Britain's Cultural Revolution

By now I suspect that you have already decided who you are going to vote for. And you might even have voted already. Good for you.

So, let’s take a look at a phenomenon that our media has largely ignored, the cultural revolution unfolding in Great Britain.

As you know, the British recently elected a Labour government, that is, a leftist government. Led by one Keir Starmer it has set out to wreck Once-Great Britain. It is doing so by applying the most absurd principles of identity politics to the nation’s past history.

If you think that things are bad over here, a brief glance across the pond will show you that things can get a whole lot worse.

Theodore Dalrymple reports from Great Britain. One would very much like to think that he is making this up, but, alas, one understands that he is not.

Just in case you believed that America had cornered the market in stupid politicians, Dalrymple offers an insight into the mind of the British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy:

In 2014, the man who is now in charge of Britain’s foreign policy, David Lammy, then 42, appeared on a television quiz show. He was asked, among other things, for the surname of the couple whose first names were Pierre and Marie who won the Nobel Prize for their research into radiation.

“Antoinette,” he replied. Evidently, he thought that Pierre Antoinette had won a Nobel Prize.

Asked for the name of the fortress built in the 1370s to defend the gates of Paris that was later used by Cardinal Richelieu to imprison enemies, he replied, “Versailles.”

Asked where the “Rose” revolution that had overthrown the government of Edouard Shevardnadze took place, he replied, “Yugoslavia.”

Asked for the successor to Henry VIII, he reflected for a moment and replied, “Henry VII.”

Somehow or other, Lammy graduated from Harvard Law School.

And then there is the patriotism issue. How has Keir Starmer’s new Labour government shown respect for the nation’s past? The short answer is that it has not. Wherever possible, it has removed paintings and statues of Britain’s heroes.

Starmer has removed the portrait of William Gladstone from 10 Downing Street because of the Gladstone family’s involvement in slavery. He has removed also the portraits of Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth I—the latter, perhaps, because Virginia was named after the Virgin Queen, and Virginia was a slave state. Finally, he removed the portrait of Shakespeare, perhaps because the Bard was not fully on board with correct political views, or maybe because he would serve as a perpetual and reproachful reminder of the prime minister’s mediocrity.

The new chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has struck a blow against patriarchy, by erasing her male predecessors:

Meantime, … the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has taken down the pictures of all men in her residence, 11 Downing Street, to be replaced by women. This is surely ironic, in view of the prime minister’s removal of the pictures of two of the most significant women in British political history. But of course, what counts in these gestures is not truth but the ideological purity of the intention behind them.

It’s not about building on the past. It’s not about sustaining patriotism by exalting the nation’s past heroes. It’s about making wokeness an overarching tyranny, by erasing the past. And by undermining national pride… and mental health and emotional well being.

Keep in mind, the antidote to despair is pride, not hope. That is, pride in achievement. It does not always need to be personal pride. If you belong to a family where your parents have achieved great things, you share the pride. You profit from their successes.

Historically, Great Britain has been one of the most accomplished cultures in world history. It gave us the Industrial Revolution, parliamentary democracy, human rights, free enterprise and Shakespeare. And let us not forget being on the winning side of two world wars. There is much to be proud about.

Now, the British Labour party wants to strip away that pride, to diminish the achievements of the crown’s subjects and their ancestors. It wants to replace pride with guilt. Those who succeeded did not compete honorably; they cheated and exploited.

The reason is, the people who mostly accomplished these things were white males. And the Labour Party cannot have that. The reason is simple-- the accomplishments of one group make certain other groups feel bad for not having accomplished as much. So, the Labour Party wants to make other groups feel good about themselves by diminishing, disparaging and erasing the achievements of white males.

Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam posited that when we want to unite disparate cultures we need to stop lauding multiculturalism and to produce an encompassing culture, one that includes everyone. The word for this is patriotism, loyalty to the nation, making sure that everyone belongs.

When you undermine patriotism, as the British Labour Party is doing, you cause the nation to fragment, into oppressor and the oppressed, into exploiters and victims. You can choose sides, to work with the oppressed or even to join the ranks of the oppressors.

 You are not living in a nation, you are living in a narrative fiction, the kind that has been peddled by the radical left for well over a century now. You belong to the vanguard of the revolution-- you know, the one that failed so miserably during the twentieth century. 

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