Western politics is defined by a conflict that is always awkward and sometimes cringe. On the one hand, our leaders are full of loud-mouthed passion, warning that the days of peace are over and that we now need to prepare for total, generational war. On the other, it’s beyond obvious that nobody cares. Across Europe and America, politicians now openly exhort their populations to feel righteous patriotism and to answer the call of duty, but all seem to accomplish exactly nothing: our militaries are shrinking due to a lack of recruits, polling shows a massive disinterest in fighting for King and Country, the young in particular remain completely unmoved. Even in embattled Ukraine, young men are choosing to dodge the draft and go clubbing instead.
How did this state of affairs come to pass? Most “analysis” starts and ends with a bit of hand-wringing about the moral decay of the youth. But this doesn’t explain much. There were countless complaints about the sad state of young people in the late 19th century — but that didn’t translate into a society-wide lack of patriotism and disinterest in defending one’s country.
More useful, perhaps, is the model supplied by British historian Arnold Toynbee, whose life’s work mapped the lifecycle of human empires. In particular, one concept is of interest here: the idea of the internal proletariat, a group of people who tend to grow in number as empires begin to stagnate and decline.
The internal proletariat is not a Marxist term (both Marx and Toynbee took the word “proletariat” from the Roman proletarii, the name of the poorest class of urban dweller). In Toynbee’s model, developed in his 12-volume Study of History, it denotes a group of citizens who live inside an empire, but for various structural reasons no longer benefit from it — and so are unlikely to rush to its defence. This is, after all, what happened in Rome: as the empire began to fall on hard times and the decline of the slavery-based economy started to bite, a mix of high taxes and painful labour shortages conspired to make Roman citizenship feel more like a yoke and less like a privilege. Once the barbarians came, many were disinclined to put up much resistance; and why would they?
A more obvious example can be found in the annals of the Aztec empire, which had subjugated a large number of peoples and tribes. When Hernán Cortés overthrew it, he did so by leading a coalition of disgruntled subjects for whom Aztec rule had few upsides. In other words, his army was made up of internal proletarians: people who lost more than they gained from the continuation of empire, even though they were formally part of it in the first place.
Why, more than 500 years later, is any of this relevant? Consider for a moment the recent vote on foreign aid in the US house of representatives. This caused quite a lot of bitterness on the American Right, and for quite good reason: the speaker, Mike Johnson, violated his own party’s rules in order to pass a foreign aid bill with the help of the Democrats, even though more than half of his own party was opposed to it.
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SubscribeIt’s even worse than that in the United States. See, my government took the most driven and patriotic men in generations and squandered and abused them in twenty strait years of counterproductive wars after it had pretended to appreciate them. As soon as they started to complain about our foreign policy as if they had seen it firsthand or something, they were treated like dirt. They lost friends, suffered lost limbs and TBI and they stacked bodies for their country. Then my government decided they could replace them with the DEI crowd. It’s working about as well as you would expect. You know where the vast majority of the boys who serve and die for this country in the infantry come from? The overwhelmingly come from the South followed by the Midwest and the West. You know, flyover country. Now we have multigenerational military families telling their boys not to enlist because their own country hates them and the people who run it care nothing for their country.
Thanks for that Matt, sadly you are correct. We are living in a ‘civilisation’ here in the west where inequality is blatantly out of control, people are being used and abused by elites and their corporate backers, we are just commodities to be exploited, in the case of our veterans they are literally paying for corrupt foreign policy with their lives, but we are all paying! Lets fight back by abstaining from Amazon and Facebook, improving our lives whilst hitting them in their pockets!
The American military leadership is feckless as well. Secretary of Defense Austin couldn’t even notify the President of his medical leave also oversaw the Afghanistan debacle. Add in the stupidity of General Millely and we’ve got huge problems of trust and accountability.
You know it’s almost like if someone disappears for few days and no one notices, they weren’t important in the first place.
Lets fight back by abstaining from Amazon and Facebook, improving our lives whilst hitting them in their pockets!
Close the tax havens.
Slightly bizarre comment. I’m all for Amazon; it provides goods at excellent prices and has good customer service. Go and live in your self sufficient bubble – if you can!
Sorry it was a lazy comment.
I was offering an alternative to a boycott. We buy stuff off amazon too. I think a boycott is impractical and not very economical. I buy stuff there because it is the cheapest place to buy stuff quite often. They employ quite a lot of people too, I don’t have a problem with amazon or any big businesses. I have a problem with the tax system.
It would improve our lives if they paid their tax and they make a fair amount of money, so that’s a fair wedge of tax. Then we could cut tax on small businesses. Or at least make big business pay the same rates they have to.
Self sufficient bubbles don’t really exist.
Congo produced fine goods. Pity they had to use slaves whose children’s hands were cut off. A boycott was simply to impractical.
A noble sentiment but unfortunately one that will NOT appeal to the Gynarchy that rules this little planet of ours.
Gynarchy? What an odd remark. I didn’t know you thought men could just become women? Isn’t Pierre Trudeau a man, for example?The overwhelming number of world and corporate leaders are men. So don’t blame women (as such!).
As usual, so many quixotic people on the Right just have no understanding of the world. No wonder they are losing hands down, at least in what we used to call the West?
Pierre Trudeau was undoubtedly a man but I’m not sure about Justin.
He is a effeminate though…
Charles that really does not make sense, has your wife been on your laptop?
For a young man growing up in today’s Britain it’s difficult to explain why he should risk his life to protect the country and the women who don’t need him; a country ruled by an out-of-touch self-serving globalist elite that denigrates nationalism and celebrates globalism.
In a country populated by illegal immigrants and man-despising feminists, for whom would he be fighting?
Succinct and brilliantly put.
A teacher in a primary school in London recently asked her class of mainly Muslim students asked them ‘who hates the UK?’ More than 30 put their hands up.
Is there a source for this that you could share?
I experienced the same working at a school with a predominantly muslim population. They’re nice enough kids for the most part, but come from a background where they’re raised to look down on anything that is non-muslim.
Disgusting savages.
Come here to turn this country into another Islamic shithole like one they left behind.
Really? sounds like some click bait from the Daily Mail
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/do-you-hate-britain-i-asked-my-pupils-thirty-raised-their-hands-35gxx2t6n
Although she did lay the blame for this at Brexit and Andrew Tate strangely.
I believe it was from an article in The Times by a teacher recounting his own experience.
I believe it, because I have seen and experienced this attitude and the resulting behaviours myself. Not just recently, but some 10 to 15 years ago.
I think it was in an unherd article a few days ago.
But we still keep importing Muslim and African low IQ savages in ever increasing numbers.
In raw numbers, not per capita, the state’s supplying the most membrs of the military in the US are:
CaliforniaTexasFloridaNew YorkGeorgia
Texas, Florida and Georgia are also not just rural “flyover” country. Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, big cities. And many African Americans and hispanics serve from these states and urban areas. Percentage wise, yes, south etc supplies more per capita. And agreed, the leadership of the country has gotten many killed in wars with little benefit overall. Of course, then again, we wouldn’t need as much military otherwise. And it also seems that a Republican governor from one of those states, Texas, got us into some of these wars. And he had supporters from those areas.
Some of he DEI crowd is also opposed to these foreign wars. Sometimes there are strange alliances.
Couple things, I did not say raw numbers. I referred specifically to percentage of infantry members and multigenerational military families. Also, Texas, Florida, and Georgia are still the South. Finally, Bush and his neocon buddies are still hated by most service members I know. They supported him until they were betrayed by him. Funny how that works.
No ofense tyo you and your overall point, but you did not specifically refer to percentages: “You know where the vast majority of the boys who serve and die for this country in the infantry come from? The overwhelmingly come from the South followed by the Midwest and the West.”
And California is the West, although I have a feeling since you mention flypover country you didn’t mean Cali. California and New York are 1 and 3 in absolute numbers. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois all pull their weight. Of course many from rural areas. Blacks make up 30% of the military, well above their population level. Hispanics 17%. They likely skew conservative compared to their ethnic peers but I imagine mostly still Democrats.
The miltary stays out of politics, generally speaking. While some DEI obviously creeps in, still largely merit based. And it’s a shame that policies the majority do not support get pushed by the leaders of both parties.I just do not think it’s a flyover thing necssarily. A black corporal from the Bronx may not get too worked up over DEI, and be patriotic, but still not want to risk being deployed to, say, Taiwan if the shooting starts.
In which branch of the military did you serve and when?
I suspect the majority of people from New York and California in the military are from upstate NY and rural CA. And Texas, Georgia and Florida are the south. Historically, even during times of the draft, the US military has been dominated by people from the south, west and mid-west. That is a fact.
Matt: Your analysis is succinct, and spot-on. Unherd would be well-served to publish essays by people like your good self who make clear arguments without getting lost in wandering, academic prose.
It should be noted that American women also have served in the military, been wounded, traumatized and killed during this period, albeit in much smaller numbers. But their sacrifice should not be overlooked.
