QUOTE OF THE MONTH

'The aim of the nation state

was to serve as an iron shield for the

sovereignty of a particular people living

within a geographical area.

And integral to the aims of the nation

state,

Have been the promotion of a national

identity,

As opposed to a tribal or a regional

one;

The promotion of an official national

language,

As opposed to a Babel of tongues and

dialects

(Did you at the time of the French

Revolution, only in eight Frenchmen

spoke fluent French?);

The promotion mass instruction,

teaching the national history,

often with a semi-mythological

tenor;

And mass media,

maintaining a national consciousness.

All of which has tended to maximalise

homogeneity within,

And accentuate differentiation without—

Which is the essence of nationalism.

 

 

Conservatism,

Which for some is the conservation of

nativisms and nationalisms,

perceives itself as having a vital role,

More vital now than ever before,

Which is to serve as a bulwark,

To serve as a wall of containment,

Against undesirable forms of change—

Disintegrative forms of change that

Threaten the national identity,

And thereby the national sovereignty.

*

But, the truth is . . .

That conservatism has failed.

Politics across the West have drifted

further and further to the Left.

For decades, maybe centuries,

conservatism has only known one gear:

reverse gear.

Mainstream conservatism has

compromised, accommodated, and sold

out;

Even worse: it has cut itself off from its

intellectual vanguard,

Thereby justifying the perception that

many have,

That conservatism is bereft of ideas,

That conservatism is simply the politics of

fear.

And mainstream conservatives are afraid;

They are motivated by fear.

Which is why they are always on the

defensive,

Never acting, but always reacting;

Reacting against the aggression of the

Left,

Allowing themselves to be shaped by it,

Rather than defining themselves on their

own terms.

The Left is also a negation,

But it is active, and has the initiative,

Which is partly why,

Despite having been proven wrong,

Again and again and again,

The Left has been largely successful.

Now, there are reasons why conservatism

has failed.

In this country, as we know,

one of them has been reliance on the

Conservative Party.

And not because it has ceased to be

conservative,

But because it has remained conservative

all along.

The Labour Party under Tony Blair had

no problem adopting Conservative Party

policies for this reason.

The mistake is in confusing conservation

with keeping traditions.

Because it is possible to be a conservative

by conserving something that is anti-
traditional.

And this is something that few realise,

even today—

Which explains why many of those who

are concerned with tradition

Continue to support the conservatives,

Because on the surface the conservatives

have retained vestigial trappings of

tradition.

Of course—

They get smaller and smaller over time,

And they become shallower and shallower,

But they are still closer to tradition than

Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

 

 

 

David Cameron was not a historical an

anomaly

When he said that the solution to the

failure of multiculturalism

Was ‘muscular liberalism’.

In saying that he was perfectly consistent

with the conservative legacy.

They are quite happy with the way things

have been going,

But they just want to slow things down

little bit,

And attenuate some of the most obnoxious

Leftist undertones

That have crept up under Labour

governments,

Although they are by now quite happy to

accept some of those too:

David Cameron is a signatory to the UAF,

Which descends from Trotskyist and

anarchist groups.

 

 

 

Now, the Right applies the terms ‘liberal’

and ‘Left’ almost interchangeably,

And this may have been correct once upon

a time,

but today this is inaccurate.

Firstly, because conservatives today are

liberals,

And secondly, because Marxism is anti-
liberal.

Marxism originated as a critique of

liberalism,

And the fundamental Marxian criticism

—Although they expressed it in a different

way—

was that the liberals had failed to deliver

on the promise of equality,

Because, through private property and free

market capitalism,

The liberals encouraged the development

of hierarchies,

Which perpetuated the subjection of one

class of individuals by another.

Later on, fascism came to challenge both

liberalism and Marxism,

Being an anti-egalitarian critique of both

ideologies.

But fascism was defeated in 1945,

And Marxism would later collapse in

1989.

But, as others have pointed out,

It didn’t matter that communism collapsed

in the East,

Because by then Marxism had been

successful in the West.

Not by making the West communist, of

course,

But by influencing Western liberalism in a

Marxian direction.

 

 

Because in any debate about sovereignty,

In a modern nation state like Britain,

Or France, or Germany, or the United

States—

Whether it concerns immigration,

Whether it concerns globalisation,

whether it concerns citizenship,

Or taxation,

or terrorism,

or the welfare state,

Every single issue is filtered through the

moral prism,

Of whether or not it affronts the ideal of

equality.

*

Let’s begin with immigration.

When conservatives pronounce themselves

against it,

Their arguments are always practical

arguments.

For the most part, they invoke economics:

Immigrants cost more than they

produce;

They put pressure on the benefits

system;

They put pressure on public services;

They drive down property prices.

Sometimes they invoke legality:

They are breaking the law;

They engage in criminal activity.

And in the rare occasions when the

arguments are about identity,

They are purely sociological:

Some types of immigrants don’t

assimilate;

Lack of assimilation may lead to

radicalisation and social tension.

All of these arguments are easily defeated

by proponents of immigration,

Particularly when they are ideological.

Because they can—and they do—always

present their arguments in moral terms:

‘They come here to work and pay taxes’;

‘They come here looking for a better life’;

‘They come here escaping poverty and

torture’;

‘There is no place for bigotry in the 21st

century’;

‘No human is illegal’.

