When Great Britain emerged blinking from the rubble of the Second World War it was a nation hugely in debt and on the brink of a silent social revolution. The country’s war debt to the United States was in the order of $3.7 billion, and despite Harold Macmillan’s ’never had it so good’ speech of 1957, the debt owed was not fully repaid until December 2006. The social change to come was hinted at presciently in Evelyn Waugh’s wartime novel Brideshead Revisited where a young soldier remarks in the closing pages that ‘it’s our turn now’ – ‘our turn’ referring perhaps to those belonging to the new order – ‘the people’; different people to the ones who are running things now. The country would henceforth become a startlingly different place, run to a new agenda.
The Empire was dismantled very quickly, the first to go being India in 1947. Public figures and senior civil servants hived off the rest of it with remarkable enthusiasm. Given his exposure to the war, followed by these other great losses, it’s no wonder that King George VI died an early death in 1952. Britannia was a spent force and her role in the world would never be the same again. To anyone not fully alive to these facts at the time, further proof was to come in the form of Anthony Eden’s bungled handling of the Suez crisis in 1956 and the nation’s further dive into humiliation. There appeared to be no option left but to beg for membership of the new ‘European project’, the European Economic Community – now supra-national governance body the European Union. Even in that Britain failed miserably for years, snubbed by France and with Harold Wilson famously detained for long periods in Charles de Gaulle’s waiting room.
Ironically it was Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath who succeeded where Wilson had failed, securing a place for Britain in the Common Market in 1971. Heath was arguably the first in a long line of interchangeable Conservative and Labour Party leaders, punctuated only by Margaret Thatcher, whose collective efforts brought into being the New Labour movement culminating in Anthony Blair. It’s very telling that the two main stalwarts of the Brexit ‘Remain’ camp were John Major and Blair – who sat on opposite sides of the House but without doubt lay on the same side of the bed.
The new, post-war order changed again in the latter part of the twentieth century with the economic rise of Communist China and the coming of age of Political Islam. The rise of China is made manifest by its ownership of, or influence over, almost everything. The Chinese are treated by most nations with enormous deference, even when faced with the outrages of their Communist regime. ‘Don’t forget Tibet!’ we once cried, but that is long forgotten – and Tibet is not the worst of it.
It is often not fully appreciated that the rise of the Marxist state was accompanied during the twentieth century by the rise of ’social’ Marxism in the democratic countries of the free West, especially the ones which practice Fabian socialism. When, in June 1987, Ronald Reagan famously implored Mr Gorbachev to ’tear down this wall,’ the fall of the Berlin wall – though hugely symbolic – was actually a massive distraction because we were all on the road to becoming Marxists by other means.
Philosopher and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party Antonio Gramsci had hypothesised, and was subsequently proved right, that the West would be won, not by bloody revolution, but by the gradual advancement of Marxist principles through its institutions – its universities, schools, parliament and instruments of government, legal systems, professional bodies, the HR departments of private companies, and so on – which would eventually lead to the overthrow of Western civilisation. This is, in fact, the most psychopathic of all social policy models – that through group-think and ‘feelz’ we wouldn’t need to have the revolution done to us – but rather would do it to ourselves.
Our rapid adoption of the doctrines of multiculturalism, diversity and social justice, and the rejection of our inherited shared values – based around the Christian family, tolerance and individual liberty – have ensured that this is so.
Political Islam has tended to be centred around Egypt and was ignited by Marxist movements in post-colonial states spanning between Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In many ways we helped it along through a sense of self-doubt which nearly all of the West has felt since the war. I know of at least one high-ranking British university which imported Egyptian students in the post-war period specifically to teach them Marx before sending them home to practice it.
Going beyond self-doubt, we have actually come to loathe ourselves as we cheer on the left’s attacks which are slowly cannibalising our institutions. Attacks on actual institutions are, for example, House of Lords reform and the devolution of power from Westminster under Anthony Blair in the UK, and the election of parliaments by the MMP system in New Zealand. Attacks on virtual institutions are, for example, the dismembering of the sacrament of marriage. It was a process which began in the 1980s with the creation of ‘de-facto’ relationships, was progressed under Helen Clark via civil partnerships, then onwards to same-sex ‘marriage’, and is still underway via the ’transgender revolution’.
