Many commentators have pointed to an alarming decline in faith in democracy. This trend is most pronounced in young people, no doubt for two reasons.
Firstly, because the young, being both utterly ignorant and even more utterly self-centred, tend to be most attracted to anti-democratic ideologies such as socialism. Secondly, because successive generations of young Westerners have been given an increasingly raw deal by the elites who, more than ever before, run their lives.
Democracy, after all, supposedly runs as a ‘social contract’, whereby law-making power is granted to elected officials who are supposed to use that power for the good of all. Most especially, democratic states supposedly cede the exclusive right to mete out violence, via the police and armed forces, in exchange for protecting the right to life, liberty and property of the citizenry.
That social contract has not just been broken by the ruling elite: it’s been smashed into pieces and now they’re stamping on the pieces – and shouting at the pieces that they are disgusting, far-right extremists for daring to scuff the elite’s shiny boots a little.
What recent events have shown is a more widespread breakdown of the rule of law that has wider, more distal causes. The widespread vandalism associated with the Ulez protests prior to the general election was the canary in the coalmine, showing that significant numbers of the population were no longer willing to consent to be governed by a ruling class they regard as having almost colonial attitude to politics. Driving through a salubrious London borough recently, I saw several 20mph signs painted over and vandalised, presumably as a protest against the proliferation of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
Why would the Western working class have any faith in democracy, really? For the past few decades, elections have changed nothing, apart from rotating the government benches between one lot of feckless, arrogant elites and another. All that’s really changed are the colours of the ties (the old-school ties are mostly the same: there’s hardly a Labor or Greens MP who didn’t go to an elite school and university). To paraphrase P J O’Rourke, voting has only encouraged the bastards.
What has been eclipsed by the reprehensible violence and vandalism of a minority is a far larger groundswell of people who still believe in a peaceful route to change but clearly no longer have faith that our Parliamentary system can deliver it without very significant external pressure. On July 27 Tommy Robinson held a huge but peaceful rally in central London that was notable for its demographics. The thuggish ‘firms’ of football hooligans associated with Robinson’s English Defence League past (a defunct organisation he long since disavowed and left in 2013) were absent; instead the attendees included a great many women and members of ethnic minorities. The organisers claimed up to 100,000 attended, but even if that is a wild overestimate it was still, as the pundit Patrick O’Flynn noted, by far the largest gathering in London Robinson has been able to put together.
And all the elites, from the corridors of parliament to the streets of shame, all shrieked in predictable unison: Far right! White supremacists! Fascists!
As Tallyrand said of the Bourbons, they ‘have learned nothing and forgotten nothing’ […]
The intransigence of the elites really is a wonder of our age, and much virtual ink has been spilled trying to understand a phenomenon as suicidal as it is inexplicable. By and large compared to its continental counterparts, throughout history the British Establishment has been both pragmatic and skilful at knowing when to give ground rather than die on a hill for a lost cause. But not this time around: at every juncture the elites have not only refused to give ground but doubled down on their positions. The unprecedented crack down on free speech labeled by Starmer as ‘swift justice’ has been determined as it has been ruthless.
The determined intransigence of the elites seems to be less a bug of the Clown World, but a feature. It’s not even just the sinister lunacy of a Soviet or Maoist commissar, for whom the less the propaganda correspondent to reality, the better – a society of emasculated liars, as Theodore Dalrymple has said, being easy to control.
Rather, the insanity of the left is a luxury statement.
Rather like Chinese noblemen used to grow long, impractical fingernails whose only purpose was to signal they did not have to work, the narcissism of the elites is so exquisite that adopting ever more insane luxury beliefs shows just how rarefied and exalted their position in society is above the common fray.
As Orwell said, one has to belong to the ‘intelligentsia’ to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. What Orwell meant as a pejorative, the modern left elite proudly wear as a badge of honour. Like the elite loons screaming and crying performatively on TikTok, it’s all about being seen to be lunatic. Look at me! I’m crazy: that means I’m not one of those deplorables who still believe in facts!
When we say, “no ordinary man could be such a fool”, they proudly declare their elite status by proclaiming, I AM no ordinary man! I am a fool!
