The aphorism attributed to Mark Twain about travel being anathema to “prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness” could not be less true. Having visited various cities in the past year, I find I hunger for home the furthest from it I go—no matter how mismanaged my rainy little archipelago is at the moment. Despite politicians pronouncing themselves democrats, our bureaucratic systems obfuscate accountability. But looking to places like the United States or Japan provides a sobering reminder that everything in politics is a choice. Staying aware of this fact allows us to resist resignation to civilisational decline and allocate blame accordingly.
In England, St George’s Day was celebrated on the 23rd of April. Sir Keir Starmer, looking to recast Labour as a patriotic party ahead of the general election, urged MPs and supporters to “fly the flag.” This broke from a tradition of snobbish Anglophobia on the English Left: as Orwell once wrote, intellectuals would rather be seen plundering a poor box than singing “God save the King.” It’s a contrast to when his shadow attorney general resigned for disparaging the St George’s cross on Twitter.
The Met Police feel similarly about the dragonslaying patron saint of our island nation. When crowds gathered in the English capital, wearing the flag, they were kettled, provoked, and had police horses driven through them. Their crime? Like counter-protesters to London’s incessant pro-Hamas marches, they made the mistake of existing while “quite openly” English. Their treatment was far harsher than that received by said supporters of the proscribed terror group, who have been allowed to gather weekly in Westminster despite having shot fireworks at police horses.
The following day, a bloodsoaked pair of black and white horses galloped, riderless, through London—like an omen of the end-times. Tempting though it may be to read prophecy into this poetic symbol, the Met Police are not compelled by the currents of history to frighten English children. A decision has been made to treat expressions of patriotism and in-group preference by the indigenous English as a provocation. This is because it is an unwelcome reminder of insoluble prejudices—love of country, culture, and family—which impede the top-down imposition of a multicultural utopia. In the liberal post-conflict Leviathan, cultures are purely cosmetic opt-in experiences, indulged in as if at a global buffet. In the meantime, as Eric Kaufmann writes, multiculturalism is unilateral: repressing that of the host nation, while tolerating violent expressions of foreign nations. The raison dêtre of Europe and the Anglosphere becomes proving its anti-racist credentials by accommodating anyone from everywhere else.
The bitter irony of this unilateral multiculturalism is that it is a product of the post-war order. As I wrote in a previous essay, to ensure the atrocities of the Holocaust were “Never Again” repeated, an unconditional openness and a fearsome hostility to “authoritarian personality” traits were urged by psychologists, social scientists, and political theorists. Buying into the false anthropology of the Blank Slate, social liberals hoped that deconstructing cultural differences and repealing sexual repression would reveal an egalitarian sameness of all peoples and ameliorate all conflicts. This was, in former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s words, a “dream”—rather, a naive and destructive nightmare. Denying that people retain preferences and prejudices when moving between lands does not change the reality that they do. In fact, it would be cruel and unusual to expect someone to forget their heritage, family ties, and love of home and history when relocating. Yet this is exactly the demand made of the peoples born into all European countries, regardless of whether they allied with or fought against Adolf Hitler, to prevent the rise of a Fourth Reich.
This resulted in a mass influx of Muslims with no investment in Europe’s post-war narrative, under the rubric of diversity and enrichment. Since October 7th, their unwillingness to let allegiance to the ummah dissolve into the cultural melting pot has been made apparent. And yet, the establishment response has been further appeasement. If only we lower one more Union Jack, then the jihaddeans chanting for intifada might assimilate to our inoffensive non-culture of inclusion.
Given that this isn’t working, those of us wise to history not being an inexorable arc contorted toward social justice ask: is this a desirable state of affairs to continue living through? Is this worth it to reach the multicultural utopia our installed elite “dream” of? What will this open multicultural metropolis even look like?
Cities in America provide a model for this truly “open” society. By insisting on retaining its WEIRD-ness, Austin, Texas, is replete with features to which most Brits would object. Since the COVID lockdowns, the skyscrapers of America’s cosmopoles are empty. Their corporations’ replaceable spreadsheet fabricators scarcely leave their overpriced studio-apartment-come-office-cubilces. Vacant benches and building doorways have become de facto hostels for the growing homeless population. Drug addicts, itchy with withdrawal, shamble along the sidewalks in soiled pyjamas. People pass them by, paying no more mind to their incoherent shouting than to birdsong.
Since 2018, shoplifting in Austin carries no risk of arrest. The problem worsened following the 2020s BLM riots, when the city’s police department was defunded by $150m. Now, essential goods like soap, deodorant, and disposable razors are locked behind glass cases in Target and CVS. The insurance industry—one of the largest lobbying bodies—ensures low-level criminality is too profitable for authorities to prevent. Law-abiding citizens suffer the same suspicious treatment as the thieving vagrants that local politicians have enabled.
