Europe’s new pariahs—the British
The disintegration of the British culture and character is seen not just in Britain but in vacation spots across southern Europe, such as Malia, Greece, where young Britons,
according to the
New York Times,
are carousing, brawling and getting violently sick. They are the ones crowding into health clinics seeking morning-after pills and help for sexually transmitted diseases. They are the ones who seem to have one vacation plan: drinking themselves into oblivion.
“They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,” Malia’s mayor, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, said in an interview. “It is only the British people—not the Germans or the French.”
And why are British people misbehaving in these gross and repellent ways?
“I think that in their country, they are like prisoners and they want to feel free,” said Niki Pirovolaki, who works in a bakery on Malia’s main street and often encounters addled Britons heading back to their hotels—“if they can remember where they are staying,” she said.
David Familton, a Briton who works in a club here, said that it was a question of emotional comfort. “It’s because of British culture—no one can relax, so they become inebriated to be the people they want to be,” he said.
This is of course the classic liberal explanation for the disorders caused by liberalism. In reality, Britain has removed all normal authority, destroyed all restraints, and released immoral, thuggish, criminal behavior—the yobbification of Britain. And on what do liberals blame the resulting moral chaos?
On the supposedly still-existing moral restraints that liberalism has, in fact, destroyed. The once highly civilized British people, whose manners were a model to the world, have turned into a mass of yobs, because—the liberals tell us—they’re too restrained! So the cure for the yobbery is to remove moral restraints even further!
Thus liberalism reveals itself as a nihilistic lust, closed off from any truth outside itself by which it can be criticized and corrected, and moving relentlessly forward to its ultimate destination—the abyss.
* * *
But isn’t all of western Europe far advanced in suicidal liberalism? So why do the British behave so much worse than the French or the Germans?
Because the British are the most advanced in suicidal liberalism. More than any other Western people, the British have elevated into their ruling moral principles the destructive trio of tolerance, non-judgmentalism, and the denial of the moral legitimacy of their own society. Thus they tolerate, subsidize, and empower Muslim immigrants who openly seek to destroy Britain. Thus they tolerate, subsidize, and empower their own homegrown population of yobs and thugs.
- end of initial entry -
Steve D. writes:
Today you asked the question:
“So why do the British behave so much worse than the French or the Germans?”
To which you provided the answer: “Because the British are the most advanced in suicidal liberalism.”
But that answer only begs a further question: why should they be the most advanced? I believe the real answer may be, because they were poisoned by empire. Because they ruled over a greater portion of the dark places of the Earth, for a longer period of time, than any other imperial power, the British gazed into the “heart of darkness” more than any other people. It seems to have destroyed their confidence in themselves and their future—and it seems that’s what intimate contact with pathological cultures always does to Westerners.
The Briton quoted in the story said that his countrymen act swinishly in order “to be the people they want to be.” I can’t believe that young Britons actually want to be swine. I think they have simply given up—on themselves, on their culture, and on the very idea of standards of behavior. When all is meaningless, pleasurable stimulation is the only activity that makes any sense.
It may be that Britain has a future. But it will have to come through the fire to reach it.
LA replies:
This is interesting, but you need to explain further why gazing into the darkness of primitive or non-Western cultures would destroy Britons’ confidence in themselves.
Steve D. replies:
The reason is pretty straightforward. For centuries, Britain took up “the white man’s burden” of empire. They sought—by force, persuasion, example, and every other tactic—to impose Western civilization upon the “new-caught, sullen peoples” of what we now call the Third World. They invested not simply their treasury, but their identity; and it didn’t work. Centuries of effort came to nothing: empire gone, loot squandered, and civilizational pride and honor and self-regard smothered under the sheer overwhelming weight of a world of wogs—who now, funnily enough, happen to live in the flat above, and in the one below. Western civilization is a failure; and if you don’t believe it, take a stroll down to the bus stop after dark.
If this sounds too simplistic, consider that the vast majority of people are themselves pretty simplistic. Most people are most impressed by actual results: if Western civilization sought to establish its dominion and glory over the world, and the mundane, everyday result was only to bring the Third World crowding into the neighborhood and ruining everything, then Western civilization has been proven a fraud; and the quicker we can rid ourselves of its residual authority, the better. Drugs and sex with random strangers are excellent purgatives—especially when you recapitulate your country’s history by taking the purge overseas, and at great expense.
LA replies:
What you’re saying is, the failure of the British in their major national undertaking, to civilize the colonial peoples and make them be like the British, made the British lose confidence in their entire civilization.