I add that many young people are taught that the United States was founded in 1619 based on slavery, our industries are causing climate change that will much life on the planet, that we are racist, anti-trans and misogynistic. At work you get DEI shoved at you and you can be subject to discipline and discharge for misgendering someone.
Why bother to defend a country that is bad and knows its bad?
Actually, I think the United States has fought its last big war. Where are we going to put troops in harms way? If we now have to live by Gaza rules, where if an enemy puts its war fighting material under civilian targets and we attack such targets, campus protests will ensue.
Indeed. Both sides of my family have sent loved ones to serve in the US military since WW1, but I’m glad that my daughter is not interested. I pray for her cousins, two of them in the Navy, one contemplating Air Force, especially as our political class seems to lust for getting into a direct shooting war with Putin and seemingly ignores China.
The military used to be one of the most respected groups in American society, and has been an example of meritocracy and putting country before self. No longer, it seems. Twenty years of “forever war,” spurning the grunts who bled for DEI, and politically-motivated senior officers like Milley have put paid to Duty, Honor, and Country.
Little wonder why a hell of a lot of Americans are not buying the “bipartisan” calls for burning up ever more money in Ukraine, and the creep towards committing ground forces there, all while we are literally being invaded from the south.
Dearie me, let’s summarise this article as follows:
“Across Europe and America, politicians now openly exhort their populations to feel righteous patriotism and to answer the call of duty,”
“What makes this situation so intractable today is that our political elites have more or less made themselves immune to the negative consequences of their own policies. They neither apologise for mistakes nor accept responsibility for them.”
“For human societies entering periods of chaos, history shows a fairly similar dynamic: an increasing number of citizens choose to retreat. They stop serving and caring; they become indeed not a problem of morals, nor a situation that is helped by blaming the young. Instead, the withdrawal of the people, just like the withdrawal of the shoreline, is a sign that a tsunami is approaching.”
Well, well. What better exemplar of the famous quote from Jefferson:
“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
Elites beware.
You’re not wrong. I basically want the entire establishment – the BBC, the uniparty, the judiciary, the CPS, the police, the entire civil service, Border Force, the looniversities – liquidated. Every last filthy one of them. And then to start again.
I have to say though that not all Unis are as mad as portrayed. I do some visiting lecturer work and so far haven’t encountered any issues when discussing controversial topics.
Civil servants would be the first against the wall come the revolution.
Sadly Rome is already ablaze, the politicians are fiddling (in more senses than one) and the people are placated with bread and circuses.
The Kremlin must be have learned Jefferson’s lesson.
Our woke elites hate and despise us.
Once you understand this you understand everything.
Worse still they hold us in utter contempt, thinking us utterly stupid.
If I ever do have to fight, it won’t be on their side.
We are too rich, and the bucks are in the hands of too few. That is what occurred in Rome and then the decline when the Roman middle class started to slide into proles and they were left with the “Elites” of their day, a small merchant class, and a great multitude of proles. These proles expected to be able to feed and house themselves as citizens and that happened until Rome could not afford it. Then came, very slowly, chaos and then the end. The great majority of the bucks went to the elite, with a few crumbs to the proles.
We are getting very close to that point as we have the greediest, most inept, incompetent “elites” in the history of the world. No matter who wins the American Presidency, there will be civil disobedience, some initial insurrection, and then, a period of escalation. And this will be coming to the rest of the West soon after.
Get the popcorn out.
The public sector has grown so much that it has become a cancer destroying from within.
The new middle classes running it have a virulent hatred for those working classes, their own grandparents were members of.
So their every generation pre modern times worked hard. Usually with their hands, saved what they could, went without to provide their offspring a better life. They were desperate to climb the ladder themselves but choices were not so vast back then. Every parent wants their child/children to do better than they did. Is it any wonder children grow up despising where they came from, sneering at their parents modest means or looking down their noses that their parents settled for less. They’ve been spoon fed bigotry from birth. Be better, do better, aim higher. Nobody ever aspires to live in a council house anymore,. Even a right to buy is still an ex council house. We’ve always suffered from social snobbery, even the working classes, as those who got out of the drudgery rarely had a good word to say about those they left behind. The incentive was to get as far away from the drudgery as possible and never look back.
The definition of crazy. Going to the polls to vote and expecting a fair and honest result from the new improved Democrat voting process. Mail in votes, programable vote machines, semi truck loads of illegible ballots delivered after the polls close and counted in secret by Democrat operatives. What could possibly go wrong?
The lack of accountability is not a bug – it’s a feature. When was it last a reasonable expectation that a MP or Minister would resign after being found guilty of unacceptable behaviour, and even resign from public life?
And that perception rolls over in the public’s attitudes. “If the Great and Good are no longer great or good why should I heed what they say?”
Very good point. Wellington said England’s greatest asset was her honesty.
“ This is not a problem of morals, nor a situation that is helped by blaming the young.”
A problem of morals is exactly what it is, that and the inability to see how lucky we are and how transient civilisation could be.
In Israel we thought we were at that point before Hamas attacked us and everything pulled back together. There is still deep resentment at the lack of accountability of those who got us here, but when the chips came down, people realised that they were fighting for themselves, not the Prime Minister who got us here.
Planned, funded and orchestrated by the CIA to create the pretext. How do I know?
I just do. And I’m right.
Helps that you have a solid understanding of your Isaeli and Jewish culture, which continues to evolve in different manners. Even though there are huge differences between secular/liberal and the haredinin Israel, you can see the connections still, especially in demographics. Even secular Jewish couples have larger families and overall help keep birth above replacement level, unlike here in Europe.
I’m not sure that USA and a lot of countries in Europe have much connecting them as the polarisation is so marked
Maybe your survive or be killed choice focuses the mind, whereas our society is likely to just collapse in on itself with no obvious target to fight.
You also have military service; our lot wouldn’t know which end of a gun to take hold of.
But Mike, we wouldn’t need to hold a gun in the first place if we had politicians making decent foreign policy…
…as in surrendering to the people who don’t mind guns? No thanks…
Ever heard of “speak softly and carry a big stick”? Well, sometimes you also need to use the big stick. That’s what it’s like in the real world.
Is that what they do in Israel? in the UK we don’t need big sticks(yet), No one has tried to invade us since WW2 despite the sh*t stirring the USA does! The American government is doing a good job of winding up Russia and China at Europe’s expense… Will Biden provide an ‘aid package’ for our big sticks??
The people who hate Israel hate the UK too.
Chamberlain did everything possible to prevent WW2 but it failed. After Dunkirk Churchill realised we needed to go onto the offensive so he created the Commandos – butcher and bolt and the SOE- set Europe Ablaze. Perhaps there is no more thoughtful and insightful discussion on war than by Cheshire VC.
RAF CASPS Historic Interview | Group Captain Leonard Cheshire (youtube.com)
Victoria Cross Recipient | Leonard Cheshire V.C | World War Two | In Valour | 1985 (youtube.com)
Chamberlain did everything possible to prevent WW2 but it failed.
Well, he tried gullibility and cowardice, but neither worked.
Re read your history ! He knew we weren’t ready in 1938. Certainly not psychologically ready for another massive war.
Nup. The guy knew what he was doing, and he was no coward.
So that “piece of paper” nonsense was all an act? He knew all along Hitler would utterly ignore it? If so, why did he resign?
I doubt it.
The British guarantee to Poland was a tool specifically crafted to produce a reason to declare war.
Tell that to the leaders of China, Russia and Iran.
At least there are some practical measures in place for the protection of the Israeli civilian population. In the UK there is nothing and no talk of anything ever being provided for civilians. Knowing that your family is being provided with somewhere to go to shelter from air raids at least shows that your politicians place some value on their lives, and thus provides some incentive for people to fight.
What I find mind boggling is the size of the British army. Israel, a country of a little less than 10 million people, mobilized around half a million soldiers (conscripts, professional army and reserves) after 7th October. Britain, country of 67 million can mobilize just over 100k on a good day? That will never be able to defend you.
Realistically, do you see any foreign army invading the U.K.?
Jihad. It’s happening!
There’s an irregular army invading the UK right now. Tens of thousands of military-age foreign men.
Weirdly, the RAF fly from Akrotiri to shoot down drones in defence of Israel, but no UK force patrols the channel to stop the invasion.
An enemy could cause an awful lot of damage and loss of life without ever setting foot in the UK. That’s why drones and nuclear bombs were invented.
Then why do you have an army at all?
‘Then why do you have an army at all?’
To legitimise America’s wars of course! doh
As I recall, the UK managed to get themselves into WWI and WWII all by themselves with no help from the USA, not that the UK had much choice in WWII.
It enables the royal family to wear uniform and display medals. It performs well at state ceremonial events (cf Queen’s funeral)
Tourists in London seem to find Guardsmen very good photographic props.
Yes. Our defence budget has been subjected to austerity cuts along with every other public service over the last 14 years. Not that we have any politicians who are capable of providing leadership in a war situation. The days of Churchill are long gone. All we have are vain arrogant idiots who are only interested in filling their own pockets.
