Tories versus Whigs? Now there’s a blast from the past! Let’s refight the Battle Of The Boyne and sort things out once and for all.

“Only Great Britain, Scandinavia, France and the Low Countries hold to a middle course.”

South Korea, Malaysia, and a few other states might find that a bit offensive. What is it with our intelligentsia and their Europe obsession?

not to forget England’s proto-Nazi, Sir Oswald Mosley who was a friend to the little Austrian corporal with the Charlie Chaplin mustache as well as to the author of The Gallipoli Disaster haunted by a black dog.

I wonder how long a state that devoted itself to a real neo-feudal, merry England fantasy could survive in the real world of competitive states: there is a reason countries such as Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Oman etc. all felt the overwhelming need to modernise or be the puppets of countries that found themselves in this position first.

Even Franco’s regime, which as correctly stated was beloved of these Ruskinite types, found itself in an alliance with the arch-liberal USA, run by Opus Dei modernisers who forced major changes in education and industrial policy (including privatisations of corporatist companies) and found itself using both the IMF and UN as tools of political theatre. The sidelining of Carlists and conservative Catalinists. Not to mention the unbounded industrialisation, internal migration, uncontrolled property development and mass tourism that the government promoted. And for all that Franco intended to fight against modernism with patinas of tradition: I refer of course to the pregoneros, the tercio familiar, the corporatist companies… all crumbled like dust when he died, even the semblance of organicist society couldn’t hold.

The truth is, read beyond the customary bad faith of the author and there is a thread in the whole story of the obscure Tory ginger group. It is this: in times of turmoil people start to worship a past they barely understand by recourse to mysticism and appeals to metaphysical entities whose existence is somehow demonstrated by the putative benefits of mass social delusion. We live in a world of bureaucratic and badly developed education systems that never teach the scientific method or the capacity to critical thought to all but an tiny minority, and even if the education system was greatly better the inherent limitations in intellect that most people have (have you ever seen what is required to have a mean IQ of 100?), unfortunately human society, regardless of the political system it calls itself, is inevitably going to produce these strings.

Those without a twee attachment to medievalism (ISIS are classic examples in a different cultural context) use modern technology and propaganda to promote their aims which leads to a build up to a great crescendo of unreason and servility that of course becomes unmasked in its barbarity and repulsiveness and is quietly set aside again.

The societies that these people worship were only temporarily stable because modernity didn’t give them the tools with which to destroy themselves, which they have now. When I was younger I never understood the author Michael Moorcock’s hostility to JRR Tolkein, but now I do. It’s because his oeuvre, which very much fell under this kind of thinking, is the replacement of realism with fantasy. Imagining modernity and its problems and divisions can be replaced by imagining we could collectively decide to live in an Arthurian Romance, or a Walter Scott novel, is an abdication of thinking about reality as it is. And thus why we hear these people say that the important part of religion isn’t the literalness of religion and God, but its ‘mythical meaning’. And yet – in reality it always is! Because the interface of trying to implement fantasy in reality always involves a great deal of having to actually deal with reality and the modern world and all it entails. Deliberately choosing to ignore that is a denial of reality that always seems to nicely parallel the denial of any rational and empirical basis for truth those that who claim a personal God, let alone a personal God exists (and that kings have divine power from him etc.) indulge in. Individualism is realism and vice versa – as the Enlightenment showed, as the human condition means reality can only be deduced alone, not through the tendentious social manipulation of others, as much as our biology (though not necessarily consciousness) may cry out in its genes that were designed for living in tribes. That is why this kind of thinking is so dangerous, because it is so appeals to all our mental debilities – is it any surprise flat earth theories are back? – that 2500 years of rationalism have tried to dispel, a saccharine re-induction to barbarism.

It’s almost as if protestantism, the enlightenment, industrialisation and liberal individualism might have something to say for themselves after all even if sadly their partisans these recently are largely mentally hamstrung PR men.