There was a time not very long ago when I wanted to become an Anglican priest. I thought I had discovered my vocation; it filled me with hope for the future. Now, however, I cannot think of a more unattractive prospect.
I was warned. At a book signing a couple of years ago, a non-stipendiary priest looked at me and said that the Church of England would eat me up. Another priest expressed such a lack of enthusiasm for his role that he might as well have told me to convert to atheism. I could hardly gainsay them. It wasn’t my place to claim that I would have been a moral, spiritual or intellectual asset to the Anglican fold – though, admittedly, I did wish to ape those clever, eccentric country parsons who so enriched the culture. As Bill Bryson wrote in his book Home:
“Never in history have a group of people engaged in a broader range of creditable activities for which they were not in any sense actually employed.”
The first history of dirty jokes, the Jack Russell terrier, Bayes’ Theorem, the power loom, Tristram Shandy, and even the submarine were all products of bored clergymen.
Of course, to believe that today’s Church of England resembled yesterday’s was my own, rose-tinted failing. Deep down, I knew it had changed almost beyond recognition. But change is inevitable – and often salutary. I could perhaps have embraced the 21st century Church of England. Unfortunately, I doubt it would embrace me. Its recent “yeeting” (to use the scientific term) of Calvin Robinson alerted me to just how far the Church has fallen. Robinson’s politics comport with my own as do his convictions: pride is a sin, marriage is between a man and a woman, and the Gospel is rather more significant than an imported racial ideology, of which Black Lives Matter is the conduit. Robinson’s treatment showed that the Church of England’s hierarchy is committing slow-motion idolatry.
When Robinson rails against what has happened to him, I have no doubt that he speaks for many, if not the majority, of churchgoers, who all but despair of what has happened to our national Church. But Robinson has a platform. We hear less often from young Anglicans, for whom the Church’s every statement seems designed to cater. Thus we get mini-golf courses and helter-skelters in our cathedrals, pride and NHS flags draped over our altars, and statements to the effect that the Church is racist but you should join it anyway. My own local church recently played host to a rock concert, for which the altar was whisked embarrassedly out of sight. Would a mosque tolerate such a thing? No, and nor should it. And of course, the Church hierarchy announced only a couple of weeks ago that they, too, couldn’t make heads or tails of what a woman was – undoing centuries of dogma and theology, not to mention insulting women.
It would be remiss of me to claim to be able to speak on behalf of all young Anglicans, especially given my continuing attraction to both Rome and Constantinople. But, after years of contact with other young Anglicans, I am confident that what I have to say now would attract something close to a consensus. So, Mr Welby, if you’re listening (which I suspect you’re not): we don’t want what you’re offering. We want heaven and hell. We want angels, powers and principalities. We want prayer, orthodoxy and conviction. We want good and evil, right and wrong. Above all, we want Christ. Your generation – the children of the 1960s – became enamoured by the secular. You think that heaven on earth is possible, if only we join the right causes and shun the wrong politic – you have surrendered to the world. But the Kingdom is not of this world. As T.S. wrote in Thoughts After Lambeth:
“Thought, study, mortification, sacrifice: it is such notions as these that should be impressed upon the young—who differ from the young of other times merely in having a different middle-aged generation behind them. You will never attract the young by making Christianity easy; but a good many can be attracted by finding it difficult: difficult both to the disorderly mind and to the unruly passions.”
If this truth isn’t soon heeded, I fear that the Church of England will be all but extinct in a decade or two. It will linger on in London and Birmingham, perhaps, where immigrant Christians still take seriously what the English do not. But it will no longer be the spiritual organ of the nation. Possibly the Catholic Church will fill the vacuum. Who knows?
I say all this as someone who is, technically, a member of the newly established religion: LGBT. It is said to be a community, though I’ve never seen it except when it rears its sponsored head to bully some poor recalcitrant for saying the wrong thing about gay marriage. Exactly this was what happened in my town last year. A Christian councilman said to some committee or other that, while he supported the right of gay people to live happy lives, he could not condone gay marriage. It has become a cliche to compare cancel culture to witch hunts, for good reason but the councilman was subjected to weeks of bullying and the foulest of threats and insults all, of course, in the name of tolerance and compassion. It upset me that the local Anglican church did nothing to snuff the flames – and may even have wished secretly to fan them.
There is, I believe, a ground swell of small-o orthodoxy among the young. New atheism (of which I was a devotee) proved insufficient in answering our moral, spiritual and intellectual needs. Many of us turned to God, whatever our politics. But if we were conservative, we naturally sought sustenance in the Church of England. I cannot be alone in saying that to find it so debased has been one of the great sadnesses of my early life. As Lear says, “we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools”.