Political Islam is simply an expression of the tenets of Islam framed through the Marxist lens of ‘struggle’ against ‘oppressors’ by the ‘oppressed’. Under Islamic doctrine the world is neatly divided into two parts: Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, that part of the world which is under Islamic control; and Dar al-Harb, the House of War, the remaining part which doesn’t operate under Islamic law and custom yet, but eventually will. Muslims residing in the Dar al-Harb have a duty to bring Islam into the ascendancy. Marx is on the one hand irrelevant to this, in that Mohammed’s ’struggle’ began without him, some 1500 years ago. Yet Marx is on the other hand hugely relevant in framing the Islamic cause as a ‘just’ one which Western society can buy into, re-founding it upon the principles of ‘justice’ towards minorities, and political correctness.
The atheist left detests Christianity (being both one of our shared traditional values and a tool of ‘oppression’) and places it in value below Islam. The teaching of religious traditions in schools, carried out almost exclusively through the ‘objective’ eye of the non-believer, at best bestows an equivalence. What isn’t taught is the reason why Islam stands out amongst the Abrahamic religions. A Christian acts through faith. While Christianity is a proselytising religion, the worst a Christian will do to the non-likeminded is annoy them.
By contrast, Islam is more a system of political organisation than a religion, bestowing upon Muslims a set of duties to be carried out irrespective of faith. The advancement of the politics of Islam is one such duty, and so it is that Sharia law has become accepted in the UK as a parallel legal system. Persons marrying in a Muslim religious ceremony, whether or not both are Muslim, can expect family law matters – including divorce, child custody, and in some cases inheritance – to be adjudicated in Sharia courts, which often give very different determinations to those of the Family Courts. It is not advertised by the implementers of this scheme that a sovereign nation with two legal systems cannot in fact be a sovereign nation.
A similar process has long been underway in New Zealand using instruments such as the Halal food certification scheme, under which manufacturers and suppliers effectively pay bribes in exchange for ‘access’ to Muslim markets. The money received is used to further Islamic causes, including the expansion of the mosque network and in some cases the funding of international terrorist organisations. What was most shocking about the New Zealand government and media’s response to the terrible and completely unjustified attacks on Christchurch mosques a year ago was the way in which all New Zealanders were branded as ‘racists’ and harbingers of ‘white supremacy’. The perpetrator was for a long time held to have been part of a ’network’, when in fact he wasn’t. We underwent a process of subjugation of the general population by forced apology, and interestingly the government was more the promulgator of this approach than were Muslims themselves.
The growth of political Islam as a force first was brought into focus by the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, and the results were hugely to Islam’s benefit. It is well known that Osama bin Laden was funded out of his family’s business empire in Saudi Arabia, whose ruler is the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. But rather than countering the threat posed by the Islamic political movement (and prevented from so doing by the West’s post-modern belief system), George W. Bush and Anthony Blair – who was later aided and abetted by David Cameron – embarked on a series of wars against minor dictators within the Islamic world who in their own right posed only a modest threat.
Saddam Hussein had learned from his earlier incursion into Kuwait and wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. Himself a member of the Sunni minority, his leadership had for years kept in check the tensions between the competing factions of Sunni and Shi’a Islam and other groups such as the Kurds. Although arguably never a centre of enlightened civility, life in Iraq became much worse after the war once its underlying tensions were exploded. The same can be said for Libya where Colonel Muammar al-Gadaffi, somewhat reformed after bombing Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, had set Libya on a path of serious economic reform – his son Saif was friends with Prince Andrew – and was keeping his large population (mostly) gainfully employed.
The wars sent a tidal wave of unstable and embittered ‘refugees’ into Europe, unleashing Dar al-Harb on the infidels’ home shores. Between 2001 and 2017 the Muslim population of England and Wales grew by more than 1.7 million, while the number of Muslims per mosque decreased from 7100 to 1900 – meaning that mosque-building was a major activity.
The effect on Britain was exacerbated by the European Union’s open borders policy, which also saw huge populations entering the country from the newly-enlisted Eastern European member states. In its efforts to leave the European Union, Britain is still grappling with the enormity of this problem – as no record appears to have been kept of who actually lives there. As reported in The Telegraph last week, a scheme to provide existing EU residents of the UK with ’settled status’ was taken up by 155% of the Bulgarians believed to be living in the country, and 112% of the Romanians.
