ACCORDING to one narrative, Axel Rudakubana’s murder of three girls in Southport last July foreshadows ethnic civil war. Alternatively, according to another (establishment) narrative, the right wing would have exploited the tragedy into civil war, if the government had not been armed with powers to censor misinformation, ban protests and prosecute free speech. Politically, judicially and journalistically, the government won.
The government spun Rudakubana as a Welsh choirboy. Dissenters described him as a Muslim immigrant. Months later, we learned that the dissenters were closer to the truth: that the attacker is a Jihadi second-generation immigrant. In the meantime, the government jailed more than a dozen dissenters for racist speech, some for years. Parliament’s Committee for Home Affairs ruled that the violence was caused by misinformation, and called for more censorship, as reported in these pages. Meanwhile, Wikipedia dedicates an entry to the ‘far-right, anti-immigration protests and riots . . . fuelled by false claims circulated by far-right groups,’ without any mention of the government’s misinformation about Rudakubana.
Nevertheless, warnings of civil war persist. However, they appear in channels that the elite caricatures as far-right, such as GBNews. Worse, the protagonists tend to be historians, with fascinating cases but weak theories. David Betz, a Professor of War Studies, has done most in recent months to turn history into theory. He regards civil war as already nascent and inevitable. According to Betz, MI5 officers have approached him with the same concern. Interviewers tend to agree, including Peter Whittle, Louise Perry, Will Kingston, Nick Buckley, Paul Embery and Tim Stanley.
In response, Robert Tombs uses the past stability of British civilisation to forecast future stability. However, the circularity of Tombs’s conclusion that ‘as long as its present civilisation lasts, England will not have a violent revolution, or a military coup, or a religious civil war’ is evident. Many think its present civilisation is crumbling fast.
The most popular academic analysis on civil war offers ‘liberal consensus’ masquerading as theory: it blames civil war on illiberal governance, opposition to multiculturalism, and freedom of speech! Historians such as British-born Fara Dabhoiwala, who claims that freedom of speech has, historically, promoted violence, feed this pseudo-science.
In fact, the so-called ’liberal consensus’ is in fact the left progressive consensus, which drives civil war, more than it ameliorates it. It’s just a question of time.
Classical liberalism emphasises individual freedoms, but also the individual’s dependency on a benign collective to protect the individual from the mob. Liberalism was appropriated by socialism (later rebranded as progressivism), which emphasises rights that must be fulfilled by the collective. Progressivism damages both individual liberty and collective sympathy. Effectively, benign forms of individualism and collectivism (liberty and sympathy) are replaced by malignant forms (selfishness and authoritarianism). Worse, socialism/progressivism is two-tier in practice: it implements rights for fashionable identities at the expense of unfashionable identities. Wokeness is the latest taxonomy of an agenda that goes back more than two centuries. Indeed, DEI should be reinterpreted as ‘Division, Inequality and Exclusion.’
Progressivism is change-seeking. It justifies itself as creative-destructive, as replacing bad with good. In reality, it destroys social cohesion by pitting ever finer identities against a common identity (e.g., Britishness). Identity politicians disaggregate the common identity, inter-sectionally, as traditionalists, conservatives, heterosexuals, men, fathers, Christians, Jews and whites. This is why Edward Dutton warns: ‘Vote Labour for a civil war fought along racial lines.’
Political favouritism is illegitimate governance. Indeed, by 2024, 79 per cent of Britons agreed that British governance needs ‘a lot of improvement’; 45 per cent ‘almost never’ trust government to put the nation’s interests first. All political scientists and historians agree that political illegitimacy provokes instability. The only disagreement is between advocates of ‘liberal consensus’, who blame non-progressive governance, and those of us, like Betz, who realise progressive authoritarianism. Overlapping the political drivers are the technological drivers. As communications improve, the costs of mobility fall. Then, the costs of anti-socialness fall. A century ago, a villager who thieved might be ostracised. Walking into a new village without references would provoke suspicion. Physical mobility enables irresponsibility.
