James Glancy
Politician, presenter, conservationist.
James Glancy boasts a unique resumé. Between 2001 and 2013, he served in the Royal Marines as a Captain during the War in Afghanistan. Later, he turned his interests to conservation and filmmaking, establishing himself as a renowned producer/director for nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel, before positioning himself in front of the camera and co-starring in the 2018 Shark Week special Sharkwrecked. From 2019 to 2020, he turned his hand to politics and was a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament for South West England.
So why did we invite him on?
Working on what was then to be his next film, James returned to Afghanistan. Midway through filming, President Biden announced America’s withdrawal from the region, seeing it collapse into the hands of the Taliban. James’ film captured the chaos, offering a front-seat view of the disaster. It’s a remarkable story; we wanted to hear it from the man himself.
But that’s not all. We also wanted to hear his take on the rise of Islamism in Britain. Should we be worried?
What did we learn?
”We might have lost the empire, but we still want to tell people what to do. Whether you’re left-wing or right-wing, we still want to impose our values.”
The conversation started on a sombre note. James reflected on his time serving in Afghanistan. He went into it motivated to defeat evil. Looking back, it’s hard to not think: what was it all for?
”I was young, excited about serving, I loved [my] country, I was abhorred by the scenes of 9/11 and I thought we were doing the right thing. I believed these people were evil, and we wanted to get rid of them. We didn’t go in with the attitude of ‘let’s understand this society’.”
One can tell it’s a difficult thing for James to admit, even to himself. But when did his outlook start to change? ”I had a bit of epiphany in 2008".
James shares a harrowing story from his service, and how a tactical, “unnecessary” strike on a village opened his eyes to the true implications of the war.
”I just thought … ‘[That] was completely unnecessary force. We might not be the good guys, and if someone did that to my family, I would vow to kill them for the rest of my life.’”