Brexit "culture wars", Meghan Markle, traditionalism and the royal family

The self-imposed exile of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is one of the many casualties of the “culture war” that has been taking place in Britain for most of the last ten years. It has intensified in the last five years to the point of infecting the image of the royal family itself. The whiff of racism is implicit in the way that the popular press (the “Daily Mail” being the most vivid example) has reacted to Meghan Markle’s behavior, criticizing her for the same actions that Kate Middleton has been otherwise fawned over for. It is incredible that two women can be treated so differently for doing the same things (one – of mixed-race heritage – scorned, the other – of white British descent – praised). The only identifiable difference between them is their racial heritage, and to not see that at the reason for how differently they have been treated by the popular press is to be delusional to what is going onin people’s brains.

Why do the popular press (and its very vocal readership) fawn over Kate on the one hand, and scorn Meghan on the other? Apart from the racial undertones, what else it going on?

“Embodying British values”

The “culture war” that has encompassed Brexit also overlaps into broader cultural issues of national identity, and both these issues affect each other. To “traditionalists”, the royal family represents a link to the values of the past: of deference to authority, ultra-orthodox family life, and maintaining “dignity” through an aversion to displays of emotion. These values are, to those traditionalists, embodied in the Queen Elizabeth II, who grew up at a time when these values were shared not only by traditionalists, but by most of the general public.

This behavior had been instilled in her father, George VI, and her uncle, Edward VIII, by George V, the queen’s grandfather. Those values, however, were noticeably absent from Edward VIII, and his very public persona and charisma made him immensely popular to the public, but hated by the traditionalists. His relationship with Wallis Simpson was only the most obvious example of how he wished to rule as a king in his own singular (and modern) style, against the values that the traditionalists held dear. This was a very public “culture war” that the traditionalists won, at Edward VIII’s expense; it was a “culture war” that cost the king his crown.

Edward VIII’s sympathies towards Fascism were, by comparison, a distraction; his views were shared by many others in the elite at the time, and what made it inconvenient was that Edward was sharing publicly views that many held in the elite held privately. Edward VIII “embarrassed” the image of the royal family by being indiscreet, and it was this that the traditionalists were determined to stamp out. Once he was “exiled” he could be conveniently dismissed as a “crank”.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are victims to similar sort of “culture war” today: by being open in their views, by engaging with public causes (in much the same way that Edward VIII did), being openly liberal, somehow, they are bringing the image of the royal family into disrepute. Nearly a hundred years on, Meghan Markle receives the same levels of scorn from traditionalists that Wallis Simpson did, with the added dimension of Markle’s mixed-race background.

So Harry and Meghan, to escape further scorn from the popular press, have exiled themselves to Canada; jumping before they were pushed, to save the embarrassment of being “shipped off to the Bahamas” like Edward and Wallis Simpson were.

The dimension of race in today’s situation is emblematic of how the idea of “liberal” Britain became a myth. The popular press wants a monarchy that lives in their minds as an unchanging symbol of the past, rather than a representation of the present. It wants a monarchy with the cosmetic appearance of modernity, but with its “modus operandi” unchanged for eternity.

The Japanese once revered their emperor as a god; the traditionalists revere the Queen and her family as a living representation of British values; or more exactly, of the values they want to mythologize. While the 1990s were a time when the royal family’s veneer of respectability lost much of its sheen, as the Queen has grew older, she has still represented a continuity of values that traditionalists in modern Britain hanker for once more. Like Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who ruled that empire for more than fifty years through the industrial revolution to the First World War, Queen Elizabeth II has ruled Britain (and its dying empire) through many social and cultural changes.

Traditionalists’ “culture war” against modernity and liberal values is summed up in the values that spawned “Brexit” as much as the values that forced Harry and Meghan into self-imposed exile. In some ways, they are victims of the same “culture war” that has forced many Europeans to leave the UK; in the battle of values and culture, the values of tradition, the reverence of authority and mythologizing the past have beaten the values of liberalism and globalism.

“Natural selection”

As the monarchy represents traditional values, it also implicitly represents the ideology of elitism and inherited superiority. For traditionalists, that innate “superiority” (and implicit “purity”) is threatened by globalism and multiculturalism. This is the real stem of the racism that Meghan Markle has faced: traditionalists, at their heart, cannot abide the idea of a black woman marrying into the white Anglo-Saxon “elite” that the royal family represents. For the royal family to maintain its “royal” lineage and its elitist power, in traditionalists’ eyes it must remain “pure”.

This is the ugly prejudice and elitism that lies under the surface of Britain’s cultural traditionalists: for Britain to remain special, its royal family must remain pure. This is not so far removed from the thinking of racial eugenicists that was prevalent a hundred years ago, and the fact that such thinking has refused to die (and even seen a resurgence) tells us that Britain’s form of hierarchical racism has been long-hidden under a façade of respectability and a pretense of egalitarianism.

Britain’s traditionalist elite has maintained its hold by adapting to change; but allowing a mixed-race American woman into the royal family was always a step too far for them; thus she had to be discreetly encouraged to live as a “royal” in name only, if not meek and subserbient then better to have her exiled outside Britain. That she has done what they always wanted has then allowed them to blame it on her own “egoistic” personality. The conservative tendency has won.

These are the same kind of traditionalists that blame “Europe” for holding Britain back, blaming the egos of EU bureaucrats for not giving Britain what it wants; and when Britain gets what it wants – “Brexit” – they still blame the EU bureaucrats for sabotaging Britain’s destiny regardless.

