The Ideology of Failure

by Stephen Pax Leonard

  Instead, the liberal mind is always trying to develop projects to address inequality in accordance with their narrow definition, many of which make no difference at all. Sometimes, as in the case of many international aid schemes to African countries run by corrupt dictatorships, they can make matters even worse (Burnham, 1964). The liberal must try to cure the evil even if it has no knowledge of the suitable medicine. They never ask what these people can do for themselves. We should be suspicious about moral actions which claim to have no personal motive. Of course they serve a self-interest. But to say such a thing no doubt makes me a ‘bad character’ with antithetical values.

  Liberalism thrives off division and can only couch its shaky premises in what it sees as the ills of Western society. The differences of opinion on this topic have been described as ‘culture wars’ (Hunter, 1991), but I see no war (in Western Europe at least). There is neither a viable alternative to secular modernity in Western Europe, nor is there opposition in academia to the multicultural animus. If it exists, it is silent and hiding, disenfranchised by the manipulated slogans that have been tossed at it. It is hoped that the silent conservative cohort can now emerge from the counter-ideology shadow. The multicultural imperative, which in its current politicised mandate might amount ironically to the complete undermining of Western liberal values in favour of sexual oppression, racial exploitation and potentially radical Islam, is not being challenged effectively in the West. That is because of the cultural grammar that has been imposed on us, and to which I have referred to previously. The fact that this organised mendacity is going unchecked is of some concern.

  The basis for a ‘persecuted’ identity is now predominantly ‘race’ and ‘sexual identity’. If one is an ethnic minority or a homosexual and one lives in one of the ‘freest’ societies in the world, then it is assumed one is somehow ‘persecuted’. As the ‘persecuted’ person, one will be subject to openly positive discrimination, especially so in the public sector. This obsession with allegedly persecuted minorities is part of a multiculturalist project spearheaded by the post-modern Left to deconstruct the nation-state with its institutions and to delegitimise a national identity which is incorrectly assumed to be somehow fascist or elitist. These faux ideals have formed the basis for the establishment of political parties which masquerade as something else. The Green Movement in particular seems to be more interested in the Gay Games than saving the planet, more focused on linking an LGBTQ identity to environmental values than doing anything at all to preserve the wild places left on Earth.

  The multiculturalists, the gay-green movement and EU federalists are keen to give up national sovereignty for spurious reasons, and do not hesitate to support giving powers to a super-elite of European Commissioners who look totalitarian in their ambitions for a European superstate. Merkel speaks of the ‘European Unification project’ by which she means another empire run by Germany. She speaks as if she were the leader of the entire European Union, telling Italy what it can and cannot do to stimulate its economy and inviting an extraordinary 1.2 million refugees into Germany without consulting the electorate. Surely, if there is one question that concerns a nation’s citizens, it is who is the Wir. This unprecedented move is one of the most flagrant abuses of democratic legitimation I can think of. The behaviour of the odious woman bearing the permanent U-shaped grimace is bordering on dictatorial.

  Whenever the concept of the nation is undermined, it is clear that democratic constructs come undone. And that, I believe, is the objective here: to create a totalitarian European state by stealth. An unholy union that works all the time, one that does not give people the say. When one gives them the say, they vote to escape, as we saw with Brexit. The apparently enlightened and universalist EU jurisdiction might prove to be as nightmarish as the experiences of totalitarianism of the twentieth century, a subject that we will return to in the ‘The Globalists in Brussels’ essay.

