'Suicide of a Nation': Matt Goodwin's AI

'Suicide of a Nation': Matt Goodwin's AI-assisted screed on Muslims and Britain The first thing you notice when you open Matt Goodwin's new book is how bad the font is. It almost seems designed to give the reader a headache. But if you really focus your eyes, you might just make out the dedication: “This book is dedicated to the Forgotten Majority.” Dr Goodwin has chosen to self-publish his new Amazon bestseller, Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity. I have nothing against self-published books. But in the case of Reform UK's losing candidate for the Gorton and Denton seat, some editorial oversight might have proved valuable. For years, I have engaged seriously with this former academic's work. I admired his 2018 book National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, a fair-minded and rigorous scholarly engagement with the rise of populist movements across the West. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Goodwin’s dispassionate analysis and refusal to dismiss or demonise those who voted for Brexit and right-wing populist parties were refreshing. An academic through and through, he was admirably devoted to facts and statistics. In the past few years, however, the good doctor (of political science) has engaged in what might turn out to be the greatest feat of undercover academic investigative research in modern history: he has actually become a national populist politician himself. Call it going native, if you like. Many have levelled that accusation. But perhaps Goodwin is in really, really deep cover. After all, how can you claim to understand national populists if you haven’t tried being one? 'Within just one generation, Britain will no longer be Britain. England will no longer be England' - Matt Goodwin, Suicide of a Nation We must suspend all judgment. We may be witnessing the most extraordinary research masterclass in all of British academia, the fruits of which are yet to be revealed. The plan was that this new book, Suicide of a Nation, would be published shortly after Goodwin’s election as a Reform MP. Sadly for him, the would-be parliamentarian lost the Gorton and Denton by-election last month to Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer. Goodwin responded by accusing the Greens of “sectarian politics” and of allying with Islamists. That led to many online - not this author - cruelly labelling him "Matt Badloss". No matter - the show goes on. The doctor is still embedded in Britain’s right-wing politics; he is a presenter on GB News. The spectre of artificial intelligence This curious new book is addressed not to an academic audience but to those Goodwin calls ordinary people (though presumably not Green voters). Academic rigour is entirely absent from this addition to the doctor's oeuvre. There are only 12 footnotes in the whole book, two of which have ChatGPT source code embedded in their links, and five of which are to his own Substack posts. The spectre of artificial intelligence looms over other parts of the book, too. Goodwin has said online that he used AI only to obtain datasets and that he cross-checked them. But the writer Andy Twelves has pointed out that several quotes Goodwin attributes to great writers like Cicero, Friedrich Hayek, Sir Roger Scruton and Noah Webster are fake. For instance, there is no evidence that the economist Hayek ever said: “The most dangerous experiments are those conducted on entire societies”. Goodwin has said that criticism of his book "is coming from notorious left-wing activists who object to a (now bestselling) book that points out clearly and with evidence from the official census, what mass immigration and rapid demographic change is doing to our country". On Thursday evening, desiring a light read at the end of a hard day, I opened Suicide of a Nation and turned to page one. “Within just one generation,” it reads, “Britain will no longer be Britain. England will no longer be England. The country that we still just about know and recognise, the country our ancestors built, will be no more. It will be replaced by something else.” I put the kettle on. Obsession with ethnicity The book is quite a ride. Some parts are almost interactive. Chapter four begins: “Imagine you were the leader of a country but secretly wanted to destroy it. What would you do?” (It then continues in the second person for several paragraphs.) Many Middle East Eye readers might by this point be wondering whether there is any point in attempting to engage seriously with this book. But I believe it is an important work. It tells us a great deal about the British right - specifically about Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which leads most national polls and wanted to make Goodwin an MP last month. So what sort of political discourse is Reform trying to mainstream? Suicide of a Nation is obsessed with ethnicity. Goodwin repeatedly insists that “elites” are pursuing a “project” of “demographic replacement”. By the year 2100, he reveals, “Muslims will go from representing about one in every 17 people in Britain to one in every four”. He predicts “by the year 2050, the White British will no longer be a majority among the country’s young people”. Why are these trends of great importance? “The ethnic and cultural core of a nation is what holds it in place, like an anchor,” Goodwin tells us. He adds that demographic changes will mean “the country will lose its distinctiveness, its collective memory, its story and its continuity with the past”. 'The greatest Mohammedan power' Absent from Goodwin’s account of Britishness (which began with the union of England and Scotland in 1707) is any mention of the British Empire. This is a strange omission. The empire meant that Britishness was necessarily multicultural. Perhaps Goodwin is unaware that a century ago Britain self-identified as the “greatest Mohammedan [Muslim] power” in the world - a bold claim made regularly by British statesmen, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George. 