The leadership election has brought about a wave of Conservatives flexing about how diverse and inclusive the Conservative Party is compared to Labour. Among the first days of the elections, there were endless tweets about how the party has the most diverse leadership election in history.
Andrew Bowie, Conservative MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine tweeted that the reasons why he’s proud to be a Conservative MP include “first trans MP” and “the most diverse cabinet in history.”
The online publication Spiked, released an article on how “The Tory leadership race is the most diverse in history. And this has sent the left into meltdown.”
The founder of Tories for Equality tweeted: “I feel proud that British children today, whatever their race, can look at the talented & diverse slate of conservative leadership candidates & think “I could do that”. I didn’t have that growing up under the U.K. Labour government. Proud of my country & proud of my party.”
This is a new attempt to call the left the real racists while celebrating how greatly diverse the Conservatives are. It appears that too many Conservative party members truly believe that to defeat the libs you must become one. Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
This is not to say that a candidates’ ethnicity and gender may be a key aspect of their campaign. After all, there’s merit to having a story of being an outsider or overcoming a struggle related to their identity. However, these MPs have been completely tokenised by those on the right. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done to these identity obsessed Conservatives, as long as their identity is good optics. And despite the attempted revision of history, this is not new for the Conservative Party.
The Conservatives have ridiculed the Labour Party’s anti meritocratic all female shortlists. However, it appears that the Conservatives are also guilty of identity politics hiring…
Under Cameron’s government, there was an active attempt to make the government less pale, male and stale. From David Cameron’s own account in a recent article, he wrote for The Times:
“I immediately froze the selection of Conservative candidates. I said that from our broader candidates’ list we would draw up a priority list, of which half would be female and a large proportion would be from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Associations in winnable seats would have to choose from this “A-list”, and they would be encouraged to select candidates through “open primaries” that were open to non-party members.”
Cameron admits that the call for positive discrimination was because “this wasn’t happening naturally”. Despite denying this was an act of positive discrimination, and instead dubbing it as “positive action”, Cameron states that “We headhunted great candidates from ethnic minorities and pushed them forwards.”
Despite Cameron’s doublethink to frame choosing candidates for the sake of their ethnicity as meritocracy exemplifies how the party has been poisoned by Blairism. How can the Conservative Party differentiate themselves away from Labour’s positive discrimination when it can be seen they acting in a similar nature?
Of course, this isn’t to state that the party leadership candidates aren’t deserving. The strongest, popular candidates are those from minority ethnic identities and/or women. It would be doing them an injustice to only celebrate them for their identity rather than what they believe. While the Westminster bunch pander to identity politics, it is clear that the party membership is focused on what a candidate wants advocates for more than the colour of their skin or what is between their legs.
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Britain Is A Dump
I am sure that you, along with literally millions of others, have by now seen the infamous tweet from Daniel Grainger calling Birmingham a ‘dump’. I found his tweet very strange, not because I have a particular fondness towards Birmingham, but because the design and aesthetics of the place are fairly standard for a large British city. The cream coloured flagstones near the train station, strange metallic water features, beggars sat on most corners of the main high street etc. These are all scenes that are probably familiar to anyone who has ever been outside.
Herein lies the problem, not that Birmingham specifically is a dump, but that every British city is a dump. We live on an island of rolling fields, dramatic coastlines, and precious woodland. However, this land is marked and stained by some of the most disgusting examples of urbanism in Europe, only occasionally pinpricked by a fine example of pre-war architecture which the local council has not yet found a reason to knock down and turn into a car park.
Please, you must believe me when I say that I am no enemy of urbanism. Many ‘trads’ and ‘LARPers’ feel as though the only part of this country with the ability to be beautiful is its countryside. I think this is a fallacy; cities have the amazing potential to be well crafted and beautiful spaces which lift the spirits, and demonstrate the finest achievements of culture and civilisation. Of course we have the ability to build beautiful spaces, instead we decided to turn these areas over to the managerial classes who seek only function.