  The egalitarianism that is always invoked by the liberal-Left is a powerful symbol because it conveys the all-important inclusiveness which virtually every public institution in the UK felt the need to remind us they symbolised, after the Brexit referendum. Egalitarianism means conformism, and is thus creativity-denying. And, let me say it plainly, without metaphor and in the manner of a good parrhesiaste, we are not all equal and it is not morally wrong to say so: there is hierarchy in every group of individuals, and in a hierarchical society everybody has a purpose. There is also a difference in the innate qualities between a man and a woman; men and women are different and attracted to quite different things (not least different careers) which is why the gender-pay gap obsession in the UK is such a nonsense. Just look at beauty. Are we all equal? Hardly. For the common man, the belief that all men are equal is simply a consolation for the qualities that they envy in others. Imagine for a moment if it were true; self-improvement would be impossible. Neither individuals nor groups are equal, but are instead characterised by an inequality of competence and moral character. Our traits are inherited, and thus inequality is mostly genetic. If we were all equal, our hierarchical social structures would presumably not perpetuate. Egalitarianism is a fabrication, and can only be achieved by holding those back that strive for excellence. If all things are equally good, they are equally indifferent. In practice, egalitarianism means in contemporary Western society at least, that everybody has to stoop down to the lowest common denominator.

  Our society has made it socially problematic to rise above this egalitarian lie, but it is doubtful whether we will still insist on equality when our overcrowded planet has run out of resources, and we are living in a state of permanent conflict as the Inuit hunters believe will happen.49 Writing in 1958, Huxley tells us how concerned he was at how prescient his book had become, particularly with regard to overpopulation. Then, there were 2.8 billion people on the planet. One doubts he could have possibly imagined that less than sixty years later, that figure would have risen nearly three times to over 7.3 billion. Huxley said the coming age will not be the ‘Space Age’, it will be the ‘Age of Overpopulation’. More and more people will be fighting over scarce resources; ethnic and tribal conflicts will open up across Africa leading to a form of perpetual civil war, as the population of some African countries such as Uganda is expected to increase five-fold within the next thirty years. The population explosion in Africa will inevitably lead to even larger numbers seeking to come into Europe. Mass migration was not a 2015 problem, but will be an existential challenge of enormous proportions for the future.

  Liberal environmentalism over the last fifty years has completely failed to address any of these problems: the world’s population has multiplied, the planet’s finite resources are quickly depleting and our air and water have become toxic. One must remember, this is what we call ‘progress’. The Chinese choking to death in the fumes of their own ‘progress’; the unprecedented loss in biodiversity because humans are crowding out wildlife all over the world. The problems are caused by incessant human expansion. The future will be an overpopulated planet fighting over finite resources, and in such a world there will be no place for liberalism.

  Wishy-washy liberalism does its best to ‘raise awareness’, but is incapable of saying ‘no’ and is therefore the worst possible approach to tackling environmental problems. As Scruton (2012) has argued, environmentalism should be a conservative issue. The ecological crisis should force conservative thinkers to reconceptualise their guiding assumptions and principles. It would then become conservationism, and would make drastic, but essential measures. Working through local NGOs, as much land as possible should be bought up and set aside as wilderness, totally untouched by humans. In theory, this would limit population growth as it would now be the humans (and not the animals) that are hemmed in. It would create a carbon sink to absorb and filter the pollution. It would allow wildlife to thrive and give a permanent home to endangered species. We are not talking about evicting indigenous groups to make way for national parks. These will not be nation
al parks, but pure wilderness areas. Liberals would no doubt deem that to be eco-colonialism, but it saves the environment from rapacious developers, mining companies and corrupt local Governments, and will go much further to help the planet than recycling plastic bags. If only the green liberals could be a little braver.

  Liberalism and equality sit therefore rather awkwardly with the environmental reality. One might argue that we need less equality, and more equity. Equity would require everyone to do what their abilities allow them to do. Everyone is given equal opportunities to succeed, but because our abilities range enormously, only some can deliver on those opportunities. The remarkable paradox is that the liberals, those purveyors of inclusiveness, who speak incessantly of tolerance and equality and who all readily sign up to the EU causes do not seem aware that this body is interested first and foremost in taking away their rights as citizens of sovereign states with its attempts to remove decision-making from their nationally elected MPs. Some draft legislation even attempts to criminalise banter. They think they are signing up to some kind of transnational, borderless, liberal dream, but instead get a high-handed centralisation of power led by angry individuals such as Schulz who bangs his fist on the table in a Hitlerian manner when he does not get his way (as commented on by Silvio Berlusconi when he visited the European Parliament). The EU is a scam, masquerading as something that it is not.50

