It's Political Extremism All the Way Down

Why I Fear the Future Part 2

In my last piece, we covered how the balance between order and chaos is increasingly being lost in modern Western societies. As we trend towards chaos, our craving for order is guaranteed to rise, once again, to the top of the agenda. 

In continental Europe, anti-immigration, anti-Muslim parties are progressing  at a rapid rate. At the time of writing, Nigel Farage has re-emerged to lead the Reform Party on a platform of reducing net immigration to zero and was immediately physically attacked. Why is this happening? 

Throughout the last decade, the legacy media answer has been the same: we don’t know and we don’t care. The rise in anti-immigration sentiment and growing concerns about the Islamification of Europe are seen not as a predictable reaction to unprecedented immigration levels, but as some sort of inexplicable evil emerging, once again, from the racist underbelly of a deeply suspect body politic. Despite being obviously true and confirmed by both ancient and recent history, the idea that right-wing extremism (the forces of order) is rising as a response to left-wing extremism (the forces of chaos) is outside the bounds of acceptability among the chattering classes.

This is largely a product of the fact that left-wing extremism is never actually described as extremism: 

It is not considered extreme to throw open the borders resulting in more people coming to Britain in 11 years of the Blair Government than came into Britain between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and 1950. 

It is not considered extreme to double Sweden’s foreign born population since the turn of the century. It is not considered extreme that this has resulted in Sweden having the highest rate of gang killings in Europe. It is not considered extreme that the governor of the Bank of Sweden was forced to acknowledge in an interview with the Financial Times that the growing crime problem is so serious, it risks damaging the country’s long-term economic growth. 

It is not considered extreme that the United States has had over 8 million illegal immigrant “encounters” under the Biden Administration, with over 1.7 million known gotaways (illegal immigrants who evaded border patrols) currently residing in the United States without proper documentation or being vetted by immigration. 

It is not considered extreme to introduce overtly sexual content into schools up and down the United States.

It is not considered extreme to promote the idea that children are capable of consenting to life-changing surgeries and hormonal interference in their bodies to treat mental disorders. 

It is not considered extreme to replace pedestrian crossing lights in central London with LGBTQ+ signals. 

It is not considered extreme to teach several generations of children to hate their country. 

It is not considered extreme to prosecute and imprison people for making offensive jokes in private WhatsApp messages.

It is not considered extreme to put male rapists in female prisons.

It is not considered extreme to pass speech-restrictive legislation that could result in the police arresting comedians for jokes.

What is considered extreme is pointing out that there is a problem with any of this. As my readers know, objecting publicly to any of this will immediately earn you the dismissive label of “culture warrior”. Because destroying your country’s history and culture is not considered extreme, but defending it is.

So where is all this taking us?

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt reminded us in a soon-to-be-released TRIGGERnometry interview that human societies have historically been united by three things: common blood, common gods and common enemies.