This low-trust landscape is watched by six CCTV cameras per thousand people. Why does the state grow its surveillance apparatus in tandem to growing its tolerance of criminal delinquency? As Patrick Deneen has observed, the scope of the state expands in proportion to social obligations receding. Concentric circles of faith, family, community, congregation, tribe, nation, historical belonging, and cultural affiliation create a Russian nesting doll of identity which shields men from fear of, or perceived dependence upon, state tyranny. But the anthropology of liberal philosophy creates an antagonistic relationship between nature and culture—compelling the state to intervene to ensure man’s freedom from social and civilisational expectations.
Liberal philosophers hypothesised that a state of nature predated civilisation, both Locke and Rousseau envisioning man living in “perfect freedom [and] equality.” Locke believed men rationally surrendered this state to form a government to protect property, manage scarcity, and seek prosperity. Rousseau believed this process was akin to a biblical Fall, and seeked to return to Eden by eliminating material inequality. Hobbes believed the state of nature was one in which life was bound to be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” and that the state exists to prevent the “War of every man against every man.” In all conceptions, man has been pried away from nature by culture and the nation state, and so the desire is created to rationally order society to return him to “perfect freedom [and] equality.” Doing so requires the state to monitor every relationship, and interfere when an individual’s ability to express themselves is limited by the actions or expectations of others. This includes reducing the burdens placed upon the conscience of individuals by family, faith, culture, history, and material reality. Dislodging us from these meaningful domains of constraint makes us anew as Camus’ “antiracist man”: existing as if ex nihilo, veiled by ignorance, naked before whatever ideology the state promotes and embodies.
Per the Blank Slate, any relationship which produces a disparity can only be interpreted as the consequence of oppression. If a person commits a crime, they are treated as if culture or material conditions forced them to forget their free and equal nature. Therefore, criminal delinquency goes unpunished while law-abiding citizens get censored for hate speech if they notice the undesirable consequences. No reminder of human differences can be abided as we transition back to the state of nature. This dizzying double standard was called “anarcho-tyranny” by cancelled commentator Sam Francis. This is because terrified citizens request that the state intervene further to crack down on the criminals they gave carte blanche to in the first place. A choice has been made to create a criminal clientele class, whose predation on stable self-sustaining people manufactures consent for more state power.
The occupants of tent cities are the Last Men of liberalism. Dislocated from cultural expectations and social obligations, they are free to pursue hedonic pleasure in the space and using tools provided by the state. Complaining when one assaults you carries a greater penalty than the act of violence, because you are asserting a civilisational standard that inhibits their expression. Transgressing against the liberal dream, by drawing value distinctions between behaviours, or reminding anyone of differences between peoples, is the most heinous possible crime. If the Leviathan of international institutions gets its way, then every city will become an open-air crack den before the decade ends.
We do not have to live like this. We did not, once. Other peoples do not, still. Despite what President Biden says, a cohesive, ethnically homogenous nation is not an expression of xenophobic hatred. Rather, it is born of Roger Scruton’s term oikophilia—meaning a love of the familiar. Japan has retained an as-yet undiluted demos.
When I visited last year, I was struck by how clean and quiet Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara were. Temples and shrines sat between shopping outlets and embedded in neighbourhoods that are shown respect. Stores have no automated barriers, security guards, or goods locked behind glass cases. Staff were polite and presumed the good intentions of customers. Social standards were enforced without the need for nagging announcements or billboards reminding public transport passengers not to stare, grope, or stand in the way of others.
While urban density influences behaviour, Japan proves that cities are not destined to fall afoul of the same civilisational decline as the population centres of the West. It reminds us that the moral decay inflicted upon us is a decision made by a political class enamoured with a utopic ideology of conquering human difference by silencing the conscience and tearing asunder bonds of mutual dependence.
But it’s not all rising suns and cherry blossoms. A transformation may be underway in Japan. The tendrils of global homogenisation are already creeping in. A Starbucks in Higashiyama ward wears a traditional Japanese home like a skinsuit. To staff these new outposts of international consumerism, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has insisted that “We have to consider a society where we coexist with foreigners.” To increase GDP and ameliorate sub-replacement birth rates, he extended an indefinite stay working visa from two to fourteen industries. Although foreign nationals increased to comprise 2.4% of the total population in 2023, they are still largely from neighbouring countries and proximate cultures—such as China and Vietnam. But Japan best beware copying the Blank Slate border policy practised in Europe and the Anglosphere.
Japan can make the unpopular but necessary choice to conserve the culture and heritage they love by rejecting the philosophy of human fungibility. They can choose to resist the pressure to permit homeless encampments, enable drug users, and loosen social stigmas. Doing so may give another example for those in England and America to look to and remind their hopeless voting populous that civilisational decline is a choice.