The military budget has been in constant decline as a proportion of GDP since the 1950s – the last 14 years are no different to the 60 before them.
The annual US military budget is now less than the annual debt.
Israel is surrounded by hostile nations, but has a population who believe in it.
Britain is surrounded by water, but has a population who no longer believe in it.
I’m ‘liking’ your post but disagreeing too. I think there are still many people in this country, including the youth, who love and believe in this country but are too afraid to say so – such is the amplification given to those who wish to see the demise of the West in the media such as the BBC and Sky and in so many official communications.
And it’s been busy importing a population that hate it.
Some of us know. My father was an officer in the Dragoon Guards, in the early 1970s, and he always lamented the lack of readiness. Of course, his service was during the Cold War when politicians and the general public were more realistic about the potential of an attack (Prague Spring had happened in 1968, and ended with Soviet tanks rolling through the streets), but even then we didn’t have sufficient numbers of troops to ensure our defence.
Given that we are an Island, the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force are more important. The British Army is for expeditionary matters (beating up Johnny Foreigner) whenever our govenment decides that this is once again necessary.
…from my experience of my twenty-year old student son and his pals…I rather think that’s about right. My own sense is that the UK is abouit where it was in 1936 when the Oxford Union voted overwhelmingly not to “Defend King and Country”…three years later they were flying Spitfires over Kent…three years after that, tankbound in the Western Desert, on the Arctic or Atlantic Convoys, or falling back to the border of British India…and two years on, going ashore at Gold, Juno and Sword.
At the moment he’d poo-poo the idea. But he is my Son, and I know him. But then he’s not called Tarquin and doesn’t go to the LSE…
The difference was that in 1936 boys from the grammar and public schools were much tougher due to the sports played, boxing, rugby and cricket. Someone who has played rugby and boxed or even better rugby, rowed and boxed at school has the fitness of the average soldier. It is upper body fitness, pull ups, and strength of the spine to carry packs, which take time to develop.
In 1936 those were just trendy dilettante arts undergraduates who have always postured thus, and the rest of the country was recognisably Britain and was theirs.
That’s not true today. The class that goes and does the fighting is literally hated by the class that expects them to keep doing it. And it knows it, so this time, it will not do its duty.
We might then find out whether women, gays, ethnic minorities and the mentally ill really are all just as good at everything as white males. But somehow I don’t see any of them fighting either. They haven’t sought equality of outcome so they can share in all the dirty and dangerous jobs, have they?
In 1936, the UK was, more or less, still a cohesive monoculture. We no longer have that luxury thanks to the push for `multiculturalism’; a push that came about because certain demographics were not interested in integrating into the host culture. But hey, we don’t have to leave the UK to find a decent Greek, Indian, or Chinese etc restaurant….
A monoculture is like porridge, it might be bland but throw it against the wall and it sticks (more or less) together. Multiculturalism is like jellybeans throw them against the wall and they scatter in every direction.
I think our elites should show us how it is done just like in 14-18.
Conscript the children of Blair, Cameron etc. give them guns and dispatch them to Ukraine
Pour encourager les autres . . . I like it!
In 22yrs in the army my husband obviously met many who served, including a surprising number of sons of the titled aristocracy for whom service seemed to be a tradition. Some of those men had everything, money, land (brains even – and looks – you’d be surprised). There was also a number of the untitled but historically monied.
As I watched them shipping out to pile into tanks for the first Iraq war I found the ‘noblesse oblige’ surprising. I understood Cpl.Flanagan better. Though in our amiable chats I could barely comprehend his Glaswegian brogue, I still remember his character and courage. His brothers were escorted to his funeral by prison personnel. The army could have provided a way out, a way up, a trade (HGV licence, vehicle maintenance etc) even a family of sorts. But the UK government was determined to civilianise every ‘trade’, cut out every perk, rename/rejig every regiment that held history/loyalty. In his later service, my husband was pushing a desk – fighting in Whitehall and during visits from MOD sponsored business consultants for everything they were determined to hand over to SERCO&Co.
The one person my husband never met in uniform was the son of a politician. Perhaps they were all too busy engaging with SERCO.
..’brains even – and looks – you’d be surprised)’
Why would we be surprised?
Ref: the depiction of upper class characters like George and General (Lord) Melchett in the brilliant Blackadder. One encountered the concept of witless, ‘chinless wonders’ not infrequently. Jocular, as a rule, but there.
Th MOD civil servants and politicians appear to have an inferiority complex with those who have served and take a perverse pleasure in making their life difficult.
The family coat of arms was often given for bravery on the battlefield, not giving money to political parties, as today.
Can’t we just dispatch them to Ukraine without the weapons?
That would not be sporting.
But here’s an idea, we could seek out the children of the elite and challenge them wherever they go as to why they are not in the Ukraine
27% of Harrovians who fought in WW1 were killed, the record for any public school. The death rate for aircrew in WW2 was 55%. To make matters worse aircrew needed a high level of education for entry( most were grammar and public schools ) school, so we lost the bright and brave.
“our political elites have more or less made themselves immune to the negative consequences of their own policies”
And not just the political elite, but also the academic, commercial, judicial, economic and public service elites – most clearly seen in the big cities and university towns. It’s much easier to wring your hands over illegal immigrants, stand against a democracy fighting for its life against radical Islam and favour self-declared victims over the majority when you have a relatively safe, well-paid job, house in the comfy suburbs and a generous pension fund; not so much when you’re on lower wages, in social/rented housing and the local schools and doctor surgeries are crap!
But worst of all, is the active anti-patriotism of the elites, which naturally causes those who would be the cannon fodder to ask, ‘Why should I, when they don’t give a shit?’ The crazy thing is that it is the potential cannon fodder who are most likely to be patriotic, but are reliably informed that this is due to their innate racism, bigotry and lack of intelligence.
Why would the elites care? They have already set themselves up to jump on the global ship.
I was reminded of a crucial moment in time whilst listening to an ANZAC school service where the idea of putting others before ones self was announced as a way to keep and foster a close community.
That moment was in about 1971 or so when we were taught that ” my friend and I” was no longer the correct use of the English language; it was now “me and my friend.” As an 8 or 9 year old I instinctively knew this was going to promote greed (dog eat dog/greed is good).
About the same time our lady teachers went off to be educated about feminism prior to our return to school after the Xmas holidays. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, but I do remember many of our female teachers coming back with negative attitudes towards the boys in the class that had not been there the previous year. We all know this attitude has only grown and the effect is seen everywhere. Race has been and continues to be used in a similar way.
Then of course we all became consumers instead of citizens and there was no such thing as ” society.” In other words, our leaders have pitted us against one another for their benefit and now the wheels are falling off, they are readying themselves to leave us in the lurch.
Julius Evola popped up on my YouTube feed last night and I watched a short video summarising some main points of his ‘far-right’ philosophy. It combines Eastern mysticism and monarchism, psychoanalysis and ‘caste-ism’; a veritable smorgasbord of different elements.
His main work ‘Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga’ has a lot of interesting things to say about democracies, capitalism, socialism, psychoanalysis and the decline of all previous traditions. A lot of it is not miles away from the comments I frequently read here in reaction to the world we currently live in.
He’s a real outlier but a lot seems a fairly accurate analysis of many of our current problems. Maybe that’s why Candace Owens has nailed her flag to the Catholic mast ( although Evola saw ‘clericism’ as another social evil). He thought religious awareness at least gave you some sense of something beyond yourself.
I will have a look. Thanks for your reply.
It’s entirely possible to have “religious awareness”, or a profound sense of something beyond oneself without subscribing to the manipulative machinations characterised by organised religion; or indeed, subscribing to an invented concept of a deity.
I’d argue that those of who have such awareness are actually more spiritually aware than those seeking solace in pieties and the “god bless” mentality.
Behave as if there were a God. Whether there is or isn’t one is missing the point.
I grew up in 1970’s/1980’s UK, I had feminist teachers in high school openly state in class that ‘boys were stupid’ and said that they wouldn’t help them learn anything, and they didn’t. Throughout my life I have watched the UK and its assets being squandered, it’s Males treated as dirt, but as now, when it suits suddenly this shallow, narcissistic garbage society expects men to step up and want to sign up. Sorry, not our country, and never was, it’s just a postal address. The UK could be taken with barely a shot fired.
“I had feminist teachers in high school openly state in class that ‘boys were stupid’ Bullshit you did. They might have explained that boys often copied their fathers violent behaviour for example but they would not have stated that “boys are stupid”.
In other words, we are all guilty.
If the rich “leave us in the lurch” and take their pets (the politicians) and all their money with them, we would all be better off without them.
I hear that Mars is awfully nice. And there’s no capital gains tax!
The 175 billion is actually 175 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
I can see the coming Tsunami. Sometime in the 2032-2034 time period, the U.S. Social Security trust fund will not have the funds to pay benefits as promised. If we can call it a promise. If the US does nothing, benefits will automatically get cut. Sustaining benefits at current levels would require increasing taxes on the younger working population. Do you think they’ll support that? Probably not.