What caused this? The most obvious answer is the Second World War. Thousands of tonnes of high explosives being dropped onto dense urban areas do tend to have the habit of leaving buildings destroyed, and we found most of our cities completely ruined. After the war, a fleet of urban planners and architects took it upon themselves to rebuild the United Kingdom. A lot of these planners and architects came from new schools of thought on design, and wanted to demonstrate this. It is indeed true that some examples of early post war brutalism are genuinely impressive, but cheap imitation after cheap imitation has sought to destroy this legacy. Now we are left with miserably grey spaces with no room for beauty and flare.
Worst of all, a lot of these areas are not maintained very well. Stroll through the city centre and buildings are normally kept in a somewhat decent condition. But venture past these and you will find endless graffiti, crumbling masonry, cracked pavements, and large dangling electrical cables. The people who live in these spaces do not have the money or the justification to keep these areas looking nice, and why would they? They never really looked that good to begin with.
If these spaces were at least affordable to live in, it would be somewhat justifiable to have them look like this, but that is not true. Disastrous planning policy (mainly the Town and Country Planning Act 1947) has left our most industrious cities with nowhere to grow, and no ability to destroy ugly monuments to the post war consensus and put up something better. These spaces are ridiculously expensive and still look appalling (with the few remaining beautiful areas costing unimaginable sums to even shop in, let alone buy). We are therefore left with the worst of both worlds: sky high property price, and terrible looking buildings.
For the trads in the audience who endlessly harp on about rural life whilst never leaving Manchester, the countryside is not much better. Yes, the fields and hedgerows are beautiful, but drive around any rural community for a few minutes and you will find the most depressing and ugly looking council bungalow estates you could imagine. Rural councils have a genuine need to house elderly people affordably (otherwise they would never downsize and allow young people into their 5 bedroom houses), but they choose to do so in the worst types of buildings fathomable. Damp, cold, and smelly bungalows with pebble dashed exteriors. No wonder your granny from the village is desperate to hold onto her 3 bed Victorian farmers cottage when that is the alternative.
Culturally and economically, we are stuck. We haven’t the imagination and courage to propose something new and aesthetically pleasing, the wisdom to go back to old styles and designs, or the money to action those proposals anyway. We are instead cut off to drift into stifling mediocrity. The only crumb of consolation being that most of the western world also seems to have this problem.
As ever, I would like to propose some solutions to these problems:
Firstly, as everyone seems to be saying, we need to abolish the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. This is not a particularly imaginative or bold position to take as an under-30, but it will arguably be the most difficult to do.
Secondly, universities should teach a broader curriculum on architecture and urban planning. I am fortunate enough to have some friends who have taken degrees in both architecture and planning at a range of institutions, and they all come back with similar stories. Lecturers seem to focus entirely on modernism, recyclable buildings, and the temporary. Few focus on beauty and traditional design.
Thirdly, people need to be given a reason to look after the places where they live and the means to do so. The means is easy: they need more spare income. This can be achieved by making houses more affordable by building more of them (see point one). The reason is more difficult, they need to be living in areas genuinely worth keeping nice (see point two).
Unfortunately, I do not foresee any of this happening any time soon. The tweet by Grainger received immeasurable amounts of criticism and made national headlines. Yes, his tweet was rude and careless, but serves to show the difficulty in having this conversation. British people seem to be perfectly happy living in hell world and are absolutely immune to all criticism of it. We need to face facts: Britain is a dump.
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The Original “Original Right-Wing Gramscians”
Last year, The Mallard’s Chairman, Jake Scott, wrote two essays titled “The Original Right-Wing Gramscians”, detailing the history, ideology, and influence of free-market think-tanks in post-war Britain.
However, unlike the post-war free marketeers, whose “right-wing Gramscian” descriptor has been added retroactively, the French ‘New Right’ (Nouvelle Droite) openly characterised themselves, as did others, as “Gramscians of the Right” – both during their intellectual ascendancy in the 1970s, and during revived interest in their movement around the turn of the millennium.
Whilst technically established in 1968 with the foundation of the ‘Groupement de Recherche et d’Etudes pour la Civilisation Européenne’ (GRECE; Research and Study Group for European Civilization), the most recent attempt at a unified doctrine for the French (and, by extension, European) New Right is found in an essay titled “The French New Right in The Year 2000” (FNR2K).