Of course the British empire had many great successes. I don’t see how one calls it simply a failure. But I suppose it’s a failure in that the colonial people, regardless of how much of the British culture they assimilated, remained ineluctably Other. Which meant that the colonial project had, finally, failed.
So what you’re saying in effect is that colonialism did to the British what the presence of nonwhite peoples in America—first blacks, then the post 1965 Third-Worlders—did to America. White Americans after 1960 thought they could assimilate the blacks; they were unable to do so, and so began accommodating to them instead. They thought with great confidence that they could assimilate nonwhite immigrants; but once the nonwhites were here en masse their differences began to emerge and white America began to accommodate those differences. Neocons, formerly the main promoters of the inevitability of assimilation, now talk about what a wonderful, diverse country we are.
The lesson seems to be that white peoples should avoid large-scale, close involvement with nonwhite peoples, whether by importing them as slaves, or by importing them as immigrants, or by colonizing them, since the unassimilable differences of the nonwhites will break down the confidence and identity of the whites, leading ultimately to their two-pronged extinction—by themselves, and by the Other.
Steve D. replies (August 28):
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The British experience is being duplicated in France—the north and west Africans and southeast Asians that France used to rule over in those places are now in France, creating havoc. In America, we didn’t bother going abroad in search of subject peoples—we simply brought them here, and here they are, creating havoc.
In all these cases, if liberalism is not the cause it is at least the enabler, with its constant remonstrations on being “open” and “nonjudgmental” and its insistence that values are essentially meaningless. It’s like an entire civilization is trying to defend itself with blanks. I think the West could probably hold its own against the presence of even large numbers of aliens in its midst, if it were able to retain pride in its identity and confidence in its culture—two things which liberalism insists are not merely bad public policy, but bad morals—and hold the aliens to its standards, rather than trying to accommodate them by incorporating their standards into its culture.
Better yet, send them back home. It is a constant amazement to me that we can have federal programs tasked with the eradication of alien plants and animals—organisms that cause havoc in our natural ecosystems—and yet when you suggest that cultures can be thought of as ecosystems which are disrupted by the presence of aliens, your suggestion is regarded as not merely ridiculous but evil. Meanwhile, that cultural ecosystem continues to degrade—and the rate of degradation increases as the numbers and influence of aliens increases.
Chris B. writes from Britain:
“I think that in their country, they are like prisoners and they want to feel free,”
We are like prisoners, prisoners of a liberalism that regards moral restraint as perverted. For this reason we adopt the reflexive extreme—as much destructive hedonism as possible. In that we can be true to ourselves. Seriously, young woman are the worst for binge drinking; they drink until they are unconscious to prove they are liberated, independent women.
Josefina writes from Argentina:
Young Europeans here are generally as described in this thread. We see them and how they live their lives here, and the only comment you’ll hear about it is, “They are Europeans,” and “They’ve got money.” We view them as spoiled rich teens that don’t give a s*** about their future.
Buenos Aires, my city, is a place where you can find whatever you want as long as you search for it: If you want to visit wonderful museums and theaters, you’ll find them. If you want to listen to some music concert or recital, you’ll find where. If you prefer good food or sports you’ll find where enjoy yourself. But the same happens if what you want is party, alcohol and drugs. And that’s what most young Europeans are looking for where they come here.
This is the story of Laura Hill, a 25 year old British woman who died in mysterious circumstances here in Buenos Aires last year. Judge it yourself.
I really think that the British culture will only disappear if the British want it to disappear. And apparently they don’t mind.
LA replies:
The story Josefina links from the Mail is quite interesting. Argentina is very popular now among young Europeans because of the exchange rate. Laura Hill went to Buenos Aires last August and was found dead there in October. Laura was apparently living a wild party life there. Police initially told her parents she died of natural causes. Much later it turned out she had ingested a fatal dose of cocaine. The police now say she died of “excesses,” as, apparently, happens to 15 young people each week in Buenos Aires. Her parents think she was murdered by being forced to ingest the fatal amount of cocaine. Also, there were bruises on her face, supporting the idea that force was used on her. The authors of the article, Andrew Malone and Jason Mitchell, make no attempt to resolve the contradictory views of her death.
Josefina writes:
Steve D. wrote:
“I believe the real answer may be, because they were poisoned by empire. Because they ruled over a greater portion of the dark places of the Earth, for a longer period of time, than any other imperial power, the British gazed into the “heart of darkness” more than any other people. It seems to have destroyed their confidence in themselves and their future—and it seems that’s what intimate contact with pathological cultures always does to Westerners.”
