The Balkanisation of Identity is the key threat of our age. It is defined as when a society becomes increasingly divided along ethnic, religious, or other identity groups. It’s a base and vile framework for engaging in politics that by its very nature separates and antagonises sovereign citizens. So why is it that, on the island that birthed liberal democracy, we suddenly find ourselves choking in the vice grip of identity politics?
I believe there are two major parts to answering this. One, the compassion and politeness abundantly found in British society has become perverted by a growing and deeply cynical socialist movement. Two, we have failed to educate every successive generation about any of our Western values, and why they separate us from both the dark ages of our own country, and of nations around the world that are still in that state of being.
It is precisely that kindness, and willingness to accept other people, that has become victimised by a highly organised and politically extreme movement. In the most perverted of ways, that kindness is being exploited to create hostile environments in the name of compassion. The threats are veiled with this compassion; don’t you want to see ethnic minorities succeed? Are you anti-racist enough? Do you recognise your privilege? Do you need to be re-educated? Do you know that men are born rapists, and that “whites” are inherently racist? Whereas many won’t go to these extremes, they don’t recognise that it is precisely these extremes that are leading the ideology. It’s taken us step by step from “live and let live” to “watch what you say, what you post, and what you think”, all in the name of compassion.
As for failing to educate young children in school about Western values, there’s an additional insidious layer here. Again, there are groups and young naive graduates actively working hard to infiltrate their socialist ideologies into schools. Kids are actively being taught racial politics, enforcing at the youngest ages this extremely vile way to think. Indigenous kids are being taught that they’re personally responsible for great crimes against humanity, that the institutions built by their forefathers are all criminal and oppressive, and that they’re fundamentally different to their other “ethnic minority” students. On the other hand, “ethnic minority” students are being told that it’s not their fault if they fail at school or commit crime, but quite the opposite; that it is the “white” systems fault that they aren’t succeeding and can’t be expected to succeed.
It has resulted in what we have today; left wing politics, previously the home of progressive liberal ideology, has regressed into identitarian extremism. The right wing is guilty of this too, both by promoting it, and by not combatting it effectively in a principled and classically liberal fashion. Where extremist identitarians scream for division and separation of people into classes and groups, both the centre-left Labour and the centre-right Conservative parties, and even the Church of England, have collapsed to this emotional and hateful screech from political hell. One of the most prominent symbols of extremist identity politics can be found in the Pride flag.
Just think about this awful and specifically exclusive identitarian flag; with increasingly violent left wing groups, an increasingly hostile culture, driving a more identitarian society than ever before, it is truly the swastika of our time. Rat out your neighbours and your family for their wrongthink, and they’ll get branded with the yellow star of a non-crime hate incident. Internet posts that offend even the most fragile and sheltered of people results in arrests. Dissenters are actively targeted by extremist terrorist groups like the ironically named Antifa, clad in black shirts and bound by such a high view of their own moral compass that they feel compelled to commit violence to uphold it. Benign opinions shared online results in employer harassment, and often the loss of a job. It also results in a most cynical and evil “cancel culture” where a small group of radical and loud psychopaths can turn the dissenter into a persona-non-grata, removing them from all public discourse and interaction with society. What might have been ignorantly dismissed in the past as radical students doing their radical thing, just a storm in a teacup, has begun to infiltrate society and sabotage the most important Western institutions that have built our country. All in the name of inclusivity, equity, and diversity.
We already have a flag of inclusivity in the United Kingdom. We are united in our culture and our values, under the single most inclusive and diverse flag in our culture; the Union Jack. No divisions among race, no divisions among sexuality, no divisions among any form of identity. The creed nor the colour nor the name don’t matter, as the hymn goes, and this is what makes Western nations great.
People seem to forget that Scotland, Wales, England, and Ireland have all been bitterly warring in different ways for millennia. It is only in the most recent of times has this warring began to subside, still with ancient, lingering, but fading issues. Britain has overcome them not with tolerance but with unity. We learned to accept differences, have diverse opinions and an inclusive society, but it is being taken away from our culture bit by bit, all at the hands of an organised and cynical radical movement that captures people and institutions like a mind virus.
But those values must be defended and upholded with the fiercest and most authentic fervor; one must not let identitarian antagonisation lead us astray from our values. We’ve had a past with identity politics before, mostly centred around ethnic divisions in religion. It’s hardly ancient history to remember a time where Monty Python’s Life of Brian offended a great deal of Christians in the UK, back when it was still a very Christian nation. Ireland even went so far as to ban it from public consumption. But Britain, ultimately, is a nation of people who, even in the face of the most offensive content, can take a joke and learn to laugh. It is precisely this social maturity that led to Liberal Democracy and Western Values. Where an Islamic equivalent would draw apocalyptic violence in the Middle East, the UK has had millennia of cultural development and social homogeneity to become a nation of stoic, strong-willed, kind and loving people.
It is exactly here where we find a most poignant example of where compassion can clash with basic political decency; where the Christians were faced with living in a country where comedians were allowed to make fun of them, do we expect the same of Muslims? The same can be said across ethnic identities; where Welsh, Irish, Northerners, Londoners, Scottish, Travellers, Farmers, and more, have all been the butt of many a rude joke, do we expect the same of foreigners? British news publications in the past have flirted with attempting to shelter us all from Islamic violence by, for example, not showing the benign cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed on the news.
I would put it to the reader that we must be stoic in the face of this threat of violence; we will not succumb the nation back to violent identitarianism. To fail to uphold our values is a failure to uphold everything that our forefathers have worked so hard to achieve; breaking the chains of serfdom, eradicating royal control, and stepping closer and closer to liberal democracy. We are far too silent in defending these values, and we are allowing some truly sick people to dictate how we think about each other, and how society should be divided along racial lines.
I do have some optimism however, as these identitarian movements tend to eat each other alive. Most recently, as Hamas commits atrocities across Israel, Jewish and Anti-semitic watch type groups are beginning to realise that most of the left is constantly flirting with support for the genocidal Hamas terrorist organisation. Left wing sexuality groups are also discovering quickly that most foreign cultures that enter the UK, most prominently those of traditionally religious backgrounds, utterly reject every level of these bizarre gender beliefs being taught in their schools. Organisations that provide woke employment advice are discovering that they are beginning to be caught out for violating laws against discrimination. Woke diversity types are also shocked to discover that an overwhelming majority of racial tension in the UK is between non-indigenous groups, such as South Asians and Blacks, or Indians and Pakistanis, or Sikhs and Hindus, or Muslims and Hindus.
This is something I have previously described as the ouroboros of identity politics; divide, divide, divide, and suddenly nobody agrees with anything and, like the ouroboros, the snake eats itself tail first.
The extremist political activists tend to wear their own insecurities and mental problems on their sleeve; or more specifically their internet social profiles. Their profile will have something along the lines of a neurological disorder, followed by an extreme political affiliation, and then sometimes an admission of their own difficulties they have with their own body. This is the face of regressive identitarian politics; emotionally unhinged, unprincipled, ungrateful, miserable, forever stuck in their bedrooms tweeting into an internet echo chamber that keeps them on the knife edge of regressivism, punishing those not keeping up with the agenda.
Considering that these are our political opponents, it won’t take long before they destroy themselves entirely, but it would be good to lend a helping hand. The tree of liberty must be watered in the blood of tyrants.