Traditionalists blame immigrants (and Britain’s modern multiethnic society) for a litany of problems: from crime, to unemployment to welfare scams. If you read the “Daily Mail” this is certainly the impression you will get. The same tropes used in the 1930s are being repeated in the age of the internet; only this time, technology is doing the job much more efficiently, reinforcing prejudices and solidifying the cultural divides.

The traditionalists can’t turn back the clock on multicultural Britain, but they can make it uncomfortable for those who don’t fit in to their prejudices: people from “foreign descent” who are “uppity” for instance, and should learn to respect what Britain “has done for them”. In their eyes, Meghan Markle should be “grateful” for being in the royal family (and therefore keep her mouth shut, one assumes).

Traditionalists can accept multiculturalism as long as it is on their terms; if people start using their own languages on public transport then “it no longer feels like Britain any more”, and so on. Immigrants are only acceptable if they are “useful”, doing the jobs that Brits don’t want. Immigrants are meant to feel grateful that they are the underclass; they are meant to feel grateful for the dehumanizing articles written about them in the popular press. Non-whites, traditionalists assume, are all meant to be thought of as “foreigners” who can never be allowed to feel truly at home in Britain; they are there “on sufferance”, at the whim and pleasure of its “natives”.

Britain, as traditionalists see it, is an implicit “white power”. Britain’s historical power as an empire, it is assumed, came about from Britain’s inherent superiority. Its ability to dominate the world, given its relative puniness in geographical terms, can only be explained by the innate superiority of its natives. Britain’s historical dominance can only be seen as due to Darwinian “natural selection” that enabled its people to make its fortune beyond its shores. In this thinking, inequality is part of the natural order, and those Britons that have thrived abroad did so due to their own innate superiority.

The irony of this form of "eugenic mythology" is that many outside Britain implicitly admire the country for that very reason, seeing Britain as a country that has produced a multitude of intelligent scientists, academics, traders and adventurers. It is this mythology of Britain always able to "punch above its weight" and "thrive on adversity" that has led to Brexit’s most ardent supporters thinking that the nation is more than capable of thriving outside the EU in the 21^st century (as some kind of fantastical super-human innovation and trade hub that operates outside of the laws of reality).

Britain, in traditionalists’ eyes, is a nation that lost its empire due to ungrateful “colonials” and the conspiracies of foreign powers, rather than due to changes in global commerce and inefficient techniques at home. The mythology of Britain as a “global power” reliant on only itself, with a royal family acting as both an instrument and symbol of that innate power, is the myth the traditionalists maintain in spite of the uncomfortable (and embarrassing) reality staring them in the face.

The traditionalists will find out who wins when mythology trades comes face to face with reality next year.

Nazi Satanism in Britain: the far-right, esoteric occult ideology and chaos

Britain might seem like an unlikely location as a crucible of far-right radicalism and Nazi-Satanism.  In recent years, though, a succession of extreme far-right groups, advocating violence and Satanic ideologies, have proliferated in the UK.

It’s important to understand what these groups really represent. On the whole, they are NOT “Nazis” in what many think of in the traditional sense; since the Second World War, many so-called “neo-Nazi” groups are more exactly “Nazi-inspired” than direct ideological successors. While there are have been plenty of far-right nationalist groups in recent decades that certainly continue the anti-Semitic “race war” ideology of the Nazis, many other groups take their inspiration from the Nazis in a more esoteric form.

In this sense, the Satanist far-right groups in the UK nowadays (like in other parts of the Christian West) are “Nazi” in the sense that they see the Nazi ideology and the persona of Hitler as an “inspiration” for their own nihilistic, anti-Christian agenda. They see the Nazis as a "force of chaotic energy" that fits their own. Their agenda is the destruction of Western civilization, as the Nazis was, through the use of extreme violence and “shock tactics”; but the "Nazi Satanists" of today are using their own moral degeneracy as a weapon to infect the rest of society like a virus. These are the same tactics that Fascism used nearly a hundred years ago,using extreme violence and powerful esoteric rhetoric to instill chaos in society, and not unlike how Islamic fundamentalists have done in the era since 9/11, ISIS in particular wanting to create their own "Islamo-Fascist" state in the Middle East.

Violence, moral degradation and psychological terror are the weapons that the far-right uses, along with spreading paranoia and conspiracy theories. It’s no coincidence that “climate skepticism”, “flat earth theory” and campaigns against “cultural Marxism” are all propagated within the far right; the origins of these beliefs are anti-Semitic in their origin, and some of them go back a hundred years or more.


Fascism as a modern-day "in-joke"

At the same time, however, the “crackpot” beliefs disseminated by the far right (and the Nazi-Satanist creed in particular) are held as a kind of “in-joke” by their own ranks. 
Unlike when Fascism and Nazism first appeared, the 21^st century incarnation doesn’t take itself too seriously; it spreads nonsensical beliefs and conspiracy theories more as a tactic to confuse society (i.e. as a form of psychological terror). The rituals held by the Nazi-Satanist groups in Britain, for example, are clearly absurd, and are meant to be; but they instill terror in everyone else all the same, which is entirely beneficial to their cause; their cause is to instill fear, confusion, moral degradation and chaos. 
This is why when the “alt-right” first came to popular prominence through the image of “Pepe the Frog”, it was all meant as a joke at everyone else’s expense; the joke was on society, and society – unclear about how to interpret what was happening – played along at its own deprecation.

This was how the “alt-right” was able to become so powerful, disproportionate to its own numbers. Other Populist groups achieved a similar level of recognition and “air-time” using the same tactics, making their fringe ideas mainstream by exploiting the malleability of fallibility of society’s beliefs. When no-one can claim to know what is right or wrong, or true or false, a land of “alternative facts” is never far away.  