And in all these high-flown statements

there is an underlying accusation of moral

turpitude,

Because everybody knows that the

word ‘immigration’ is a euphemism;

Because everybody knows that the

problem is not so much immigration per

se, but the types of immigrant;

Because, deep down, and despite any

protestations to the contrary

—And that includes the immigrants

themselves—

many regard them as neither equivalent

nor interchangeable with the natives,

Nor with the broader European family.

Which implies that the natives, and that

family,

possess an essential quality,

That makes them not the same,

unequal,

Which is a violation of the ethical code,

And therefore cannot be allowed under

any circumstances.

And the result is a loss of sovereignty.

And, because it is rooted in moral

philosophy,

Rather than on practical considerations,

Conservatives—who are allergic to

abstract thought—do not have an effective

answer.

They don’t have intellectual weapons,

Which is why they end up compromising,

And backtracking,

and capitulating,

over and over again,

On this and related issues.

And this makes conservatives look like

hypocrites:

Because, on the one hand,

they present themselves as defenders of

the traditional nation,

But on the other they consistently betray it.

And they are made to look like hypocrites

in another way:

Because as soon as they begin to do what

they were elected to do,

They are reminded that there is a precept

they must never contravene.

And that those measures that they

promised, that they began to implement,

in the interest of tradition and of

sovereignty,

Are unethical:

They are reminded, in other words, that

their purpose is indefensible.

And the other side knows it:

The other side knows that as soon as

conservatives go over the line,

It’s just a question of applying enough

pressure,

And deploying the usual arsenal of

unfalsifiable slogans,

Because, should conservatives attempt to

defend themselves,

They can easily be made to look selfish

and small-minded,

and can be broken every single time.

And who can respect people like that?

When there is resistance, it comes from

traditionalists,

Who are invariably met with perplexity.

The Vice-President of this group was

attacked in the media back in the Summer,

For stating that Doreen Laurence lacked

merit to be a peer of the realm,

For suggesting that she was not an

example of the best that Britain can

offer—

Because that was the original idea, in the

days of yore,

one was ennobled, one was allowed to

become a member of the nobility, if one

was deemed to be of the highest character,

to have rendered singular service to the

country,

to represent the best.

The Vice-President of this group was also

attacked for suggesting that people have

natural homelands,

A suggestion that implies that a person’s

homeland is not determined by civil

servants using bureaucratic procedures.

Vanessa Feltz said in her radio programme

that Gregory’s views were ‘impossible to

understand’ . . .

‘Impossible to understand’!

She suggested that her colleagues were all

nervous in the studio,

Biting their nails,

Clinging to their controls,

Unable to compute!

Let’s talk about citizenship.

When Lee Rigby was decapitated in South

East London earlier this year,

One of his assailants, delivered a few

remarks to a bystander, who recorded

them.

And among other things he said:

‘By Allah, we swear by the Almighty

Allah we will never stop fighting you until

you leave us alone . . .

I apologise that women had to witness this

today, but in our land our women have to

see the same.

You people will never be safe. Remove

your governments . . .

Tell them to bring our troops back so we

can—

and then he corrects himself—

so you can all live in peace. Leave our

lands and you will live in peace.’

Now, Michael Adebolajo repeatedly

used ‘you’ to refer to British people,

And ‘our’ to refer to foreign countries

living under Islam.

And the interesting part is that Mr

Adebolajo is not a Nigerian immigrant:

He, like his accomplice, is a full British

citizen,

Born in Lambeth, Central London.

His statements suggest clearly that neither

he nor his accomplice identify with Britain

or British people,

Even though the label ‘British’ has

become highly elasticated.

These are individuals who were born

in the mid 1980s and early 1990s

respectively,

Who have lived in the United Kingdom all

their lives,

And were educated in a British university,

in politically correct, anti-racist Britain.

Indeed, the younger assailant,

lived most of his life under the Labour

government dominated by Tony Blair—

The diverse immigrants’ best friend!

Clearly, their loyalties are commanded by

something more powerful,

More essential than their civic status.

Even though their parents live here,

Their real family, literally and

metaphorically, is elsewhere.

Their essential identity is something that

they carry with them,

That is inside, and that goes where they

go,

And is not something to be acquired by

legal means,

Or by education,

Or by length of residence.

It says something that Blair saw it

necessary to require a pledge of loyalty

From anyone wishing to hold British

citizenship.

Under ordinary circumstances,

This would have been deemed completely

superfluous.

And this is clearly not limited to a few

extremists,

Because it was also deemed necessary to

have an American-style ceremony,

on the basis that those being welcomed

into the fold were not taking their

citizenship seriously,

On the basis that they were seen to have a

purely instrumental relationship to it.

And yet anyone daring to suggest

that peoples from very different cultures,

and very distant origins,

have natural homelands elsewhere,

Will be regarded, not as mistaken or

misinformed,

But simply as immoral.

*

We could also talk about international

development.

Mainstream conservatives feel that

they must absolutely commit thousands

of millions of pounds in international

development,

And to increase that commitment every

year.

This despite record deficits, and debt, and

cuts elsewhere;

This while pensioners and war veterans in

this country live in poverty.

It’s obvious that this is unfair.

But in this rich country, that charge is

easily countered with the notion

that those who have too little,

Have a moral claim on those who have too

much.

It’s a Marxian notion,

Founded once again on egalitarian

principles.

So we see that Cameron, as an egalitarian

liberal, cannot possibly cut the funding for

international development.

He would be branded as heartless and

immoral.'

 

 

 

Extracts from a speech made by Alex Kurtagic at the 2013 Traditional Britain Conference.