Then we’ll have a large cohort of elderly going into poverty or having to sell other assets to sustain themselves. Elderly are large consumers of healthcare. Same issue if the Medicare Trust Fund runs dry sometime between 2028 and 2030. Sustaining benefits at current levels would require increasing taxes on the younger working population. Do you think they’ll support that? Probably not. Then taxes will need to go up in other areas. Or the US will need to ration care. A further mess would result if more elderly stop seeking care and the healthcare providers see less business.
What a mess. And as an American, i feel we need to confront it. We cannot tax a smaller younger population into poverty to sustain a larger more well do to elderly population. I expect benefit cuts.
The elderly will have to be expropriated. There’s a reason why assisted dying is rising up the agenda everywhere. The state will have to assist the dying of old people who don’t want to die. It needs their money.
You’d think they’d encourage smoking.
And their housing
Canada’s numbers are worse. Our Medicare system is already in collapse. Seniors are euthanizing themselves regularly.
Sadly, there is no will to confront it among either the political class or the electorate. Even now, Team Biden is floating out the idea of a ridiculously high capital gains tax along with a wealth tax that would put a levy on unrealized gains/profits. This is what passes as deep thought in DC.
And what is wrong with ‘selling assets to sustain oneself’. A person accumulates assets when of working age and consumes them when no longer working.
A greedy older generation seems to expect the young to pay high taxes to keep them in houses, cars and holidays that the young cannot afford themselves. This same generation has used it’s power to destroy pension prospects of anyone under 40 who doesn’t work for the state.
And now the young are expected to fight to preserve a lifestyle that they will never see for a generation who have never had to fight for anything.
Almost 60 myself so not a whinging youngster.
Probably your leaders will look at Canada and realise they can euthanise the country into financial sustainability.
Medicare/ Medicaid funds are soon to hit-the-wall triggering automatic cuts. This will be interesting.
f*****g bring it on; I’m tired of this decadence and torpor.
Speak for yourself. Or maybe get up and do something? There’s no need to rush Armageddon if you’re sure it’s coming anyway
I AM doing something. I’m doing everything I possibly can, but I’m only one insignificant person.
In the UK our Prime Minister saw nothing wrong with holding a document which allowed him to live & work in a foreign country & his wife to be registered as a “non dom” for tax purposes. Why would I answer a “call up” from a man like that ?
How shallow. You’d not be answering “a call up for a man like that”, but to defend your family, your home and your tribe.
whoooosh
A land that Rishi and the globalist cabal who put him there have sold out. I expect that Labour will finish the job when the are elected in the autumn.
We only get one chance at a life. Why should the younger generation fight in a war called by politicians who are highly unlikely to have to risk their useless lives in it? Nor will the warmongers in the mainstream media have to fight in it. They will be protected from war’s worst effects by holing up underground or migrating to a safe country. The rest of us won’t be so lucky as there is no infrastructure in place to protect citizens from air raids. I note that not even one article I have read by a warmongering journalist or politician even mentions civilian protection – which generates even less motivation for the young to fight if they face the prospect of losing their family in said war.
Good point. Those who sent people into action in WW2 had fought in WW1. It was the Labour Party who flatly refused to support increase defence spending in the 1930s meant that the industrial working classes living next to docks and factories had their homes destroyed. If it had not been for the London Undergound, the death toll in the East End Of London would have been much greater. It was Chamberlain who insisted on the development of fighters, the Hurricane and Spitfire, in order to protect Bitain from bombing.
Yes, but at least in WW2 there was a plan to evacuate the children, and people could get Anderson shelters though I don’t know how effective they were.
.
True. Anderson shelters protected people from shrapnel, flying glass from windows being blown apart and houses falling on them.
“And what is America’s political class doing in the face of this looming fiscal disaster? They are quite literally borrowing money to send to Ukraine and Israel instead”
… er not literally. More like buying munitions from American companies and sending the goods. That way the money and economic benefit stays in the USA.
You might want to read up on the “broken window fallacy”.
Agreed. When the money supply is fixed then there are winners and losers in a closed system. In todays economy, printing money to pay for the window means everyone gets what they want – it’s the inflation it causes and future generations who are the losers.
Quite right – but the conclusion that people are not willing to fight is the wrong conclusion. Just look at the gilets jaunes, and the various robust farmer protests across Europe. People are willing to fight for themselves and their communities, but not – as the article correctly says – for elites who no longer represent them. After all, Annalena Baerbock openly said that she doesn’t care what he voters think, she’ll do what she decides.
You forget “Covid” – for two and a half years, our elites terrorised us, deprived us of every constitutionally protected right and freedom, ruined our society, ruined the education of a generation of schoolchildren, ruined our economy, made a mockery of science and the rule of law, violently repressed legitimate protest, censored our speech … and it is impossible to hide that not only was it all for nothing, but it made things a lot worse.
Ukraine is very similar. It was a completely unnecessary war, brought around by Western arrogance and waged by exploiting the grandiose fantasies of extreme far-right Ukrainian nut-jobs. As with “Covid”, that is becoming impossible to hide.
People are willing to fight, but the people will define the society they’re willing to fight for.
We are headed for a reckoning. That is not a bad thing, though it will be painful.
This is the correct conclusion to draw from the article. Some of the hand-wringing responses show a determination only to be myopic.
The West is expending more energy tearing itself down than in any defense. Who needs external threats when the enemy from within is doing the job for them? And given the idiots parading across multiple campuses, the cycle is poised to continue since it is graduates of those very universities that disproportionately populate govt. The country is actively participating in its own demise.
Our leadership and the expert class are, as usual, missing something very important. In this age of drone warfare, targeted artillery, etc, just moving our forces up to the “front” will be an invitation to slaughter. Your sons and nephews will die before they get within a hundred miles.
Or imagine trying to insert troops into the conflict, like our air cavalry in Viet Nam. Every possible landing zone will be pre-targeted and swarmed by drones at the touch of a single key.
It’ll just be murder, plain and simple. Large scale war is no longer feasible, except as a population control strategy.
I think the only reason the war in Ukraine morphed into this WW1 style trench warfare but with drones is the lack of air superiority.
Had the Russian air force lived up to the expectations the Ukrainians would have no time to play around with fpv drones much.
The war in Ukraine was not supposed to be won quickly. The expectation was that it would be lost quickly. Offers were made to Zelensky et al to ferry them out of the country at the beginning of the invasion.
Luckily the Ukrainians dug in and fought. Not that they had a lot of choice, as they knew what would happen to them if the Russians took over.
Exactly.
Genocide, like in 1930s.
Obviously pro Russian clowns on this site and others pretend not to know history.
The sky continues to fall. I’m an old guy who has been told all my life, by one faction or another, that the end is near.
It is hard to comprehend why brutal poverty in this world is at its lowest point ever. Wealth, far beyond dreams of 50 or 75 years ago, is normal in the West, while whining about hardship is as common as ever.
For the utopians among us, things will never be right. I say continue to work on what isn’t great, but rejoice in all we have.
Considering the political elite, academia, and the main stream media have spent the last 20 or more years excoriating and demonising white young males, the demographic that would make up the larger part of any army, it is hardly surprising that they won’t fight. They have been given no political stake in the counties that their forefathers fought for and defended.
one can’t help but think that this was the plan from the beginning.
On the other, it’s beyond obvious that nobody cares.
They might start off not caring, but that may change when the Russian Army starts raping and murdering their way through their country.
Ain’t it just the modern way for some media hack to spout off about what other people do or don’t think and should or shouldn’t do ? As if they’re all one homogeneous group. And as if he knows.
The one common thread in this sort of nonsense is the denial of any individual agency and the assumption that as circumstances change, behaviours do not.
But people do have agency and adapt their views as situations become more critical. Britain 1939. Ukraine 2022. To cite just 2 examples.
Doubtless the author would have written that there’s no way we would have fought to recover the Falkland Islands in 1982. No rational analysis would have forecast that. And yet we did.
The author really needs to get out more and meet a wider range of people. And study some history.
Elites who have imposed their Anywhere philosophy, denigrating nationalism.and celebration of national culture, should not be surprised when the Somewheres refuse to take up arms. They have effectively made their own bed. Hopefully their bunkers will be.comfortable places to lie in them.
They are not elites, they are wealthy and affluent. If we go back to the end of Roman Empire, the leaders were the military aristocracy, fighting defined their status. A gentleman had a coat of arms to identify to his followers where he was on a battle field. The connection with the military and navy in Britain carried on with the working class and the landowning gentry and then public schools. As Orwell said , in the pre WW2 public schools the greatest honour was to die for one’s country.
