Oh good. You get a package and creatively wrap it. Who doesn’t love a Dutch surprise?
It’s all very predictable. As soon as you see the headline, you know what’s going to happen.
A great big chunk of the normie right, and even the more based/red-pilled/dissident/whatever right, have reacted like this. What do you reckon, do you recognise the below?
“Outrageous! *What do they mean HER penis*? If the left did this eh meh meh hypocrisy blah! Harumph, most unorthodox! If a man did this! We’ve fallen so far, the future of our country, something something the Queen. Splutters champagne, monocle falls out, but with Victorian era mutton chops.”
OK, the last bit might be a little unfair. You get the point though, don’t you?
Is this really some great new surprise or at all shocking? No! It’s been done to death and now they’re acting out with increasingly more extreme things to get the same level of reaction, attention, etc. to try and keep any buzz or excitement going in their latest fad.
Now they’re getting their ‘tits’ out at the White House. What’s next? Synchronised helicopters at the Cenotaph this November while the King stands to attention? This is all so dumb and transparent. Why are you reacting as if it’s anything other than boring?
The ‘right’ is the most promising place anything new or interesting is likely to come from. It’s on the outside. It’s not establishment normalcy, curated and factory-made orthodoxy. When it reacts in such predictable ways to such obvious dreariness, it’s really letting itself down. Don’t let your enemies feel like insurgents when they’re cradled by the status quo. Let them jump the shark.
Reacting is a diversion of your energy from more important things. Minority issues cut both ways. Sure, ‘most people’ (do majorities matter, or does winning matter?) might agree with you, and it might even count for something, but how high on their list of priorities is it? Yes, take the low hanging fruit, or perhaps this is an issue which also largely takes care of itself if enough (of the relevant) people are on your side.
Yes, this may have played a role in bringing down Nicola Sturgeon, but how significant was that? What role did money problems play? And the SNP are still there, with Labour next best positioned to take over. Nothing big or culturally or politically is really that different in Scotland. For the whole UK what still stands? The economy, immigration, house prices, tax rates, NHS standards, take your pick of any issue which needs more work.
For now, let the TERFs and trans people have at it. It’s not like the TERFs are your friends. Why give any quarter to a slightly different strain of the progressive problem?
And on a totally basic level, isn’t it just stupid to bother fighting ‘to prove’ (to who?) that men are men and women are women? This is really just a playground case where someone calls you a name, and you either call them one back or ignore it. You don’t waste energy trying to persuade your accuser that you are not whatever they called you.
Just like the playground, they don’t really believe in ‘her penis’ anyway. It’s a shit test, ab initiation rite, an in-group/out-group signifier. It’s like molesting a pig to get into the Bullingdon Club or whatever. Well, that’s the Machiavellian side. A lot of these people are just useful idiots, aren’t party insiders, don’t have a clue, and really have the same energy as the ones who have the power of God and anime on their side. Either way, don’t bother. It’s stupid.
Are we really wasting energy on something as basic as this rather than just going “no” and carrying on with something real, something that might need more real fighting over?
Don’t waste the energy. They’re better prepared for it and you’re just feeding the trolls, following the paths they’ve laid out for you.
When you react in the ways they expect:
- They have their own set ways to react, and the game keeps going,
- They’re ready and waiting, don’t do what they expect and wrongfoot them,
- You keep their fad alive, and…
- It makes you look like you’re just doing the same old thing you’ve done since 2016 or whenever.
The more you disengage, the more they’ll look for a different game, or otherwise chase the high by pushing the absolute limits of their ideological/aesthetic paradigm. Eventually they run out of things to do, or it breaks, or people will get so totally disgusted by it that it provokes a real reaction. Interpret ‘reaction’ as you will.
Your instinct to react now is understandable, but it’s not useful. Yes, you’re right, progressives do get away with all sorts of things. On one level it’s because they have power to enforce what they want, defend their people, and you don’t. On another it’s because they have the kinds of religious fervent nutters who will throw bricks through people’s windows, glue themselves to roads, throw Molotov cocktails, etc. and your side doesn’t.
Well, OK, then you have to work with the people you’ve got. It means treating this for what it is. Boring!
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Environmentalism: The Quintessential Conservative Cause
Over the past few weeks, a single topic has dominated the German media and has meanwhile made its way into the international media: The removal of climate activists from the village of Lützerath, which they occupy to stop the mining of lignite there.