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Net Zero Versus Cost of Living
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels are rising – that is a fact. Before the industrial revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels steadily remained at around 280ppm (parts per million). This number had remained constant for thousands of years, with very minor increases over the years due to natural processes. In March this year, CO2 concentrations were sitting at 418.81ppm. This huge increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has already created and will continue to create unprecedented effects on the environment globally. This daunting fact has prompted leaders across the globe to act.
Last November in Glasgow, the COP26 summit was held which was widely regarded as an instance of the UK taking global leadership in the fight against climate change. The UK has worked hard to bring all participants of COP26 to a consensus about the actions needed to mitigate against the harmful effects of climate change and reduce global CO2 emissions as a means of lessening the damage caused by global warming in the future. In doing so, the UK government has sought to fulfil their end of the bargain and beyond, making bold promises in the hopes of accelerating the UK’s charge to becoming net carbon neutral by the year 2050.
Energy production is one of the biggest issues regarding our drive to net zero, producing 21% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. As such, the government has placed a levy on domestic energy bills, costing the average UK household an extra £159 per year on energy bills as a means of financing subsidies for renewable energy products. In addition to this, the government has recently raised the household electricity price cap from £693 to £1,971. This will put immense strain on the budgets of many households, not even mentioning the skyrocketing inflation recorded at 7% in March 2022. This financial squeeze is not showing any signs of relenting, with disposable incomes predicted to fall by 1.9% this year – an even bigger decline in living standards than the one seen in the year prior to the Winter of Discontent.
With all the economic doom and gloom spreading about, a question must be asked – is net zero by 2050 worth it? The UK sits on top of huge shale gas deposits which could easily be exploited by the government issuing licences for companies to begin fracking on these lands, solving the gas supply issues which drives lots of the inflation currently seen. This gas could also be used to generate electricity domestically, reducing the UK’s reliance on French electricity whilst increasing supply to the point where households’ electricity bills could be drastically reduced. The UK currently contributes to 1% of global emissions, meaning that despite being virtuous, the drive to net zero will have relatively little effect globally when countries like China and India make relatively little efforts to reduce their own carbon footprints. Moreover, exploiting domestic energy supplies will likely result in lower overall carbon emissions than the alternative of importing, as huge amounts of carbon dioxide is emitted when transporting these resources to the UK.
As such, it is little surprise that Reform UK – the largest right-wing opposition party to the Conservative party has begun to campaign against the government’s current plans to achieve net carbon neutrality. Whilst it is a noble cause to reduce carbon emissions, the current economic reality shows that the plans currently in place will massively reduce the quality of life for millions in this country instead of being the ‘Green Revolution’ that was promised by this government. We need pragmatic, not dogmatic solutions to current issues and reviving domestic energy production is the first step to solving the cost-of-living crisis and reducing our dependence on energy imports. We still have twenty-eight years to reach our target. Making sure that people are financially safe should be the government’s priority, only then can we focus on the environment. There is no doubt that this method of mitigating the cost-of-living crisis will encounter large resistance from pressure groups such as the Extinction Rebellion, but a far larger resistance will be seen in the polls if the government does not get a handle on the situation soon.
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So What?
At the end of last month, the first results of the 2021 UK Census were published. As many will recall, the results were simultaneously, although not quite paradoxically, shocking and expected. The information published showed that 1 in 6 UK citizens are born in another country – ten million of the UK’s 69 million; a 33% increase from the 7.5 million a mere decade ago.
The details were shocking insofar that few expected a demographic shift of such extreme proportions, even when compared to the last census in 2011. Nevertheless, they were expected. As anyone with an elementary understanding of British politics knows, the political system has pursued, less-so out of empirical consideration and moreso out of humanitarian (“it’s our moral obligation!”), diveristiarian (“diversity is our strength!”), and utilitarian (“immigration grows the economy!”) dogma(s), a policy of mass immigration since the late 1990s.
Just last week, data from the ONS showed that migration into Britain had reached a new record of 504,000 – a net increase of over 331,000 from the year prior. Keep in mind, all of this has happened despite the public’s clear and consistent opposition to immigration, nevermind the magnitudinous demographic change it has caused.
As soon as the data went public, one could piece together the overarching division of attitudes. Some welcomed the rapid erosion of Britain’s native-born citizenry. By contrast, the murmurs of the moderate-minded indicated a sense of foreboding. If the data on citizenship is this demographically untenable, what on Earth is the data regarding national identity going to look like?
Well, now we know. Reported by the ONS, the UK 2021 Census showed:
“81.7% of residents in England and Wales identified their ethnic group as within the high-level “White” category in 2021. A decrease from 86.0% in 2011.
