I feel it's important to show your working if you're going to make a claim such as "civil war is inevitable" and in characterising the imprisonment of someone who *called for a pogrom* (and subsequently pleaded guilty) as a miscarriage of justice Professor Betz has shown much more than that.
Higher education many years ago was viewed as intrinsically valuable because of the increased knowledge and critical skills it encouraged. It was far less seen as the passport to a lucrative career. Since the 1990s it has been sold as a financial deal which students pay for which now turns out to be a dangerous idea as graduate jobs fail to match the number of graduates.
On the tendency to form mutually antagonistic tribes that refuse to understand each other, the church of England is providing a text book example at the moment. As often happens it is reflecting social trends.
Interesting piece, thank you. I don't have anything particularly useful in terms of data or 'proof' to bring to the discussion of whether civil war is inevitable in the UK. However, I think sometimes we instinctively can feel or know truth but struggle to articulate it with reason or logic - and it be nonetheless true.
Back in 2010, for just over a year I was a prison officer in South London, before moving elsewhere in UK to a new life. When I got here I was introduced to some friends at the pub by a good mate of mine, and I had a really good chat with a lad my age who was a police officer. We agreed on lots, and he was in the process of leaving the police for similar reasons i had left the prison service, so we had a good chat. The group of us went from pub to pub, and at one point in the night, as our group left a bar, another group of lads were going in. There was no aggression, no words spoken, and no one in our group batted an eyelid: but the experience of violence in prison, and specifically the strange sixth sense you become accustomed to feeling just before violence takes place, suddenly struck me - and in that moment I knew the group going in were trouble, and there was going to be imminent violence. The copper i was talking to stopped talking - he too had noticed it. No one else in our group had, even though we were a group of young men, a demographic somewhat attracted to violence. We were leaving, we left the pub behind us and didn't look back. The other group hadn't actually done anything, and now they were someone else's problem if they did. But it fascinated me that the two people in our group who had immediately 'known' that violence was imminent, and had both had that sudden feeling, were the two who experienced violence everyday in our jobs: the copper and the screw. No one else noticed.
I don't think this is anything more than a subconscious acknowledgement of subtle body language cues: the tensing in shoulders and the adrenaline in the eyes of men intent on immediate violence. In fanciful moments I have wondered if it's a spiritual reality, the presence of evil (i have never got this feeling before watching a fair boxing match, or a rugby game for example: only in violent situations that were plainly immoral - prison beatings and assaults), but I can't quite square that with the fact that violence often happened in prison without me noticing, I simply had to clean up afterwards - so it must be from visual cues that i only became attuned to from habitual experience. At any rate, I am not claiming some special skill, just a particular type of awareness that now, many years after leaving the prison behind, I have no doubt lost to a great extent.
I only mention all this because, despite lacking specific evidence or data, I FEEL that our streets and towns and cities are very much closer to violence: that as a society, as communities, we are teetering on the cliff edge of very serious violence. I can't quite put my finger on it - a mounting hostility, perhaps. The ubiquity of frustrated and angry young men. The lack of trust in institutions, the media, the police, the courts. An openly divided and increasingly tribal citizenry. The increasing feeling that there is less - if not quite nothing - to lose. The sudden increase in racial or ethnic based grievances being aired in private group chats, when for my generation 'racism' has been the cardinal sin for the whole of our lives.
I'm not alone in feeling this; lots of other people do too. I suspect lots of them are the type to attend unherd meetings, as it is a feature of conservative thought to justify one's instinct of truth through reason, rather than to reason one's way to a radically new but logical principle. I very much doubt any of them want a civil war - but they have felt it to be a growing likelihood and Betz confirms their suspicions.
Thank you so much for this. "We wait all night for calls like this", but seriously. The anecdote about the young men in the pub is really helpful, because we do develop and sometimes lose particular forms of awareness as a result of attention we're hardly aware of. As a young man I could tell at once whether an area was one in which drugs might be bought. So I know that my own lack of any sense of danger on the streets is not evidence of anything reassuring. My sense of the Unherd crowd — largely middle aged, and men for whom a beer bottle was not a potential weapon but an occasion to spend £7.00 — is that they also lacked the kind of intuition for violence you had once. On the other hand, if they knew London was dangerous from the media they would feel menace in the streets: the first time I was sent to the States I prowled the city streets in darkness expecting any moment to be shot or stabbed — in Georgetown.
