Somehow Celtics is still a thing

For reasons I don’t understand, Michael (Mehul) Kingsbury is still at it:

What is this “Irish whisky” of which he speaks? Even in the US, where this clown lives, they spell it with an “e”…

Anyway, back in those long distant days (October 2021) when I still operated a Youtube channel, I actually did a video about Mehul and his absurd proposed TV show/racist propaganda nonsense. If you don’t want to listen to me droning on for 16 minutes however (and who could blame you?), I’ll boil the story down… basically around 18 months ago, Mehul started attracting attention on Twitter for a show he envisaged called Celtics, and for mass-blocking thousands of Irish and Scottish people who actually know about history before they could criticise him for the numerous things wrong with his idea. Some of which included:

— The title. “Celtics” is not a word (unless you’re referring to the basketball team);
— In his promotional art, he included a goddess called Aeronwen, who may not actually have existed in the first place and if she did then she was Welsh and therefore outside Irish mythology. Also he praised the actress playing Aeronwen for her natural Irish accent, which a putative Welsh goddess surely wouldn’t have had in the first place;
— Plus he said the show would be using Gaulish accents for “authenticity”, despite the fact we don’t know what a Gaulish accent would’ve sounded like, and despite the fact that a putative Welsh goddess wouldn’t have had one of those either;
— The “Book of Danu” isn’t an actual thing and there are no known myths about Danu, and I gather her very name is a linguistic reconstruction that’s not universally agreed upon;
— He also uses Belenus, who was indeed worshipped in Britain, but his actual cult centre was in Italy, and he was a national god in Noricum, a kingdom around what is now Austria and Slovenia and which was then an ally of the Roman republic and later part of the Roman empire.

This latter point is kind of important and deeply ironic, considering this description of the show from Mehul’s website:

A deeply immersive Storytelling experience, with a historical and mythological script that relates to our own times. By 50 AD Celtics of Britain began to be enslaved by the Roman Empire, and their culture faced destruction. Yet, they found ways to resist and fought back eventually pushing the Roman Empire off their lands. The script covers not just the Celtic Gods but the mortals as well. Also it shows how the mortals became Gods through their deeds, that through deeds that were seen as superhuman by their peers that they became deified as Gods. Which gives us a living, breathing, Celtic script and movie series.

So Mehul’s not big on the Roman empire; not, mind you, that I think the empire per se actually has that much to do with things. Here’s another screencap of him from Twitter (had to take this from my video as I can’t find the original):

Oh. Neo-Marxists and globalists, eh? I think Mehul’s true colours, all shining white of them, are starting to show through…

…and with this suspiciously Aryan-looking lovely he’s not even dogwhistling it that much. Not that he really was before now, mind you:

As I was saying above, there is no Book of Danu in the sense of a religious text like the Bible, nor is there any reason I can see why (if such a thing did exist) it would be citing Christian scripture, unless it were written after the advent of Christianity to Britain in which case why would they be invoking Danu at all, if Danu even was her name, and…

…sorry, but… for FUCK’s sake, Mehul, why are they holding codices, which is a form of book that probably didn’t even exist until about the first century (to say nothing about the origin date of Brehon law, which is unknown and probably unknowable)? Oof. Anyway, there’s a handy article here looking at the contemporary political angle of the show:

…this filmmaker is using this fantasy of Celticism to produce what is openly and explicitly far-right propaganda. The show’s promotional materials and social media resound with the tedious clamour of the far right’s favourite tunes: the Roman Empire was “Globalist” and “Multicultural”. The Celts were a freedom-loving people, defending their sacred freedom of speech from the censorious Romans. Everyone who scoffs at this arrant nonsense is a neo-Marxist globalist. The show’s website declares the show to be a commentary on the present-day “globalist empire occupying our lands” and warns against the “totalitarian censorship” that threatens our freedoms. Pointing out that this paranoid fantasy has as little basis in the present as it does in the dim-and-distant Celtic past is, naturally, totalitarianism.  By neo-Marxists, naturally.  These are familiar refrains to anyone who has spent any time observing the far right.

Basically Mehul is using Celtic mythology and identity in the service of white supremacy in much the same way far-right propagandists use Germanic and Nordic mythology & identity (and, alas, Australia made its own contribution to that unfortunate trend too. If you ever come across someone calling themselves an “Odinist”, this cunt is probably why). I don’t know if Mehul is an actual Nazi as such, but actual Nazis do exploit these old myths and their modern adherents, this article calls it outright “fake spirituality”. And just like contemporary non-racist heathens get the shits at A.R. Mills types using their beliefs and heritage as a cover for basic racism, I kind of have the shits with Michael Kingsbury for trying to do the same with my heritage. (Parenthetically, one of Mehul’s Celtic goddesses is being played by an Icelandic performer. For whatever that may be worth.)

And if you think it’s just me, here’s what Twitter recommended for me when I went to his account:

I know Twitter is all about the far-right these days, but weird how it doesn’t recommend me shit like this when I visit my own profile…

Mehul is evidently a man of minimal abilities and considerable mental illness that goes beyond him just being… optimistic about those abilities. But goddamn I wish I had half his self-belief and self-confidence, it takes some brass balls to be so sure of oneself as he is. I just wish he’d turn that self-belief towards something that might actually be admirable.