As part of the “White” ethnic group, 74.4% of the population in England and Wales identified their ethnic group as “English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British. This is a continued decrease from: 80.5% in 2011 and 87.5% in 2001.”
As with the initial citizenship data, many celebrated this seismic change, suggesting that fewer white British Christians in Britain amounted to a moral improvement.
On the other hand, some deemed the largest demographic shift since late antiquity to be completely ineffectual. Directed at Nigel Farage’s reaction to the census, which underscored the shrinking ethnic British population in London, Conservative MP Sajid Javid tweeted a forthright and mask-off response: “So what?”.
“It’s not happening and that’s why it’s a good thing” as the saying goes.
Nevertheless… So what? Well, for a start, it shows that the 2011 Census wasn’t a one off, but signified the start of an unprecedented trajectory: the continuous decline of the ethnically British population. On its own, this should be alarming, but the fact this demographic shift has occurred within a single generation makes it even moreso. Needless to say, but worth saying nonetheless, to do so without consultation from or consideration of those implicated is, to put it moderately, extremely irresponsible.
Moreover, what good is talk of “integration”, the oft-proposed silver-bullet to the consequences of immigration, if the historical ethnocultural in-group, the one which immigrants are supposed to integrate, cannot sustain its hegemony? At most, they’ll “integrate into” (perpetuate) a godless ratrace; a demoralising sluggish existence against the world’s richest on the housing market and the world’s poorest on the labour market. As Morrissey says: shelve your Western plans… Life is hard enough when you belong here.
As it stands, numerous communities across England and Wales are majority-minority – where the national majority group constitutes a local minority – a fact which makes panicked rhetoric about rhetorical divisiveness all the more out-of-touch. Mutually-segregating, and often mutually-loathing, communities have been around for decades, the census just reaffirms this reality.
More to the point, who could expect integration? Flimsy abstractions of Britishness aren’t holding British society together. Having a cuppa, forming an orderly queue, and appealing to vague, arbitrary, and contradictory notions of “tolerance” and “inclusion” and so on just doesn’t cut it. What is a nation, especially a democratic one, if it cannot inspire loyalty?
The rate of immigration and concentration of immigrant and immigrant-descended populations diminishes any incentive or expectation of integration, no matter how willing the native population is to water down the criteria of national belonging. If people can choose to associate and live amongst their kind, they shall do so – as has been the case since the dawn of time. Blood is thicker than water, even if the water is boiled, milked, and caffeinated.
But beyond a debate of causation, whether it’s a case of “can’t integrate” or “won’t integrate”, both instances point to the same overarching problem: Britain is fragmenting.
In order to accommodate the contradictory complexities of the world, primarily a consequence of the similarly unwanted reimagination of Britain as a “global” entity, “Britishness” has been reconfigured from a distinct identity – something that people indivisibly are, that their parents are, that their parents’ parents are – into a bureaucratic technicality – something that people can have, should and whenever they be so inclined; from a complex and unique ethnocultural particularity to a two-dimensional universality.
This fact, combined with evidently unmanageable and unpopular immigration numbers, is not a good omen. Rather, it risks gradually wiping Britain from the face of the Earth; from its unique and beautiful place in relation to a global diversity of similarly unique and beautiful ethnocultural organisms to a crude amalgamation of all-else, pathetically bound though an appeal to inoffensive all-inclusive emptiness.
All the more fitting then that the census should also reveal a collapse in religiosity. In a nation where church and state are bound, less than 50% (46.2%) of the population identifies as Christian – down from 59.3% in 2011. Simultaneously, those self-identifying as having “no religion” surged from 25.2% to 37.2%. This is the first time in 1000 years that Christainity is not the majority faith.
Of all the census details, this is perhaps the least surprising. For decades, we’ve barely considered ourselves “Cultural Christians” – those that tick the box, but don’t attend the service. In this regard, the 2021 Census is merely a formal confirmation of long-waning Christainity.
Who could have seen any of this coming? Actually, quite a few people. Back in 2011, then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, citing statistics published by Migration Watch, said that the UK could expect 50,000 Romanians every year over the course of ten years.
At the time, these numbers – as well as millions of ordinary people – were lampooned and ridiculed by the media, politicians, comedians, and (most damning of all) the Experts (the Serious People that Know Things), as delusional racists, fruitcakes, loonies, and so on.
Nevertheless, a decade later, that is exactly what has transpired. The census revealed that the number of Romania-born people living in the UK amounted to 539,000 – a 576% increase from 2011.