  Post-modern liberalism and radical Islam are both closed systems of thought with very different cues: one is extremely violent and based on aggressive religious domination, the other claims to be pacifist and based on a sense of self-loathing, ideological aggrievement in a society that is characterised as iniquitous. They are both quasi-totalitarian, have universalist ambitions and tolerate no opposition. Both radical Islam and contemporary liberalism assume that their appeal is so universal that they cannot be considered as ideologies, and yet they are both systems which make a claim on the truth. Unlike with radical Islam, in the case of liberalism, there is a misrecognition of its own presumptions.

  Both of them destroy the souls of communities. Post-modern liberalism has its roots in the French Enlightenment and the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Its central belief is that man is good, and that civilised society is the problem. If somebody commits a crime, we should not blame the criminal, for it is society that is at fault. The other central belief of post-modern liberalism is that utopia is achievable through social progress. This is the inhuman doctrine, a revolt against reason, that has infiltrated our institutions and that has a stranglehold on academia in particular. Instead of Enlightenment idealism, Edmund Burke (1790) insisted that the real rights of man are rooted in tradition and faith, and he questioned the dubious pursuit of equality and the socialist maxim ni dieu, ni maître. It is his ideas that still inspire conservatives today. In accordance with this thinking, we should be able to question the view that dramatic cultural change is both necessary and inevitable.

  In parts of Scandinavia, liberalism is the backbone of the judiciary and legislative system. This liberalism which believes there is nothing ineradicably evil in human nature shows a complete disregard of a history of centuries of warfare, torture and evil. And it has become hegemonic because its advocates believe this is the only acceptable cultural framework for any society. Liberalism considers itself the sole principle that constitutes human reality, and any country that falls foul of its criteria, say Russia or China, are by definition not ‘developed’ to the same degree for the simple reason the cultural thinking of these countries is not theirs, and thus illegitimate. This is how liberalism is hegemonic.

  Left liberalism, as practiced in Sweden with its overwhelming emphasis on diversity and empowerment for minorities, is not equipped to meet any of the challenges, environmental or otherwise, that face the West in the twenty-first century. As practicsed in Sweden, it is a negative, nihilistic ideology that threatens to destroy the best things in that society and undermines its cultural wealth. It is time that we stopped rejecting our spirit; time that we discarded the pathos of repudiation, aspired to anti-nihilism and became once again comfortable taking our side of the fight. We need a less liberalist ‘emancipatory’ teleological view of society, and should be able going forward to challenge the nihilistic tendencies inherent in this ideology. Otherwise, we will be just left to drift in a tide of liberalist fancy towards the beach of disconnectedness.

  V. What is going on in Sweden?

  The deal with multiculturalism is that the only culture you’re allowed to disapprove of is your own.

  — Martin Amis

  The sun dips at just before 3pm, and amidst the pantry twilight my thoughts and preoccupations turn inwards as they tend to do at this time of the day. Such a light and glowing hearth with its quivering flame suit well the contemplative mind. Upon the wall hangs a faded photograph of the Queen Mother falling out of a barouche after one too many pink Gins. In the adjacent photo, a group of young gentlemen, grinning like Cheshire Cats, sporting pink pantalons and spats, looking as if they have cadged an invitation to the polo. Luncheon complete, I draw the red, velvet curtains and turn the radio on. The forceful, vibrant sounds of the Somali language penetrate the cool air of the living room. It is P2, a Swedish public radio channel, (the equivalent of Radio 3 in the UK more or less) that broadcasts in Somali for two hours every day. I turn the Roberts radio chrome tuning dial knob, hoping to find the news in Swedish, but the next audible frequency is instead a discussion programme in Arabic: raised voices, extended overlapping speech and discursive violence. A few more rotations of the chrome dial, and then finally an extended news programme in Swedish. There has been a major terrorist attack in Paris: earlier in the morning, a group of Islamic fundamentalists representing Al-Qaeda entered the premises of a French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and killed, execution-style, the entire editorial board of the newspaper. Several related attacks occurred in the Paris region immediately after.