Now I live in a place quite as safe (and white) as Georgetown where I still find the occasional sight of bouncers outside pub doors very shocking. So the feeling you so vividly describe: _The ubiquity of frustrated and angry young men. The lack of trust in institutions, the media, the police, the courts. An openly divided and increasingly tribal citizenry. The increasing feeling that there is less - if not quite nothing - to lose. The sudden increase in racial or ethnic based grievances being aired in private group chats, when for my generation 'racism' has been the cardinal sin for the whole of our lives._ seems like a report from a foreign country. That may simply strengthen your point about divisions, but it still seems to me a very long way from 23,000 deaths a year.
Thanks Andrew. Apologies, I didn't mean to suggest that I thought the unherd crowd had a keen intuition for violence akin to a current policeman or prison officer - i very much doubt that too, and quite agree with your point about the beer bottle, ha ha! - i just meant that there is an increasingly widespread 'sense' of a coming violent upheaval, despite a difficulty in pinning it down with data or sound arguments, as i think Betz attempts to. And i think it is similar in kind - but not in degree - to the copper/screw instinct (or wariness/ alertness/suspicion/whatever it was!), and therefore - in my opinion - not entirely without precedent. I totally acknowledge that this basically comes down to me saying 'I feel like it's about to kick off', without any data or proof - and i don't think i can claim it's necessarily any more valid than someone else saying 'I feel like it's not going to' - I don't have proof. But I still think that feeling, without proof or data or logic or reason, can point to something being true, in the same way any instinct can. And I'm perhaps struggling to articulate this without sounding like I think I have better 'instincts for potential civil war' than anyone else! Because I don't mean to claim that at all.
Pretty absurd. What would they kill with? Americans don’t even do that much killing, even with those factors amped up, a much more violent society, and guns. The professor needs a reality check.
I think “once they had the guns” is doing an awful lot of work there. And to compare Britain today to Northern Ireland during the troubles is pretty weird. Though as you’ve pointed out the reaction by the crowd is the interesting thing. I’ve spoken to MAGA supporters who intone about civil war or claim one is already ongoing. Sometimes there’s a little glee behind the warning.
This is a good point, and potentially the key reason there isn't already more widespread violence. However, Northern Ireland was subject to even stricter firearms laws and weapons restrictions during The Troubles, and several paramilitary groups still successfully managed to arm themselves with pistols, semi automatic rifles, grenades and semtex, in order to wage low level civil war and assassination campaigns. I suspect the laws of supply and demand will easily flout UK law in the same way, if it came to it. There are fairly regular gangland killings with firearms in Britain, so it seems easy enough to smuggle them past the coastguard already, it's just that the risk/reward means it's not worth the effort for otherwise law abiding people. Also, ethnic minorities stabbing each other with knives is an endemic problem in UK cities, so it's already clear that the firearms laws don't really stop people intent on killing each other from doing so with whatever means they can. Lastly, there has already been intelligence reports in the UK of illegal arms shipments under the care of muslim smugglers being apprehended in France on their way to Britain: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's publication recently commented on this. It may be that such shipments are intended for criminal gangs protecting territory or the drug trade etc - it may be that they were headed directly to Islamists or terrorists or other foreign/domestic hostile actors. Who knows? But i suspect this is not a single case of smoke without fire, drifting over the Channel: I suspect it is smoke from the glowing remnants of a fire that has already been creeping along the fuel line into the UK, unseen, for some time. If/when the violence arrives, I strongly suspect that those who want the violence will have the guns near to hand to do it.
Is it possible to defend an ethnicity without succumbing to racism? A negative answer to that question terrifies me, but every time 'white' is used as a slur it becomes more difficult to be positive. Critical Race Theory is the work of the Satan. I suspect there won't be as many deaths as Betz envisages, but I don't see any way through that doesn't involve a catastrophic and bloody crisis of some shape or form. Ho hum.
You can always find idiots saying idiotic and insulting things: that's the wonder of the internet. But I don't see what American critical race theory, whatever the phrase may mean, has anything to do with English conditions.
More to the point, Betz was explicit that he doesn't see a sudden bloody crisis with a consequent resolution, but a process of years long low level violence, as in Northern Ireland.
"I don't see what American critical race theory... has anything to do with English conditions" - I think that's a good example of aspect blindness (in the Wittgenstein sense)
I feel it's important to show your working if you're going to make a claim such as "civil war is inevitable" and in characterising the imprisonment of someone who *called for a pogrom* (and subsequently pleaded guilty) as a miscarriage of justice Professor Betz has shown much more than that.
