Lies and tyranny

"Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny". Aristotle, allegedly.

This is an excerpt from my coming book, Convert or Die.

There has been a marked change in the legal atmosphere in the West in the last few decades. Efforts to silence dissent, previously a hallmark of the tyrannical Soviet Union, Ba’athist regimes in the Middle East, and assorted left-wing nationalist governments, have taken hold.

In France, people get fined regularly for criticising Islam and immigration. The gilets jaunes were beaten and tear gassed for their protests, and not a single Western government expressed the mildest disapproval.

In Germany, there is talk of banning one of the most popular parties in the country because it believes in the nation state and opposes immigration. Even though it is led by a lesbian, it is accused of being far right, hollowing that term of all meaning.

In Canada, protesters against lockdowns had their bank accounts frozen and were imprisoned.

In the United States, a presidential candidate is facing 91 indictments, most of which are laughable.

In Britain, minor anti-immigration riots led to courts being opened 24 hours, and a raft of charges and prison sentences, including against individuals who were merely present, or who said unkind things on social media. This in a country where violent criminals regularly get early release or no prison sentences at all.

By contrast, Arab dictators, when the “Arab Spring” protests began in 2011, made extensive efforts, at least rhetorically, to reach out to the public and accept some of the protesters’ grievances. Western governments are showing no such consideration.

What explains this draconian turn?

We argue that, throughout the West, the state, the establishment media and the civil service are basing their worldview on a series of fantasises and lies. As the establishment loses the ability to defend the lies on which it is basing its policies, its reaction will not be to moderate, but to exercise extensive repression.

We attempt to catalogue some of these lies below, in the hope that their rejection by the public will weaken the encroaching tyranny.

Lies about society

Wealth and power

Those with wealth are always more powerful than those without. Egalitarian claims to the contrary are delusional, yet these egalitarian delusions underpin all modern Western democratic systems.

Parties that promise to hold the rich to account – while taking their donations and gifts – are especially lacking in credibility. They are likely to talk a good game while further empowering oligarchs.

In an aristocratic system, those with wealth and power are well-known and are constantly in the public eye – at least as far as their peers and neighbours are concerned. In multiparty democracy, donors are often hidden from view but wield enormous power.

The wealthy can fund media and other institutions that bestow credibility and legitimacy, including political parties. The plebians cannot.

Allowing the wealthy to hide their power is detrimental to the public, as it removes the tools that keep the powerful in line: the threat of public humiliation, and the opprobrium of their peers. That is why egalitarian ideologies are in effect more tyrannical than most hierarchical ones.

Any cursory glance at the role of lobbyists and large corporations in modern Western governance shows that it is the oligarchs who are truly in charge. Egalitarianism enables oligarchs to rule unchallenged.

Aristocracy and oligarchy

Aristocracy addresses the question: how can we have meritocracy, despite the universal human tendency to nepotism? That answer is to create a class of extremely competent individuals related by blood.

Aristocracy gives the intellectual and military elites great responsibility and independent wealth and encourages them to intermarry. Their offspring then have the greatest possible chance to win the genetic lottery while being economically secure enough to develop their potential to its fullest.

Those who shine from among the lower classes are gradually elevated to the ranks of the aristocracy. Those who do not – who invariably constitute the majority – are protected by a stable political system that gives them clear roles and responsibilities. 

The alternative to aristocracy is for those who manage to succeed financially to use their wealth to further their own economic welfare. That is oligarchy. Those business tycoons then proceed to acquire the organs that shape public opinion – as occurred with Fox News or Twitter or the Washington Post. The oligarchs can then influence politics according to their commercial interests. These commercial interests can include offshoring industries, dismantling trade barriers, and flooding the labour market with imported workers. Oligarchs have shown their willingness to destabilise the lower classes just to gain a little more wealth. Aristocrats, for all their faults, require functioning lower classes to maintain their position.

Both aristocracy and oligarchy have been tested by time. The first created the greatest civilisation known to mankind, the second is collapsing it.

Therefore, the duty of a state is to elevate the aristocracy and discipline the oligarchy.

Therefore, oligarchs serving lengthy jail terms, or having their assets seized, or even “falling” from buildings, is better for society than oligarchs only ever being fined.

In Britain, the stated purpose of the state has been to flatten society, removing any traces of hereditary inequality.

This will merely make it harder for those with titles and wealth to challenge nouveau riche oligarchs. The oligarchs must be delighted, as challenging them requires resources and education, and is not easily done by the disorganised masses.

Lies about sexuality

Marriage

Western governments and societies forget that homosexuality is a novel concept.

Of course, there was always male on male sexual activity, including in nature. However, such activity was seen as perverse and as temporary, rather than a lifelong bond akin to that between man and wife.

Contrary to popular belief, Greek and Roman thinkers saw the practice as abominable. However, in the last few seconds in civilisational terms, a new concept arose: that of “marriage equality,” whereby individuals of the same sex can be “married”.  