A relatively short work, the FNR2K reads less as a political manifesto and more as an intellectual one. Granted, the content is political, but it doesn’t confine itself to the trappings of electoral politics. After all, the French New Right (FNR) grew out of electoral alienation, instigated by consecutive right-wing electoral defeats throughout the 1960s.
This prioritisation of intellectualism over electoralism is made clear off-the-bat when Alain De Benoist, often dubbed the FNR’s leading figure, dispels the idea that the FNR constitutes a “political strategy”. Instead, the FNR is defined as a “school of thought” attempting to “formulate a metapolitical perspective”.
Metapolitics, Benoist continues, is “not politics by other means”. Rather, it is the idea that “ideas play a fundamental role in collective consciousness”. All human actions, trivial or revolutionary, take place within a framework of “convictions, beliefs, and representations which provide meaning and direction”. These “convictions, beliefs, and representations” are the focus of the FNR’s work. In simpler terms, metapolitics is that which is outside, but shapes, the development of politics.
FNR2K is divided into three sections: Predicaments, Foundations, and Positions. ‘Predicaments’ is divided into three sub-divisions: What is Modernity?, The Crisis of Modernity, and Liberalism: The Main Enemy, all of which provide context to the FNR’s intellectual work.
‘Foundations’ establishes the FNR’s theoretical first principles in relation to a variety of topics: man, society, politics, economics, ethics, technology, the world, and cosmos. Throughout, these first principles are juxtaposed with the theoretical first principles found in liberal modernity.
Finally, ‘Positions’ summarises that which the FNR is for and against, as well as an additional 13th stand-alone commitment to promoting “independence of thought and a return to discussion of ideas”.
The FNR interprets Modernity as a convergence of five processes: Individualization (the destruction of traditional communal life), Massification (the adoption of standardised lifestyles), Desacralization (the replacement of religious understanding with scientific understanding), Rationalization (the hegemony of “instrumental reason” via capital and technology), and Universalization (the globalisation of assumed-to-be superior models of social organisation).
The Crisis of Modernity refers to the failure of these processes to produce their initial promises of Freedom and Equality. Freedom has been reduced to a procedural formality; it means to operate “within the marketplace, technoscience or communications without ever being able to influence their course”. Erstwhile, Equality has failed two-fold. It has both “betrayed” the people it allegedly sought to benefit (e.g. the murderous nature of communist regimes) and has been “trivialized” (e.g. growing economic inequality under capitalism). Specifically, this has happened despite Equality being the foundational principle of both communism (equal access to means of production) and capitalism (equal opportunity to prosper within a market economy).
As such, the end result of Modernity is “the most empty civilization mankind has ever known”. Contrary to a free and equal paradise, “the language of advertising serves as the paradigm for public discourse, the primacy of money has made commodities an omnipresent feature of society. Man has turned from a social animal to a hedonistic object; he occupies an unreal world of drugs, virtual reality, media-hyped sports” – he operates as a “solitary individual” amid an “anonymous and hostile crowd”.
Considered to be “the dominant ideology of modernity”, it follows that Liberalism is the FNR’s primary intellectual target. Attacked for reducing life to individualistic economic competition, erstwhile imposing a hypocritical notion of value-neutrality, the FNR considers Liberalism responsible for creating a barren existence: survival for the sake of survival, an existence devoid of higher purpose or aspiration.
However, Liberalism is not the only target. Whilst charitably described as a “legitimate reaction”, the FNR dismisses Marxism as a counter-productive and misdirected response to the problems arising from Liberalism, being rooted in common modern presuppositions.
As an example, Benoist points to the modern welfare state. Emerging as a reaction to the autonomous market, the welfare state does not restore historic communal ties undone by Liberalism. Rather, it assisted in re-engineering society to adhere to the matrix of mere production and consumption. Whilst Liberalism is nothing more than a “global system of production and reproduction”, Marxism has created conformity around “an opaque redistributive structure”, one which has “generalised irresponsibility” and has transformed members of society into “nothing more than recipients of the public system”.
In summary, Modernity has reduced humanity to the lowest-common denominator; to the barebones of production and consumption, supplementing its constituents with a hypermodern array of metastasized rights and a dehumanising system of welfare. Compounded, the end result is a frightful and depersonalised lumpen.