The rise of financiers and a liberal urban class, such as Asquith, a barrister, and those living on dividends, such as the Webbs, created an effete affluent impractical class who despised physical courage, patriotism and British culture. The massive increase in the service sector and humanities departments in universities has resulted in the left wing middle class intellectuals view of despising physical courage, practical action, patriotism and British culture ( especially boxing- the manly art of self defence and rugby). . As Arthur Bryant stated, in the 1820s a gentleman was expected to be able to clear a lane with his morleys. The boxing ring was considered the nursery of manliness.
Today we have what Ibn Khaldun noticed in the 14 century.When men are protected by walls and garrisons they lose their manliness and uprightness. He was comparing town Arabs with Beduin.
The reason why the Boers( they inspired Churchill to create the Commandos) in the Boer War and New Zealanders and Rhodesians were such effective special forces in WW2 was their tough upbringing which encourage independence of thought and action. It was worth listening to WW2 Commando officers who fought on the St Nazaire Raid to appreciate the decline in the manliness and uprightness of most of the ruling class in the Western World.
Jeremy Clarkson’s the Greatest Raid of All – the FULL documentary | North One (youtube.com)
The Commando officers were extremely tough brave gentleman. One does not need to be coarse or crude to be tough.
Thank you for the YouTube link! I agree with every word you wrote. There is a meme that’s been floating around online for some time now, and although some self-identified “intellectuals” despise it for its simplicity, I find the simplicity poignant. The truth doesn’t have to be complex. The meme goes like this: Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
Editor – first line!!
Ha. I’m actually glad he didn’t fix it. Good article. The error only enhanced the authenticity.
That’s how I’m spelling it from now on.
What do you mean? A typo?
Have no idea what is being referred to here but “disinterest” makes me cringe. In fact, it is used wrongly at least twice in the article.
Speak for yourself, I have land, sheep, family and a gun. Very happy to defend them all
Real useful against a fighter jet or cruise missile I’m sure
You’ve obviously never experienced being savaged by a dead sheep
I don’t know about sheep herders, but the goat herders won against the fighter jets and cruise missiles Billy.
Those goat herders were a battle hardened well trained militia with bombs and rockets, not a few farmers with shotguns
Oh you are funny. They had hardly anything more to work with than small arms. I knew a couple of guys who got shot at with old fashioned muzzle loaders a time or two. They may have had some battle hardened vets but their “training” was garbage. By the time we left the country, we had killed off all of the stupid and incompetent ones. Also they seemed to get better trained as time went on like they were adaptable or something. I don’t know. Maybe a lot of the ANA that US Marines were told to train just so happened to be Taliban or something. Turns out cheap small arms, improvised explosives, and dogged determination counts for a lot.
We’re going to ignore all the weapons and training the Americans gave them while they were battling the Soviet Union are we?
It would take an awful lot of cruise missiles to take out every 50 acre sheep farm in North America….about 122119479 in fact
Gun sales in the USA are up dramatically….
In which order, if I may ask?
🙂
This’s quite a clarifying article. Thank you. Actually ‘my’ own tiny island I live in- there’s a lot of policies thrusted on the populace over decades with no concern of the impact. The difference is here the heads-in-charge say we are thinking wrongly if we disagree. In a way, they are right. The people in power are thinking ‘rightly’ for their own benefit. This leads to apathy and a very competitive nature of society. I think perhaps in a time in history, some laws were actually passed that benefit society and foster people’s love for their community such as freedom of speech laws in the ammendments a long time ago in the States. X
Yep, I’ve already “done an Emily Dickinson”.
Still wrestling with the question of whether it’s worth voting. Do I fully commit to the attitude of “I’ll just learn to deal with anything that comes” and cut those ties to society or is that last bit of duty towards that society worth doing?
10 years ago, the answer to that question would have been a no-brainer. But now? It’s a quandary. Too much has happened that has chipped away my faith in democracy; too often, it’s been exposed as a sham.
I was a forward pioneer in this,not by choice but by fate,and by genetics too, actually. When I attained the age of 30,and that was 40 years ago and realized with an epiphany of blinding clarity that I didn’t fit the narrative or the narrative didn’t fit me I took an alternative route. What I mean is I saw that SOCIETY the one I was born into and had been taught or rather had the idea subtly inculcated and indoctrinated into me that if you did ABC you got the reward or pay or return of XYZ. Simples. But it’s not.
So seeing that I was never going to have a partner which I know shouldn’t matter and being alone is inhabiting the moral high ground and is like being a movie star,ha ha, and means you’re head and shoulders above da common people etc etc,all the things people put on Facebook about how great it is living alone with no friends but really it’s more like a more obscure song by Simon & Garfunkel “I am a Rock”. But the partner thing was the least of it. I was earning money,good money but the gate keepers of property ownership were keeping me at arms length with,you can’t buy a house on your own,you’re a girlie,you’re on your own,it’s raining,it’s Teusday, whatever…plus in that day there was no.access to financial advice or if you knew where to find it you didn’t need it plus my social ineptitude was such that I.didbt know HOW to travel even going to a restaurant or to the theatre was “People like us Don’t do that ” So realizing I was going to have NOTHING EVER that was the promised reward or return or point of being part of society (which already told me I wasn’t,),well,sadly it seems like everybody in the younger generations now is turning into ME ,dreadful fate,or a version of what I had. If you’re being required to work 12 or even odd 14 hour shifts 5 days a week and sometimes 6 but you’re never going to be able to own a house etc is that a system of living youd go to War to.support.or send your grandsons to,or see your great-nephews sent to. None of the elites offspring will be put in the front line and those of us educated in the 1960s.weve read the poetry of Wilfred Owen,weve seen Oh What A Lovely War,you can’t pull that”it’ll all be over by Xmas” + Domino theory on us. We’ve had our inoculations.
I hope you find the Lord someday. That’s the only reward worth fighting for. May God bless you, Jane!
I think the explanation can be expressed rather succinctly: The populations of the West are not, in general, Neoconservative.
Which is to say that they don’t, in general, feel that it is up to us to promote (our version) of democracy all over the world and even if it was, that doing so with the force of arms is not the best way to go about it. They do not feel threatened by ‘the jungle’ out there ‘growing back’ , or believe that all that bombing ‘out there’ really protects us ‘back here’. They don’t’ believe in domino theories and almost certainly don’t know or care what an oblast is.
The West’s populations are right.
No, they’re spoilt and complacent. European welfare states are running out of money, and yet at the same time hampering personal growth and entrepreneurship by over-taxing the smart and hard-working. In the meantime they are also trying to expand their tax-bases through failed mass-immigration policies that result in the thoroughly predictable loss of culture and social cohesion. Moreover, Europe’s best and brightest are emigrating in unprecedented numbers for more prosperous shores. Unless things change soon, European nation states will start to resemble open-air prisons in which those who obey the rules will be rewarded and those who disobey will be targeted as enemies of the state. We’ve already experienced a taste of this during COVID lockdowns and political protests where naysayers received hefty fines or their bank accounts got frozen.
The West’s populations are suffering from slowly boiling frog syndrome.
There would without doubt be an actual rather than a virtual civil war in the United Statss if the liberal and conservative sides could get the Ukrainians to fight it for them…!
Joking aside, this may well become a realistic possibility if stage 2.0 of that proxy war were to involve mobilisation of the millions deprived of their national home.
Its not $175 billion, its $175 trillion, with a T, not a B.
Eyewatering number. $600,000 required from each man, woman and child to fund it. Not gonna happen.
In Israel the brightest and the best are still volunteering for the best combat units. And they have children, lots of them.
When the alternative is massacre, it keeps your personal priorities in touch with reality.
$175 billion is no longer eyebrow raising let alone eye-watering. It must be $175 trillion and no one cares about that amount either.
Stories of the relatively imminent collapse of social security, Medicare, the unservicibility of the national debt, have been around all my life. I’ve grown up with them. They’re learned at the same time and with the same rapt attention as are the 3 R’s.
The atomic bombs we avoided by hiding under our desks never came and these accounting calamities never did either.
The NFL draft is tonight. Please don’t bother me until it’s over.
Perhaps the author made a Freudian slip with that figure. Billions, trillions, who cares? It’s all monopoly money these days. They’ll print more.
It’s when interest on the debt begins to compound in a head-swiveling manner and when payments on the debt exceed defense spending- we’re there and it’s uncomfortable to say the least.
I can remember walking to my local post office, just after my 18th birthday in 1973, and asking the clerk, my heart pounding, for the card that I was required to fill out in order to enter the Selective Service…better known as “the draft”. By that time the Vietnam War was winding down, and the American citizenry were disillusioned with their military leaders, including the Commander-in-Chief (i.e. The President of the United States). Two years later Saigon fell, and the U.S. was forced to switch to an all volunteer military.
Today, unless you’re working for some component of the Military Industrial Complex, or are a voluntary member of the armed forces, you, as an American citizen, have limited connection to our adventures in foreign wars when our troops are on the ground…or proxy wars, which are funded by taxpayer dollars without referendum or any sort of public input.
In short, if you want to bring back America’s civilian involvement in foreign warring decision making, then bring back the draft. Nothing screams ” STOP THE WAR(S) ” louder than being notified that you’ve been drafted into military service, and your immediate presence at Fort (fill-in-the-blank) is mandated.