There are now large tracts of the UK, Islamic and otherwise, where it is difficult to detect English being spoken. Many of the old industrial centres resemble Afghan hill towns complete with figures in robes, minarets and onion domes. The Muslim mayor of London – a place referred to by insiders as ‘Londonistan’ – is on record as claiming that both knife crime and terrorism are ‘a natural part of life’ in a big city. So watch out, Auckland, in your vision to become a ‘most liveable’ place.
An increase in sexual assaults by recent immigrants has been widely reported throughout Europe, but especially in Germany – which took in a million, predominantly Muslim, ‘refugees’ during the post-war ‘crisis’. And while the humanitarian effort was lauded by the left, AfD leader Alexander Gauland correctly remarked that the million who had so far been housed account only for six weeks’ worth of African and Middle Eastern population growth – meaning that there is a constant stream to follow.
The response of politicians to what has essentially been a ‘reconstruction’ of the countries of the West has been astonishing. Faced with a complaint by a constituent that her childhood home was now unrecognisable, Britain’s then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown was caught on camera referring to the complainant as a ‘bigoted woman’. White British people, who have been an ethnic minority in London for some years now, are practically the only minority group which isn’t protected or specifically supported either by ‘positive discrimination’, legislation or subsidy.
The ‘end of the road’ in terms of the United States’ response to the 9/11 terror attacks was the election in 2009 of President, Obama. Across the Muslim world, Obama is known to be culturally accepting of Islam. In international policy terms, Obama proved himself to be the most un-American president ever, proof that even the most patriotic country in the world is not immune from self-loathing. As he courted Islamic leaders, there wasn’t an un-American cause that he didn’t delight in. At home, he concentrated his efforts, not surprisingly, on expanding the welfare state.
It’s absolutely no surprise that Miss Ardern’s delayed response to COVID-19 was due to her being ‘otherwise engaged’ with Islamic matters here. The rise of Marxism in the West needs to be properly understood, and named, as the underlying reason why once-great democratic nations succumbed so easily to the coronavirus lockdown and the imposition of martial law upon their populations. In another age we simply would not have allowed the current suspension of liberties to happen.
Ardern is the international poster girl for COVID-19 ‘response’. A hugely compliant population fell in line instantly, and business got on board with the government and media’s ‘messaging’ by repeating it ad nauseam as a badge of virtue. Within the hold of ‘prison ship New Zealand’ there is barely a whimper of discontent. The reason for our low infection rate and statistically insignificant number of deaths will always be attributed to the draconian measures imposed and never to the fact that we are the ‘final tram stop’ for any disease, situated as we are at the bottom corner of the world.
The West will fare poorly as a result of this episode. Boris Johnson, who painted himself initially as an Alpha-male, Churchillian leader, panicked. His U-turn to lockdown failed British democracy. Never again will ‘democratic’ Western nations be able to lecture despots and dictators on freedom and liberty now that they have extinguished these things themselves.
At the current time the Conservatives appear genuinely not to know how to extricate themselves from the wreckage of welfare dependency and restrictions which they have inflicted on the population. Their continued worship of the National Health Service, that millstone around the country’s neck affectionately referred to as the ‘international health service’ by foreign visitors, has not helped one bit. A relic of the Attlee post-war Labour government’s largesse, its ‘preservation’ from collapse was the main reason given for the lockdown.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, recently said that at the start of the crisis that Sweden followed the UK in maintaining democracy and order. When the UK back-tracked, Sweden kept going. As a result, its star will rise. Germany has also managed well. It didn’t lock everything down, and it’s largely private health system – funded by employee contributions – coped well and is a model to be emulated.
The smaller East Asian countries have emerged through their more democratic handling of the disease as the new First World. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and even Malaysia – once dubbed the car-jacking capital of the world by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew – roundly beat us. The People’s Republic of China is laughing at us. The way we manage the lives of our citizens is no different to theirs. And in time we can expect our living standard to be no better than theirs either. The ‘liberty’ worn by the West was a very thin veil. With its removal, we are now primed for tyranny.
Hail Miss Ardern, and brace for the New Order.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.