Activists had already demonstrated in 2020 against the resettlement of the village for the Garzweiler open pit mine and subsequently occupied the village. Beginning on January 11, more than 1,000 police officers went on the offensive and began driving the activists out of the village, resulting in large-scale unrest that lasted for nearly a full week. The locality has not been cleared to this day, in part because activists have tunneled themselves into the ground and barricaded themselves in tree houses. After police officers were pelted with stones and even Molotov cocktails, the reaction of politicians on the right-wing spectrum has been concentrated on these acts. Of course, this is not surprising, but none of these politicians have really been critical of the issue of relocation and demolition of villages, their community and history itself. It seems that only left-wing people ever stand up for environmental protection and, in this case, for saving the village as well as, indirectly, its history (even though this is probably not a motivation for them). But the fact is that environmental protection should also be something important for conservatives, and it is the relationship between the two things that I intend to examine here.
Parts of the small village, first mentioned in the annals of history in the 12th century, belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of Duissern for many centuries. After more than 900 years, the village, like many villages before it, must now make way for the Garzweiler open pit mine and its owner RWE AG. As a result, the Duisserner Hof, for example, which is on the list of monuments of the city of Erkelenz because of its historical and cultural significance, has to be demolished.
A similar fate befell the village of Immerath in 2018, when the neo-Romanesque St. Lambertus Church was demolished. As art historian Annette Jansen-Winkeln noted before the demolition, it was quite dramatic that the church was partially destroyed during World War II and the community then had to invest heavily in rebuilding it, only to have it demolished for the expansion of the open-pit lignite mine. The congregation had invested in large ornamental windows during the reconstruction period, which she was able to save from demolition. The diocese of Aachen had sold the church to RWE AG “with the proviso that the [windows] be treated in the same way as the wall.”
The St. Lambertus Church was a symbol of identity from the very beginning, according to the art historian. In 1886, the village’s approximately one thousand inhabitants decided to build this new church. “For such a small community to produce such great things – there must have been a lot of social competence.”
This situation should cause an unpleasant emotion in every conservative. What is being destroyed in these cases is the active life of a village, its community, and its history, all things that should be central to the conservative view of society. Not only that, but it is being done for a purpose that is detrimental to the environment, that is, contrary to a cause that conservatives should champion: Environmentalism.
Roger Scruton captured this sentiment perfectly when he famously wrote,
‘We must make the environment, the countryside, and the settled communities of our nation into priorities of government. Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but conserves and enhances them. Environmental politics therefore needs to be rescued from the phony expertise of the scare-mongers and from the top-down manipulation of the activists. Properly understood, environmental protection is not a left-wing but a conservative cause.’
Now, as Scruton correctly points out, environmentalism is seen as a core issue of the left political spectrum. Climate change organizations like Greenpeace and social movements like Fridays for Future have uniformly adopted a progressive stance on sociocultural issues, making it almost impossible to support them as a conservative. The reason that the issue of environmentalism has found particular appeal on the left is because of the way they frame the fundamental nature of the problem. The movement, according to Scruton, has
‘acquired all the hall-marks of a left-wing cause: a class of victims (future generations), an enlightened vanguard who fights for them (the eco-warriors), powerful philistines who exploit them (the capitalists), and endless opportunities to express resentment against the successful, the wealthy and the West.’
Meanwhile, for a long time, little to no real engagement with the issue was made in conservative circles, thus surrendering an issue to political rivals that is now key to due electoral decision-making. In the 2021 German federal election, the environment and climate played the second-largest role for voters in their election decision.The Christian Democratic Union of Germany’s (CDU) internal election report shows that almost one million voters switched from them to the Green Party. For the Greens, 82% of voters named the environment and climate as the most important issue for their election decision. It stands to reason that for many of those who switched their votes, the lack of climate policy competence on the part of the CDU was at the forefront of their minds.
Far from being a foreshadowing of the years to come, this situation offers an ideal opportunity for conservative politicians and movements to reflect on the principles of conservatism. Environmentalism should be an issue that conservative politicians ought to make an important part of their election platforms if they want to win. It is not the case that this is to be done for opportunistic reasons. In fact, for Roger Scruton, environmentalism represents “the quintessential conservative cause”.
Fundamental to this view is the conservative attitude toward society best captured by Edmund Burke, who speaks of society as a social contract, but ‘not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.’ The preservation (and amelioration) of nature and the Countryside is considered a duty for those who are aware that they have received everything from previous generations and must conserve it for future generations. As the great American poet and farmer Wendell Berry puts it: “The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.’
This awareness gives rise to a natural preference for the local over the distant. Which manifests itself best in Roger Scruton’s notion of oikophilia: ‘[T]he love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile.’ American legal scholar Robert P. George aptly summarized this position when he stated “that one naturally and rightly has a special love for, and duties toward, members of one’s family, tradition of faith, local community and region, and fellow citizens.”