I disagree really very much about this statement. First of all, the British were not those who gazed into the “heart of darkness” more than any other people; those were the Spanish (mixing considered). And second, it was not the Empire that poisoned them, it was the end of the Empire. Great Britain, its identity and its values started with the British empire. Great Britain’s reason for existing was the expansion of those values through the world. With the end of the empire, that is to say African decolonization, Great Britain lost its reason for existence. Great Britain’s identity was that of an empire, not that of a nation-state.
Something similar happened to Spain when the Spanish Empire ended in 1898. Spain faced an identity crisis and become grass for Communist ideas during the first half of the 20th century. They had their Civil War, Franco took power and “taught” them to be an isolated nation-state, then he died and monarchy was reestablished. And now they are part of the EU but not so much in danger of national suicide as Britain.
Britain should recover those values that make it great and use them to construct her identity and reason for existence as a nation-state.
Steve D. writes:
I don’t really understand why Josefina disagrees with me, especially when she writes that Spain essentially duplicated Britain’s experience. Both countries allowed their national character to be subsumed beneath their identity as an empire; and when the empire failed, there was nothing left to have confidence in. But that process of losing national character began, and was for all intents and purposes complete, before those empires came to an end. The end of empire simply exposed the rot—it did not cause it. The real cause—the real poisoning of the national character of both countries—was indeed the process of empire building, a process that dissolves national identity.
But I think the real reason Spain was less poisoned was that Spain was more frankly in search of loot than was Britain. The British considered it their sacred duty to offer to the benighted peoples of the world the Light of Civilization (at least, that was their national myth of empire)—and the world just wasn’t interested. In contrast to Britain, Spain was pushed out of the empire business by other Westerners—by competition from Britain, by revolts led by ethnic Spaniards, and finally by the United States. But the British were defeated by the wogs—by “sloth and heathen folly.” The failure of the empire for the British was thus not merely a national failure, but a civilizational one.
Richard B. writes from England:
The discussion about the behaviour of young British people on the continent is a bit hollow. Thousands upon thousands of foreigners behave appallingly in the UK every year. In London alone 55 percent (approx. 100) of murders are committed by foreigners. Today’s Daily Mail has a story about the rape of a young British journalist by a group of asylum seekers in Calais.
The interview by a BBC journalist of a Greek doctor was a classic piece of non-journalism. The doctor said over 100 young British women come to him every morning for morning-after pills. But why don’t these girls use the pill or other contraceptives? I would like to wait outside that doctor’s office and count the number of young women who go there.
Young British people do drink too much but they are “demonised” by the liberal and the less liberal media because they are white. There have been many instances of young black Britons running amok in the med. There is an element of racial misogyny here. Your Indian correspondent is a case in point. He has the gall to criticise European women when even in the UK women from the Indian sub-continent suffer abuse at the hands of a “culture” that would not be tolerated by young British people for five minutes. Forced marriage, female genital mutilation, a caste system, etc.
LA replies:
You’re conflating our Indian correspondent with people from the “Indian sub-continent” who commit various abuses. But the latter of course are Muslims, mainly from Pakistan. And our Indian correspondent is, of course, a foe of Islam and has written that India made a fatal error when, because of the influence of Gandhi, it did not expel all the Muslims at the time of partition.
Anthony Damato writes:
The NYT article about the bad behavior of British people vacationing abroad was not surprising. The exact reason for their pursuit of sex, booze and fights lies somewhere as a result of their meaningless existence, directly resulting from the collapse of tried and true traditional morality.
Everywhere they look, from their treasonous, empty political leaders, to their clergymen espousing sexual deviancy as normal, to their new mostly “exotic” arrivals shouting slogans such as “Islam will dominate,” they see only chaos. And let’s not forget the popularization of porn further smashing the notion of human dignity and decency, and you have a recipe for the undoing of societal standards.
As Sam in the film “Casablanca” put it to Rick and Ilsa while admiring a choice bottle of champagne as the cannons of the advancing Nazi army thundered ever louder to Paris, “This ought to take the sting out of being occupied.”
That being said, isn’t the double standard clear as day? Imagine the NY Times taking the same unflattering view of, let’s say, Moslem lawlessness and violence in the UK. What about an open article about the degree and extent of African American and Hispanic violence in the USA? Nope. Only misleading articles about police (“police” is code for whitey) targeting of minorities is allowed, except when the cops are two black females pulverizing a black motorist, or any of a dozen examples of a black mob stomping a white victim near death, or out of control knife crime by minorities in London. Then, the reporting becomes suddenly void of facts. No name, race or religion, just propaganda to cover up the awful, frightening reality of racial and civilizational incompatibilities.