Telecommunications also enable isolation, which damages empathy. Decades ago, almost everybody worked, sold and bought face-to-face. Telephones, the internet, and the over-reaction to covid each accelerated a trend to stay home. Even for those living in the same home, interactions are distracted and even mediated by the same technologies. However good your technology, it can never perfectly mimic the inter-human interactions for which we evolved. Users become more internalised, more self-righteous, less empathic. These technologies are also associated with depression and learned helplessness, which in turn have political implications. Users learn to depend on technology for information, which the government is best able to control. Dependency on government information overlaps dependency on government handouts. Sedentarism (another effect of both technology-dependency and government handouts) makes people too unhealthy to consider independence or protest – except via telecommunications!
Irrespective of technology, the free movement of people is a political choice, as constituted within the EU, and as tolerated by British governments even after Brexit. Free movement is to the advantage of refugees, but also criminals escaping justice (that’s why Britain is a hub for Albanian gangs). Worse, Western legal systems treat almost all illegal migrants as refugees not as criminals, and treat deportation as a greater evil than crimes in-country. The immigrant population is also a more criminal population (although the government covered up the fact for decades, until recent freedom-of-information requests). Free movement is to the advantage of refugees from war, but also warriors, terrorists and insurgents escaping defeat. These malcontents bring their conflicts with them. That’s why Rakib Ehsan warns that civil war in Kashmir would be mimicked in Britain. Free movement also favours young men, who are better able to navigate the physical challenges of migration. Young men are better able to commit crime. Given more young men, particularly from sexist cultures, the rate of sex crime goes up. Immigrants are over-represented amongst sex criminals. British native girls have suffered decades of organised abuse by immigrant men. The government encourages immigrant sex crimes by covering them up.
Public authorities accommodate crime of all sorts by de-policing privileged communities, by negotiating with ‘community leaders‘ for access, by tolerating vigilantism by minorities, by legislating religious exceptions (such as evasion of animal welfare and food safety laws during the production of Halal food), by tolerating sharia courts, and by sentencing minorities leniently. These accommodations are counter-productive. Crime goes up. Government complicity provokes vigilantism. ‘Our country is on the brink of civil war,’ tweeted one influencer, in reaction to last week’s crime statistics.
Privileging immigrants too is counter-productive. Governments facilitate illegal immigrants by transporting, housing and paying them as asylum seekers. Private businesses even extend discounts to self-identified refugees (such as Harewood House). Immigrant privileges are paid by citizens, in taxes and inflation. The government’s latest solution is to contract private landlords, for five years at a time, to house migrants. ‘This is designed to cause civil war,’ tweeted one influencer. Immigrants have more children than natives, partly thanks to their privileges. Their birth rate perpetuates a ‘youth bulge’. Youth bulges are associated with increased chance of civil war in any society. Immigrant youth bulges are riskiest.
Overlapping the political, technological, and immigrant drivers of civil conflict are the economic drivers. One result of illegal immigration is accelerating growth of population, which strains resources. Worse, most immigrants to Britain are net takers. They show higher rates of welfare-dependency, lower rates of work. Productivity declines (despite the fakery of measuring economic growth by population). Britain has suffered an ‘almost unprecedented’ plunge in productivity over the past five years. More than half of Britons are net welfare recipients. Britain’s debt is greater than its economy. At current rate, public services will collapse for want of money and Britain will be a failed state. Without intervention, failed states always suffer civil war.
I agree with Robert Tombs that British institutions drive stability, but the drivers towards civil war are distressingly numerous: progressive divisiveness; progressive destructiveness; two-tier justice; identity politics; illegitimate governance; increased mobility; declining empathy; remote telecommunications; learned helplessness; criminal bulge; warrior bulge; young male bulge; youth bulge; vigilantism; immigrant privileges; declining productivity and national bankruptcy. The only question is how long will it be taken lying down.