This love for the familial and social environment, traditions and nature is naturally linked to a sense of identity. We recognize the need for a “We” that cherishes traditions and evokes a sense of home, a place that is “Ours”. This notion of oikophilia is thereby something that is animated only because we are located in such a place. There exists a deep connection with environmentalism, since this notion has a great impact on the way we treat the environment. It is simply a fact that man tries to protect what belongs to him more than what is not his own. Now, with the environment, man receives a communal inheritance from which responsibility for the inheritance arises.
Accordingly, it is also a profoundly intergenerational view, consistent with the Burkean social contract, for thus one is not master of the land but a tenant who is but one person in a long line of tenants who are all equally entitled to receive that inheritance. One might object that this means that you may not change anything about the environment or use its natural resources, but therein I would say with Theodore Roosevelt, ‘I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.’
With all that said, it does seem that a brief consideration of policy implications is needed. From the view of conservative environmentalism that has been presented, there are attitudes that conservatives should have toward economic and technological policies and practices.
It seems that conservatives in this case must be completely opposed to an unregulated free market, not conservative in the first place, and regulations regarding the extraction of natural resources should be supported. In this, again, it may be said with Roosevelt, “I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude.” (1910 speech on “New Nationalism) What seems obvious to me is that a rethinking of ecological issues should also include a rethinking of economic issues.
Conservatives should also stand up for domestic producers, discouraging them from taking production overseas, and oppose the globalization of industries, if possible. Restricting the import of certain products might also be worth considering, instead supporting local farmers and passing laws that encourage people to buy locally, which saves a lot of shipment mileage, automatically helping the environment and strengthening the local economy.
It also seems as if many conservative movements ought to change their language on the subject of environmental protection. Often excessive opposition within conservative circles creates the feeling that you can’t be conservative if you are pro-environment or you feel that you have to deny climate change to be conservative, which is wrong. It is necessary to emphasize more often that environmental protection is not only about climate change, but also about the degradation of natural resources and the preservation of the beauty of our home.
However, the most important thing remains something that politics cannot do and must come from the citizens themselves: Taking personal responsibility, which comes from rational self-interest that encourages the people to look after the environment themselves. The key for this is for people to realize that we are inheritors of this world and like a good farmer we have to cultivate this land and pass it on better to our inheritors.
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The Tragedy of the Praying Indians
A generation after the first Thanksgiving, colonial Massachusetts experienced the single deadliest per capita war in North American recorded history. Though the famed declaration of friendship between White settlers and Native tribes was within living memory for many of the fighters in this war, it did not in any way soften the animosity nor stay the violent hands of either side. This was King Philip’s War, a turning point for American history, the war that set the precedent for Anglo/Native relations for centuries to come, and yet one that is woefully unknown and underdiscussed even West of the Atlantic. It left all parties involved scarred, traumatised, and for one group even less understood than this forgotten war, a betrayal never to be overcome.
It is 1675, and the titular King Philip, Christian name of the Sachem (chief) of the Wampanoag, Metacomet, has lead a raid on the New England colony town of Swansea in retaliation for the English executing three of his countrymen for the murder of one John Sassamon. Despite his European name, Sassamon was a Harvard-educated Praying Indian, the name given by the Puritan colonists to the groups of Native Americans that had adopted the faith and customs of their new neighbours. He was a respected member of Metacomet’s court and a cultural mediator who had recently informed the Plymouth governor of the Sachem’s intention to gather tribes for war. His murder was seen as revenge for this betrayal by the English, but this perceived overreach of the colonial authorities, in killing his kinfolk without consultation, was the pretext Metacomet was waiting for to being this war he had been so wanting.
The raid on Swansea was a horrible affair. The Wampanoag laid siege to the town before overcoming the militiamen defenders and laid a terrible waist upon the hapless civilians. Many women and children were butchered neath the tomahawk that day, and the other colonies were quick to respond to the massacre. The Praying Indian warriors were keen to come to the assistance of their European allies to meet this aggression, and expected naturally to be accepted as a welcome aid by their dear friends. They were in this, and in much else, utterly and tragically mistaken. Though the Praying folk saw the English as firm allies, this was a decidedly one-sided relationship. That these natives had taken as their own European clothes and custom, and English tongue and English Bibles, mattered little, for to the Europeans the Praying Indian inescapably remained, above all, an Indian. An outsider worthy always of suspicion over trust.
