When a deeply unpopular governing construct clings to power and openly treats the citizens who oppose it as an internal enemy, societal tumult becomes inevitable. A British expert on “irregular warfare” has issued a dire warning that the UK is rushing headlong to the worst manifestation of popular unrest – civil war – and that a hostile and woefully out-of-touch government is solely to blame.
David Betz is “Professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London, and specialist in the study of insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare, cyberwarfare, and propaganda,” journalist Louise Perry relates. Perry interviewed Betz in February on an ominous subject: “The Coming British Civil War.” The professor is not hopeful that it can be avoided.
‘Societal Failure’ in the UK
Betz told Perry he has long studied “the subject of societal failure and attempts to cure societies which have descended into civil war for one reason or another.” In recent years, he has come to a sobering conclusion. “I began to recognize the problems which we were studying abroad as being increasingly prevalent – indeed increasingly typical – of our own societies” in the West, he said.
Americans long exposed to Swamp intransigency in Washington, DC, do not need an intricate understanding of UK politics to grasp Betz’s assertion that the nation’s dominant political parties are attempting to preserve a discredited status quo against the overwhelming wishes of a citizenry desirous of systemic change.
“This actually came to a head for me in the period after the Brexit vote [to leave the European Union] during the Parliamentary shenanigans over how to implement the people's decision on that matter, where the people were consulted on it on a very specific matter of the national will,” Betz emphasized. “And it appeared to my mind as to many others that the government was doing its best to subvert and otherwise avoid the implications of that decision, which clearly went against their own judgment about what was good for the country or at any rate good for themselves – good for the establishment.”
Sound familiar? A so-called democratic governing body was rejecting the stated will of a majority of UK citizens. Discrediting itself even further, it pompously declared that it was doing so in the name of preserving democracy.
Betz also highlights rapid, transformative demographic change via massive, unchecked immigration as a key element in the disintegration of British society.
“Multiculturalism has drained the nation's social capital, it's encouraged factionalism and polarization, both of which are up massively while the belief of people in pre-political loyalty has been shattered by the triumph of identity politics in our society,” he damningly explains.
Betz points out how Brits are being educated to despise their own history and cultural heritage, further fueling alienation and division. That along with an ever-increasing economic burden on working-class citizens puts an already roiling pot to full boil.
He also notes that the development of a widely perceived surveillance state in the UK is a direct byproduct of an unpopular government being unable to rely on the support of the governed. “When legitimacy collapses then your government costs are very high,” Betz observes. “You have to police everything, you have to watch people because they won't do the right thing and indeed if people are really pissed off as soon as they're unobserved they'll do the wrong thing.”
Rise of the ‘Feral City’ and ‘Two-Tiered Policing’
Independent UK politician Nick Buckley also spoke with Betz in a discussion posted online on March 1 that amplifies the theme of impending disaster. Betz told Buckley that English cities, riven by massive indigestible Third World immigration and economic malaise, are becoming densely populated Mad Max wastelands.
“I use a term derived again from the military literature, in that case, an essay from the United States in the early 2000s describing something called the Feral City, which is a city that is fundamentally ungoverned. And there are many aspects of [that in] many, many British cities,” Betz stated.
He also references attempts by UK officials to provide separate rules of law – tougher on native citizens and more lenient to Muslim immigrants. “The government's efforts to co-opt or at least not to further inflame the Muslim population... give substance to charges within the broader society of the existence of two-tier policing and generally unequal application of the law,” he says. “These things are very damaging to civil comity, to perception of legitimacy and so on.”
‘The Most Important Fissure’
Above all, Betz lays out the heart of the conflict between the ruling elite and the people of England. It is the crux of the crisis playing out in all nations of the West today: “I think fundamentally the most important fissure is between nationalism and post-nationalism. Nationalism is in bad odor and has been in elite circles since the world wars, really.”
“But essentially, if one understands it as a love of one's place and people, then that idea is one that appeals to Britons across a range of ethnicities. And if you think of it that way, then the problem is that we have our elite, our political media, certainly our corporate elite, they're all post-nationalist in their orientation. They don't think in terms of national interest. In fact, they're suspicious of people who talk about national interest.”
“Elite betrayal” is a term Betz uses to describe the feelings of those eager to topple what they believe is an irretrievably corrupt status quo. Given those sentiments, which are growing by the day, it is indeed a deadly game the UK establishment is playing. If electoral redress is denied to people who see their government as a force of direct harm in their lives, violence and bloodshed become the only alternatives.
It makes losing an election to a Donald Trump or Nigel Farage seem like a skip through a London park.
The guillotine of the French Revolution and the bullet to the nape of the neck that was the signature of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia are blazing billboards from the past warning Western elites to turn away from the path they are pursuing. But in an age when history is distorted and denied, is there anyone in power in England today with eyes able to see where unbridled government hubris beyond the breaking point ends?
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