In reality, there is no marriage without the theoretical possibility of procreation, however remote. The institution of marriage is built around having and protecting children. Its primary purpose is to safeguard women and children by creating a permanent bond between parents. In situations where procreation is in theory and in practice impossible, marriage is also impossible.

It is fanciful to claim that marriage is merely about love and desire, rather than about duty, responsibility, the passing of traditions and the preservation of community, especially women and children. Yet we see precisely that attitude from almost all parties in the West. So much so that what was always considered perverse is now considered a protected characteristic, with the state willing to use its coercive powers to prevent people from speaking the obvious truth: homosexuality is perverse.

Feminism

Feminism is the claim that the differences in form and biological functions between males and females do not imply a difference in social, economic and political functions.

Feminists claim that women and men are equal, or should be equal, or could be equal, even if their roles in rearing children are obviously and necessarily different. Feminism is the claim that evolution and biology should not inform the sexes’ social, economic or political roles.

As Chesterton put it, feminism is the claim that a woman is enslaved when she helps her husband but free when she serves her employer.

It is self-evident, therefore, that feminism is very convenient for oligarchs: it depresses wages.

And yet progressives, the oligarchs’ self-declared enemies, universally champion feminism.

Transgenderism

The logical consequence of feminism is transgenderism: if the biological differences between men and women do not imply social, economic and political differences, then why not the other way around? Why can a man not adopt the social or economic profile of a woman, and then claim to be a “real” woman?

If biology does not matter in one direction, why should it matter in the other?

That said, the usefulness of transgenderism to the oligarchy should not be underestimated. If the oligarchs can make you say that a man is a woman, they can make you say anything else. In this sense, asking you to “affirm” transgenderism is a test of loyalty and obedience, as we explain here.

Be very mistrustful of oligarchs who support this tyrannical lunacy.

Lies about the economy

Welfare

The official Western stance on welfare is that it is temporary, that people want to work, that its benefits outweigh the cost, in that it permits those temporarily out of a job to continue spending, preventing the economy from crashing in a recession.

Human nature, however, says otherwise. Welfare enables leeches.

If we can get paid without working, our natural tendency to sloth will lead us to do so regularly. Welfare is not a temporary arrangement to bridge difficult times. It is a permanent crutch used by those able to work but who choose not to.

This becomes increasingly true in a society that loses faith and community. Without faith to provide a conscience and private motivation, without community to provide shame and public motivation, those who can live on welfare will increasingly choose to do so.

Providing welfare to foreigners is especially destructive, as it gives the impression that this is a weak society ripe to be taken advantage of. Yet this is precisely what the Western state is doing – most London social housing is occupied by those born outside the United Kingdom, and illegal migrants are housed in four-star hotels. Western governments are doubling down on hosting illegal migrants and providing them with benefits. They are prioritising foreign leeches over productive citizens.

Pensions

A state-sponsored pension system is destined to bankrupt the state, due to the perverse incentives it creates. The state cannot indefinitely pay seniors’ pensions for the simple reason that the presence of state pensions disincentivises men and women from having children. This shrinks the workforce and the tax base and increases the tax burden.

In reality, seniors can only depend on their children to provide for them during their old age. If society is safe and stable, they may be able to rely on their savings. Outside a safe society, the elderly and frail are, at best, robbed and left destitute.

Society consists of a generational chain of mutual obligations, and the provision of a pension by the state breaks that chain.

Throughout the West, neither supposedly conservative nor liberal parties recognise this truth. In Britain, politicians insist on raising pensions at rates higher than inflation, thereby increasing the burden of pensions on the economy and stiffing future generations.

This is social suicide.  

Net Zero

Wealth is characterised by high energy consumption. A sensible political leadership that wishes to increase its society’s wealth would want to maximise energy consumption, not outsource it to China.

Cheap and abundant energy is a key mechanism for generating wealth. The West had already achieved energy abundance. Net Zero mandates replacing existing efficient infrastructure with new, inefficient and unreliable infrastructure.

However, gas and coal need to be maintained anyway, even under the Net Zero utopia, as so-called renewables are unreliable (and expensive). Therefore, the West will be paying to maintain infrastructure that it already has, while buying new infrastructure that is less effective than the existing one.

The result is rising energy prices, weaker industry, and poorer households. And more wealth for the net zero oligarchy, who happens to have outsourced industrial production to China anyway.

The oligarchs are profiting from economic suicide.

Lies about identity

Belonging and ethnicity

Rishi Sunak was not described as Britain’s first Kenyan-origin Prime Minister, but as Britain’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister. Even though his family came to the UK from Kenya.

Why did residence in Kenya not make the Sunaks Kenyan, whereas residence in Britain somehow made them British? And what does the Sunaks’ identification as Indian, rather than Kenyan, say about belonging, ethnicity and religion?

Modern Western states tend to forget that tribe, ethnicity and religion are the building blocs of political organisation. People naturally have affinity towards those who are like themselves and naturally reject outsiders.