Likewise, by spreading fear and confusion, the agenda of the pagan far-right is furthered. Using, for instance, a picture of Hitler as part of a Satanic ritual is certainly shocking; but then, that is the entire point. When the far-right advocates social or ethnic cleansing, it does so more than anything to influence wider opinion, by making these views “normal”. By spreading these ideas on social media, for example, its chaotic ideology seeps into the popular imagination. This is how “random” acts of violence, or hate crimes on the street, become more and more endemic. Views that would have once have been seen as extremely racist or hateful (and indeed still are, by any objective standard) are instead seen as “typical”.

The mainstream media plays along with this, by giving these extreme views a form of “moral equivalence” on talk shows or debates. Extreme views are then publicized without criticism, or not even by pointing out where they are factually inaccurate. In this way, nonsensical beliefs become “mainstream”.

This has been happening gradually since 9/11, but accelerated after the global financial crisis, and Britain has been one of the crucibles of this ideological transformation. These days, Britain has become a country in the grip of a “belief-based” project. No one in their right mind thinks that Britain could benefit economically from leaving the EU, but the power of belief over facts was behind what led to the referendum result in 2016.

The power of belief – of “the will” – is also a strongly-held concept in the far-right. The fact that some of the beliefs are nonsensical, as mentioned earlier, is also a kind of “in-joke” at the expense of society; if they can convince the rest of society that they are serious they have already succeeded in their task at manipulating society.  

This is why the psychology of the “cult” is so similar to that of the far-right: they are ran according to belief systems that defy rational thought; their agenda is, indeed, to destroy rational thought (or at least, make enough people question it). If their beliefs are then shown to be in error when they come up against reality, it is not the fault of their belief system, but reality itself that in in error; the only explanation for this dichotomy must be some kind of conspiracy against them.

This is why conspiracy theories find such fertile ground in the far-right: they are the only way to rationalize how their beliefs are so self-evidently nonsensical.


The cult of chaos

Britain nowadays seems a fertile ground for conspiracy theories,“magical thinking” and “cultish” ideology. All these things have come together under the convenient banner of “Brexit”, and it is no coincidence that the same crackpot conspiracies once held by the far-right gradually came to be held by a large portion of the electorate: the EU is responsible for all the ills in British society; the EU is a Jewish plot; the EU wants to abolish the British army etc. etc.

The “Nazi Satanists” in Britain are meanwhile reveling in the potential they see for chaos; spreading race hate, hate between the Abrahamic religions, hate for minorities, outsiders and those from alternative lifestyles. Their aim is to create fear and chaos between them all in order to make civilization disintegrate, and replace the old order with an ideology completely free of morality; an age of Satan. 
No-one in their right mind expects Britain to morally desintigrate to that extent; but Nazi Satanists only need their degenerate beliefs to infect enough of society to create moral disorder and a spike in intra-community violence in order to consider their methods to have been successful. Their use of the internet is the way they have been promoting their extreme ideas.

Britain has a tradition of the esoteric and the occult, with Aleister Crowley being one of its most famous figures. It was said his disciples tried to form a connection between him and Hitler, in the end to no effect. The esoteric world blossomed in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, around the same time as in the UK. The factors behind the fascination were the same; the rapid change in society and technology sent many looking to alternative routes for guidance amidst the uncertainty of an ever-changing world; falling back on ancient wisdom was something that had a strong tradition in both German and British paganism, through Nordic and Celtic (Druid) culture.

Satanism has become mixed in with these among the modern far-right in Britain. Fascism, since the global financial crisis, has had a "reboot" as a force for energetic, chaotic change. The hypnotic power of esoteric symbolism has seen a new home in the changing social and economic climate in Britain, and it will take a radical rethink if its dark forces are to be defeated.

Brexit Britain: a rogue state, hostile power, and government of lies

Britain’s government is establishing itself as one that no foreign power in their right mind should trust.

The conditions to Britain leaving the EU with the “withdrawal agreement” (a legal document) included Britain having specific obligations, in particular about Northern Ireland. It has since come to light that, not entirely surprisingly, the government – under Boris Johnson’s tutelage – has been looking at finding ways to “get around” the obligations on Northern Ireland they agreed to with the EU - to ignore them while pretending they haven't. The minutiae of those obligations don’t matter so much here as much as the message that Britain is clearly sending to the EU: “You trust us to do what we agreed to? More fool you”

A "rogue state"

The message this sends to the EU, and to the rest of the world watching, is that post-EU Britain is happy to act as a “rogue state” in terms of its legal obligations. If you sign a treaty with Britain, its government is saying, don’t expect us to honour it; we have no honour.

Britain’s imperial past has many examples of how it has abandoned its obligations, legal or moral. Ireland knows all about that,when the British government allowed a million Irish people to starve to death. But Britain has been masterful over the years in creating a myth of Britain always siding with the “good guy”; of being a beacon for democracy and human rights. It was always much more cynically pragmatic than that in reality, only surrendering its colonies when they no longer became economically viable or worth the military effort to hold on to; it has also been a friend to many loathsome regimes at one time or another.

The British government today seems to believe its own historic myths, which may be one reason why the government is acting in such bad faith with the EU. In falling for its own myth of Britain as an “exceptional” nation, it follows that its politicians think international rules don’t apply to them. The fact that Britain (through its numerous tax havens) is the leading instigator of global tax evasion tells you enough. The EU tolerated this kind of behavior when Britain was a member state (and Luxembourg is likewise culpable in that regard, if on a much smaller scale); but now Britain is outside the EU and is self-evidently set on a strategic path that opposes (or is actively hostile to) the EU’s interests, Britain can only be regarded as a threat. The fact that the British government is happy for it to be known that its promises amount to nothing tells the EU that it is dealing with a hostile power.