The early stages of King Philip’s war were not good for the English. Despite the common contemporary view of the various North American colonial conflicts as being between technologically advanced musket-wielding Europeans versus bow and hatchet-armed Natives, there were a lot of shared weaponry and tactics between them. This makes sense when considering that by the late 17th Century Natives and colonials had known of and been trading with one other for decades, and many groups had enthusiastically adopted firearms to fight their tribal rivals in wars over fur-trapping land. These years using European technology served the Wampanoag well in the first engagements of the war, and using them they beat the English militias in a number of battles up and down Massachusetts Bay. An opportunity of spiritual warfare was also presented; when a near total eclipse of the moon one night allowed the tribal warband to slip out of the colonial noose tightening on their swampland capital and make for the wilds. Such a freak lunar event at such a crucial time was seen as a divine blessing by the Wampanoag, and an ominous sign of heretical magic by the English, who were thoroughly demoralised by the affair.
Native successes in the war made the situation for the Praying Indians deteriorate rapidly. The English feared uprisings amongst the settled natives, and in a grim turn, dissolved the praying towns that had until then served as a shield for the colonies, and moved thousands of Indian civilians into internment camps, with over 1,000 being crammed into just one at Deer Island. Conditions in the camp were dreadful, and the families kept there doubled as hostages to ensure the loyalty of the Indian scouts fighting with the English. Many hundreds would die over the cruel winter of 1675-6. Puritan minister John Elliot would fight hard against this policy, but by this time it was dangerous to say anything to the defence of Native Americans, no matter the tribe or custom, and he was powerless to stop it.
As for the success of the Wampanoag and their allies, it would not be the English that finally overcame them, but their own kin. Upon hearing that the Mohawk tribe to the West were moving in force towards Massachusetts Bay, Metacomet and his men eagerly turned to await these new allies in their fight against the White man. He was, however, gravely mistaken. In a single action the Mohawk warriors fell upon the Wampanoag, upon the Narragansett, upon all the troublesome Algonquin Confederation and massacred them almost to a man. Metacomet’s power was in a single night broken, and broken by his own kind. He fled to the wilderness, shattered and alone, and would be later slain by the musket shot of one of those who had been, despite everything, loyal to the end; a Praying Indian called John Alderman. The war continued for a further two years in scattered skirmishes, but hope for victory died with Metacomet, King Philip himself, in the Massachusetts swamplands.
King Philip’s War devastated all involved. It resulted in the deaths of 2,000 Natives and 2,800 colonists, the near total annihilation of the Wampanoag and their allies, and of the English settlements nearly half were attacked with hundreds of civilian deaths. The Praying Indians suffered perhaps more than any; hundreds of their already small population had died, and the discrimination and suspicion they had suffered from the English before the war had metamorphosed into open hostility and hatred. They had considered the Europeans their brothers, in culture and Christ. They had adopted their ways and their God, severing themselves from their Algonquin brothers of Old in favour of the civilised and energetic New.
It did not save them.
The newcomers did not see brothers, they saw Indians. They did not see Christians, they saw Indians. They did not see allies, they saw Indians.
When it came down to it, ingratiating themselves to their new neighbours did not save the Praying Indians. For their efforts and their loyalty, they received only tragedy and betrayal, they died like the rest.
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here.
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The Marvelisation of Ukraine
The discussion has never been stupider.
The relative infrequency in which western audiences are exposed to war means that every time a conflict breaks out, enormous advances occur not just in technology or strategy, but in culture too. Whilst the First World War showed the power of industrialisation, the Second showed the potential of modern media to be harnessed as propaganda and the Gulf War demonstrated the importance of emergent 24hr news coverage.
Those who have followed the war in Ukraine through Twitter may have noticed a similar cultural shift. Russia, whose information warfare capabilities have been for so long held up as an aspirational standard for other nations, appears to be losing the battle online. Even well-paid RT journalists who were quite happy to continue shilling through the poisonings in London and Salisbury, the Russian downing of an airliner and the annexation of both Donbass and Crimea are now resigning – shocked to find unfriendly propaganda being produced by their own organisation.
The news is not that the Russians have, in PR terms, been internationally out-maneuvered. They are the aggressor (and a much more powerful one at that), they’re non-Western and non-democratic. The government does not respect liberal values – or human life. There was never much support or sympathy for Putin or his regime overseas and many are taking the side of Zelensky. Rather, the noticeable shift has been in the way that Ukraine has been discussed online and in how support for Ukraine is being expressed. What we are witnessing is not so much the lionisation of Ukraine as the Marvelisation.
In order to make sense of complex foreign events, people have always had to distort and simplify in order to find a frame of reference they understand. It’s why so many of our baby-boomer politicians end up talking about Munich and appeasement. The horrors of Nazism are the defining moral event of our modern age, to which our revulsion is universal. With such a point established, it is easy for people to rely on it to establish the defined evil of the opposition position, mawkishly conjuring images of them taking the noble and justly defiant stand of David Low: ‘Very well, alone.’