I remember that day as well! And being confused about whether I really wanted to fight, or not, if it came to that. Fortunately for me, that day has not arrived ….. yet.
Agree with the idea of our of touch elites, and an electorate no longer believing citizenship provides tangible benefits is interesting, but your article (perhaps deliberately) does not mention the slow drip feed of the mutated postmodernism destroying our society – nonsense such as critical gender theory, critical race theory and post colonialism makes the younger generations believe (against the evidence of their eyes) that we are living in a racist, trans phobic imperial hellhole. They should speak to victims of genuinely oppressive regimes such as any of the communist regimes of the 20th century, modern Venezuela, DR Congo, Myanmar, Iran, indeed modern Russia. These people think the modern left’s ideas to be wrong and just plain weird – we have a tolerant, rich and vibrant country. Perhaps it is worth defending after all
I wish this essay would be front and center on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. There’s been a sense of dread on the ground in the USA for some time. Even the Ecuadorian-American guy whose company mows our lawn says his wife has a low level sense that things ‘are just not right.’ Perhaps the Jan 6 riot at the Capitol was an indication of Mount frustration? Or is it the lack of interest in military recruitment; 15,000 positions annually go untaken – or is it the rush of millions who are not stopped coming over the southern border, threatening local budgets, creating pressure on housing availability and putting downward pressure on manual labor wages?….perhaps that’s why Trump gets so much traction? The wealthy elites are buffered from any untoward government policies but not so much the ordinary citizen on the street.
Well I still love America better than any other country and I have 2 sons in the military. One did 3 tours in the Middle East and loved it. May have been wasted to some, but he had a great time learning the military and is now a Major. He always wanted to be an Army Man….Our government is a mess and social media is the real boss of most of America. The media is the real president. Ignore it all and just let it roll by – time is on the side of the patient…2 of my grandkids wanna be drone pilots. Est another will be a Marine…Every generation since we came to America we have been military – since 1600s – so see you on the battlefields..
What sort of psychopath has “a great time” in killing people for no discernible purpose? I cannot think of a single benefit that was accrued from the most recent adventure in the Middle East. We were not, as Bush and Cheney expected, greeted as liberators, nor did we leave democracy in our wake. We just left, egregiously so in Afghanistan. In the 20 years I spent in the shadow of Fort Bragg, not once did I encounter a soldier who equated combat to fun.
This kind of American military masturbation doesn’t impress anyone. You are trying too hard. The US is not a military culture: that is why they are so bad at actually fighting. As has been said before: America does war like business, and business like war.
“an insulated, out-of-touch ruling class protected from the ill effects of its own policies,” This is a ruling class, the Cultural Marxist Left Democrats and RINO establishment Republicans who will destroy the country for the sake of personal power. They rule using the concept that the end justifies the means. The Democrat part of the equation has irreversibly changed America with their blatant disregard for the Constitution and their out of control illegal invasion of non European military age males.
Love him or hate him the Conservatives in the UK got rid of a popular leader, Johnson, who had handed them the biggest majority to hand it over to globalist, green card holding Sunak, non-dom’d wife, who no one would have voted for, and no one will vote for in the upcoming election. They, helped by the, very biased, civil service led an obfuscation, whisper and leak campaign against him. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC Cummings claims that: Within days of the Conservatives winning the 2019 general election, Mr Cummings says, he began talking to his allies within Downing Street about ousting Boris Johnson.
“We were already saying, ‘By the summer either we’ll all have gone from here, or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as prime minister,'” he adds.
“He doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t know how to be prime minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem not because he was the right person to be running the country.”
John had successfully run London. The certain problem was (and still is) that Rishi Sunak is unelectable, but they’d rather sink with Sunak at the helm than swim with Boris.
Idiot
“the withdrawal of the people, just like the withdrawal of the shoreline, is a sign that a tsunami is approaching.” We can only hope the tsunami is not too late!
Compliments to author Malcom Kyeyune. A well written and accurate article me thinks.
To fight for a country requires the option of your own country to be better than the option of losing to the other country.
If you really think that living under Russian, Chinese or Iranian occupation would be better than living in any current Western country, then I think you need a reality check. And that is assuming the other option is not massacre.
You must of missed the pink & purple haired half witted students in university spouting how much better we’d be (themselves obviously) if the country was Marxist. Youtube, TikTok is full of them
My father’s generation (he was born in 1915) was massively anti-war, in all classes of society, having seen what the Great War achieved (hint: nothing). At the top end, so to speak, there was the famous debate at the Oxford Union, where the House agreed that they would not fight for King and Country. At the bottom end, where my father was (an East Ender, first generation born in this country to Jewish immigrants from Poland) they were heavily influenced by Communism – my father was a convinced Communist, who was president of his local cell in Bethnal Green – and determined that they would never fight for the capitalists.
What happened? In September 1939, he and his friends were the first in the queue to join up. The only reason that the Oxford Union types weren’t ahead of them was that they tended to know people in authority, so didn’t have to join any queues.
In other words, if the threat were close enough and the enemy evil enough, we might all be surprised. At least, I hope so.
Excellent comment, based on historical/familial experience rather than the faux-knowingness of many comments.
But this comment is not based on historical reality.
Most communist followed Commintern orders and sabotage West war effort because Soviets were allies of Hitler.
Supplying Germany war machine till June 1941.
I have no reason to not believe in your father journey, but it was not the usual one for committed (president of etc) communist.
Most of them follow Moscow orders to sabotage West war effort till June 1941.
Because till then Soviet Russia were allies of Germany, starting ww2 with them by invading Poland.
Obviously, lefty, woke idiots graduates of pseudo universities are never told that by their Neo-Marxists lecturers.
Amazing article, couldn’t relate to more
Just like Pearl Harbor, once attacked, things change. Isolationism ended. When there are not enough volunteers, there is the draft.
America was a monoculture at the time, immigrants aspired to become American. I don’t see that happening today
They are not elites, they are wealthy and affluent. If we go back to the end of Roman Empire, the leaders were the military aristocracy, fighting defined their status. A gentleman had a coat of arms to identify to his followers where he was on a battle field. The connection with the military and navy in Britain carried on with the working class and the landowning gentry and then public schools. As Orwell said , in the pre WW2 public schools the greatest honour was to die for one’s country.
The rise of financiers and a liberal urban class, such as Asquith, a barrister, and those living on dividends, such as the Webbs, created an effete affluent impractical class who despised physical courage, patriotism and British culture. The massive increase in the service sector and humanities departments in universities has resulted in the left wing middle class intellectuals view of despising physical courage, practical action, patriotism and British culture ( especially boxing- the manly art of self defence and rugby) spreading throughout ruling class . As Arthur Bryant stated, in the 1820s a gentleman was expected to be able to clear a lane with his morleys. The boxing ring was considered the nursery of manliness.
Today we have what Ibn Khaldun noticed in the 14 century. When men are protected by walls and garrisons they lose their manliness and uprightness. He was comparing town Arabs with Beduin.
The reason why the Boers( they inspired Churchill to create the Commandos) in the Boer War and New Zealanders and Rhodesians were such effective special forces in WW2 was their tough upbringing which encourage independence of thought and action. It was worth listening to WW2 Commando officers who fought on the St Nazaire Raid to appreciate the decline in the manliness and uprightness of most of the ruling class in the Western World.
Jeremy Clarkson’s the Greatest Raid of All – the FULL documentary | North One (youtube.com)
The commandos officers show one does not have to be coarse or crude to be tough.
In a word, yes. Revolution primarily requires two things. One, an engaged, organized, dedicated minority who are willing to go to great lengths and risk a great deal for the sake of change. Two, a disinterested apathetic majority who are not willing to join the revolution, but neither will they put up much effort to oppose it.
Right now we certainly have the latter, but not the former. Trump, for all his bluster about draining the swamp, is content to play ball within the current system. He pushes the boundaries of acceptability within the system, but not in any organized or effective way. He’s just playing to the crowd, using the deep anti-elite sentiment for the sake of self-aggrandizement. I think a direct revolution or coup that simply takes over the existing government is unlikely. It would almost have to come from within the military, because the military is still respected enough that if they took over, it would probably be accepted for a while. No revolution could ever stick without at least tacit acceptance of the military for obvious reasons.
A grassroots popular revolution in the US will almost certainly not be national in scope. The country is too large, too diverse, and too heterogeneous for that. It’s painfully obvious that the interests of California will never align very well with those of Kentucky or Virginia or Maine, and so forth. Any grassroots revolutionary movement will almost certainly take the familiar form of a state or states trying to secede from the union and pursue their own social and economic policy. Since the states have most of the functions of a national government already and even their own military in the form of the national guard, it remains the path of least resistance for anyone who wants out from under the boots of the federal government.