It’s no secret that Farage’s acknowledgement of immigration-led displacement of white Britons was one of his early selling points. Indeed, it was arguably as important (if not more important) than his euroscepticism. As has been established time and again, the latter is very much a product of the former. As such, it’s rather uncharitable to interpret his aforementioned comments with regard to London as anything but a reiteration.
Additionally, there’s David Coleman, former Professor of Demography at Oxford University, who predicted back in 2013 that, if demographic trends continued, “white Britons could be a minority by 2066” – a prediction which not only remains valid after the 2021 census but, evidently, did not assist him in retaining his then-already under-pressure position.
Granted, these are only notable examples. I cannot begin to imagine the number of normal people that have lost their livelihoods for concurring with such predictions, nevermind articulating the sentiment that they spelt trouble. Not even then does this account for those who have been scared into silence by active legislation and the fear of a vitriolic social death. You can be targeted for far less.
The inability to talk about matters in a frank, open, and civilised manner compounds problems which arise from matters which provoke the desire to discuss them in the first place.
On the religious front, Peter Hitchens has written and spoken about Britain’s post-Christainity on multiple occasions. Ever since WW1, Britain’s religiosity ceased to be sincere, instead being a series of motions undertaken without spiritual, theological, or moral investment. Now that there’s no room for doubt, one can expect the iconoclasts of Diversity and Inclusion to erase whatever hollow secularised traces of Britain’s Christian identity still exist in public life.
Put diplomatically, none of this is sensible. Quite the contrary, all these convergences spell catastrophe. Over the past few years alone, we’ve seen the fledglings of a nihilistic balkanised Britain.
Back in September, the now white British minority city of Leicester – a so-called “model” for a ‘diverse but cohesive’ Britain – fell victim to ethnoreligious rioting between Indian-descent Hindus and Pakistani-descent Muslims. Far from ‘diverse’, the riots were a replication of pre-existing global troubles.
To bare witness to the impotent, ahistorical, buzzword-laden gush of no-name ‘community leaders’, drowned out by an eruption of third-world carnage in Britain’s oldest settlements, as the mainstream press obfuscate the essence of the problem, is to bare witness to the self-deluding and short-sighted nature of Britain’s post-war political establishment.
Throughout various towns and cities across England, South-Asian grooming gangs have targeted white children since the 1980s. The police, more concerned about causing offence than networks of child prostitution, ignored the plight of the victims for several decades. Not even MPs could discuss the matter without facing repercussions.
Along the south-east, the perpetual tide of migrants (legal and illegal) has caused social unrest, so much so that coastal residents have taken to barricading their homes. The rate of immigration has skyrocketed housing costs, led to panicked hotel cramming by the Home Office, as well as an explosion of council-sanctioned homelessness.
Immediately following the release of the ethnicity data, tweets taunting white Britons to “come get your capital back” go viral, along with recorded procolations that Britain “is our country now”. Erstwhile, those of immigrant backgrounds descend on the capital, declaring their undying allegiance to a country that isn’t the one that houses them.
As for the sainted discourse, the goalposts of debate are shifted from “relax, you’re a local majority” to “relax, you’re the largest minority group” and pieces bemoaning “gentrification” are replaced by pieces celebrating “diversification”.
In the case of London, now 36.8% (down from 42.7% in 2011), some have tried to deflect any and all discussion of this matter by appealing to insinuations of white nationalism, forgetting that this entire question is, in essence, an ethnocultural one.
The idea that an unprecedented, unasked for, and potentially irreversible shift in the composition of a major city, nevermind an entire country, would not matter to the people insofar the shift was driven by those identifying “White Other” is obtuse and arrogant. Indeed, even when such a racial commonality exists between ethnically native and foreign-descended populace, there are still longstanding consequences.
As mentioned at the start, all of this boils down to mass immigration. The old and moneyed, addicted like junkies to the coursing streams of cheap foreign labour, are prepared to carve Britain’s youth out of the social contract in order to get their fill. Big business, professional activists, bureaucratic functionaries, and main-party politicians have locked arms and tirelessly marched in lock-step against my generation, their national belonging, and their prospect of a better future.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have demonstrated their indifference towards the problem of large-scale immigration-led demographic change. If anything, they have encouraged it, despite the pleas of their core voters.
Under Blair, Labour pursued a policy of mass-immigration to “rub the right’s nose in diversity”, simultaneously creating a pool of votes on which the party could rely in future elections, and accelerated Britain’s descent into ‘humanitarian’ quangocracy.
By not-so-much contrast, the Conservatives, having promised for decades to reduce immigration, won a landslide majority with the aid of traditional Labour voters (distinctly opposed to immigration) with a pledge to fulfil the spirit of Brexit – retainment of the sovereign control of borders to reduce the mass influx of people – only to do the exact opposite once in power. Don’t attribute to “failure” what is, in every respect, a design choice.