Adam C. writes:
“I think that in their country, they are like prisoners and they want to feel free … It’s because of British culture—no one can relax, so they become inebriated to be the people they want to be,” he said.”
What I took this statement to mean is, the stressful pressures of submitting to the violently-imposed multicultural tyranny of modern liberal Britain (for example, being forced by government fiat to disbelieve ones own daily observations as to the predatory and parasitic behavior of immigrants, and generally living in a society so mismanaged that it has lost its soul and its pride) are such that only binge drinking while out of the country liberates a sense of freedom, vitality, and aliveness that ancestral empire-building Britons took for granted.
LA replies:
Would that it were so! Would that there were even that degree of consciousness of and unhappiness about the racial cultural transformation of Britain. But I doubt that these young English are getting drunk to escape the misery of multiculturalism.
Philip M. writes from England:
“I think that in their country, they are like prisoners and they want to feel free…”
I have always found it interesting that one of the most famous nightclubs in Ibiza that the Brits head to is called “manumission,” which is the act of freeing a slave.
“The once highly civilized British people, whose manners were a model to the world, have turned into a mass of yobs, because—the liberals tell us—they’re too restrained! So the cure for the yobbery is to remove moral restraints even further!”
I think maybe you judge these comments too harshly, Lawrence. I am no liberal, and I’m sure many of the comments on this thread are part of the truth. However, I have always felt that there is a hardness and a toughness in the way working-class people bring up their children, a feeling that the displaying of emotion, love or tenderness towards child or spouse is soft, wimpish and embarrassing. This is not new, but is a deeply engrained part of our culture, and one which unless kept in check with powerful social pressures will naturally lead people who have become emotionally stunted to seek release in alcohol and to find some semblance of tenderness, or even simply touching someone else, in the only avenue that is acceptable and understood in working-class Britain—sex. Wanting sex is not wimpish, that is something we have always been able to snigger and laugh about, it is in effect even now the only socially acceptable outlet for many working-class people to express any kind of emotion, however primitively.
What I’m saying is, modern Britain didn’t come from nowhere, and even though we have lost our constraints, it did not have to take the form it did. When I see the buttoned up, emotionally repressed older generation, their sluttish and emotionally stunted grandchildren in no way seem an illogical or confusing response to this.
The British are a martial and an expansionist race. While we had our military and imperial adventures to justify this hardness, it served a useful and perhaps necessary purpose. But without purpose, the hardness merely makes us disfunctional.
Does all this make me sound like a hopeless lefty?!!
August 28
Alan Levine writes:
A comment on the fascinating thread on the British:
1) It is pretty clear, despite some feeble attempts to defend them, that the British, or many of them, are in fact worse behaved than other Europeans outside the Islands if not at home. The misbehavior of British soccer fans has been legendary for years.
2) I am not sure that it can be closely connected with immigration and its consequences. On that point, the British actually compare favorably with the French. The latter’s allowing their country to be flooded by North Africans who hate them and who they always disliked is a good deal crazier than any immigration insanity in the rest of the West, which is saying a good deal!
3) Steven D.s theory of “poisoning by empire” makes no sense. If the imperial subjects were so disgusting, why would any sane person be influenced or deranged by their examples or their (alleged) failures?
4) He also manages to make it sound as though the entire “non-white” population of the empire was irredeemably barbaric from beginning to end. That is not, obviously, an accurate characterization of the Indians, at least.
5) Empire, or at least the African and Asian empire, was notoriously not a central concern of the British people at any time. The lower classes and middle class, except for a few people specially connected with India, were never interested in it and were unconcerned either by the acquisition or loss of colonies. The latter were almost all conquered quite cheaply by a relative handful of Britons, often in the context of major wars with European foes. The central concern of British policy toward the rest of the world was always the defense of Britain and the European balance of power, not the empire, even for the upper class.
6) The British and the other empires did not seek to Westernize their subjects, either believing it was impossible or being unwilling to invest in it. They at most sought to abolish some particularly disgusting abuses like sati and slavery.
7) The empire, as Mr. Auster tartly observed, was not such a failure as some pretend. Despite the very limited aims of the rulers, they did improve things, and some places in the former empire aren’t all that awful—e.g. Malaysia.
8) I haven’t noted the neocons rejecting assimilation of immigrants. They still either claim it is going on, or just stick their heads in the sand and refuse to discuss the issue seriously, as they usually handle immigration questions. Or they just quote Emma Lazarus.