Didn’t you guys fight aware about 160 years ago to stop states succeeding from the Union. No president is going to want to be remembered as the person responsible for dismantling the USA. It is said civil wars are the bloodiest
Yes, but as liberals take great pains to remind us at every opportunity, that war was about slavery, not states’ rights or secession. They’re quite righteven if it is for the wrong reasons. Without the slavery issue, there would have been no reason for either side to fight. The southern states would probably not have been forced into a position where they felt it necessary or desirable to secede, nor would the north have had any compelling moral imperative to generate public support to sustain the war effort. They would have let the south go.
The civil war resulted in two amendments to the Constitution, the thirteenth, which banned slavery, and the fourteenth, which guaranteed equal rights to all citizens, and it wasn’t much enforced in the south from 1876-1955 due to political considerations. Reconstruction was essentially abandoned as being too expensive and problematic to continue as it probably would have led to low level warfare of the type seen in many other places then and now when one group simply doesn’t like being ruled by another group and makes the ruling as difficult as it can be short of open rebellion. It was more convenient to simply let the south have Jim Crow than to force them into compliance.
Some amendments to explicitly outlaw secession were proposed before and during the Civil War, but were never passed, nor were any passed afterwards nor since. For all that the conventional wisdom is that the question of secession was resolved by the civil war, there was essentially no structural change in the federal and state government or the division of responsibilities. Most of the power creep we now see in the federal government actually only only dates back to WWII and the New Deal, when the government was forced to intervene in an existential economic crisis and then fight a new kind of ‘total war’ that required a complete mobilization of the productive and military capacity across the country.
Despite the history, despite the conventional wisdom, the USA is structurally still not a unified country or a unified government. The federal government has no direct control over the states on day to day issues. California has its own emission standards for vehicles that have, for decades, forced auto makers to sell different versions of their cars and for incoming residents moving to California to have their own cars converted to so-called ‘California’ emissions. The National Guard is still organized by state, and just a couple months ago the governor of Texas called them in to ‘reinforce’ the Texas-Mexico border with razor wire and fencing. The President could theoretically nationalize the guard as head of the military, but he didn’t, because that hasn’t been done except during wars to deploy the guards in foreign conflicts. To nationalize the guard in time of peace in direct response to a state action would have been basically testing the loyalty of every guardsmen. It could have resulted in a mass resignation that would have been a global embarrassment. Biden wisely backed off and chose to simply act quietly through legal action. The national guards are a potential source of a military force that would be more formidable, organized, better armed, and better trained than most revolutionary and militia forces, and let’s remember that two decades later, the Taliban is still in Kabul and the US military is not. In states where the military has a significant physical presence in terms of equipment and bases, like Texas, a rogue governor could seize a lot of weapons very quickly and force the federal government to make some very unpleasant choices.
The civil war only ever resolved the theoretical question of secession, but secession and rebellion are, by their very nature, not theoretical questions. Murder is against the law almost everywhere but people still get murdered every day because just because one isn’t allowed to do a thing doesn’t mean one physically cannot do that thing. It’s not a question of what should happen, but what can happen. It’s a question of practical possibilities, of what can physically be done when nobody cares to follow the rules anymore. That being the case, the mechanical, structural factors that made secession possible in 1860 are, by and large, all still there, and some things that weren’t there, like the national guard situation, have arguably made secession more realistic from a practical standpoint.
I know over there Scotland has made some noise about leaving the UK, and it’s generally accepted that they could if they ever got enough support to do it. That’s because there’s a legal process in place to let them do so. The only difference between Scotland and Texas is some words on a document that establish a legal procedure for Scotland to leave the UK. There’s no legal procedure here, but it doesn’t change the fact that Texas has it’s own government, it’s own elected officials, it’s own laws, policies, and all the trappings of government. I’ll also say that it would be a good deal more difficult to subdue Texas by force should they decide that yes, they really want to secede and are willing to contest the point with violent action.
I don’t anticipate anything rising to that level. I expect without an overarching moral issue like slavery, if the disagreements got so bad and the disputes so heated that states started contemplating secession referendums (and there are people who tried to collect signatures for just that in California and Texas), there would likely be some kind of compromise reached that either changed the Constitution in some way to give the states more independence or just drew up a new Constitution because everybody, especially the wealthy and powerful with the most to lose, would conclude that a war would be much worse for everyone than simply letting the other side have their way on their own turf.
An excellent, intelligent post, thanks Steve, I agree although my earlier comments about a mass abstaining from Facebook and Amazon, could precipitate the up and coming financial crisis?
I think the expectation was the Ukraine War would be short, because Ukraine would lose almost immediately. There were offers to fly Zelensky et al out of the country, IIRC.
Excellent article. Thank you Mr Kyeyune and UnHerd.
No one has time for war as we’re too busy binge watching Netflix or And & Dec, big brother, love island, married at first sight. If you want to motivate the masses into war mode take away their TV’s, mobile phone access and kill the internet. The streets would be flooded with pissed off folk in no time. They would be prepared to commit all kinds of atrocities to get back to their soma induced coma of non stop entertainment fed through multiple devices. Neil Postman write a book about it. We are simply “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
The Ukrainians must be fast learners if they are checking out of being part of an empire that they have only recently joined. Is that a measure of the speed of the tide?
Or is that a legacy of being part of the Soviet empire? If the latter, they are not ideal members to bolster the crumbling Western/American imperial edifice.
The Roman emperors gave incentives to the new peoples who entered the Empire to behave themselves and to be good citizens. Roman generals recruited these new peoples as federate troops.
Eventually, the leaders of these new peoples decided to dispense with the appearance of subjectivity that the titles that the emperors had bestowed on them and claim their own authority.
The one thing that the Aztec and Roman rulers didn’t have was electronic and digital technology. In its various forms it is an instrument that lends the rulers who use it an advantage that the Caesars didn’t have.
As for the young generations, how many of them are moved by the repeated celebrations of the Second World War. The moral scripture of Britain’s part in this leaves the young people I know completely cold.
These celebrations, such as for D-Day, an event that for today’s young took place a lifetime ago and in a world totally alien to them, have become a bore. What did the Trojan wars that moved the early Roman aristocracy mean to the Lombard and Alemannic farmer and his wife?
I wonder how many US soldiers volunteer from Oregon?
With Portland trashed and full of the drugged & insane, as it was yesterday, and with virtually no shops selling stuff anyone wants or can afford, what exactly, and who exactly?!? would they be fighting for?
Eastern Oregon, like Eastern Washington and Northern California, are very conservative.
Excellent!
A much better article than I expected given the headline. I thing that there is a lot to be said in favour of his diagnosis, as to the prognosis, only time will tell.
Excellent analysis. One indicator of the general lack of resolve is reflected in the now widespread overuse of extremely expensive missile and drone defense systems in both Ukraine and Israel. These systems were designed to defend against first strike assaults to be immediately followed by massive counteroffensives to cripple an enemy’s capability to mount additional strikes. They are magnificently effective but were never intended as a perpetual shield in lieu of aggressive counteroffensive measures. To use them exclusively for prolonged defense against massively cheaper and easier to build weapons is an attritional catastrophe unfolding in slow motion. We will run out of these defensive systems components far sooner than Russia, Iran, and North Korea will exhaust their capacity to supply offensive missiles and drones. What will we do then? Why have we defaulted to this? Because we have not the stomach for a real fight.
Why is this being presented as a choice?
In the event of WWIII between US and China we would have no option but to join in on the US’ side.
The era of comfortably sliding along as if war was not the human default is over – and it is over because Liberalism has destroyed that status quo.
I looked through the Politico article that would supposedly tell me how ordinary people in the West are being hurt by the sanctions on Russia, but I didn’t see anything about that. I didn’t read every word, but it certainly wasn’t the major thrust of the article. I’d say this assertion needs more evidence.
De T or no de T, people will not be led into a war that’s not for them. And the great majority of Western denizens, of all persuasions, doubt that their countries are being run for their benefit or even security.
Talking up the inevitably of international conflict as we hear on all sides does not re establish trust or lead to people relegating their concerns to necessary national interest. As a hundred odd years ago, only actual war can bring that about. And it has to be real war, total war chez nous not a little war over there somewhere in which ‘our interests’ are supposed to be at stake. That just begs the question.
So we are heading for a showdown, not between countries but within them. Will our masters dare resort to total war to maintain their rule? And will enough people see this danger to defuse it and hold it’s perpetrators to account?
I think you mean $175 trillion (not billion)
Poor bases for this article. his interpretation of Rome and the Aztec empire is fundamentally incorrect. Youth won’t fight today because too many are simply soft from a life of ease: drugs, sex, porn, no existential threats etc. they rarely see death. despite that though, the numbers willing to fight for their country are still substantial. the recruitment problems of the British Army, say, are down to 2 things: the grotesque incompetence of the MoD and the grotesque incompetence of the firm ‘managing’ the recruitment process. the numbers that drop out from the application process are staggering and they do so because they apply and after 6, 10, 14 months, have still not been processed so they move on and get other jobs. Our elites are a joke. they are only ‘elite’ in the sense of social wealth and privilege, not in an ‘SAS-style elite’ sense. Our ‘elites’ are twerps. truly we are would-be-lions led by total donkeys.