The fact that the British government disseminates lies can hardly be surprising either. Even the Prime Minister in his earlier career as a journalist became infamous for creating “fake news”, long before the term was widely-used. Nothing that comes from the government’s mouth should be taken at face value; its signature on a legal document is apparently meaningless as well. It only chooses to abide by agreements when it suits them.

This, then, is the meaning of a “rogue state” when applied to Britain’s government: one that has a selective application of the rule of law. While Britain’s legal system has long been respected around the world, its twisted application of law means that London is the litigation capital of the world. “Brexit Britain” is a country where judges are seen by parts of the media as “enemies of the people”, while the government – and the infamous Home Office in particular – are habitual exploiters of the legal system to overturn judgments that go against them. The fact that these attempts are often expensive failures is just a sign of how the government happily misuses public funds simply on a savage point of principle.

This doesn’t even mention how the government is routinely denying the legal rights of citizens on a daily basis: people like the “Windrush generation”, some of whom have been denied their rights, lost their jobs and deported (or exiled) for just having the wrong skin colour. The same is expected to happen to many Europeans too, given time. 

Then there are the tens of thousands of homeless whose plight is often due to a collapse of the social care system. Britain as a “rogue state” is one where many of the mentally ill and disabled are abandoned by the state to fend for themselves on the street, with a system designed to torment them yet further. Britain today is a country that allows some of its mentally ill and disabled to literally starve to death. It isn’t the government’s active policy; it simply doesn’t care what happens to them.

The “rogue state” that Britain is becoming is an inevitable consequence of the “Brexit Agenda”: not caring about rules; not caring about the consequences of its actions. It is, at its heart, an amoral creed. 

Brexit Britain is a project ran by and headed by shysters and charlatans, crooks and ne’er-do-wells. Its agenda can only appeal to the worst elements of human nature: cranks who see it as an opportunity to pursue their own fringe obsessions; vultures who see Britain as a way to make their fortune at other people’s expense; careerists who see it as the easiest way to advance themselves, no matter how.

This has been true in many other countries as well, of course. Britain is just rediscovering its corrupt heart, with all the other corrupt countries in the world looking on at Britain as another member of their rogue’s gallery.

The irony of Britain’s “rogue status” in the eyes of the rest of the world is that it is a self-defeating cause. Going back to the issue of Northern Ireland, making things more difficult for the Republic of Ireland only makes things harder on relations with the USA as well as the EU; for the US Congress is a huge supporter of Ireland, and no trade deal can be endorsed without its support. So the British government’s “FU” attitude to the EU is also a two fingers to the USA as well. This leaves Britain without the support of both its closest trading bloc and the most powerful country in the world.

Maybe this is why Britain’s government post-EU is cosying up to China and the Gulf States: one-party states and autocratic monarchies might be where Britain’s government sees its future: as "dodgy" banker,  private tutor, luxury goods maker and tech provider to the world’s least democratic states.  

Brexit ideology: the dangerous realm of cranks, crooks and control freaks

Brexit's detractors have never had to look far for evidence that "Brexit" was an idea that consumed the imagination of cranks. Linked to this is the tendency for many of Brexit's most vocal advocates being ideologues whose interests were in a more "flexible" interpretation of the law; such as using loopholes for the purposes of aggressive tax avoidance, and a more general desire to remove state power from the interests of an unregulated private sector wherever possible: "Britannia Unchained".


Cranks

This author has written before about the dangerous attraction that Brexit has to a myriad of ideological extremists and fantastical fanatics. These are people who have their own agenda to pursue through Brexit, and typically fall in to the camp of being either libertarian ideologues, racial nationalists or far left socialists.

We only have to look at the people occupying the most significant offices of the state, and the people whose advice they rely on. Most of the key positions in the British government are occupied by ideological Libertarians (of "Britannia Unchained" fame), or are advised by them.
The main with the most significant (and unchecked) real power is Dominic Cummings (more on him later). His clarion call to attract "weirdos" into the corridors of power tells us everything about what kind of "project" Brexit Britain has become: a vehicle for radical ideological and structural change of the country, of its priorities, and its place in the world.

In a sense this "change" might all sound exciting (and the Prime Minister is a skilled purveyor of the cult of charismatic enthusiasm). A look at the kind of "weirdos" Cummings is attracting to the highest levels of government tells us something much different, however: some of these are people who don't so much think "out of the box" as think the morally unthinkable, and are happy to say it in public as well. In other words, Brexit is an idea that attracts the morally unscrupulous (more on that below), as well as giving fuel to innate prejudices, dark paranoia and loopy fantasies.
Build a bridge across a three-hundred-metre-deep, bomb-strewn stretch of ocean? Sure! Engineering flights of fancy; dreams of Britain as a eugenically-purified nation of super-intelligent go-getters (thanks to a rigorous immigration programme of only the very best and brightest while also breeding out the native degenerates). In this kind of alternative dimension of being, Britain rules the waves, not as an imperial power of old, but as an island race of technologically-advanced geniuses. These cranks have truly become drunk on their own absurd propaganda.
All that has stopped Britain from ruling the waves, apparently, has been its own lack of self-belief. Britain outside the EU can literally reach for the stars.