We therefore observe that ethnic enclaves are a universal human norm. Some become seemingly benign cultural curiosities, like Chinatown or Little Italy. Some are dangerous, like the Banlieux or Birmingham, or like Little Italy during the heyday of the Mafia.

Diversity is almost never a strength. Diversity means that people have different allegiances, and different values. That in turn makes it impossible to agree on a common good.  Politics turns into conflicts over each community’s portion of the economic pie. I explore this at length here.

The Lebanese of West Africa remain Lebanese, not African. And the Siddi Africans of South Asia remain a separate community and are not Indian or Pakistani. When Indian Muslims come to the West, they live among other Muslims, not with Hindus and not with the ethnically European. And they marry other Muslims, usually from their own ethnic group – those who do not often face stern rejection from their community.

The truth that the Western state tries to hide is that those who belong to the West are those who are ethnically European and culturally Christian.

For oligarchs, however, the supply of cheap labour and additional consumers is worth it.

Religion and cohesion

Western states no longer recognise that liberalism is a Christian compromise, based on the Protestant notion that religious authority does not reside in the Church, and on the Catholics’ decision to no longer press that issue through warfare.

The separation between Church and State, by contrast, is a fundamentally Catholic idea which refers to the separation of administrative authority between the ecclesiastical and temporal authorities.

The modern West incorrectly assumes that Muslims or Hindus or even Communist atheists can maintain such a separation, despite history demonstrating that all political community must have an ideological or religious basis. The leadership of Britain fails to notice that Hindu and Muslim Indians rally to different sides. Their supposed Britishness does not bridge their religious divisions.

It is bizarre to expect non-Christians to adopt Western values when they do not adopt the faith that underpins Western values.

The state in the West does not understand that communal cohesion is maintained through shared faith. Rather, Western progressives are trying to make “Islamophobia”, or legitimate criticism of Islam, a crime.

Islam and democracy

Almost no one mentions that far more British Muslims joined Islamic State than the British military, let alone asks why.

Furthermore, moderns assume, incorrectly, that Islam and democracy are compatible. However, Islam views itself as the natural religion of state that is entitled to govern Christians and Jews – it does not accept that they can govern themselves in shared territories and still implement the law of God. And if the Christians or Jews do not implement the law of God in accordance with the Muslims’ understanding, then Muslims are entitled to fight them. The result is perpetual warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims until Islam establishes itself in government.

Islam also permits the ruler to judge whether anyone is guilty of “waging war against God” or of “causing corruption in the earth”. When the ruler deems it necessary, he is entitled to kill that person.

This combination of militarism and license to kill easily leads to despotism.

It is bizarre to expect Muslims to work towards maintaining free and democratic states in the West, when they have never built any at home. Recall the hopes that greeted the “Arab Spring”. Consider how it ended.

Immigration and democracy

Given the reality that migrants will not adopt Western values – unless they embrace Christianity and practice it for a few generations – bringing in foreigners and giving them citizenship is destructive. It is an especially dangerous experiment when done in large numbers – a handful of Pakistanis may wish to adapt and/or convert, but if they move in their thousands, they will form parallel communities and face no pressure to integrate. And indeed, this is what the West is witnessing.

Mass migration from diverging cultures paves the way to civil war. Westerners forget that chaos, enmity and conflict are the norm in diverse societies. Diversity is not a strength, but a burden, and is fundamentally incompatible with democracy – diversity needs to be managed with authoritarianism, as the alternative is either political paralysis or communal conflict.

Democracy, by contrast, requires a bedrock of deeply shared values that permit the governing party to trust its opposition rivals enough to hand them power peacefully. In a diverse society, there is no shared understanding of the common good – diverging identities make it difficult to define what is common, and diverging values make it difficult to define what is good. Trusting your rivals with power is therefore suicidal. Increased immigration brings the West closer to a point where accepting the outcome of elections is seen as suicidal.

Lies and tyranny

The West’s political establishment, including the media and civil service, is wedded to a series of blatant lies. These lies are economically and socially toxic, but empower the oligarchy.

It is impossible to defend lies, especially lies of the magnitude of those adopted by Western states, without repression, intimidation and violence.

Unsurprisingly, Western governments are using draconian measures to defend these lies, including with absurd “hate speech” laws intended to prevent the discussion of difficult truths, restrictions on social media to prevent the spread of “misinformation”, de-banking of dissidents, and punishments against peaceful protesters.

The lies that have been spread by the establishment, and the measures taken to protect those lies, have broken down the trust required for democracy to function. Without trust, there can be no peaceful transfer of power, no democracy.

That is why the repression from establishment parties will intensify. There is no other path open to the current ruling classes.

The truth can be established peacefully, with reason and good example, if one is willing to sacrifice enough, as the Christian martyrs were. Dissidents must insist on speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, by the grace of God. No matter the consequences.