Higher education many years ago was viewed as intrinsically valuable because of the increased knowledge and critical skills it encouraged. It was far less seen as the passport to a lucrative career. Since the 1990s it has been sold as a financial deal which students pay for which now turns out to be a dangerous idea as graduate jobs fail to match the number of graduates.
On the tendency to form mutually antagonistic tribes that refuse to understand each other, the church of England is providing a text book example at the moment. As often happens it is reflecting social trends.
Interesting piece, thank you. I don't have anything particularly useful in terms of data or 'proof' to bring to the discussion of whether civil war is inevitable in the UK. However, I think sometimes we instinctively can feel or know truth but struggle to articulate it with reason or logic - and it be nonetheless true.
Back in 2010, for just over a year I was a prison officer in South London, before moving elsewhere in UK to a new life. When I got here I was introduced to some friends at the pub by a good mate of mine, and I had a really good chat with a lad my age who was a police officer. We agreed on lots, and he was in the process of leaving the police for similar reasons i had left the prison service, so we had a good chat. The group of us went from pub to pub, and at one point in the night, as our group left a bar, another group of lads were going in. There was no aggression, no words spoken, and no one in our group batted an eyelid: but the experience of violence in prison, and specifically the strange sixth sense you become accustomed to feeling just before violence takes place, suddenly struck me - and in that moment I knew the group going in were trouble, and there was going to be imminent violence. The copper i was talking to stopped talking - he too had noticed it. No one else in our group had, even though we were a group of young men, a demographic somewhat attracted to violence. We were leaving, we left the pub behind us and didn't look back. The other group hadn't actually done anything, and now they were someone else's problem if they did. But it fascinated me that the two people in our group who had immediately 'known' that violence was imminent, and had both had that sudden feeling, were the two who experienced violence everyday in our jobs: the copper and the screw. No one else noticed.
I don't think this is anything more than a subconscious acknowledgement of subtle body language cues: the tensing in shoulders and the adrenaline in the eyes of men intent on immediate violence. In fanciful moments I have wondered if it's a spiritual reality, the presence of evil (i have never got this feeling before watching a fair boxing match, or a rugby game for example: only in violent situations that were plainly immoral - prison beatings and assaults), but I can't quite square that with the fact that violence often happened in prison without me noticing, I simply had to clean up afterwards - so it must be from visual cues that i only became attuned to from habitual experience. At any rate, I am not claiming some special skill, just a particular type of awareness that now, many years after leaving the prison behind, I have no doubt lost to a great extent.
I only mention all this because, despite lacking specific evidence or data, I FEEL that our streets and towns and cities are very much closer to violence: that as a society, as communities, we are teetering on the cliff edge of very serious violence. I can't quite put my finger on it - a mounting hostility, perhaps. The ubiquity of frustrated and angry young men. The lack of trust in institutions, the media, the police, the courts. An openly divided and increasingly tribal citizenry. The increasing feeling that there is less - if not quite nothing - to lose. The sudden increase in racial or ethnic based grievances being aired in private group chats, when for my generation 'racism' has been the cardinal sin for the whole of our lives.
I'm not alone in feeling this; lots of other people do too. I suspect lots of them are the type to attend unherd meetings, as it is a feature of conservative thought to justify one's instinct of truth through reason, rather than to reason one's way to a radically new but logical principle. I very much doubt any of them want a civil war - but they have felt it to be a growing likelihood and Betz confirms their suspicions.
Thank you so much for this. "We wait all night for calls like this", but seriously. The anecdote about the young men in the pub is really helpful, because we do develop and sometimes lose particular forms of awareness as a result of attention we're hardly aware of. As a young man I could tell at once whether an area was one in which drugs might be bought. So I know that my own lack of any sense of danger on the streets is not evidence of anything reassuring. My sense of the Unherd crowd — largely middle aged, and men for whom a beer bottle was not a potential weapon but an occasion to spend £7.00 — is that they also lacked the kind of intuition for violence you had once. On the other hand, if they knew London was dangerous from the media they would feel menace in the streets: the first time I was sent to the States I prowled the city streets in darkness expecting any moment to be shot or stabbed — in Georgetown.