Not another UnHerd writer happy to take a cheque for doing Putin, Xi and the other Autocrats work?
Now some lessons from History – first the most immediate – nobody would have said Ukraine would resist and fight the way it has. This sort of Author would no doubt have said they’d fold and fail to rally not caring too much about the outcome. Wrong big time.
Second lesson – in mid to late 30s the idea UK or US young would rally to support another war was unthinkable. Society was riven with division, economic depression and memories of mass slaughter. US was a melting pot of immigrants then too. Yet is this not now the ‘greatest’ Generation?
The nature of any future conflict will of course be different and unlikely to involve mass mobilisations. But the West is sleeping giant that is slowly awakening and if it came to it would rally much more to our fundamental freedoms than we might self-critically think. One should have a bit more faith. The issue for the Totalitarians is they can only push forward their forces with a gun behind their back and brain-washing. That only ever gets them so far.
(Obviously the new meme of many Right wing commentators is the ‘elite’ conspiracy twaddle, forgetting they are largely funded by v rich elites themselves)
You are deluded. I’m white working class. I will NOT fight for a society that threw me overboard 25 years ago.
I know who my real enemies are.
You should be aware that the very worst outcomes for the working class were in the “People’s Democracries” of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with their fake elections, fake trade unions, appalling housing and absence of workplace safety. Or the same again in China.
Your immediate enemies here (I’m not disputing your main point) are still standing between you and worse options.
Exactly how I feel. As a nearly 70 year old woman I wont be sent to the front line – but,they are getting desperate,but many of us could find ourselves “mobilized” they didn’t slip that weasel word past me. That could mean anything from being forced to work in a munitions factory like women had to in WW1+2,the popular myth is they loved it because it was independent work and not “in service” and well paid,but what is kept silent about is that Emmeline and.Christabel Pankhurst did a deal with Lloyd George for the vote in return for keeping the women in line and in those factories. Any woman who objected got abuse and shame not support.from those two and their acolytes.
I didn’t know know this. I wonder if that had anything to do with the ghastly Pankhurst being an avid supporter of the disgraceful white feather movement?
First they’d have to build those factories as most of our industries have been shipped overseas in search of ever higher profits
Same here.
And I think there are obvious differences between us and the Ukranians.
Have Ukranian men been repeatedly told that masculinity is toxic, or bombarded daily with propaganda telling them it is shaemful not to embrace mass immigration and diversity? I wonder if Ukranian TV shows have included a ridiculously disproportionate number of gay characters, or whether white men have been largely expunged from Ukranian advertising (unless they need someone to play the part of a complete moron or someone who can’t get an erection without medical help).
That probably explains why Ukranian men -like British men in the pre-woke era – have been prepared to fight for their country.
Ukrainian situation is more complex than that.
Poland is full of Ukrainian men of military age (many hundred thousands, some people say over a million) who clearly have no intention of fighting for their country (I spoke to quite a few of them; many uber drivers are Ukrainian).
It’s a typically lazy article (appalling first paragraph – where were the proof readers ?).
Lazy in its assumption that people in the West are not prepared to fight – or take other measures to maintain their wealth and freedom – to defend their freedoms. As usual, stated as fact without substantiation.
Yes, the West has become lazy, complacent and distracted. And lost sight of its core priorities. But some of that is inevitable after such a long period of peace. History shows that people do stand up for their interests when really pushed. We just haven’t been pushed quite far enough yet. Hopefully it won’t get that far.
Most of the conflicts and wars all over the world since the official end of WW2 have been fomented by the USA,mostly covertly,in order to maintain USA economic supremacy and regarding Ukraine and Israel,no change there. Mr Putin is actually the unlikely wearer of the White Hat,standing out for Truth and true Freedom. Which seems counterintuitive to our Pavlov trained dumbed down brains.
But that’s about the level people who have to go out and buy a burger in a bit of bread or even have some chump on a bike deliver it gone.cold can manage.
Reality check !
Did the US start the Korean War ?
Did the US invade Hungary in 1956 ? Or Czechoslovakia in 1968 ?
Did the US cause the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in 1979 ?
Did the US start the Iran-Iraq War (the bloodiest conflict since WWII) ?
Did the US cause Saddam Hussein to invake Kuweit ?
Did the US cause China to attempt to invade Vietnam ?
Did the US actually start any of the Arab-Israel wars ? Or actually benefit from any of these ?
Doubtless you’ll dig up some obscure conspiracy theories to claim that the answers to these questions are all “yes” !
Yes, the US has done some bad stuff since WWII. But they’re not the only ones – and far from the worst.
You should be asking yourself just why the US has so many allies who freely choose to join it in NATO. And why countries like Russia and China have so few. And why people are queueing up to get into the US if it’s so goddam awful. And want to leave countries like Russia and China.
Re all your list and the US. Each one of those conflicts took place in places that were (and as far as I know, still are) thousands of miles and at least one ocean away. Most were a similar distance from the UK. What do any really say about ‘us’ protecting ‘ourselves’?
I really don’t know. They weren’t our conflicts !!!
The Comintern was formed in 1919 to promote communism. Up to 1942, Britain was the defender of the free world and democracy. By 1942 Britain was bankrupt and the USA became the defender of the free world and democracy . JF Kennedy in his inaugaration speach accepts America’s responsibility as did those presidents post 1942. The reality was that post late 1960s many of those influential middle and upper class, or one could say, the affluent classes, refused to accept their responsibilities, hence our problems. It is like the children who have enjoyed the wealth from the family business who in their twenties suddenly find they become responsible for running it. They have to give up some of their pleasures and make sacrifices, resulting in temper tantrums.
To whom much is given, much is expected.
Your last sentence also explains why the US gets so much flak. It’s held to a high standard than everyone else.
But I’m not sure the US really does have all these worldwide responsibilities as you (and JFK) suggested. Nor that Britain or the US was ever – or should ahve been – the sole defender of the free world and democracy. States need to defend themselves first.
Not sure how the Cominterm was relevant here.
It spread communist revolution, Vietnam and various terrorist organisations in the late 1960s an
The English speaking World was the only part which was democratic, free, meritocratic in part, relatively free from corruption, law which was applied blindly and stable.
The proof was that the English Speaking World did not succumb to Nazism or Communism. The ESW provided a united front to Nazism and Communism. France only had a stable country post 1945.
Its amazing how often the US has come “to the rescue” and only extended the duration of every conflict it enters, leading to millions more deaths, rarely “winning” but filling the pockets of its MIC every time.
What utter rubbish.
“Came to the rescue” in WWI and WWII without extending those conflicts. For which most of the world is very grateful. Also helped rebuild Western Europe. And would have done the same for Eastern Europe if not blocked by the Soviet Union which insisted on keeping those countires in effective slavery for 40 years. But I expect you’re OK with that, cause the US is always the bad guy.
I love it!
Who should we fight for JW, the very Rich right wing elites or the very rich Left wing elites? I know they’ll be hiding in the bunkers of their gated communities or private islands, when their incompetent policies and preposterous ideologies lead to social collapse.
The West is not a ‘sleeping giant’ – it is a hollowed-out, mostly de-industrialised, debt-ridden, rentier, financialised swamp of oligarchies. It’s hubris, sanctimony and endless aggression continues to write cheques that it’s industrial base is now no longer able to cash.
The US of the 1930s had spare and easily transferable capacity everywhere – from relatively fit New Deal workers to huge factories & shipyards all over the country. They’ve transferred all those assets to East Asia now.
War is wonderful for those that have no experience of it…
Defeat and occupation isn’t much fun for those who have to experience it either.
No true, but war started it…
I’m miserable, dissatisfied and very unwilling to contribute to this society. But I despise Vladimir Putin and everything he stands for, and I would happily see every country in the western world go bankrupt just to get rid of him.
If every country in the western world went bankrupt, they would eat themselves from the inside out and you wouldn’t be able to finance your war.
If you are very unwilling to contribute to society, why do you feel that everyone else should go bankrupt to save the society you are unwilling to even participate in.
If you despise putin and everything he stands for, yet hate your own society enough not to participate in it, what sort of society do you think we need instead.
I love my country and my people and believe in Western liberalism but they keep lying to us. They lie or lied to us about Covid ( masks, lockdowns, mandatory unsafe, untested vaccinations , climate change ( obvious grift everywhere you look), Ukraine ( they could have had a deal), inflation ( new money theory etc.).
I dont know why they keep lying but I know they lie about almost everything
Their lies magnify themselves in their echo chambers. Their lies serve their vanity that they are annointed to lead.
They lie because they know there is no cost for doing so. Who lost a job, who was even demoted over the Covid debacle, or the mindless spending that will continue until it no longer can, or the indoctrination of a cohort that has grown up hating its country?
They lie because if they told you the truth, you’d be reaching for a pitchfork.