In the media, the Sensible umpires of political discourse, with clear-minded sobriety and transparent neutrality, insist that mass immigration is completely unstoppable and that we should shut up and make-do.
Likewise, in the equally Sensible world of think-tanks, mass immigration is supposedly the magical solution to all of Britain’s economic woes; everything from unprecedented high-tax levels to Britain’s economic stagnation. Even a general overview of Britain’s economic performance these past few decades is enough to clock that such “expertise” is merely an officialised delusion.
More than mere snark, “So What?” perfectly encapsulates the underlying problem of our entire political system. Everything, from the political media to think-tanks to sitting MPs, pushes depoliticisation. The art of the possible is replaced with the art of the impossible. A decision of indecision, democratic deliberation, and the alternatives it affords, is supplanted by the arbitrary apolitical confines of authoritarian managerialism.
By opening up a multitude of historically unprecedented political fronts (tension between ethnocultural groups) whilst depoliticising the policy areas pertaining to their creation (post-war immigration policy) the British political system has manufactured an increasingly unsustainable ethnocultural divide.
In a scrambled effort to feign unity, schools across the country are mandated to teach the British state’s reinvention of its foundational identity, utilising empty appeals, laden with contradiction and irony, to “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs“.
It does not occur to our leaders that democracy is the conduit by which identity groups will compete against others, that high social trust is prerequisite to liberty, or that mutual respect and tolerance can be hard enough within predominantly monoethnic/monocultural societies, nevermind increasingly multiethnic/cultural ones. In the end, all that is left is the brute force of authority.
Being the only politician with sizable political support that is prepared to deliberate this fundamental matter, Farage’s hour of decision is upon us. If he does re-enter politics, he must do so on the back of these census results. The stalwart indifference of the political class, and all that has transpired as a consequence of their dogmatic recklessness, must not be allowed to continue.
If he does create a new party, there’s every reason to believe he’ll be rewarded handsomely at the ballot box. The Conservatives face electoral annihilation. Javid, fully aware of this fact, is not standing at the next election; presumably why he felt comfortable telling his constituents (96% white British) that their survival, in their own native land, never meant anything to him.
That said, few expect things to improve under a Labour government. Having never promised a precise number on immigration, one could safely bet, if they ever did, that a) it wouldn’t be sufficient or, if it was, b) they’d u-turn on their promise once in power – just like the Tories.
However, should Farage decide against a new party (or leadership of an already existing party), he must stand aside for an alternative to manifest. Whether we like it or not, as Britain’s demographics continue to change, especially at the current rate, ethnicity, identity, and all things in-between will become a far more prevalent part of our politics. We must be prepared to address these matters – for our own good and for the good of others. The only thing worse than an insufficient answer to the demographic question is to never answer it at all.
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Diversity: A Pyrrhic Victory
The Russo-Ukraine war has underscored the arduous, industrialised drudgery which characterises modern warfare; the mechanised obliteration made possible by modern technology has minimised opportunities for combatants to attain individual recognition and perform feats of life-affirming glory.
In continuation of this grim rediscovery, a revitalised war between Israel and Palestine has revealed the metaphysics to which modern warfare owes its preference for annihilation over capitulation: the depoliticization of combatants, a dehumanising process in which Palestinians become “human animals” and Israelis become “filthy pigs”.
Those who say “Israel’s security is our security” are wrong, but they’re less wrong than those who believe Britain is unaffected by the recent attacks in the south of the country. Over the course of decades, Britain’s policy of mass immigration has produced a series of immigrant enclaves in towns and cities up and down the country, many of which dislike each other far more than the native white British population for a variety of historic reasons; a fact which has been made apparent to everyone after several members poured into London, to celebrate and to mourn the outbreak of war.
However, as one can clearly see in the videos, with Turkish and Palestinian flags fluttering side-by-side, it’s not merely Britain’s Jewish and Palestinian diasporas being at each other’s throats, it’s a matter of every ethnic diaspora and commune piling into coalition with one another, further diminishing social trust and charging historic grievances.
Across all of England, from Oldham to Stoke, from Birmingham to Burnley, from Peckham to Kensington, from Rotherham to Dover, Britain’s post-war policy of mass immigration has gradually turned the Land of Hope and Glory into a giant drop-zone for an inter-ethnic Battle Royale.
Far from a cohesive unit, it is near impossible to walk through the middle of London without encountering a protest dedicated to the interests of another nation. When the government sought to curb illegal migration, Britain’s Albanian diaspora descended upon London in boisterous assembly, decrying the government’s rhetoric as racist and a xenophobic sleight against the disproportionately Albanian ‘asylum-seekers’ crossing the English Channel.