In response to this hellish existence, the FNR begins to lay the ‘Foundations’ of its counter-ideology. At bottom-level, this means recognising a distinction between Pluriversuum and Continuum; a distinction between what is diverse and particular (‘plural’) and what is constant and universal (‘continuous’).
Contrary to Modern depictions of man, either as an “infinitely malleable” atomised individual or the sum of a single specialised factor (i.e., economy; homo economicus) – man is neither wholly determinable or determined.
For example, one can’t change his ethnicity or family, but can, in a moral sense, choose to “go beyond himself or debase himself”. In this instance, the Pluriversuum of man is exemplified by the natural diversity of communities which exist in the world, whilst the Continuum of man is exemplified by his ability to engage in decisions, irrespective of his particular community and its customs. Neither is more key to man’s nature than the other; they are distinct but equally important aspects of what he truly is.
Against the backdrop of the first section, the FNR sees Modernity as reducing Earthly existence to Continuum (technical decision-making within a globalised system of production and consumption) at the expense of Pluriversum; liberal modernity means global homogenization (or, as it has become known in some circles: globohomo).
Given this, it follows that the origins of man, a social animal, as well as the affairs of his society, are also beholden to this logic. Society cannot be reduced to a homogenised collective or aggregated individuals, but a “body of communities” – families, neighbourhoods, localities, national ethnicities and supranational groups; they are distinct and defined by their respective, precise, and unique relation to each other.
Politics is an art, offering a vibrant plurality of forms, renditions, improvements and cultivations, unlike the Modern understanding which situates politics as a system of management; decisions are made to be purely technical and “neutral”, denying any fundamental alternatives to the machine, reducing politics to a matter of stability, rather than the deliberation and actualisation of ideas.
Economics (oikos-nomos; family law) must be recontextualised, from the narrow realm of immediate and quantifiable transaction to a broader understanding which incorporates distinctly qualitative values, such as beauty, ecology, family, and ethics.
Ethical values, whilst universally contingent on the distinction between good and bad, and other such related categories, must be allowed to organically develop into specific customs appropriate for particular societies. The universal reduction of morality to “practical materialism” must be resisted. This principle of striving towards excellence, provided specific meaning by context, is also true of different modes of life within a community; a good plumber is better than a bad philosopher.
Technology, whilst celebrated for its “Promethean” capabilities, must be harmoniously balanced with environmental custodianship. Concern for the natural world should stem not from government regulation or technophobia, but from a shared moral conscience; one which earnestly wishes for future generations to inherit a world “no less beautiful, no less rich, and no less diverse than the world we know today”.
Having established their given context and theoretical response to said context, the FNR2K concludes with its ‘Positions’ – what it is against and for:
Against Uprooting, For Strong Community Identities; Against Racism, For Difference; Against Immigration, For Cooperation; Against Sexism, For Gender; Against The New Class, For Bottom-Up Autonomy; Against Jacobinism, For a Federal Europe; Against Depoliticization, For Democracy; Against Productivism, For New Forms of Labour; Against Ruthless Economic Policies, For Economy at the Service of the People; Against Gigantism, For Local Communities; Against Megalopolis, For Cities on a Human Scale; Against Unbridled Technology, For Integral Ecology; For Independence of Thought and a Return to Discussion of Ideas.
Many of these points will be intuitively, if not immediately, understood, such as the first, third, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth. After all, these are matters regularly discussed and supported by more traditional conservatives: social cohesion, national identity, strong borders, developing social and economic capital, aesthetical refinement of all kinds, and environmental custodianship.
Although there has been strong pushback against ‘gender ideology’ and corresponding issues (i.e. transgenderism), one shouldn’t be misinterpret De Benoist’s use of ‘gender’ – he’s saying very much the same thing: men and women are ontologically different and one cannot, and should not, become the other.
Even unfamiliar terms like “The New Class” immediately become familiar once De Benoist pins down a summary:
“…the manpower for the media, large national and multinational firms, and international organisations. This New Class produces and reproduces… the same type of person: cold-blooded specialists, rationality detached from day to day realities… engenders abstract individualism, utilitarian beliefs, a superficial humanitarianism, indifference to history, an obvious lack of culture, isolation from the real world, the sacrifice of the real to the virtual, an inclination to corruption, nepotism and to buying votes… The New Class depersonalises the leadership of Western societies and… lessens their sense of responsibility.”
