by Frank Millard

I’m not racist but…

I’m not anti semitic but…

I’m not Islamophobic but…

The list goes on. Everyone can expect agreement when they are in their safe space echo chambers and as a result of the algorithms that reinforce whatever prejudices or inclinations they may have. However, the ever-increasing polarity and separation from context and other perspectives divide society to a greater degree than would be otherwise.

British politics seems to have got very American and very parochial at the same time. We are now expected to conform to narrow political views and stereotypes that are frankly absurd or dangerous or both. For example, we are expected to believe that either Palestinians or Israelis can do no wrong and it is our duty to support a side as if it were our own. All Gazans are not Hamas and they are not all Muslim even. All Israelis are not Netanyahu and neither are they Zionists.

Why can’t we just believe in humanity without one set of humans being regarded as more human and equal than others? But, no, Zelensky good, Trump bad; Nigel good, Kemi bad; Jeremy good, Keir bad; and so on relating to personalities, religion or ethnicities according to one’s echo chamber.  That goes for pro life and pro choice, women’s rights as opposed to trans, BLM and much else that divides America that spills over into the British consciousness

Herded, not governed

Monitored and manipulated. Surveilled not policed. “The police are the public and the public are the police” Robert Peel emphasised policing by consent and cooperation. A breakdown in that consensual relationship can lead to a police force becoming little more than a force. Furthermore, where the society has fragmented the state shortly follows, which either reflects and underpins a cohesive society or its breakdown.

There comes a point when repeated negative discussion of a single subject by the media and on social media become negative themselves and if not accompanied by positive and practical solutions or possibilities, the recipients can become stirred up and increasingly tense and frustrated, by which time repeated negative comment becomes incitement.

Some tv presenters, internet influencers and others seem to have made a career out of incitement.

Where we are now and what led to it? The last few years have suffered from the aftermath of the Brexit vote, a global pandemic, a massive supply chain crisis that eroded old trade assumptions, threatened, raised prices, a European war, an energy crisis immigration, . Inflation, culture wars. To apportion blame for that would be to fuel incitement further. Government can only manage and the civil service advising and managing the managers. However, more than that has been a disconnect between government and the governed and even government and its ability to make decisions due to a rise in over-mighty quangos, multinationals and supranationals. Meanwhile the new world order and the structure upon which it depended has broken down and been threatened by displacement by a BRICS alternative, which appeals in its apparent multilateralism, but hides Hegemony.

“Britain lost an empire but has not yet found a role. Well, it has less an idea of what that might be than ever. It eschews globalism but is prey to little Englanderism.

Society is divided from stem to stern. Much of this was by politically motivated agents facilitated by digital opportunism, but the very binary nature of the digital world and its processes tends towards polarity and reflects existing prejudices along with artificial (ie inorganic) developments and orderings of society. We are no longer free thinking and free acting individuals, but each regarded as a collection of categories and syndromes that define and separate us from each other. The consequence of this is as we are categorized and identified (externally) we are encouraged to categorize and identify ourselves to the external world according to the psychoses that have developed as a result or preexisted. There was a time when young people were encouraged to search and find themselves, but now invent the identity that they wish to project rather than gain an intrinsic understanding of their internal mechanism and the journey upon which they are embarked. This externalising of the psyche risks creating a void within. Thus emotions are externalised and become ritualised as nothing more than emoji world. While a species that decreates itself psychically and culturally is in deep trouble. This tendency for spiritual beings to deny their true nature and destiny by identifying as purely material is unhealthy

We are witnessing a civil war in slow motion. For God’s sake don’t let it speed up.

Frank Millard BA (Hons), MA, PhD LOND is a historian, writer, Bruges Group senior fellow and political editor of Context Cast News.