Coronavirus in the UK: a Brexit "stress test"?

A country’s culture tells us a lot about how it reacts to a crisis. When the Coronavirus hit Italy, the government put the entire country in quarantine (this literally being the place where the term “quarantine” was invented). When the Coronavirus came to Britain, the government’s approach has been one of “Keep Calm and Carry On” (as though stiff upper lip is a coherent strategy against a pandemic).

The advice the government is following comes from its Chief Scientist, who is in fact a behavioural scientist. This makes one wonder if Britain's official reaction to the Coronavirus isn't then turning into a kind of mass behavioural science experiment imposed on its population. 

Britain’s strategy rests not only on a lot of counter-intuitive thinking; it is also the dead opposite to what the rest of the world seems to be doing. Why?

Libertarian “behavioural science”

There is an attitude of “let things run their natural course” at work here, which is a mentality shared by proponents of laissez-faire Libertarianism. The “behavioural science” aspect of the government’s strategy is about “nudging” human behavior rather than through implementing drastic measures that could cause panic. In other words, the government wants the British population to be acquiescent and placid; fatalistic, almost, about the coming epidemic.

The government naturally has its own reasons for not wanting to create a panicked population, but the strategy here also seems to rest on some aspects of British culture as well. Fatalism and stoicism are two aspects of the British psyche that have been honed through different “crisis points” over the centuries, most recently the Second World War. Boris Johnson’s grave demeanour during these Coronavirus press conferences, feels deliberately designed to engender morbid acceptance of what is to come. In another (probably deliberate) way it feels like a quietly-knowing echo of the kind of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” of Churchill fame (which at the time definitely did not reassure everyone at all, by the way). Thus we have the national leader implicitly evoking the nostalgic spirit of “national struggle” and ultimate sacrifice, with the latter being seen as an inevitable consequence of the former. Those at the most risk, the elderly and the infirm, are already being made to be seen by the wider population as, to an extent, helpless victims of viral “natural selection”.

The scientific strategy seems to rest on allowing most of the population to be exposed to the virus naturally, with people’s own immune systems given time to fight it off. In this sense, the government seems to have already accepted that the health care system is unable to cope, and is encouraging people to “look after themselves”.

The fact that this strategy goes against all the official WHO advice and the responses of most other governments in the world is telling. It tells us the British government approach is a combination of Libertarian thinking backed up by the fatalism inherent in the British psyche. One wonders if some in the government haven’t already seen the “learning potential” from taking this “ideological strategy” to a pandemic outbreak to see how the same strategy could be used across the country more widely to deal with the political effects of Brexit next year.

Coronavirus: an opportune Brexit “stress test”?

If people can acquiesce to losing, for example, potentially half a million people on the back of ideological “science”, what else could they accept?

The dark echoes that this fatalism to mass death leads to need no explanation. Already Britain is a country where homeless people are left to die on the streets or in seclusion in the countryside and some of the disabled live in starved penury; people acquiesce as people are made homeless and the disabled starve thanks to government indifference. Such things are accepted, so it isn’t hard to see how that same population could accept potentially half a million dead as “one of those things”.

This is a society that has been “nudged” for the last ten years to accept what was once unacceptable in a civilized society. The British government’s approach to the Coronavirus has all the hallmarks of being ideological in its nature, against the approach recommended by the world’s health authorities. The ideological project that is “Brexit” intends to radically transform the structure of British society. Already weakened by a decade of austerity and welfare “reform”, those social structures are only supported by a government that seems willing to let a viral outbreak dissolve much of what’s left of British society’s communal bonds. 

With so many already homeless, so many disabled left to their fate, why would care about the old and infirm dying in a viral outbreak? This would be Darwinian "natural selection" on a national scale.

By making people acquiesce to the idea of half a million dead as somehow “feasible”, it psychologically prepares them for the ideological mayhem that a Libertarian “Brexit” would inflict on them afterwards. Worn down by a decade of austerity and a year of viral deaths, whatever ideological plans the government has for “Brexit Britain” would be accepted as almost trivial by comparison. There would be no effective opposition left.

In this sense, there could be a very discreet (and deliberate) psychological strategy behind the government’s “laissez-faire” attitude to the Coronavirus outbreak (as their strategy is so plainly at odds with every other country’s): using the outbreak as a way to “stress test” specific structural aspects of society, while weakening public resistance to the radical (and at one time, unthinkable) social change to come afterwards.

The “national struggle” that the Coronavirus is now being portrayed as by the British government evokes the jingoistic spirit of Britain’s mythologized past on one hand and the stoic fatalism in the British psyche on the other. The acceptance of the radical ideology of Brexit after the national trauma that an ideological approach to the Coronavirus could inflict could well be something the government is banking on.

The “ideological laboratory” that Britain has been for the last ten years seems to be stepping up in its approach, with Brexit as its endgame; in the case of the Coronavirus, using Britain’s population as expendable “guinea pigs” seems like just the logical conclusion of that when applied to medical science.

Finally, there is the idea of the virus as a "test of national character". By being able to deal with the Coronavirus with its own ideological approach, it implies that Britain can deal with any kind of adversity. The mythology of Britain's supposed exceptionalism fits the Coronavirus outbreak into the narrative of Brexit.

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.