Crooks

Then there is the attraction that Brexit poses to another plethora of "outside actors"; foreign interests that see Brexit as a corrupt opportunity to peddle their influence at the expense of Britain's own moral standing. Given the ridiculous levels of delusion present in the highest levels of government, it's no surprise that some outside the EU are looking at post-EU Britain as a turkey ready for carving.

Outside of the EU, Britain is already in talks with China and actors in the Middle East, for example. The farrago over Huawei is only a taster of the kind of things to come, as Britain faces a world that sees Britain outside the EU as a pygmy on stilts. Britain has no serious clout to defend its own interests; in this new plane of existence, it only has the power of its own lack of self-awareness, unaware that everyone else sees itself as an emperor with no clothes.

The things that Britain has to offer the global economy are its financial industry, the related  "fintech" industry, and the high regard of its education system. It is also good at making things that kill people, and is one of the world's centres for enabling tax evasion. Based on this, it is easy to see how post-EU Britain will become an ever-more nefarious magnet for providing high-end services to the globe's rogue states and criminally-minded mega-rich.

What else, after all, can Britain offer? It has nothing else that the world really wants. Think of it as Switzerland with a coastline, but one that can't even properly feed and house its own native population.


Control freaks

Presiding over this state of affairs are Boris Johnson and his key adviser, Dominic Cummings.

The "bloodbath" of ministerial restructuring that heralded Johnson's ascent to the premiership (and the more recent one that took place the day before Valentine's Day) demonstrated his ruthless application of power. While Johnson can be charismatic, he is also a control freak; the latter trait he also shares with the chief adviser he brought in with him to Downing Street, Dominic Cummings. Johnson's idea of government is far more absolutist in its internal application than any previous Prime Minister in living memory; a populist tendency he shares with Donald Trump.

The difference to the egoism mania of Trump is that Johnson and Cummings seem to have agreed some kind of mutually-beneficial "pact", where Johnson delegates certain areas of policy and strategic control to Cummings. There had been rumours (such as over the decision over HS2) that Cummings' influence had been on the wane since the election in December, but those must have been well and truly squashed by the manner of forcing the chancellor Sajid Javid's resignation after being barely seven months in the job.
Cummings' malign influence had been responsible for getting Javid's own advisers removed the previous autumn, and it is now clear that both Johnson and Cummings see the Treasury, as well as some other departments, as simply vehicles of the prime minister's own strategy: there to tell him how something can be done, not if it should be done. Ministers that disagree cannot expect to be tolerated for very long. Cummings was already seen to be behind the extraordinary expulsion of more than twenty Conservative MPs from the party whip back in September (at a time when the government was already in a precarious position in parliament).
With Johnson at the helm and Cummings at his side, theirs was a partnership of convenience, with the adviser seemingly happy to play the role of sinister villain sidekick and Johnson as the "lovable rogue". Together, they achieved a lot and ripped up as many precedents in a few short months.
In this way, Johnson has made his premiership much more about a "cult of the charismatic leader" than has been known before in British politics. Theresa May's own attempts at "control freakery" were almost comically-inept by comparison. Johnson, with Cummings' at his side, has destroyed his political adversaries in short order, leaving him as a popular leader, with near-autocratic political inclinations.

Johnson's childhood fascination with ancient Greece, you wonder, might have a large part to play in this, with its chain of famed dictators, philosophers, lunatics and tyrants. Johnson's unstable upbringing and his near-constant necessity for praise and attention, leaves him with an ego that craves a desire for approval, as well as a desire to make his mark on history; to be a "man ahead of his time". This is something that he shares with Cummings, whose own sense of grand sweep of history allows him to indulge his own grandiose view of his own intelligence.
These two men are the ones in control of Britain's immediate future. They have used their skills to seize it, in a way that would have seemed unimaginable only a year ago. There is still an open question about what they will do with their near-unstoppable power, given their low regard for those that get in their way, and what they have done with it so far.
We may soon see.

Brexit psychology: the victory of delusion

"Brexit" is an idea based on delusions, both paranoid and fantastical.

The crowd that gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate "Brexit" at eleven o'clock on the 31st January were celebrating the victory of their own delusions. They were "free". They were free from European oppression.
What "victory" had they won? As summarized brilliantly by Tom Peck in the linked article above "what makes Britain’s independence day different from most, though not all, that have gone before it is that its prize is a freedom nobody else wants". Britain has become "the first country to throw off the yoke of an oppressor whom nobody else considers themselves oppressed by. We have won our freedom from our own imagined nightmares. We have liberated ourselves from the terrors of the monster under the bed that was never there. We are the children that never grew up"

Brexiteers have won freedom from their own imagined nightmares. Britain has freed itself from the invisible monster. St George has slayed the dragon that never existed. England is a country at war with its own shadow, a dog chasing its own tail.
You get the picture.

In Britain leaving the EU, the EU has also lost a valuable member. As Ian Dunt says "Britain joined late, but when it did it brought something unique: a caution which is needed in any grand project. That detachment is now portrayed as a sign that Britain never fitted in. It's nonsense. Any number of European states, except for perhaps Germany, could have succumbed to jingoistic populism. We were just the only ones stupid enough to hold a referendum on it. Britain's careful approach to Europe suited it and provided something valuable to the manner in which the project evolved"

One of the EU's missed opportunities was that Britain's involvement could have been used to rein in the political urge to continually crave for more and more "more Europe", with political decisions based on pragmatisn rather than ideology. Instead, we have had the UK as a EU member whose perspective was too often under-utilized, by itself as well as other member-states. Now Britain has left, its internal politics intoxicated by its own delusions, and the rest of the EU faces a populist insurgency slowly eating itself from the inside out.


