This time, without further ado, I’ll start straight from the quote: “… the foreign and domestic policies of the state are based on a deeper cultural narrative inextricably linked to national identity: before we know what we want, we need to know who we are. These cultural narratives amplify or constrain our action as much as (or even more powerfully than) military or financial factors. They describe our place in the world, help order our internal social relations, and give purpose and meaning to our actions. In short, the cultural narrative of who we are is a prerequisite for politics. It purposefully structures the human capacity to achieve what we want.”
At first glance, this quote resembles an excerpt from some scholarly treatise analysing the cultural preconditions of public policy itself. It is both true and false. The authors of this quotation are quite venerable and prominent in the academic world of the British academy. Prof. Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christ Church, University of Oxford. Doug Stokes is Professor in International Security and Academic Director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter. But they did so with a very specific operational purpose – to help the British government strategize against one of its gravest threats: the loss of geopolitical subjectivity and even the breakup of the United Kingdom.
Their joint report is entitled “How ‘progressive’ anti-imperialism threatens the United Kingdom” and is posted on the Geostrategy Council website for a reason. The authors argue quite convincingly that the adherents of the culture of exception (cancel culture), who have awakened (woke culture) in order to get even with the “cursed past” of the British colonial empire, are in fact performing, in familiar language, “foreign agent functions”. Or, to put it more simply, they are a “fifth column” that acts in the interests of an external enemy and works to undermine the notional “fortress of Britain” from within.
The numerous “culture wars” waged by “progressive” wokers against the British historical tradition for the purpose of restoring social justice may end very badly for that social justice, and for the British statehood. And, in the final analysis, for Anglo-Saxon (that is, Western) civilization in general. The report’s authors remind readers that the entire “civilized” (read Western civilization with the inclusion of Japan and South Korea) world is at war with three formidable foes.
They are the People’s Republic of China, with its global ambitions; Russia, with its “military revisionism” (apparently, the authors call Russia’s leadership in advanced weapons such as hypersonics); and radical Islamic extremists conducting terrorist attacks in various parts of the world (including in Western Europe). Each of these “fronts” has long had its own particular “war”, but taken together, they represent a major threat to Britain and the “collective West”. This is the classic Cold War image war that has become very much in demand in the current Cold War 2.0, which is more often and more justly referred to as the “hybrid war”.
The conventional “collective West” is endowed with such characteristics as freedom, rule of law, democracy, openness, and social justice, while China and Russia are positioned as the embodiment of authoritarianism with the intention of spreading an authoritarian order to the rest of the world – the West in the first place. Islamic terrorist radicalism needs no special positioning – it is “good” enough.
This picture of two new “blocs” or “camps” with the old characteristics (“democracy” vs authoritarianism) is drawn by the authors in a new version, with one essentially important point corrected. Nigel Biggar and Doug Stokes state the shift of the “centre of power” from the West to the East, referring not so much to the military and strategic aspect, as to the trade and cultural one. In a global world so structured, there is a “war” for foreign investment, and ultimately for economic domination. China, with its huge market, political stability under the authoritarian rule of the CCP, its advanced information and communications technology and its growing military might, is clearly the first contender to challenge the West in alliance with Russia and to consolidate around itself the entire initially non-Western, and later overtly anti-Western, world.
And in this endeavour, the authors emphasise, China and Russia are actively assisted by domestic “progressives” trying to impose an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist discourse as the dominant one. And, in so doing, to destroy the traditional national identity based on acceptance of and reverence for the great British imperial past. And the entire Western past, which is by no means confined to colonialism (and not necessarily as horrific as it is portrayed by left-wing progressivist ideologues). Western civilization, the professors argue, is the natural leader and “beacon” for humanity, since it was the West (and Britain in the first place) that invented such universal values as “human rights”, “democracy”, “civil liberties and political rights” and “tolerance”. Finally, such fundamental norms as “minority rights” and “political correctness”.
It turns out that in their struggle against Britain’s allegedly shameful imperial-colonial past, the “culture-swappers” are sawing off the very “bough” on which, figuratively speaking, they are “sitting”. After all, it is under conditions of western freedoms that such phenomena as the MeToo movement, BLM, the same woke’rs and other conventional “dissidents” became possible. Who in reality already own the mainstream discourse that disavows the once glorious imperial past and thus destroys national identity.
And, if the thesis I quoted at the outset is indeed correct, then the direct result of the left-wing “progressives” in Britain turns out to be the complete disorientation of the British nation as such. If we Britons are not to be proud of our past, but ashamed of it and erase it permanently and irreversibly from national memory, then a gaping vacuum is emerging in place of traditional identity. And if we do not know (no longer!) who we are, it is impossible for us to define what we want. Hence, the nation ceases to be a nation and becomes a conglomeration of individuals, communities, ethnicities, and territories that are living together for reasons that are unclear.
It is clear what catastrophe the spread and triumph of a left-wing progressivist discourse that invalidates virtually all national history could lead Britain to. In terms of facing external challenges from authoritarians such as China and Russia, and fanatical passionists such as Islamic fundamentalists, one can confidently predict total failure. The loss of national identity inevitably demoralises any nation, and its claim to any meaningful place in the global world (let alone a claim to leadership) remains a claim. Which may eventually lead to final frustration and even disintegration of the country.
Biggar and Stokes take their analysis in this direction, addressing the most acute and painful problem facing the UK today. Of course, this concerns Scottish separatism and the looming threat of another referendum on independence. The results of the May elections in Holyrood (Scottish parliament) showed that the winners – the Scottish nationalist party allied with the Greens – are only waiting for the end of the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to put the fatal referendum question to Boris Johnson’s government.
Maybe this is partly why Johnson is trying to postpone this moment (the cancellation of the lockdown) as far as possible, and is already considering moving the cancellation date from 21 June to 22 July. Even though the number of vaccinated in Britain has already reached 60%. Johnson is even prepared to have a no-nonsense opposition in his own faction in the House of Commons to vote against extending the restrictions. Already 49 members of the Tory caucus have just done so. And there is no doubt that the number of such protesters will increase by 21 June.
But again, Johnson is understandable. Nicola Sturgeon – First Minister of the Scottish Government and leader of the SNP – stated bluntly immediately after winning the election: as long as the pandemic continues, we will not ask for a referendum. And it is all about that “for now”. Because the central promise of the party at the election was precisely to raise the question of a referendum and to achieve that right at all costs.
Thus the current Britain is under attack from three sides – from the China-Russia-radical Islamist triad, from its own “fifth column” of left-wing “progressives” and from the Scottish separatists who rule in one of the four parts of the British Union. That is why the academics conclude their report with a set of advice to help the Johnson government to neutralise, firstly, the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist discourse of the “awakeners” and, secondly, to extinguish Scottish separatism, so to speak, “on the doorstep”.
The general recommendation is “to defend and promote an attractive idea of Britain’s past and its global future”.
And specifically in relation to Scottish voters to do the following:
– Support organisations within civil society that will engage in shaping a positive image of Britain, enshrine the resulting image in memes, ‘tailor’ those memes to particular groups of voters and begin to broadcast them verbally and through imagery;
– Again, with the help of civil society organisations, monitor the way history is taught in Scottish schools and ensure that it is taught in a politically neutral way and that there are no nationalist interpretations;
– Finally, to show that it is from the colonial past that all the co-operation, assistance and support organisations that Britain is proud of today have their origins.
The programme is simple and, by all appearances, easy to implement. As they say among sailors, seven feet under the keel and fair wind! But ease of implementation is no guarantee of the desired result. And in general: a passing wind may turn out to be a storm.
Leonid Polyakov, PolitAnalytics