Scorched earth politics: The age of intolerance

By Pete North - June 7, 2020

Whether it be Fintan O’Toole and his boilerplate article on English exceptionalism or the occasional tract downplaying the British role in D-Day, or similar such outings from the Economist and New Statesman, painting Britain as inward looking, xenophobic and nostalgic for empire, they all serve one purpose. To defame the nation and demoralise its citizens.

A country that no longer believes in its founding values and has no sense of self-worth will cave into virtually any passing political fad. If the nation is attacked politically or militarily, you then have a public that will stand aside and allow it.

This is the oldest trick in the book. The Soviets knew it, the modern left knows it too. The communists played on the imperialism schtick then and now, while the modern left has long sought to associate nationalism of any kind with fascism and racism.

Anti-racism, then, is a veneer for leftists who oppose the very idea of the nation state. This is why they oppose any immigration control and seek to extend the franchise to foreign citizens who are not stakeholders. The purpose of this is to weaken the power of national democracy. So too is the drive to reduce the voting age to include those still in the grip of the educational institutions the left has power over.

The problem here is the modern left don’t actually believe in democracy. They protest general election results and referendum results. They agitate for outbreaks of violence to provoke the authorities then use the media to play the victim. They don’t play by the rules of democracy. There is no loser’s consent. If they can’t win by legitimate means then they’ll use all other means. They’ve become more aggressive in recent years because they can’t sell their ideas at the ballot box. Why should we vote for metropolitan leftists who think communism is cool and when they actively despise the people they seek to rule over?

The traditional left can take credit for a great many societal enhancements, with a proud history behind them of organising and mobilising for change, but they did it through the ballot box. We’re not dealing with the old left here. Here we’re up against a new evil. The same old communist agenda but warped by their depraved notion of “social justice” where even basic biological facts are a thought crime.

The modern left doesn’t care about black people or racism or equality. The Black Lives Matter movement is just a Trojan horse for a more authoritarian agenda designed to subordinate the majority, not liberate it. Puffed up with their own self-righteousness, with all the moral certitude that the ends justify the means, they’ve persuaded themselves that violence against the person is legitimate and that every issue bar none is a binary loyalty test. If you don’t conform you become the enemy.

This has been evolving to the point of critical mass for some time through a toxic culture war raging on the internet. Trump is just the inevitable backlash against it – and to a point, so is Brexit.

Successive centrist administrations have failed to stand up to an increasingly feral activist media and a worryingly censorious academic establishment. Safe spaces, trigger warnings, de-platforming etc is nothing to do with progressive values and everything to do with delegitimising even moderate voices of disagreement. That’s the truly terrifying authoritarianism in the West. It goes against the fundamental values it was built on… freedom of speech and association, and equality under the law.

Everything in the progressive agenda is aimed at dismantling nationhood, hence the creation of strains of victimhood according to gender and ethnicity. Those victims groups then get to make their own rules and exept themselves from standards everyone else is expected to follow. A society simply cannot function that way.

But then that’s the actual intent. They’re destructive nihilists who naively believe that destroying the democratic West automatically brings about something better. They’re absolutely convinced they can’t possibly be wrong because they now believe the nation state is the greatest evil on earth and anything that follows couldn’t possibly be worse. You cannot, therefore, be surprised if there is a conservative nationalist backlash. It’s been a long time coming.

This is fundamentally a culture war between those who believe in the nation state and its founding ideas and those who don’t. This culture war is an existential matter for America and the UK. This is why the “progressives” have a fondness for regional and global bodies that undermine and usurp national sovereignty. It’s a way of circumventing national democracy. Brexit is a partial corrective.

What we are seeing now, though, is a new front, where the murder of a criminal in the United States has been seized upon to promote the idea of “systemic racism” as a pretext for demolishing it. The useful idiot white liberal youth who see themselves as righteous crusaders for the downtrodden minorities are doing the dirty work of communist agitators in what has become the largest global brainwashing operation of the 21st century.

These protests are being stoked by leftists who would love nothing more than to see genuine racial strife kick off, and destroy civil society in the process. They want division, they want to force you to pick a side. They seek to provoke, they want retaliation, and they don’t care who gets hurt or used in the process. They couldn’t care less about black people or racism. This is their war on all of us. Scorched earth politics to make us submit to their intolerant dogma where they get to decide who you read and watch, what you’re allowed to say and think and who is allowed to speak.

Unless our politicians wake up to the threat we almost certainly will see a popular hard right resurgence. With the left now becoming the new puritans, any strongman leader who takes away their instruments of influence, be it shuttering/defunding “liberal” universities, clamping down on left wing media, banning protests, and putting militias on the streets, will widely be viewed as acting in the national interest – and given the destructive lengths the left is willing to go to, it’s hard to disagree.

But then we end up destroying democracy to save it. When people believe there is a tangible threat they will vote for whoever will best defend their values. If mainstream politics won’t they they will look to the fringes for an equal and opposite force. We have our warnings from history. Now is the time to heed them. If our police and politicians are going to kneel in submission then perhaps there’s a point of agreement with the far left. As a nation we do not deserve to survive. Cowardice and foolishness does not deserve to.