Then again, why shouldn’t they turn out to show support for their Albanian brothers and sisters? Aren’t public protest and freedom of speech cornerstones of our liberal democracy? Surely, the same can be said about the pro-Palestine demonstrations? Weren’t their ‘fiery but mostly peaceful’ demonstrations indicative of their successful integration into Modern British society, underpinned by the civic values of diversity and inclusion, liberty and tolerance? Let’s face it: diversity hasn’t failed. Diversity has triumphed and everyone hates it.
Before projecting the Israeli flag onto 10 Downing Street and the House of Commons, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is of Indian descent, condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms:
“As the barbarity of today’s atrocities becomes clearer, we stand unequivocally with Israel. This attack by Hamas is cowardly and depraved. We have expressed our full solidarity to Benjamin Netanyahu and will work with international partners in the next 24 hours to co-ordinate support.”
Many have humorously remarked on the staunch, some might say excessive, support for Israel amongst Indians and those of Indian descent, but such solidarity is entirely rational. Given their historic enmity with Pakistan, it’s unsurprising that Indians would support the group with a grievance against a comparable ethnoreligious enemy. In blunt terms, the Indian support for Israel isn’t derived from a fondness for Jews, but from a general dislike of Muslims.
The tendency of our politicians to talk about hatred and division in the same breath overlooks the fact ‘hatred’ is just as capable of uniting people as it is of dividing them. Of course, Sunak is not your typical member of Britain’s Indian diaspora but given the riots in Leicester during the autumn of last year, it’s safe to say that if such grievance can be imported in-tact from the Indian subcontinent to the English midlands, it definitely extends from the English midlands to the nations of the Levant.
Meanwhile, north of Hadrian’s Wall, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, who is of Pakistani descent, issued a more lukewarm response to the widely publicised atrocities:
“My wife Nadia and I spent this morning on the phone to her family in Gaza. Many others in Scotland will be deeply worried about their families in Israel and Palestine. My thoughts and prayers are very much with those worried about loved ones caught up in this awful situation.”
Whilst many found the latter’s statement wavering and distasteful, it’s important to see things from the perspective of Yousaf. After all, he has family in Gaza and the chances this doesn’t affect his view on such matters is highly unlikely.
For readers who don’t recall, Yousaf made national news attacking then-SNP leadership contender Kate Forbes for her Christian view on gay marriage, suggesting her stance made her unfit to be First Minister. A matter of days later, it was revealed Yousaf had dodged a crucial Holyrood vote to liberalise marriage laws due to pressure from his fellow members of the local Muslim population.
Evidently, he is trying to balance his ethnoreligious and familial interests and emotions with his official responsibilities, as leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland. Indeed, this is impossible for most and far from easy for him – especially given his scornful opinions of the people he governs – yet it’s clear, given his unique position, he is forced to show more consideration than most people; people who lack the responsibilities of public office.
On her way to the Israeli embassy to pay her respects, Bella Wallersteiner, a liberal-conservative commentator of Jewish descent, encountered a large celebration of the attack on Israel. In response to the public display of support for Hamas and Palestine, she posted:
“I’ve left as didn’t feel safe. I tried speaking to a few protestors and making the point that it was totally inappropriate to hold a demonstration of this kind after a heinous terrorist attack. As you can imagine, I didn’t get very far. I’d advise people avoid the area.”
As someone who has routinely championed immigration and cosmopolitanism, Wallersteiner only now felt threatened by the implications of diversity and mass immigration because it negatively implicated her ethnic group. It goes without saying that homogenous societies are hard enough to maintain, even when its inhabitants adhere to pro-social values. As such, you can’t advocate the creation of a multi-ethnic, multicultural society until it affects you; such an ethnocentric outlook is unlikely to produce good results, for oneself or for other people.
Of course, Wallersteiner is not the only one guilty of ethno-narcissism. Diane Abbott’s letter to The Observer, which ignited accusations of anti-semitism, anti-ziganism, and anti-Irishness, which led to her suspension from the Labour Party, drew a qualitative distinction between racism and prejudice. According to Abbott, whilst Jews, Roma, and the Irish have been victims of prejudice, experience of racism is particular to black people. In summary: “You’re an Other, and therefore you’re a victim, but at least you’re a White Other, unlike me – a BLACK woman.”
Essentially, anti-semitism is bad, but anti-blackness is worse. The aforementioned minority groups aren’t immune to discrimination, but they are immune to exceptionally egregious forms of discrimination due to their ‘whiteness’ or relative proximity thereto; a notion which critics called a “hierarchy of racism“.
