5G towers spreading Covid. The vaccine containing microchips or it was a Chinese bioweapon. Now there are conspiracy theories of liberals deliberately encouraging mass immigration in a WEF plot in the ‘Great Reset’. The latest conspiracy revolves around the immigration debacle in Europe. However the real reason behind the regular ‘crises’ is not a conspiracy. There are elements of truth in all myth making. However in the current miasma, the myths betray a more pernicious reality. The Easter Islanders didn’t build their huge Maoi statues for the veneration of mythical gods. The statues secured a manipulative and lucrative business for the elites, which led to deforestation, civil war and civicide.
The fundamental reasons for civilisational suicide are both internal and external. But mostly internal. For some strange all too human reason, successful civilisations kill themselves. It is no wonder that the twentieth century then was the century of total war. This means that industry and trade is not confined to the market place, a quid pro quo between equal enterprises. The NeoCon philosophy of the US post WW2 and the era of dollar supremacy turned so-called ‘threats’ into a massive defence industry. The ‘threat’ of China, Russia and Iran now provides a huge boost for domestic defence industries. Resource war is all the rage. For the defence industry, a rationale, a myth, helps to facilitate the elite manipulation of resources. A crisis is monetised.
The biggest real threats are internal, however. Whilst trying to contain the enemies at the gates of the citadel – war rages internally. Liberal democracies are unable to defend themselves from corrosive internal elements. There is a fundamental weakness in liberal democracy. Whilst being ‘well intended’ it is unable to see beyond the Orwellian liberal speak. It wraps itself in a cotton wool of nice soundbites and multicultural theory.
Unfortunately, civilisational suicide is coming home to roost for nations such as the UK. There are three related reasons for cultural decline.
Firstly, the economic debacle. Public spending in Britain as a percentage of GDP is now 44%¹. This can be compared with China at 19%. Britain has a higher rate of spend than Nazi Germany at the height of rearmament in 1939. Adam Tooze in ‘The Wages of Destruction’ (2006) estimated that “by 1939, the German state accounted for roughly 40% of national output.” Rather than tackling the fat in the civil service, Chancellor Reeves is adding taxes for working-class people.
The second component – is the problem of ‘short termism’ in liberal democracies. Because governments are elected for a short 4 or 5 year term, the inherent policy goals are always changing. Government becomes ‘top heavy’ and the voting loyalty of state sector Labour voters becomes sacrosanct. As the origins of success and wealth fade in Britain, memories of what made its success are forgotten. This is replaced by a black and white daguerreotype of the past. Slavery, colonial guilt, race reparations reduce national policy making to virtue. Since liberalism is a descendant of Christianity, one can witness the self-hate and ‘ressentiment’ which abounds. Society becomes radicalised by weakness. Heroic virtues are signs of elitism and an all-encompassing tragic and morbid egalitarianism takes over. Liberalism resents success and greatness. Every aspect of its life; from the arts, to work, to government is taken over by mediocrity. DEI initiatives become the destructive parlance of the virtuous. When the Europeans arrived on Easter Island in 1722, the locals could not recount the meaning behind those huge monolithic statues peering from the island citadel.
Nietzsche described the guardians of the new credo of Christianity as the ‘priesthood’. Curtis Yarvin, the American conservative, calls the liberal elites ‘the Cathedral’. The new elites, in order to maintain power, convinced the people of the virtuousness of the new creed. Heroic virtue was replaced by Christian weakness. This development of elitism is the final stage of societal self-mutilation. The new elites today, in Britain, in the EU, in US bureaucracy, espouse a virtue agenda since, without this baggage, without creating their own ideology, they would be without portfolio. They need this credo to keep a compliant mass dumbed down by media such as the BBC and Sky. Incompetence becomes par for the course. The state sector similarly is the home of a philosophy and creed which is funded by the state. It’s a vicious circle impoverishing the nation.
Due to short termism and self-loathing, the state becomes prey to the third critical development of ‘extractive elites’. Crises, whether it be war or Covid, provide ample opportunity for extractive players. It coincides with the new era of ‘state capitalism’; capital works in a symbiotic relationship with state actors, for example in the civil service, for extractive consultancy. The managerial class see the state sector as an abundance of riches. Whereas in previous generations the middle classes flocked to the private sector – now the sons and daughters of ‘the Cathedral’ flock to the civil service, to woke universities, and home-working state roles. The Covid industry provided an opportunity for public-private gain. According to the NAO (National Audit Office) £376 billion was spent on a mixture of PPE purchasing, furlough and test and trace. The problem of state-induced ‘crises industries’ is that they are primarily extractive rather than Keynesian. There is little added value or economic boost for economies. Ayanda Capital received a £250 million PPE contract, spent on a large proportion of defective equipment. The company had no experience in the health industry. Today, no lessons have been learnt. The extractive elites are at the trough. The new goldrush is perfect. It works at the intersection of virtue and money.
