Enthusiastic Young Men (EYM): Dr Parvini, we’ve read all your books and wanted to tell you that we’re putting the principles of The Populist Delusion into practice! We have formed an organised minority and we have hatched an amazing plan that is going to save football from the corrupt and evil clutches of FIFA!

Me: Fantastic, what’s the plan?

EYM: Well, we’re putting together a team, and we’ve got a great manager signed on, and … we’re going to win the World Cup! That’ll show FIFA once and for all!

Me: …

EYM: We thought you’d be excited …

Me: I mean …

EYM: Go on, be honest, what’s the issue?

Me: The plan is fundamentally retarded. Winning the World Cup – a tall order in itself – is, even if you pull it off, simply playing in FIFA’s tournament, by FIFA’s rules, which empowers FIFA, gets everyone to buy back into FIFA.

EYM: Why can’t you just be happy for once? This is blackpilling! Are you sure you’re not a demoralisation agent paid by MI5?

Me: No, I just think the plan is silly and has nothing to do with anything I’ve written whatsoever. You can’t change the system by winning the World Cup, you just become part of the system, a play thing for FIFA. Basically no structural change can result from taking part in and winning the World Cup. A plan to oust FIFA would have to start from very different premises.

EYM: People were right about you! You just want to bring everyone down. Don’t you understand people need hope? Don’t you understand we’re up against the odds here? Don’t you understand that we’re not going to be able to win the World Cup unless we all pull together now?

Me: Sorry, guys, no matter what you say, the plan is moronic.

EYM: Your blackpilling is getting to be too much! All you do is sneer! You just hate the working man. It’s because you’re foreign isn’ t it! It’s because you hate us, it’s because you’re best friends with a mentally ill transsexual! All you do is say ‘don’t try to win the World Cup!’, well what should we do then?

Me: If the goal is to overturn FIFA, literally anything else. Anything else at all would be a better plan. Start by mapping all of FIFA’s nodes of power, its funding structure, its areas of strength and weaknesses, its potential vulnerabilities, which key stakeholders would need to be isolated or turned, build a theory of FIFA’s power and then develop some sort of mechanism to bring it down. Won’t be easy mind, it’ll be like trying to take out the heads of the five mafia families all at once. Also, rather than using the team to sell football shirts, build some lasting institutions such that a realistic replacement for FIFA might emerge from it, otherwise it’s not doing anything at all. Failing that, take a plate of cream and mash your face into it.

EYM: Elite theory is absolutely stupid and wrong-headed! It’s about time people stopped listening to you. We should never have read your stupid book.

Me: …

EYM: You’re an absolute doomer, no better than Peter Hitchens! He said we can’t win the World Cup too. And by the way you’re fat and your courses suck too! You’re a grifter, you’re probably a subversive agent, and did we mention that you’re brown too?

Me: Guys, I have to give up on this, one day you might get it, or you may not, but there’s no point in this conversation.

EYM: We hate you!