I might say, by the way, that in my observation, assimilation of some, not all immigrant groups, does still take place, however slowed and impaired by liberal policies, though how long that will continue is an open question.
Philip M. writes:
Quite simply, we make poor hedonists. We are not good at letting our hair down and enjoying ourselves. When I see the faces of the young girls queueing outside nightclubs, in the rain, in the middle of winter, shivering in their micro-skirts, novelty tiaras or fairy wings, they have a look of grim determination that they are damn well going to enjoy themselves which I imagine must be similair to the look of grim determination to get into heaven that their great-grandmothers must have had as they queued to go to chapel. Truly, the miserable crab-apple does not fall so far from the tree.
We have a culture which conflates any expression of love, tenderness or physical contact with sex. It is widely known for example that the British need far greater “personal space” than most cultures. You could argue that this is the result of harsh “Victorian values” and Protestantism, or a sexual revolution which made sex the measure of all things, or more likely that the latter was an overreaction against the former, but many British people would far rather kiss and cuddle their pets in public than their children (indeed pets are a surrogate for children in this country, and is the main reason we are so obsessed with animals).
For the last several years Britain has been in the midst of a national obsession with paedophilia, a subject which links in with our obsessions with sex and childhood. I think at least part of the reason many people, particularly men, are obsessed with this topic is that it in a way justifies their own sense of awkwardness around any child or young person, so unable are we to relate to something that is demanding attention but is not covered in fur with a wagging tail. A few years ago there was a story in the papers about a child who escaped from a nursery and wandered off down the road, and sadly drowned in a nearby pond. The inquest heard that a local workman had seen the child on its own but had not wanted to approach the child in case people thought he was a paedophile. Either he is lying and simply felt awkward getting involved, or sex is the only common currency or emotion that is understood or expected any more by anyone here, at any time.
There is no point any of your readers from England trying to pretend things in this country aren’t bloody awful. I am still just about young enough at 32 to get invited out on “works nights out,” a phrase which makes me shudder, and have to endure sitting in clubs where the music is so loud that no one would be able to conduct a conversation, even if anyone did have something to say (I think that’s the reason they keep the music loud). The only conversation is sex or being drunk, the only joke is for the boys to shout “get your tits out,” or for the girls, “get your cock out” (we believe in gender equality in this country). I find it embarrassing that these people have passports. Having said that the local people who live in tourist towns in Europe have decided to exchange their souls in exchange for pounds sterling, so my sympathy is limited.
Its funny really. I stand for the BNP in elections and dearly love this land, but sometimes I think that maybe I should’ve been born an Italian or something.
If you’ll excuse me, I think I need to lie down and listen to some Smiths.
LA replies:
Boy, what a depressing portrait. And I thought the Germans were supposed to be the neurotic nation of Europe.
What you seem to be saying is, there was always this emotional restraint about the British, and maybe also emotional frustration that accompanied it on an individual level. But the restraint “worked,” because the culture that required the British to be restrained also supported the restraint. The restraint was organic to their culture. But since the ’60s, the general culture does not support the restraint, yet the habits of restraint are still there. The culture tells the British they’re supposed to relax, be natural, and express themselves, but their built-in way of being is the very opposite of that. So they’re in conflict. Not knowing how to relax and have fun, when they try to do so they mechanistically go to extremes, like the soccer hooligans or the young tourists drinking themselves into oblivion.
August 29
Philip M. writes:
Wow. Lawrence, that is amazing. Did you actually glean that from what I said? That is absolutely it, in a nutshell. That is what I was trying to say, but I didn’t feel I was conveying it at all well. I don’t know how on earth you managed to discern that from the jumble I wrote, but the short paragraph that you have written is one of the most succinct descriptions of this country I have read and I’m frankly proud if my e mail to you somehow helped it to be arrived at. Cheers!
LA replies:
Thank you. What you said was new to me, and very disturbing.
Philip replies:
Disturbing—well, yes. But at the same time it does illustrate very well just how very different in their souls and in their spirits the nations of the world still are, and this is a comfort. I hear politicians talk about how this or that law or scheme has worked very well in Spain (or wherever) and should be adopted here, as with 24 hour drinking supposedly ushering in a continental style “cafe culture” and I think, “You just don’t get it. You don’t get that we are not like Europeans, and it will not work.” Take comfort from the fact that the media, the government and ruling elites have done their best to fashion us into something else—and they cannot. It is beyond them. Deep in our marrow something about us remains the same … and one day in the near future, if some of your other contributors are right about the way things are heading, British hardness and restraint may yet make an ugly but neccesary return.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 27, 2008 07:18 PM | Send