All this said, some points are likely less understood from the get-go. Despite being listed second, the commitment to ‘difference’ is perhaps the central defining tenet of the FNR. Dubbed “the right to difference” De Benoist suggests, as a matter of principle, that diversity is good – diversity of people, cultures, systems, products, religions, and ideas.
Placing primary emphasis on ethnocultural diversity, the “right to difference” is meant to counteract what De Benoist sees and refers to as “the ideology of sameness” – an all-encompassing term for global homogenization and all its various forms: mass immigration, economic and cultural globalisation, philosophical universalism, egalitarianism, and so on.
However, whilst the “right to difference” forms the basis for the FNR’s support for group-based, individual, and ideological differences, it also provides a basis for conserving differences in a whole host of other domains.
Democracy is, first and foremost, understood as a rejection of universal equality; it recognises “a people” – defined by a common, but distinct, sense of membership – as the basis for legitimate deliberation and decision-making, both in the name of the common good and as an expression of individual agency. This is situated in contrast to depoliticization, which does not recognise the existence of a people, and by extension the sovereignty of the people, allowing bureaucrats, technocrats, and lobbyists to forego pluralism and disqualify certain political programs at will.
Similarly, instead of a “Europe of Nations” or a “European Nation”, the FNR2K poses organic regional secession from existing European nation-states, and the ‘bottom-up’ federalized along Eurocultural lines (including Russia), affording distinct identities and devolved powers to all principalities, with the exception of “those matters which escape the competence of the lower level” and apply to “all the federal communities” of Europe, such as major military, diplomatic, legal, environmental, and infrastructural matters.
The FNR believes: “the nation-state is now too big to manage little problems and too small to address big ones” – civilizational superorganisms, organised in a polycentric patchwork, albeit with integrated research, industry, communications, and currency, are necessary for securing autonomy, tranquillity, and difference.
Labour must be reinterpreted beyond a ‘productivist’ understanding – it must incorporate work that is conducted and valued for qualitative, rather than merely quantitative, reasons; this ranges from labours of love and duty to ensuring the fruits of labour strive for timelessness, rather than obsolescence.
Additionally, modernity has created a society “where payment by salary is the principal means of integration into social life”. As such, the mission of reimagining labour is two-fold: “to work less in order to work better and in order to have some time for oneself to live and enjoy life”.
Tell me: doesn’t it feel as though you’ve heard all of this before? That you have felt, read, or even articulated such sentiments yourself? To be clear: I am not remarking on the originality or unoriginality of the FNR2K. After all, what good would such a point prove? ‘Originality’ – the moralist insistence to reinvent, the insistence of newness as a virtue – is a cornerstone of modernity.
Rather, I am remarking on how a document published over 20 years ago still bears an uncanny resemblance to matters the British right has, seemingly, only begun to publicly engage with, even if only peripherally, over the past few years: disaffection with liberalism, deracination in a society struggling to be cosmopolitan, the ‘bloatedness’ of institutions, the sense of ennui amid barely managed decline, the ‘re-emersion’ of tribal and class antagonism, the vicious discourse surrounding hereditarian innateness and social malleability, the homogenisation of everything from brand logos to community identities, from the sound of music to values and customs, from architecture to our options at election time.
Despite this, Francophobia has become something of an informal cornerstone of the British right’s identity; THB Britain Should Invade France, etc. Such parochialism, whether sincere principle or hollow performance, does not aid our political or intellectual development.
If the British right is prepared to concede, as it has done so before, that despite historic animosity and cultural differences, Britain and France share common civilisational challenges (multi-faceted demographic change, the future of freedom, sclerotic and hostile institutions, etc.) then it should also be prepared to engage with and learn from French – and more broadly, European – interpretations of affairs.
It’s no debate. The French right talks about positive visions for the future, the British right talks about the Plank of the Week. Whilst the British right mobilised to find footage of Keir Starmer not wearing a seatbelt, the French right almost made Eric Zemmour president of the republic. In Britain, we’ve only just got around to discussing illegal immigration. By contrast, France is way ahead of us.