'Imagine you were the leader of a country but secretly wanted to destroy it. What would you do?' - Matt Goodwin, Suicide of a Nation As many historians have argued, empire was deeply involved in the formation of British identity. But this is entirely absent from the Reform candidate's impassioned account. There is certainly nothing illegitimate or even unusual about arguing for restrictions on immigration or that migrants should integrate. Indeed, this argument was made just this month in the Labour government's "Protecting What Matters" policy document on social cohesion. But Goodwin’s focus on ethnicity puts ethnic minorities in a double bind. On the one hand, he insists they must integrate into what he calls the majority culture, and yet he suggests that they cannot actually become as British as the white British. Consider the following passage: “nearly one in five people who are currently living in Britain - roughly 13 million - were not born in this country”, Goodwin writes. “While many of these people will feel British and passionately support the country, by definition it is also true they cannot have the same instinctive, emotional connection to our identity, history and landscape as those whose families have been here for generations.” How many generations? What about those whose families have only been here for one generation? Or three generations? Or five? Goodwin does not specify. Who counts as British? At other points in the book, there is confusion over who is truly British. We are told that many ethnic minority Brits are as concerned about “demographic replacement” as Goodwin is. He says that “the New Elite will sacrifice their own people’s rights to free speech and free expression on the altar of protecting the feelings of immigrants, minorities and outsiders". But then he writes: “For the British people, the outcome is unmistakable. They are treated as second-class members of their own country.” But do “the British people” here include the minorities supposedly being protected by the “New Elite?” What is clear is that for Goodwin, being a British citizen doesn’t mean you are necessarily truly British. He opines that “citizenship is not the same as belonging, and belonging requires more than a passport. It is an emotional allegiance. It is a strong bond.” But this narrative of a “demographic replacement” is strongly undermined by a series of factual errors throughout the book. Goodwin tells of a Bradford classroom in which only four out of 28 pupils spoke English as a first language, forcing teachers to navigate “dozens of languages”. There is no citation, and, as Andy Twelves has pointed out, no online reporting that would support this claim. Even more remarkably, Goodwin writes of “schools where children speak more than thirty different languages”. He says this was from a 2019 BBC West Midlands report. But no record of such a report can be found. We are told that Boris Johnson was in “opposition” in 2019, when he was in fact in government. Other mistakes and misrepresentations contain serious implications for Goodwin’s core arguments. In a section on “Muslim sectarianism”, he writes that “independent Muslim MP Iqbal Mohamed was later filmed telling an all-Muslim audience, ‘We must take over the whole of Birmingham, the whole of West Midlands, the whole of the UK’.” The suggestion is that this was calling for a Muslim takeover. But Mohamed was speaking not about Muslims but about the left-wing Your Party. Distortion and alarmism Elsewhere, Goodwin accuses the Labour government of a “sinister plan” to introduce a new definition of “Islamophobia”. “Any such legislation to outlaw ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ would amount to a law against blasphemy, making it all but impossible to criticise Islam,” he declares ominously. But the definition of anti-Muslim hostility (recently adopted) has always been proposed as non-statutory, meaning it isn’t legally binding. Goodwin wants us to believe that Labour intended to make it “all but impossible to criticise Islam”. This seems hugely alarmist. And although he fervently defends free speech in some cases, at other points, he proposes heavy, draconian measures targeting religious freedom and limiting what people are allowed to wear. “The burqa, niqab and other forms of religious dress should no longer be permitted in public spaces,” he argues. This would impact some orthodox Jewish communities, and would also make the Archbishop of Canterbury’s life quite difficult. Islam in Britain The good doctor presents us with an exceedingly bleak assessment of Islam in Britain. He bemoans that there are “highly segregated Muslim enclaves where the White British are almost completely absent and Muslims have little meaningful interaction with the non-Muslim majority”. He warns of “alarming views among Muslim communities” and sectarian politics. “Clearly, there are many Muslims in Britain who do not share these views and would not condone these actions,” Goodwin writes. “But nor has there been much vocal opposition to them from within Britain’s Muslim communities.” Goodwin relies on selective evidence. Many surveys for years have shown that while there are certainly integration issues, particularly among recent migrants, British Muslims as a whole are highly integrated. Recent polling conducted by Opinium found that 85 percent of British Muslims support democracy as "the best system of government", compared with 71 percent of the general population. It also found that 94 percent of British Muslims support "equal treatment under the law for all faiths and none", compared with 80 percent of the general population. Seven in 10 Muslims said they "feel completely or mostly loyal to the UK", whereas only half of the British public at large do so. And eight in 10 Muslims reported frequent interactions with non-Muslims, with 38 percent saying they "have personally or through family served in public service roles". This is completely different from the image painted by Suicide of a Nation. Goodwin concludes his 196-page book by declaring that “Britain is not yet dead, but it is in mortal danger. If it is to be saved from suicide, it must be now. The final pages of our civilisation need not be written yet. Not here.” Very rousing, I thought. The former academic warns his readers elsewhere that the "elites will attack me because I wrote this for you. They will call me every name under the sun because I dare to tell you the truth”. Recall that Reform tried to bring Goodwin into the House of Commons. He has a platform on GB News and remains a significant public figure. You may well conclude that the man dubbed Badloss is mainstreaming a dangerous obsession with ethnic politics, and that he is promoting a highly alarmist brand of cultural nationalism. But I would implore you to be more open-minded. Personally, I cling to the hope that Dr Goodwin really is undercover, that he is exploring the heart of darkness so we don’t have to, and that one day he will emerge into the light as an academic once more, to present us with the true sequel to National Populism - a tell-all memoir and expose that reveals all. Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.