When all the numbers flipped noisily to zeros, at midnight 1999/2000, something happened away from the celebrations – plotted, prepared and planned. This was not the building of a New Jerusalem, but a distillation of chaos as a monstrous assembly of competing flawed visions, social experiments and technological expectations manifested as a darkness after dawn.
No nest of shady conspirators remade this world in their own image, but well-meaning ideologues and planners with a vision of year zero. However, dystopias are just utopias that have been tried and tested. Since the millennium, new delusions have appeared, such as that of the infallibility of the herd and the mutability of meaning. However, there is only the truth, not mine or yours or someone else's. Different views of a single tree are only that, views, not the tree.
In the 1960s various milestones were achieved, such as an end to censorship, general equality of opportunity, increased freedom of the individual, more universal unity and more respect for individuality. Now, censorship has returned. Freedom of speech is curbed and even freedom of thought, not by governments but by ideologically driven organisations and keyboard fodder. There is more division and discord now than for very many years and the post-war consensus is forgotten. This social media cockpit is spilling out and is neither the world for which the wartime generation fought nor for which the hippies strived. At its root has been the tendency to categorise us all into groups and sub-groups and divide us as part of various ideological experiments. The result is polarisation and the binary nature of social media where old friends commonly regard each other as suddenly evil, prejudiced, misguided or stupid. However, one might identify the attitudes that led to this by those words. Cynicism and defeatism have never achieved anything positive in this world and criticism has achieved very little apart from distrust, discontent and division, the very building blocks of oblivion.
The British have tended to believe in cultural enrichment rather than racial separation. There is no point in debating it though. A trap has been set so that however it is sprung the response and result are just the same. Critical race theory leaves no stone left unbiased. First one has to believe in racial difference in the first place. As someone descended from East African slaves as well as British East India officers and sundry European and Asian ancestors, why should I? What is the point in dividing up humanity apart from causing strife? Integration was always a two-way process. Typically, Britons carry umbrellas, eat curry, listen to dub reggae and Bhangra. That is not appropriating culture but valuing it and identifying with it.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the British insisted on a clause committing the European powers to the abolition of the slave trade in their dominions as Britain had in 1807. In 1808 the Royal Navy West Africa squadron was formed at considerable expense and for only one purpose, to suppress the West African slave trade. During its existence it captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves. In addition, the West African island of Fernando Po (Bioko) was settled in 1820 to act as a base in the suppression of the trade. The Royal Navy was also active off East Africa and actively pursued an aggressive policy against the trade by Brazil and Cuba forcing its end. Within Africa slavery was suppressed in all British dominions and General Gordon was responsible for its suppression in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan long before his despatch to Khartoum by Gladstone. No nation on earth did more to end slavery around the world than the British. Maybe that would never have fully atoned for its past sins, but no one can doubt the continuing commitment by our people to a fair and united future.
The War Drags On
The confusion, division, and chaos on social media, which seem to have spilt out onto the streets of late, must have a background, origin, and context. We can follow prevailing opinion or any number of unlikely conspiracy theories to get to the root of the political and cultural divisiveness that has spoilt friendships and torn social media apart. However, we can certainly identify certain interest groups currently at war with each other over our approbation and support. The chaos is largely due to these warring groups and their conflicting propaganda feeding into echo chambers and stirring up the digital soup with suspicion and counter-suspicions in their own interests.
So, who or what is so opposed to Britain and the Commonwealth, America and its 'dream'? Religion is mocked and opposed, but not more so than Christianity, which is curiously portrayed as anti-Christian. The individual and individual freedom are being supplanted by vague communitarianism and our support for democracy undermined by accusations of 'populism' and that the working classes do not understand for what they vote. The family unit is undermined by identity politics. Categorisation and identification with groups, miscalled communities, has replaced traditional social and familial groupings. Identification by nation has been replaced by 'community' affiliation. Worst of all, division and discord have been encouraged in the name of social justice.
The competing world visions have started to fall into convenient alliances, which give the appearance of coherence on the psychological battlefield. Accusations against Russia for meddling in UK affairs are quite amusing considering that it is an amateur at digital manipulation compared with others, especially North Korea and China, which owns much of the world's media and may be using capitalism to bring down capitalism and replace it with its own economic and political model. What can be discerned through the mist is a Chinese worldview being established globally through social and conventional media channels. A Chinese version of Marxism, not the traditional variety, a Chinese view of Britain and its empire, a Chinese-type cultural revolution pulling down our culture and traditions. Russia may want a weak EU, but China and its belt and road initiative (BRI) wants all its European eggs in one economic, political and regulatory basket. Even so, there has been no China report to follow on from the Russia Report.
We are not just caught in a psychological war between Russia and China over China's ascendency, but other conflicts that make common cause with either side, which does not make any of them good or bad, but just natural allies. The Western globalists and supranational organisations will always be anti-Russia, while those who favour the nation state and individualism will always fear China. The pretence of virtue is everywhere. Bringing down one's opponents is easier if they do it to themselves.
Everyone thought that capitalism would tame China, but it was just another weapon. When rail links are fully open between Beijing and Paris. When highways and rail tracks have carved their way through the Amazon rain forest. When Europe is a province. The minds of the West will already resemble those that changed them.
The Wasteland
An enchantment has fallen over our nation. Just when it was about to struggle free it imprisoned itself in guilt and blame, divided and conquered from within. Meanwhile the old warhorses roam in the wilderness and mighty Excalibur abides in the stone.