There is a pretty cringeworthy and anger inducing bit of television out there in Britain at the moment, no it’s not the obvious political propaganda of ‘Citizen Khan’, but the cynical and also worrying Unilever advert, featuring, a cast of young people, including a serious-faced junior political commissar called Grace Jones, pontificating on food waste and hunger. The sick irony of this advertisement is that it is to promote a hunger reduction campaign by Oxfam in the UK, a country with an obesity problem, and many of the other diseases caused by or attributed to food affluence.  This vid is so awful that it should be called ‘Project Cringe’. You can view the video by clicking on the embedded file above.

Oh what fresh hell is it when someone can be introduced in a straight faced way as a ‘school influencer’? Influencing for what is the first question that needs to be asked? In this case the stated issue is food waste, but could be any Leftist touchstone issue such as ‘climate change’ or the vague slippery term ‘social justice’ for example. This advertisement deserves a closer examination than maybe those making it intended us to, and we should ask ourselves: Do we really want the equivalent of a Political Officer on a Soviet era ship,military unit or factory, influencing our children? I certainly would not, and would withdraw my child from a school that allowed such blatant and overtly Leftist political campaigning to go on.

Today the junior political commissars may be speaking on the subject of food waste, but tomorrow they may be peddling appeasement to theological fascism, or encouraging children to grass up their parents to the authorities if the parent should express a non-Leftist opinion. The term ‘school influencer’ is another of those dishonest phrases that obfuscate rather than describe, like the term ‘religion of peace’ does to untruthfully describe the violent ideology of Islam. It is term, and a title, that should make us all shudder.

This is an incredibly cynical advert, because it was probably intended to convince the gullible middle class Left that Unilever have a lot in common with the enlightened, but paternalistic values, of Lord Leverhulme, the 19^th century industrialist, philantropist and founder of what became Unilever. However, Leverhulme’s philanthropy came from his religious beliefs, whereas this advert comes straight from the PR departments of both the development charity Oxfam and Unilever.

This advertisement represents a knowing melange between a multinational company wishing to burnish its public relations image, and the increasingly Leftist charity, Oxfam. The whole package, from the crass use of newsreel film of people like Mohandas K Ghandi and Martin Luther King, through to the use of children to make a political point, stinks of cynicism. Oxfam used to be a solid famine relief charity but in recent years has become yet another module in a third sector that has become a ‘nexus of left wing schmoozery‘. Oxfam and Unilever appear to be made for each other, and that should not be taken as a compliment.

It is right to do right and whether you call it charity, alms or tzdakah, to help those deserving people who are in need is a moral commandment that binds those of different faiths or none. However, I could not, in good conscience have anything to do with Project Sunlight which is what the link up between Oxfam and Unilever is being called. Even though I have sympathy with the idea of reducing food waste, and seeing the Third World develop itself, I could not support the same socialistic, welfare promoting, Israel-hating and aid addiction policies that have failed before so many times, and with which Oxfam choose to associate themselves with.

I was trying to think of some witty and informative form of words to describe this advert but I kept coming back to the phrase ‘patronising and creepy bollocks’. It’s patronising to the viewers and insulting their intelligence, if the creators of this film thought that we would all believe that putting up a bit of Leftist guff, and backing a charity that has behaved in a politically questionable manner, would make us all think that Unilever were the good guys.

This film is creepy on several levels, but for me the idea of ‘school influencers’ promoting a particular political view, particularly a Leftist view, is what is most creepy, and is something that is worrying in itself.

It sends a shiver down the spine of anyone who has studied authoritarian societies, including those of the great and terrible 20^th century Dictators. The use of peer pressure to induct children into Communist or Fascist or Nazi thought patterns was a key factor in those societies cohesiveness and their destructiveness. The fact that such ‘school influencers’ exist at all, and are pumping Leftist guff into our schools, is something we should be very concerned about.

Because there are Leftist-trained ‘school influencers’ being given access to our children emphasises most strongly, the need for parents to take a much closer and, if necessary, critical interest, in what is going on in their local school. Over the last 40 years the Left have run riot through academe, teacher training establishments and schools, the result of which has been a drop in standards, debased exams and an overly politicised curriculum. However, to brainwash children and use them to push Leftist political views to other children, as in this Project Sunlight advert, is in my opinion an action of the lowest of the low.

This advertisement has told us something which it probably never intended to do, which is the existence of abominations such as ‘school influencers’ and should also cause us to ask questions about just who exactly is influencing our children, in what way and to what particular point of view.