The frame of reference for Boomers is the Second World War. But for the terminally online generation, it is Marvel films. Post-invasion, Marvel’s The Winter Soldier began to trend as the conflict was compared to the film. The number of people replying ‘Yo, Thanos fr?’ to this obvious meme tweet is deeply troubling – the fact it had to be taken to a fact checker even more so. People are campaigning for Jeremy Renner to be cast as Volodymyr Zelensky. There is a dangerously high number of tweets achieving near apocalyptic-levels of cringe by depicting the Ukrainian leader as ‘Captain Ukraine.’ But why would anyone compare a real-life conflict with a superhero film? The people committing these atrocities against intellect are desperately seeking a cultural reference to fit into a narrative of good vs evil, and sadly the narratives with which they are most familiar are Marvel ones.
The use of both Marvel and the Second World War as rhetorical devices have much in common. For groups with relatively little understanding of international relations, of diplomacy or history, both offer a reference point that is almost universally understood. Marvel’s films achieve titanic viewing figures, and we must not forget that boomers grew up in a world where the Second World War was still a common subject for films and programmes. That means, at least, that there is a common understanding, and ensures that everyone is roughly on the same page.
The clear-cut ‘good guy vs bad guy’ narrative of Marvel films, much like the universal revulsion to the crimes of the Nazis, also provides an easily defined good vs. evil narrative, of just war, deo et victricibus armis. Once you identify yourself and your chosen side with Winston Churchill – or Ironman – you have taken position on the moral high ground. It is a way to dismiss the position of your opponents and establish your own as self-evident without worrying too much about the niceties of debate. There is no room for subtle nuance, for allowing that perhaps there has been a categoric failure of western foreign policy in the build up to Ukraine, or that appeasement was a sensible, logical policy borne from Chamberlain’s calculation that the longer war could be delayed, the better Britain’s chances, as James Levy argued. Relying on the black-and-white nature of Marvel or the Second World War means a debate has no room for nuance – indeed, this is rather the point. There is no room for Kissinger’s constructive ambiguity – the extent of the understanding is limited to them BAD, we GOOD.
The use of Munich as a parallel for everything in international relations should be derided. There are some cases in which it is a genuinely useful historic parallel; but in the main, it is a poor example that betrays a lack of understanding. Prior to the invasion, for instance, Tobias Ellwood MP called for a ‘Churchillian approach’ to the crisis. What Ellwood meant was that his course of action would have been Churchill’s – brave, daring, bold. Any other potential action was Chamberlain’s – servile, cowardly, fit only for the effeminate nursings of the seraglio. Given that Churchill was perfectly prepared to assign Eastern Europe as a sphere of Russian influence in the Percentages Agreement, Ellwood’s call was deeply historically inaccurate, but it did at least serve to remind us that he has both the heart of a lion and the brain of a sheep.
The use of Marvel as a parallel for anything in international relations should also be derided. Every mention of a character from a superhero film in discourse this important should be greeted the way my girlfriend greets me when I get home from work – with thinly veiled contempt. They are a way to infantilise a complex situation. Watching films, as with all visual media, requires perception rather than conception. Marvel films don’t require understanding, insight or intelligence – the good will eventually win out, as it always does. Gasp as the superhero defeats the bad guy just in time to save the world for the 4,927th time running.
Marvelisation is deeply crass, as crude and unrefined as the oil western nations are still dependent on Putin for. But it is not solely driven by a lack of empathy. The main driving factor is more simple. It is content platforms doing what they do best; producing content. There is a gaping chasm in the timeline, and it must be filled with content. Ukraine is more than a war; it’s a chance to go viral, to close a real, discernible gap in the race for retweets.
A war set to displace and kill thousands seems an odd place to seek new content from. But it is not a new phenomenon. In The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Jean Baudrillard posited that the slick media presentations, such as Norman Schwarzkopf’s ‘Mother of All Press Conferences’ and constant media coverage from the new 24-hour news channels made it essentially impossible to identify what actually happened. Since the Gulf War, the internet has only accelerated this process of conflict becoming content. War has become a hyperreal simulacrum, indistinguishable from other forms of visual media. War is to be consumed. As Zelensky films himself walking around Kiev, the Twitter hive-mind of Marvel audiences immediately turns to Jeremy Renner because they are almost totally unable to distinguish the real world of war, of which they have no experience, from that of Marvel, which they are deeply familiar. For them, watching Ukraine unfold is no different to watching a new show. For Ukrainians, it is a grim daily reality.