  After the horrendous details of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack have been digested, there ensues on the radio a discussion of what has occurred. Swedish journalists (newspaper editors and reporters) and politicians are invited to give their views. Instead of condemning the terrorist attack for what it is, a hideous act of savagery, one after the other calls in to give his or her analysis of the motivation for the shootings. A consensus rapidly forms: the tragic events occurred because the assailants had been ‘excluded’ from society. Before knowing anything at all about the terrorists, it is assumed that they came from difficult backgrounds and had been denied certain opportunities in life. Society had somehow failed them. Back to Rousseauesque post-modernism. They had not been integrated. The overall message was clear: the executioners were the ‘victims’, not the journalists who wished to promote the freedom of speech and whose blood-soaked bodies laid sprawled across the meeting room floor in central Paris.

  The remarkable thing about the response to this and other terrorist incidents is the repeated empty rhetoric about multicultural diversity and mutual respect that is expressed by the Western leaders, and more conspicuously the near-silence from the rapidly growing Muslim community in the West (where were France’s six million Muslims in the Charlie Hebdo memorial marches in Paris?). In 2015, a young Danish filmmaker Finn Nørgård was gunned down at a debate on blasphemy in central Copenhagen. A demonstration of solidarity and inter-faith dialogue was held after his murder and attended by over 40,000 people but there was not a single head-scarf in sight. Even the more moderate Muslims (and at no point is one suggesting tout court that all Muslims are enemies of the West) often see little reason to condemn the events, perhaps because some see jihad as fundamental to the Islamic faith and its theology. But where are these moderates? One cannot hear them, and according to the Turkish President, they do not exist (2013).51 European leaders constantly tell us that the terrorist attacks have nothing to do with Islam, but it is not the Christians slamming planes into skyscrapers, blowing up underground trains and driving trucks into crowds
of revellers.

  In this essay, I want to focus on Sweden and describe some of the events I have witnessed these last five years in particular. It was during the 2014 Swedish General Election campaign that I realised there might be something wrong. Election posters and placards were everywhere to be seen. But Sverigedemokraterna (SD) — the anti-mass immigration party — their placards had been removed or vandalised. The third largest party was curiously invisible. Postmen had refused to distribute their literature, the party website was hacked, the party election hut had been burnt down. The list goes on. One might quite reasonably ask whether any of these actions belong in a genuine democracy, and indeed whether it is time to have election observers in Sweden. If the UK’s third largest political party’s headquarters were attacked and newspapers refused to advertise the party, it would be a major scandal. But not in Sweden. It is thus legitimate to ask whether Swedish elections are in fact free and democratic. In 2010, three of the major Danish political parties (Dansk Folkeparti, Venstre and Det Konservative Folkeparti) issued a statement urging that the Council of Europe send election observers to Sweden to monitor ‘violations of democracy’ regarding the treatment of SD.52 These are not minor Danish political parties; these are parties that are either in Government now or that have been in governing coalitions previously. Once again, things are perhaps not what they seem.

  Before the General Election in 2014, Danish parliamentarians became in fact sufficiently concerned by the Swedish immigration policy that they raised the issue of closing the bridge that connects Denmark with Sweden. Having gained Swedish residence permits, asylum seekers are free to enter Denmark. Leading Danish politicians have described the Swedish immigration policy as a ‘liability’.53 More recently, their other neighbour to the West, Norway, said that if Sweden collapses (because of its open-doors immigration policy), it will contravene the Geneva Convention and will secure the border completely, preventing the chaos from spreading. Sweden’s neighbours are then preparing for its collapse.54