephen Toope, an effete human rights scholar who administered the campus as Justin Trudeau administered Canada. Toope oversaw the cancellation of the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, supported a shocking anti-free-speech mechanism and introduced an anonymous reporting tool for “microaggressions”. By the time he was done, Cambridge was too.

Arday has been defended by fellow academics, lawyers, the media, and grift initiatives through two strategies: i) the shriek of “racism”, and ii) the claim of being held to a higher standard – therefore “racism” again. There is, his supporters argue, no question that plagiarism is more rampant among whites – so pick on them.

I think this is fair. So let’s go with Zack Polanski (previously known as David Paulden) leader of the Green Party.

Lied So Much

Like Arday, Polanski is queer for Palestine. Because he’s lied so much, it's not clear whether Arday is actually retarded, but Polanski definitely is. Without question. Polanski has also lied about his own past and accomplishments.

His decision to change his name from David to Zack is curious. He claims that it's after a character in the book Goodnight  Mister Tom. If you have never read this book but knew Polanski on account of his behaviour, this could be uncomfortable. In modern-day England, a title like Goodnight Mister Tom could be associated with the activities of BBC paedophiles after everyone’s knocked off at Portland Place. Reassuringly, there were no paedos in the book – Zach was just a flamboyant if unlucky fellow who ended up getting bombed by the Germans.

In an interview with The Guardian, Polanski claimed that his first kiss was with a “Muslim called Jihad”. Just imagine being Polanski last year when news broke that another Islamist had gone all stabby at a Manchester synagogue – and his name was “Jihad”? I think Polanski’s heart may have jumped into his throat as he combed through his Facebook friends with his fingers trembling, whimpering the old “please-oh-goodness-please-no”.

Polanski has embellished his CV but unlike Arday – who may well have gone on to declare that he was a confidante to Carlos the Jackal had he not been interrupted – there’s more hyperbole than just winging it. Against what he claimed, Polanski didn’t actually work for the Ministry of Justice. He didn’t sit at a desk there and do bureaucratic things – or nothing, which is today’s standard there. When it came time for the troubled department to “educate” its staff on “diversity, equity and inclusion”, a makeshift stage was erected and in came Polanski playing the poor Ministry staffer who overheard an offensive joke about curry in the urinals – so has to take a “mental health” two weeks off work with counselling. So, a niche actor, industrial theatre, etc.

Hypnotherapy

Polanski’s career in hypnotherapy should be examined with caution. Hypnotherapists, like magicians, can turn on you. Once I was at a magic show in a bar (in Cresta) and the magician, who was also a hypnotherapist, was rubbish. Magically sensing I had doubted his powers, he confronted me with aggressive certitude: “Hey, don’t f*** with me, I’m in the PE (now Gqeberha) magic circle”.

Polanski used hypnotherapy to help women “think” their way to larger breasts, and charged handsomely. When confronted with the wisdom that such is impossible, Polanski became ratty. I’m pretty sure the magician who scolded me was a member of some group, druid-ish as it may have been, but Polanski wasn’t a member of the National Council of Hypnotherapy. It is said that the bulk of hypnotherapy in England is treating women who do not like having sex. Was Polanski ever exposed here? How would he have dealt with this – apart of course from the advice of, “Well, I just don’t think it's a good idea”?

On Wednesday last week Polanski returned to declare that the heatwave affecting his country is the worst crisis since World War II. Nobody bothered to fact-check these remarks because the few assembled were so shocked the leader of the Green Party was actually talking about the environment, and not transgenders, or Gaza, or race. Misfits will tease that he pivoted to climate change because he was a signatory on the letter supporting Jason Arday. Of course he was.

The most racist thing anyone could do to Arday was already done: over-promote a fantasist hiding in plain sight, erect a ring of white academics around him to shriek “racist” at anyone who stumbled across his plagiarism, and pay him handsomely – thus incentivising him to lie more.

Won’t Easily Disappear

The enduring nerve is astonishing. Some Arday-supporting white academics have returned with the position that, facts as they may be (and by facts we mean “pathological lying”), such is the threat of the far-right and its racism that Arday and his work retains their solidarity.

When the top of society is inhabited by people at such odds with the natural laws of the universe, the game is up. What did we do to create Ardays, Polanskis, Anthony Faucis? Among other things, we dropped our guard and our standards. Such complacency fooled us into believing in ridiculous concepts such as the permanent emergency in health and race. We became anxious, trivial, and irrational.

This is why the crisis at Cambridge and today's progressive politics won’t easily disappear. The worst of us stand at the pinnacle, wholly undeservedly, pissing on ambition and meritocracy, desecrating the symbols of civilisation that once made good people and great places. When we stare up at them, all the shit we’ve welcomed to live inside our heads stares back down.