HTR(14): The tragedy of the Modern Left

On seeking a multi-racial monoculture

I came across this image on Twitter, which I feel encapsulates well a standard line of criticism against conservative politicians, most especially those that are enjoying a resurgence of popularity, the 'national populists'. It is a line of criticism that has been deployed repetitively for decades now, but it is one that is losing its purchase as a criticism – worse, it is one that is now actively creating what it most wants to defeat. It indicates the tragic nature of the Modern Left.

An extract from my chapter in this book

Yoram Hazony, in his book The Virtue of Nationalismⁱ, describes the origins of the widespread distaste for expressions of national identity within European cultures. Hazony traces the modern form of this distaste back to Immanuel Kant's manifesto of 1795 called Perpetual Peace. According to Hazony, "Kant argues that the establishment of an international or imperial state is the only possible dictate of reason. Those who do not agree to subordinate their national interests to the directives of the imperial state are regarded as opposing the historic march of humanity towards the reign of reason. Those who insist on their national freedom are supporting a violent egoism on a national scale, which is as much an abdication of sound morals as the insistence on violent egoism would be in our personal lives."ⁱⁱ In other words, nationalism is immoral.

Kant's perspective was not universally embraced until it was given an enormous impetus by the events of the Second World War. Hazony argues that in the face of the horrors of Auschwitz there were two coherent responses. The first was to see the suffering of the Jews as due to the lack of a nation state able to act in a way that would have protected the Jewish people from such barbarism - and this interpretation led directly to the creation of the state of Israel. The second, and polar opposite response, was to see the horrors of Nazism as simply the expression of national identity taken to its logical conclusion - and therefore the only moral response was to diminish such national identity through the formation of an international community, that which eventually became the European Union.

Those who take the latter understanding, therefore, cannot help but see any enthusiasm for national identity – or even, without enthusiasm, a desire to see nations and distinct national cultures defended – as immoral, and immoral in the specifically Hitler/Nazi coded form, as exemplified with the opening image.

To rely upon this framework is to be part of the dominant culture of our times; it is a world-view that is affirmed and reinforced on a regular basis, not just by various influential media but at the small-scale, granular level, especially amongst Matt Goodwin's 'new elite', who are the ones occupying the opposite pole to the national populists (in UK terms they are the #FBPE/ Remain/ affluent graduate elite who are shifting to Labour in increasing numbers). It is what I have previously described as the 'bubble', the 'Modern Left' (capitalisation important), the 'woke'. I would now interpret this world-view as an instance of left-hemisphere capture, in that there is an explicitly understood framework which governs the interpretation of experience and which systematically ignores and excludes the experiences which do not fit, which are not easily mapped into the world-view.

In simple terms, the reason why I see this framework as tragic – why I see that image and similar ones as the futile protests against reality of the Modern Left – is that the social conflicts that have emerged, which are driving events and their consequent political reactions, are not captured within that framework. That framework does not have the resources to deal with what is happening. The presenting issue in the UK at this time is not coded by race but by culture, specifically religious culture, in the form of the tension between Islam and everything else. Where local Islamic groups seize power, either formally or informally, and where abhorrent behaviour is not investigated for fear of being called racist (as in Rotherham) then the framework is failing. People notice this, and react, and slowly consent for those in authority is withdrawn, and trust in the police diminishes in the face of 'two-tier' policing, and fuel is placed on the bonfire of civil conflict. This is why I see catastrophe coming. The hallmark of left-hemisphere capture is the inability to recognise gaps in understanding, to deny that such things exist – until the time when reality becomes overwhelming and there is catharsis and anagnorisis. We are living through the tragedy of the Modern Left.

One of the aspects of this tragedy, one of the great ironies of this myopia in the Modern Left, is that it is creating what it seeks to defeat. When the lens of race is insisted upon as the right way to see the world morally, where 'whiteness' is coded as inherently oppressive with the consequence that the straight, white, working class male is the piñata of our time, then those who are excluded from the field of moral concern will react, organise and resist. The differences between races (which exist) will be seized upon, and those who most seek to resist the Nazis will be those most responsible for the renewal of Nazism. We have to do better. We have to escape the satanic dynamic.

The answer is actually quite straightforward – easy to understand but immensely difficult to implement. It is to insist that nations are real, that national cultures are precious, and that it is perfectly moral and justifiable to say of certain practices 'we don't do that here, that is not the way that things are done in this place, in this nation'. It is to insist on the primacy of one culture over others in a particular land, most especially it is to insist that – leaving aside the question of whether one culture is better than another in an absolute sense (closer to the Kingdom) – in this country these things are allowable, and these things are not, simply for reasons of history. To say 'this is who we are'. It might be, to offer a specific example for debate, to say that 'church bells are legal, but the adhan is illegal'; it would certainly proscribe sharia law.

Of course, most nations do this automatically, and without any hand-wringing. It is part of the foolishness of our time that we indulge the breast-beating, and kow-towing, and bending of the knee which is the inverted imperialism of our time (we're still the most special society in the world, we're just especially bad).

What we need is a vision of a multi-racial monoculture, something which can unite different races in harmony and friendship around a concrete ambition, a way of life that is demonstrably British (and therefore inevitably Christian) within which all of us might find a place to flourish – a 'normal nationalism'. Without such a vision, clearly, compellingly, persuasively articulated – and such a vision I suspect will have to come from Canterbury not Westminster – our future becomes Hobbesian, nasty, brutish and short.

What gives me hope, other than my faith, is that what I seek can be seen in seed form with this:

Come on England!

i Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, Basic Books, 2018.

ii Hazony, 2018, p200.