The immigration industry in the UK is another crisis turned into extraction. The accommodation providers Serco (5.5 billion GBP so far), Clear Springs (7.5 billion GBP so far) and Mears (2.5 billion) have 10-year contracts. Government is planning for another 10 years of incoming migrants. They are arranging 110,000 placements per year, charging 38,000 GBP per placement. Yet the government is raising taxes on working people. There is no conspiracy. Just state capitalism reaching its apogee.
There is some justice to a recent Syrian’s claim that he is only in the UK because his country has been destroyed by the irrational policies of successive US neo-con policies and international competition. However, the plight of the sovereign nation state has to be the first policy of government. This being the nature of the social contract. Without that, government risks losing authority. Successive crises confirm common opinion that they are being monetised and even engineered. Home Office figures in the UK state that 8 million GBP was spent daily on asylum seekers in 2024. This is in stark contrast to the recent Chinese intervention in Myanmar (Burma)². Chinese forces went cross-border dismantling scam centres trapping thousands of Chinese workers. Here is the sovereign state upholding ‘the exception’. The exception is the sovereign state wielding effective power to protect its citizens. Britain and Europe are constrained by international law and the ‘rules-based order’. This is a euphemism for collapse and self-abasement.
Whilst Jared Diamond pointed to resource and geographical factors in the demise of the Easter Islanders, the Aztecs and the Khmer, the emasculation of Europe is down to cultural factors. Plato in ‘The Republic’ maintained that excessive freedom and equality destroy civic order: “the father grows accustomed to be like his child, and the citizen to be like the foreigner.” James Burnham in ‘The Machiavellians’ argued that the moral relativism of liberalism contains the seeds of its own destruction: it disarms societies morally and politically, leaving them unable to defend themselves or their traditions. Europe has lost the memory of successful civilisation. The truth of the past is replaced by notions of ‘progress’, however irrational. Fundamental building blocks sink into disarray as gender, democracy and family are dismantled. Reality is distorted by endless new liberal innovation; in politics, gender and free speech. Everything is malleable; nothing is real. The west has entered hyperreality; unable to defend itself, the social contract is broken and collapse beckons inside the citadel.
Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught International Law and Political Philosophy at Universities in Europe. His articles have appeared in leading magazines and journals worldwide in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada, etc . His new book- ‘Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century’ is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.
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Interesting thoughts on the exploitation of the state (and its funders) via the inbuilt failure of liberalism. Guaranteed to upset the Christians though who won’t accept the link between Christianity and liberalism (despite the obvious institutional capture of their hierarchies and the brand of faith now being preached).
Well, it’s always interesting when writers cite (or worse still, quote) Nietzsche, who hated Christianity with a vengeance – and distorted it beyond all recognition – to advance or prove their argument. Someone who lists a distorted version of Christian doctrine and asks: “Can one believe that such things are still believed?” is hardly enriching or soundly academic reading for any student. Interesting, too, to read Bolger’s achievements which include “Adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.” He wouldn’t be advising any Think Tanks or Corporates if he were on record with any such distortion of Islam. I’ll put it no stronger than that.
Brian Patrick Bolger concludes (in his rather difficult to read article – I’ve only had time to race through it, though, so apologies if I’m not “getting it”) that “The fundamental reasons for civilizational suicide are both internal and external. But mostly internal.”
Maybe. But the really fundamental reason for the suicide of the nations of Europe, including the UK, IS the rejection of God. Simple. Who was it, said: “Truth is always simple, it is error that is immense.”
Christianity is, by definition, not “liberal” while individuals who think they are Christians may well be, including churchmen in the CofE and Pope Leo in Rome. By definition? Well, Christ told us that the way to (a happy) eternal life is narrow – and few there are who find it. The Anglican C.S. Lewis confirms this when he points out that “…the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…” (The Screwtape Letters).
Amen to that. It’s what we are witnessing all around us.