It’s clear that many of our problems are here at home, not with the “Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys”. Given how intellectually barren the political landscape is generally, particularly on the right, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to look beyond the English Channel, and see what our continental adjacents can offer as inspiration.
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On Science and Conservatism: Is the Relationship Dead?
Why have conservatives have turned against science? This question is a fundamental mischaracterisation of the relationship between science and right-wing thinkers. As a young scientist and a conservative, I find myself straddling this so-called divide and in the unique position to offer analysis on the state of the relationship between the right-wing and science. It is true that today, with issues such as climate change and vaccine efficacy, right-wing criticisms of the scientific elite have overwhelmingly dominated the discourse on scientific distrust. But if one is to truly interrogate the disconnect between modern day conservatism and the scientific mainstream, you must also consider the converse; why has science turned against right-wing thought? Or perhaps more notably, how have left-wing idealogues used science against conservatives?
The left-wing bias of modern academia is well documented, with one recent study published by Nature revealing that only six percent of researchers self-identify as conservative and less than ten percent of academic political donations support conservative candidates. With this troubling trend of progressive overrepresentation in scientific circles, the left has used their advantage to co-opt and manipulate science for its own political ends. This threatens to undermine the very principles of intellectual freedom and academic integrity upon which scientific inquiry depends.
With the left having such a hold over modern science, the tendency on the right has, somewhat justifiably, been outright rejection of scientific thought and practice. This seems a self-defeating proposition. Sustainable prosperity will only be practically achievable if we look to make technological progress within our own borders. To do this we must address some major flaws which have become inherent to scientific thinking, causing both alienation of conservative thinkers and degeneration of the scientific practice.
Suppression of Dissent
Central to the ethos of scientific inquiry is the freedom to question the prevailing orthodoxy and challenge established thought. Yet, in recent years, the left has sought to suppress dissenting voices and enforce ideological conformity within the scientific community. This manifests itself in two ways, firstly through the development of a culture within academic institutions which is antithetical to conservative viewpoints and, perhaps more importantly, through political discrimination in grants and publication, prohibiting conservative viewpoints from being spread in scientific literature.
An often-understated consequence of the leftward shift in academia is the comprising impact on peer-review. Peer-review is the process which underpins science. Academics review the work of other researchers to assess the scientific validity and rigour of their experimentation and argument before the work can be published. Whilst a noble concept, it is easily victim to confirmation bias. If only six percent of academics identify as conservative, how likely is it that the handful of reviewers of a grant proposal or paper will be ideologically conservative or even supportive of controversial proposals? This fear is not merely the musings of a scorned conservative scientist but a reality backed up by research. Half of academics would mark down a right-wing grant application. Four in ten American academics admit they wouldn’t hire a Trump supporter. A third of British academics would not hire a Brexiter. Not only does this inhibit the volume of conservative scientific literature, but it restricts a conservative’s earning capacity from grants and promotion, and therefore their academic influence. What this leads to is the self-censorship of conservative thinkers looking to progress their careers, thus creating a spiral of worsening conservative intolerance on campuses and in academia.
One striking example of this phenomenon is the case of postdoctoral researcher, Dr Noah Carl. Dr Carl graduated from the prestigious University of Oxford with a thesis titled ‘Cognitive ability and sociopolitical beliefs and attitudes’ and was subsequently awarded the Toby Jackman Newtown Research Fellowship at St Edmund’s College in Cambridge. For early-career researchers, such a postdoctoral fellowship is invaluable in gaining a foothold in the cut-throat academic industry. Yet Dr Carl was never able to assume his position as he was dismissed by St Edmund’s College for his alleged association with far-right figures. This so-called association involved attending a conference also attended by race researchers and publishing in a journal with a controversial editor. He advocated for free inquiry into how stifling debates around race can do harm and his research examined common stereotypes. Even a cursory assessment of this reasoning shows how Dr Carl was only guilty of challenging the left-wing orthodoxy. The University had no issue with his research when they appointed him, but guilt by association was sufficient to effectively end a young researcher’s career after left-wing student backlash.