Paranoid delusions

Those Brexiteer delusions mentioned earlier have been there for decades. There is a recurring sense that these are people who could only be happy if they have an enemy, even if it is one that is entirely illusory. George Orwell said a thing or two about that in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it's a psychological trick that politicians have used down the ages. Technological advances have allowed them to refine their techniques, and the rise of populist rhetoric has seen the resurgence of that old chestnut, "the other". It can be any "other", as long as it can be used to take the blame.

What makes it different today is the use of "plausible deniability" by the populist leaders whenever their acolytes use that rhetoric to project harm. There's always the "nod and a wink" about populist rhetoric, from Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and all the others. If far-right violence and hate crimes are increasing, it's because of provocations from the other side, never from theirs ("there was blame on both sides" etc.). They are always "isolated incidents", except when highlighted to show how liberal society is failing. You can never argue against their rationalizing of violence, because they don't use rational arguments. 
The rhetoric of division serves a purpose - to provide an "other" to aim their frusatrations at, whether it be foreign plots (the EU's "agenda") or fear of loss of culture (immigration). With Brexit, the emotive argument used has been that Britain has been "humiliated" countless times over the decades by Europe, and more generally "held back" from fulfilling its greatness. 
While it's true that joining the EEC was originally a decicion based on the changing global strategic situation, the kind of "deal" that Britain has got out of it over the decades has been one that has involved various "opt outs" compared to other member-states (on Schengen, the social chapter, the rebate, the Euro etc.); in fact either proving Britain's more advantageous "exceptional" status with the bloc, or the ability of Britain to get more than should deserve. Either way, to other European countries, Britain's complaint of "bullying" by the EU looks like the complaints of a country with a dire lack of self-awareness.

The British print media have much to blame for this sense of eternal paranoia, or "Europhobia". The culture of pychologically equating "Europe" with the Second World War - also thanks to films and TV series - has led to Britain, and England in particular, with a sense of greivance against "Europe" totally out kilter with reality. The sense of the EU being a co-operative project is lost to them, with "Europe" used by David Cameron when it was necessary to prove his Eurosceptic credentials to the hardliners in his own party. The EU became the "whipping boy" of the British psyche, which ended with Cameron being eaten by the monster he couldn't stop feeding.
By the time of the referendum, the EU was being blamed for almost everything possible: from illegal immigration from the Middle East and Africa, to the closing down of factories in the North-east of England. Nothing was the fault of Britain's own government, if it could be conveniently blamed on the EU. 


Fantastical delusions

Similarly, Brexit supporters often sound like they ought to be sci-fi/fantasy aficionados. The vision they have of Britain outside the EU is one where Britain is able to transcend global rules and norms. 

In the same way that they fantastically blame the EU for holding Britain back for decades, they claim that "Britannia Unchained" can become a 21st century buccaneer: using language more commonly found in sci-fi fandom, they claim that Britain can be a pioneer in the tech industry (as though no other country has thought of it before), or can become a "supercharged" leader in space technology, for example. Why not build a Britain space fleet to colonize other planets, for that matter? Money is no object to them. No ambition seems too fantastical to hold.

Likewise, Brexiteers live in a world of 21st century make-believe; a fantasy realm where borders are frictionless even though there are no agreements in place to allow it. The Britain they imagine is one where the geographical reality of the country's berth right next to Europe is forgotten; instead of it being mere practical, financial and logistical sense to do the bulk of our trade with our neighbours, Britain should be imagined as a country where it is as logistically simple to trade with Australia as it is with Austria. 
Britain, in their eyes, is not tethered to Europe by geography at all, but is in effect a giant floating island, like "Laputa" in Gulliver's Travels, able to move around the world and trade with whom it wishes at will.  

All this is imagined because of emotional ties to the past. If these fantastical delusions are not permitted to happen, then it is the fault of Europe, or a conspiracy to "do down" Britain from within. Then the paranoid delusions take over to cloak the fantastical nature of their imaginations. These people are, emotionally-speaking, mere children in adult bodies. 

Brexit Britain is a country fuelled by the infantile instincts of a nation that has yet to grow up. Boris Johnson is, in this sense, the leader to a cult of age-regression.

Boris Johnson: the personality cult and "national saviour" narrative

After Boris Johnson’s first appearance at the House of Commons as Prime Minister, his general approach was dismissed by the opposition as “incoherent optimism”. This is as accurate a description of Johnson’s “free jazz” approach to dialogue as you may get, but at the same time, it exemplifies the problem that conventional parties have to tackling Populism as a whole. They cannot counter appeals to emotion with references to facts; it is an approach doomed to failure, for it misses the point. They do not understand the nature of what they are up against.

Johnson’s appeals to emotion are typical to Populism, with the important distinction that Johnson became London mayor eleven years ago using the same charismatic,maverick approach several years before Populism became a wider force in the world. It should also be mentioned that Johnson’s predecessor at the mayoralty, Ken Livingstone, used his own charismatic (left-wing) style to great success for eight years.

Love versus fear

Johnson has been compared to Trump many times before for obvious reasons, but there are also important personality differences worth mentioning too, and these affect their political style in important ways. The two men may well be Populists, but they are Populists of their own mould. Both men are narcissistic and charismatic,reckless and unprincipled. Both men have used their force of will to attain personal success by breaking conventions and engaging in amoral behaviour. And yet, although their careers have both fluctuated over the decades, they were always in an ultimately upward trajectory, until they reached the absolute pinnacle of power.