One might say this dispute has served as proxy for vying wings of the Labour Party, which is partially true. However, it’s evident that ethnic grievance plays a far more important role. Corbynites did take to Twitter/X (where else?) to complain about Abbott’s suspension, but their gripe had next-to-nothing to do with Blairite manoeuvring.
Instead, they targeted the implicit anti-blackness of Abbott’s critics and the publicity they received, suggesting they were the ones perpetuating a “hierarchy of racism”, privileging concerns about anti-Semitism over anti-Blackness, seemingly ignoring Abbott’s comments regarding the Roma and the Irish, thereby undermining their outrage and revealing their own ethnically motivated hypocrisy.
Every faction involved lays claim to real ‘anti-racism’. Compared to other social ills, they agree racism is evil, yet each group believes some evils are eviller than others. They agree on a general qualitative assessment but disagree on a distinct qualitative assessment; they agree on whites as the common enemy, but not who benefits the most from the racist superstructure of Western society, other than whites themselves.
Even when considered non-white, Jews are perceived as ‘white(r)’ than their comrades. As such, non-Jews band together to push concerns about anti-semitism to the periphery of ‘anti-racism’. Just as minority activists align themselves against whites due to their general non-whiteness, increasingly collectivised ‘Black and Brown’ members align themselves against Jews due to their distinct non-whiteness to push their interests up the priorities list of the ‘anti-racist’ movement.
Indeed, the anti-white intersectional logic of the anti-racist coalition which ejected the white working class from the political left, laying the groundwork for the Conservative electoral landslide in 2019, a victory which is being undone because the Tories severely underdelivered on their promise to lower immigration, is problematising a faction which helped this process along.
Arguably parallel to peripheralization of ‘cisgender’ women within anti-sexism in pursuit of ‘trans rights’, both Jews and ‘cisgender’ women are prone to flock to right-leaning media, who herald them as martyrs cancelled by the Social Justice Mob and so on. Just as ‘TRAs’ and ‘TERFs’ appeal to the external enemy of the sexist heterosexual man, accusing each other of jeopardising the safety of women – as if the nature of womanhood wasn’t the source of conflict to begin with – vying ethnic factions of the anti-racist coalition accuse each other of playing into the hands of white supremacy by advancing their respective interests.
The UK government does this all the time. Due to the hegemonic obsession with diversity amongst the political and media class, a propensity which has given rise to legal commitments to support and promote Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, as per the Equality Act (2010), the state-backed intersectional diversity which it encourages necessarily inflames tensions between minority groups and the white British majority.
In an attempt to hold warring minority groups together, hoping to offset the explosive potential of re-opening historic grievances, and to integrate a growing migrant and migrant-descended population, one which emerged from a policy which the British people have consistently opposed whenever given the chance, every facet of media has become infected with anti-white sentiment. From Access UK’s state-funded hotep workshops to fabricating history about the British Isles, from inserting slavery and racism into every facet of media to covering up racially-motivated grooming gangs to protect ‘social cohesion’.
However, whilst minority groups view the anti-racist coalition as a means of affirming their uniquely serious grievance – discrimination against their particular group – it becomes apparent that their opposition to whites merely aligns ethnic grievances; it does not assess their validity or resolve them. As such, the potentiality for conflict remains, overflowing into violence and aggression every time there is an international crisis or domestic dispute.
The direct consequence of this is the antithetical to what every self-appointed champion of small government and liberal values theoretically wants, which is more power being given to the state to interfere in people’s day-to-day life through censorship and distort public opinion through social engineering.
Sadiq Khan’s recent announcement to increase ‘anti-hate’ patrols is just one such example. In any other circumstance, conservatives and libertarians would dismiss such measures as pedantic, overbearing, and ideologically driven, yet nobody seems concerned that the attack in southern Israel is being used to empower an apparatus which spends every other day arresting people for ‘hate speech’.
The protection of people and property is the initial function of the police, so I severely doubt that specific ‘anti-hate’ measures will be limited to arresting people who smash up shopfronts and graffiti public property, especially since the police cannot be relied upon to fulfil its most basic functions, as revealed by their indifference to serious crimes and the public’s rapidly declining trust.
Moreover, what are new arrivals to this country supposed to integrate to? Democracy? What is democracy without a demos? Civil liberties? Which are routinely trampled by the managerial state? Capitalism? Do you seriously expect society to be held together by consumerism? People will eventually ask for something more than material security and economic growth, both of which we are failing to procure anyway; what holds society together then?