Another case is that of esteemed Professor of Public Law at Macquarie University in Sydney, Andrew Fraser, who published a letter in 2005 in his local newspaper calling for restriction of African immigration, due to its effect on increasing crime rates. Macquarie University initially defended Fraser’s right to free speech, but after pressure from the local Sudanese community, Fraser was suspended, with the University citing how Fraser had affected the university’s ability to operate and offering a public apology to those who were offended. Again, absent from the response was any criticism of Fraser’s scientific rigour. Fraser has long been a proponent of the role of immigration in increasing Australian crime rates, the evidence for which remains strong to this day.
Regardless of your own views on these issues, its inarguable that both scholars faced vilification and professional repercussions for conducting research and providing comment which deviated from the left’s ideological agenda. The cancellation of scholars like Carl and Fraser serves as a chilling reminder of the dangers of ideological conformity in scientific discourse. By stifling dissent and enforcing orthodoxy, the left undermines the very foundation of scientific inquiry, to question and hypothesise, thus relegating it to a tool of political expediency rather than a genuine quest of understanding.
The Rise of Scientism
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the left’s control over science is the rise of scientism,a quasi-religious belief in the infallibility of scientific authority. In the eyes of leftist ideologues, science has become not merely a tool for understanding the natural world, but an all-encompassing worldview that supplants religion and morality. There is no phrase I personally detest more than, ‘Trust the science.’ This phrase has become a mantra of progressive politicians, but it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific practice. In trying to project science as objective truth, they are committing a major offence of scientific thought, presenting a theory as fact. The scientific method is built around making hypotheses and proving them wrong based on observation and evidence. Anyone that tells you science can prove truth is lying to you. It is fundamentally impossible to prove truth by using the scientific method, as more evidence can always be uncovered to refute any such assertion. In the leftist zeal to elevate science to the status of an objective truth, they conflate empirical evidence with ideological principles, compromising the integrity of the scientific process.
Science was never intended to replace religion or morality but rather to complement and enhance our understanding of the world. Renowned scientist Isaac Newton, for instance, integrated his Christian faith into his exploration of natural laws, aiming to inspire others to appreciate the beauty of divine creation.
“When I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.”
– Isaac NewtonModern scientists are increasingly unravelling new frontiers, from artificial intelligence to genetic modification, prompting profound ethical questions. But unfortunately, as science has progressed, secularism and scientism have gained traction in intellectual circles, causing the influence of religion on scientific discourse to wane. This trend has left a moral vacuum within the scientific community at a time when it is most needed. As we look to address the ethical questions of new scientific frontiers, the increasingly fervent belief in the infallibility of science among the elite is a dangerous precedent to set in our quest for knowledge.
How do we fix it?
It was easy during the Covid-19 lockdowns to argue against science, as it was used to justify draconian government laws. But now this period has passed, such a trajectory is self-defeating. Countless right-wing figures have continued to prosecute against science, yet they largely remain excluded from serious political discourse. Clearly though, a total embrace of the scientific establishment ignores a long-standing hostility and prosecution of right-wing thought.
As we look to wrest control over our own countries back from the leftist elite, conservatives and nationalists ignore science at their own peril. Across the Anglosphere we see conservative parties stagnating. Young people are disengaging from politics. Idealogues are pursuing their agendas. If a truly right-wing presence is going to be felt in politics it must champion cultural revival, national progress, and self-reliance. By leveraging national resources and driving scientific and technological innovation, we can build a future focused economy to our own benefit. Importantly, science can be reclaimed from leftist control by promoting independent domestic research to replace our current bureaucratic institutions, prioritising the protection of conservative thought in academia and rebuilding confidence among the right-wing populace.
So, is the relationship between conservatives and science dead? From suppressing dissenting voices to the promotion of quasi-religious faith in scientific infallibility, the left’s agenda threatens to degenerate scientific practice and undermine its capacity to investigate the world around us. But this should not catalyse right wing rejection of science. Science may have turned its back on right-wing intellectuals, but in a constantly evolving world it would be counterproductive for conservatives to concede science to the Left. It’s only with the input of conservative thinkers that truly free scientific endeavour can help lead us away from regression and embrace a vision for right-wing progress.