What is different about Johnson and Trump is what motivates them beyond the self-evident narcissism. Trump’s motivation stems from the instincts of a businessman. He is a swindler with the approach to ethics as straight-laced as a mafia don, and although he clearly loves attention, he doesn’t seem to mind what kind of attention it is; bad publicity is still publicity, after all. This indicates a very high (and very skewed) sense of omnipotence.

In this sense, Trump is the kind of narcissist that doesn’t care if few people love him or like him, as long as people respect him. He may be a difficult person to love, but a much easier person to respect; and he seems to have earned a kind of grudging respect even from enemies that hate him. If you can’t be loved, then at least be feared: this seems to be his “mafia don” mentality that he applied first to business, and now to politics.

Johnson’s narcissism, on the other hand, seems to stem from an innate need to be loved. Playing the buffoon and the clown simply for people’s laughs (and therefore affection) has been his singular style since becoming involved in politics.While he is by nature academically-bright and sharp-witted, his public persona has been to play the jester. 

This also explains why Johnson’s rhetorical style is subtly different from Trump’s. To borrow the phrase used at the start, compared to Johnson, Trump’s rhetorical style is more “angry incoherence” compared to Boris’ “incoherent optimism”. Boris wants to make people feel good, so that they will feel good about him. His use of high-flown rhetoric and pseudo-Churchillian prose are a strategic act and a psychological ploy. It is also clear that he is at his most comfortable when in this role, such as when inspiring Londoners during the Olympics or extolling Britain’s future prospects during the referendum campaign. With the oncoming event of Brexit, he is in the role of national leader continuing in the same motivational manner, exhorting others to combine with him in a collective spirit, and scolding the opposition for sowing doubt and disharmony.

The cult of Boris

Of course, by embracing such a faith-based belief system, the reality of Brexit hardly seems to matter to him. Boris has turned Britain into the archetypal personality cult, with him as its charismatic leader. This is where Nigel Farage and Johnson share the same instincts: they are both “Pied Pipers”, and along with Donald Trump, are an Anglo-Saxon Triumvirate of Populism.

In this way, Boris’ message is both dangerously seductive and terrifyingly simplistic. He has turned Brexit from an ideological “death cult” to an esoteric “sex cult”: his persona provides a motivational “force of nature” that infatuates the nation, making them love him for making them love themselves and love their country. The negative energy, and the anger and depression that Theresa May’s ghoulish tenure generated has been transformed by Boris into a kind of orgiastic national hero-worship.

It may still be Brexit “do or die”, but Boris’ rhetoric ability is to make it seductive regardless, and to make people love him for it in the process. To any right-thinking person, Brexit may well be a disaster, but to Boris’ supporters, it will still be a glorious disaster. Boris’ ability to channel all the stereotypical national myths into an evocative “Brexit” narrative is the spell that his supporters don’t want to end. Such a narrative would be even difficult for agnostic parts of the electorate to ignore. After all, it worked three years ago, so why not now, at its most pivotal moment?

The signs are that the anger that Farage channeled through his “Brexit Party” is now being dissipated by Boris’ singular rhetoric; his purple prose transforming the “betrayal” narrative into a narrative of national salvation. Boris’ emotive and bombastic talk in the House of Commons on his first full day in power left the opposition not only confounded but also dejected. As said earlier, they simply lack the political tools to know how to deal with it. The only answer is for them to find their own emotive narrative to fight back against Boris with, but they are too divided and lacking in a clear direction to know where this would come from.

This is why there is a temptation to go along with the “national destiny” narrative: that Boris, from a young age, was destined for greatness, regardless of his reckless and unconventional nature. The Churchill parallels are well-known, as well as knowingly well-versed by Johnson himself. Clearly, he has long been fascinated by the wartime leader, seeing the man’s ups and downs and long-winded career (and unstable upbringing) reflected in his own. Churchill was a deeply-complex (and often maddening) character, and his long career before 1940 was largely famed for its infamy, in spite of its longevity. Like Boris, the people that most liked Churchill didn’t know him; they only loved the myth. While charismatic, he could as easily be horrendous company. It was only the Second World War that rectified his reputation; so now, the man on the British five pound note is only remembered for his exploits during a five year period of war. The charlatan and drunk he was known as before has been forgotten.

Doubtless, Boris has similar hopes of national “immortality”. If he can get his government through Brexit, then his hope is that he stays in power for long enough that people will remember him for being the charismatic blonde-mopped icon in power at a time of adversity and national change and will have forgotten about any of the trauma and hardships (he created) that went with it.

Given his luck, he may well pull it off.

Boris Johnson’s government – the Brexit “coup” and the Libertarian agenda

Many people were worried that Boris Johnson was someone who didn’t have any idea what he was doing. From the way he has assembled his new cabinet, it’s very clear that he does know what he is doing – and that is what terrifies everyone but the Libertarian right. 

Boris, the man mocked as a “clown”, is clearly having the last laugh: like the “Joker” in the Batman universe, he has long given the impression being a chaotic anarchist without any kind of plan; but in reality, he very clearly does have a plan; a plan that terrifies his opponents. The blundering Boris “persona” was always an act to those who knew him well, and the manner of his assembling of government is the crystal-clear evidence of that.

He has assembled a government of ideologues, whose other key attribute is loyalty to Boris. This is not a “compromise” government, it is a government assembled for a mission:to leave the EU at the end of October, and embark on a “WTO Brexit” if necessary. In order to do, Boris has displayed not only his tendency for the theatrical, but also for powerful ideological statements. Boris has ruthlessly purged almost all the “old guard” from government – Theresa May’s natural instinct for preferring old, unimaginative white men, for instance – and replaced them with a cabinet of eclectic personalities that looks around ten years younger.