Integration is a necessarily particular process, it assumes a particular group and set of customs to which people can be integrated over time. You can’t ‘integrate’ people to a global matrix of sustenance. You can’t ‘integrate’ people to a group which you allow to be displaced through migration. You can’t ‘integrate’ people to a value system which is designed to accommodate everyone, lest you plan on hollowing out every religion on the Earth, forcing people to treat their symbols as quirky cultural tokens and their prophets as secularised self-help gurus.
How perversely ironic is it that the liberal-left obsession with diversity has emerged from the inability to comprehend that people genuinely are different to one another? If anything, it is the native population which has been told to ‘integrate’, to tolerate and adhere, to ways and customs of the new arrivals, not the other way around.
The Labour Party, almost definitely the next party of government, issued a document titled: “Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future”. According to the report, the commission “originally used in the first democracies in Ancient Greece – that are critical for the success of any nation, with Britain being no exception” – demos (shared identity), telos (shared ambitions), and ethos (shared values).
Curiously, the report left out another very important concept to the Ancient Greeks: ethnos (shared character; ethnicity). According to the ancients, a society which lacks a sufficient degree of homogeneity inevitably leads to a lack of social trust, a lack of social trust will inevitably lead to factions, and factions will inevitably lead to the outbreak of disorder and even civil war. As such, in an attempt to ensure its survival, the state must micromanage society down to the last snivelling minutia to tie everything together; a far-flung difference from the unarmed, gentle-natured, and almost passive policemen of George Orwell’s England Your England.
As Singapore shows, a diverse society is only manageable if you have a stable demographic supermajority and reliable public institutions, especially when it comes to dealing with the bare necessities of public order, such as preventing violence and theft. The UK has neither of these. As per the most recent census, the white British majority is declining and crime is basically decriminalised.
As such, if things continue at their current rate and on their current course, we’re going to need more than ‘anti-hate’ patrols, Tebbit’s Cricket Test, and Hotep Histories to integrate an increasingly diverse populous; dear reader, we’re going to need the Katechon. Indeed, diversity is not the fancy of freedom lovers, but of tyrants, as Aristotle elucidates in Politics:
“It is a habit of tyrants never to like anyone who has a spirit of dignity and independence. The tyrant claims a monopoly of such qualities for himself; he feels that anybody who asserts a rival dignity, or acts with independence, is threatening his own superiority and the despotic power of his tyranny; he hates him accordingly as a subverter of his own authority. It is also a habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens to that of citizens at table and in society; citizens, they feel, are enemies, but aliens will offer no opposition.” (1313B29)
I started this article with a reference to the wars in Ukraine and Israel, yet these two are not the only major conflicts which 2023 has endured. The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, initiated after the latter launched a large-scale military invasion against the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, violating the 2020 ceasefire agreement between the nations and leading to the expulsion of over 100,000 Armenians.
Whilst Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, most of its territory was governed by ethnic Armenians. Without this natural fraternity, this sense of demos, the Republic of Artsakh could simply not exist, nor would the Azerbaijani government need to re-constitute the state through Asiatic authoritarianism. Even for us moderns, it is clear that diversity is not the basis of peaceful and stable self-government. The more we stray from this fact, we will deny ourselves to attain that which we have always wanted: the ability to discriminate and enjoy people as individuals and exceptions, rather than monoliths to which we are forced to remain diffident, for the sake of ourselves and others.
Therefore, to conclude, I shall leave you with this passage from Aristotle’s Politics, in which the great philosopher outlines the natural conclusion of a society which does not take its responsibility towards the diversity of its constituents with any prudence or honesty:
“Heterogeneity of stocks may lead to faction – at any rate until they have had time to assimilate. A city cannot be constituted from any chance collection of people, or in any chance period of time. Most of the cities which have admitted settlers, either at the time of their foundation or later, have been troubled by faction. For example, the Achaeans joined with settlers from Troezen in founding Sybaris, but expelled them when their own numbers increased; and this involved their city in a curse. At Thurii the Sybarites quarreled with the other settlers who had joined them in its colonization; they demanded special privileges, on the ground that they were the owners of the territory, and were driven out of the colony. At Byzantium the later settlers were detected in a conspiracy against the original colonists, and were expelled by force; and a similar expulsion befell the exiles from Chios who were admitted to Antissa by the original colonists. At Zancle, on the other hand, the original colonists were themselves expelled by the Samians whom they admitted. At Apollonia, on the Black Sea, factional conflict was caused by the introduction of new settlers; at Syracuse the conferring of civic rights on aliens and mercenaries, at the end of the period of the tyrants, led to sedition and civil war; and at Amphipolis the original citizens, after admitting Chalcidian colonists, were nearly all expelled by the colonists they had admitted.” (1303A13)