Now I live in a place quite as safe (and white) as Georgetown where I still find the occasional sight of bouncers outside pub doors very shocking. So the feeling you so vividly describe: _The ubiquity of frustrated and angry young men. The lack of trust in institutions, the media, the police, the courts. An openly divided and increasingly tribal citizenry. The increasing feeling that there is less - if not quite nothing - to lose. The sudden increase in racial or ethnic based grievances being aired in private group chats, when for my generation 'racism' has been the cardinal sin for the whole of our lives._ seems like a report from a foreign country. That may simply strengthen your point about divisions, but it still seems to me a very long way from 23,000 deaths a year.
Bugger. I see there's no markdown in the replies.
Thanks Andrew. Apologies, I didn't mean to suggest that I thought the unherd crowd had a keen intuition for violence akin to a current policeman or prison officer - i very much doubt that too, and quite agree with your point about the beer bottle, ha ha! - i just meant that there is an increasingly widespread 'sense' of a coming violent upheaval, despite a difficulty in pinning it down with data or sound arguments, as i think Betz attempts to. And i think it is similar in kind - but not in degree - to the copper/screw instinct (or wariness/ alertness/suspicion/whatever it was!), and therefore - in my opinion - not entirely without precedent. I totally acknowledge that this basically comes down to me saying 'I feel like it's about to kick off', without any data or proof - and i don't think i can claim it's necessarily any more valid than someone else saying 'I feel like it's not going to' - I don't have proof. But I still think that feeling, without proof or data or logic or reason, can point to something being true, in the same way any instinct can. And I'm perhaps struggling to articulate this without sounding like I think I have better 'instincts for potential civil war' than anyone else! Because I don't mean to claim that at all.
Pretty absurd. What would they kill with? Americans don’t even do that much killing, even with those factors amped up, a much more violent society, and guns. The professor needs a reality check.
The IRA managed that level of killing, proportionately, once they had the guns.
I think “once they had the guns” is doing an awful lot of work there. And to compare Britain today to Northern Ireland during the troubles is pretty weird. Though as you’ve pointed out the reaction by the crowd is the interesting thing. I’ve spoken to MAGA supporters who intone about civil war or claim one is already ongoing. Sometimes there’s a little glee behind the warning.
This is a good point, and potentially the key reason there isn't already more widespread violence. However, Northern Ireland was subject to even stricter firearms laws and weapons restrictions during The Troubles, and several paramilitary groups still successfully managed to arm themselves with pistols, semi automatic rifles, grenades and semtex, in order to wage low level civil war and assassination campaigns. I suspect the laws of supply and demand will easily flout UK law in the same way, if it came to it. There are fairly regular gangland killings with firearms in Britain, so it seems easy enough to smuggle them past the coastguard already, it's just that the risk/reward means it's not worth the effort for otherwise law abiding people. Also, ethnic minorities stabbing each other with knives is an endemic problem in UK cities, so it's already clear that the firearms laws don't really stop people intent on killing each other from doing so with whatever means they can. Lastly, there has already been intelligence reports in the UK of illegal arms shipments under the care of muslim smugglers being apprehended in France on their way to Britain: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's publication recently commented on this. It may be that such shipments are intended for criminal gangs protecting territory or the drug trade etc - it may be that they were headed directly to Islamists or terrorists or other foreign/domestic hostile actors. Who knows? But i suspect this is not a single case of smoke without fire, drifting over the Channel: I suspect it is smoke from the glowing remnants of a fire that has already been creeping along the fuel line into the UK, unseen, for some time. If/when the violence arrives, I strongly suspect that those who want the violence will have the guns near to hand to do it.
Is it possible to defend an ethnicity without succumbing to racism? A negative answer to that question terrifies me, but every time 'white' is used as a slur it becomes more difficult to be positive. Critical Race Theory is the work of the Satan. I suspect there won't be as many deaths as Betz envisages, but I don't see any way through that doesn't involve a catastrophic and bloody crisis of some shape or form. Ho hum.
You can always find idiots saying idiotic and insulting things: that's the wonder of the internet. But I don't see what American critical race theory, whatever the phrase may mean, has anything to do with English conditions.
More to the point, Betz was explicit that he doesn't see a sudden bloody crisis with a consequent resolution, but a process of years long low level violence, as in Northern Ireland.
"I don't see what American critical race theory... has anything to do with English conditions" - I think that's a good example of aspect blindness (in the Wittgenstein sense)