Those “eclectic”personalities are, put another way, a sign of how Johnson’s government (like himself) is one marked by mavericks and “outliers” (although there are also blunter ways to describe it, which may come later). This is the most obvious sign that Brexit is a Libertarian project, led by people from unusual backgrounds. Boris himself was born in New York, and lived most of his formative years in a nomadic existence abroad with his siblings following his father’s career around different parts of the world. His family’s background and make-up is already easily rich enough to merit a dramatic saga, without even looking into Boris’ own career.

The core positions have been given to people who, like Boris, come from eclectic backgrounds, with a common cause in being long supporters of the Libertarian agenda. The new chancellor, Sajid Javid, is the son of Pakistani immigrants (whose father, like Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan, was also a bus driver); the new foreign secretary (and also first secretary of state), Dominic Raab, is the son of a Jewish Czech refugee who fled the Nazis as a child; the new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is the daughter of Hindu immigrants who fled Idi Amin’s brutal regime in Uganda. Then there is Michael Gove who, under the title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CDL) will be responsible for domestic preparations for a potential “WTO Brexit”, is the adopted son of a Scottish family.

The Libertarian agenda bleeds into almost every position of strategic significance, with arch-ideologue Liz Truss in the International Trade brief, and Andrea Leadsome in the Business department. Theresa Villiers, another Libertarian, takes over Gove’s position at the Department for the Environment. The “icing on the cake” of all this, though,  is seeing Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the ERG Libertarian faction in the party, becoming Leader of the House of Commons (and thus being a near-successor in this position to Leadsome). Meanwhile, the agenda to diversify the appearance of government likewise continues with men of Asian background being promoted to the Department for International Development and in the role of Chief Secretary to the Treasury (supporting Javid). The new party chairman, meanwhile, is black.

There are token positions given here and there to moderates (or Boris-supporting “Remainers”), but the overall complexion of the government (no pun intended) is one that is radical in ideology and diverse in its heritage. In this sense, it mirrors much of the make-up of the ERG faction itself, whose character is also eclectic, if not often downright odd.

But this is the point: Brexit, and the “hard” form that the Libertarian faction support, was always, by definition, a marginal cause, supported by people who never represented the values of British society at large. This was why the allegation that Brexit was effectively a Libertarian “coup” against British society stands even more valid now, looking at the people running the key levers of government. These are people whose agenda is one mainly supported by “cranks”.

Perhaps the most significant personality involved that backs this interpretation in all this is not someone in a government department, but who is said to become a key government advisor: Dominic Cummings. This is the clearest sign that Johnson’s aim is to bring the “Vote Leave” referendum campaign into government, complete with Cummings’ ideological pyromania – the “British Steve Bannon”, if you will.Things may well become “interesting” very quickly.

Apart from Cummings, it is clear that Johnson does not shy away from controversial characters (who’d have thought that?); this is further self-evident from promoting Gavin Williamson so quickly after being fired under a cloud of national security scandal, while similarly promoting Priti Patel after her controversial dealings with Israel. The message given out here is that Johnson values ideological loyalty and patronage first, and is not that bothered by (or maybe even secretly admires) unethical or destructive behavior. Given his many own examples over his career, this is hardly surprising. The same indifference to chaos is a characteristic that seems to run through the personalities of many in key positions in government.

So the Johnson administration is an assemblage of personalities designed for a purpose: to make Britain leave the EU at the end of October, regardless of the consequences. This is the government that Libertarians would have dreamed of having three years ago, had Gove not knifed Johnson at the critical moment in the leadership campaign. As it is now, it has been called the “Ferrero Rocher” Brexit government: Johnson spoiling the ERG by effectively creating their “fantasy cabinet” for them.

This all makes it clear the Boris is dead-set on destroying the “Brexit Party” and reclaiming as many of their supporters as possible, while seemingly indifferent to any flight in the other direction from moderates in his party to the Lib Dems. Johnson has set his stall with his choice of personalities. Perhaps he sees the strategic long game in how the Brexit may well eventually see the resurgent and ideologically-motivated Lib Dems replace a directionless and insular-looking Labour Party, and sees little point in fighting against the political tide; he simply wishes to forestall what he sees as the coming realignment by making his own ideological preparations. It would certainly be ironic if, a few years from now we have the Conservatives and the Lib Dems as the two main parties, given how they were in government together only five years ago.

Boris has cultivated the clownish image for so long that people have forgotten (or never knew) about the intellectually-gifted man underneath. His strategic method behind his agenda is clear from how he has chosen his government. His supporters, and the Libertarians, will say he is bold and ruthless; his detractors will say (justifiably) he is destructive and reckless. He can be both those things, of course. His strategy, if he is looking at the likelihood of an early election, may well be to – in the short-term – to deal with Brexit and the (divided) Labour Party as soon as practically possible. The chances of Johnson winning a majority in parliament in an early election may be higher than many people assume, given the stark difference in style and appearance his government will portray to the public. By contrast, Corbyn’s Labour Party is more likely to divide the opposition against Johnson with the Lib Dems and others.

The effect of this may well be not dissimilar to the election of 1983. It’s possible that Johnson has seen this as a possible (fortuitous) scenario as well, leaving him comfortably able to plan for the strategic long-term afterwards. Of course, any early election could also be a complete mess as well (the Prime Minister himself, as well as other ministers, could lose their seats); it could all go completely wrong and the Lib Dems could be the big winner out it it. But this is the risk that Johnson takes; and we know he likes taking risks from time to time.   

Whatever happens, it won’t be dull.