As society collapses we must know our enemies
If society collapses, it will do so because politicians, writers and priests exploit - for entirely selfish ends - people’s real concerns. These men are our enemies.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats’ poem was written in the aftermath of the first world war, a time of plague, poverty, displacement and, for some, a profound sense of dishonour. The poet, Ireland’s greatest, saw the end of civilisation, the final collapse of Christendom. Nick Tabor describes ‘The Second Coming’ as the “most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English” since its theme of society collapsing, with the emergence of that terrible beast “slouching towards Bethlehem”, a metaphor for any and every perception of threat to what we see as the proper order of things.
For many in Europe the 20th century, or at least that part of the cursed time beginning in 1914 and ending in 1989, was not a time of greatness but of sorrow, death, destruction and the decline of what had been fine civilisations. Between 1918 and 1920 a fifth of the world’s population died, not from the bullets we remember so vividly from other poems but from a terrible plague. War had come but close behind her rode pestilence and his brother, famine. War, plague, starvation and of course death seemed the order of the day, that ‘blood-dimmed tide’ Yeats wrote about.
In the years that followed Yeats’ literary second coming the world saw the worst of humanity and, albeit in glimmers, some of the best. Across Europe a new form of powerful leader emerged. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin: men driven by rage and hate, powered by the exploiting of grievance and encouraged by an unbreakable belief in the rightness of their cause and its destiny. Were these the rough beasts of that second coming? Powerful, inspired and inspiring men forging great societies from the weak cuckold that was Christendom. Places created by the memories of Rome’s greatness, the strength of old Teutonic myth, the comfort and sustenance of Mother Russia’s breasts. Societies formed by the destruction of chosen enemies: the church, the Jew and the landlord.
“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.”
Other parts of civilisation were spared the terror of the first horseman but not its partners. Poverty, famine and death brought suffering even to that great hope, the USA. Depression, racism, the anarchy of vigilantism, all made worse by the indulgence of moral panic. Society was collapsing:
Well, what is a vigilante man?
Tell me, what is a vigilante man?
Has he got a gun and a club in his hand?
Is that is a vigilante man?
Rainy night down in the engine house,
Sleepin’ just as still as a mouse,
Man come along an’ he chased us out in the rain.
Was that a vigilante man?
Black men were lynched, adulterers castrated, workers beaten with clubs, a legion of snitches served the powerful and the moral order banned drinking. Everywhere people stood in line; for a job, for a piece of bread, for water, for a bus maybe to somewhere better. Things were falling apart. In England hungry workless men marched the length of the land.
And then war, biding its time, returned. Once again everything was put on hold while young men fought to a standstill in rain, mud and blood. And this time old women and children died too as men found the power of the bomb. A few of those powerful men, the ones driven by hate and rage, were thrown down. And we celebrated until, so quickly, we saw that the rough beast was still walking towards Bethlehem. New warlords arose as the old order withdrew: in China, across Africa, in Latin America, and even in Europe. The horsemen still rode: poverty, famine, war and death persisted. Not in Europe, frozen into inaction by the memory of those two terrible wars, but everywhere else.
But things hadn’t fallen apart. It is no comfort to the dead in China’s fields, Congo’s mines or Vietnam’s rice paddies but far from falling apart, things got better. More people than ever had enough to feed their families and, for many, a space allowing children to go to school. New technologies, most created by a renewed United States, spread across the world as that nation broke free, at least in part, from its racism, moral panic and a puritan urge to control people. An idea re-emerged: liberalism, cursed by its success in the 19th century and always condemned by those who seek power over society, began to work its old magic again. Men, free to order their own lives, created betterment. Beginning in May 1979 the world tried to reseal the cages of those horsemen: wars reduced in number, famine and poverty declined, and the world’s health, wealth and happiness improved. In 1989 the flood of liberalism broke, Eastern Europe was free and, for a moment, that flood seemed likely to wash over Russia itself. In China an old man decided his legacy would be to make his people rich rather than himself powerful. The world healed a little.
Today the damage beneath the world’s healing seems infected again. The healing is real, nearly everywhere liberalism has made people healthier, wealthier and happier. But instead of celebrating the patient’s slow recovery, many people bash at the seals keeping those old horsemen at bay. Shades of plague, famine, war and death are let loose and wise sages once again tell us that doom and damnation is soon upon us. Once again society is collapsing. Angry men point at new enemies - technology, capitalists, liberals. Old enemies - black men, Jews, landlords - are dusted off. Mobs gather, sometimes with some semblance of purpose but often without excuse beyond an ill-directed rage. Men, too often men claiming the guidance of god, pursuing power, ride these dangerous waves believing they can, with a little drop of oil here or there, reach the top without finding themselves rulers of an ash heap.
But despite the efforts of these politicians to tell us otherwise, despite their selfish exploiting of grievance, things are not falling apart, society is not collapsing, men and women are not fleeing to safer places, the planet is not on fire. Our enemies are not businessmen or black migrants, car drivers or Jews. Our enemy is not the landlord or the oil company executive. Our enemy is the man - or women in this age of equality - who wants to tell us that, if we dispose of those they label as enemies everything will be fine.
Our real enemy is Zack Polanski, Marine Le Pen, Greta Thunberg, Jeremy Corbyn, Rupert Lowe. Our enemy is anyone who thinks a better future comes from less liberty, less choice and more power to government. Our enemy is the person who wants to stop you having French cheese, New Zealand lamb or Argentinian beef. Our enemies are those - Mazzucato, Stiglitz, Deneen - who think betterment is directed by the state not created by a free people. Our enemy is tariffs, licences, bans and controls, he is Mike Bloomberg, Sadiq Khan, Rishi Sunak and Wes Streeting. And yes, he is Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
Our enemy is the public health officer who wants to ban gambling, vaping, drinking and the humble hamburger. Our enemy is someone who says “free speech is vital but…” while calling for advertising bans on sweets or the silencing of someone - perhaps another enemy - with unsavoury views. Our enemy is the planning system, it is Ofsted, Ofcom and Ofgen. Our enemies are the ‘experts’ who say globalism and neoliberalism are to blame or who tell you free markets aren’t free and capitalism makes people poor. Our enemies are those who want to fix the price of fuel or rent or groceries, who believe they know better than millions of people making choices every day.
If society collapses, it will do so because politicians exploit - for entirely selfish ends - people’s real concerns. Whether it’s a worry about inflation, the price of fuel or anger created by what the Imam said about Israel. It is Green Party agents going door to door telling people to boycott Jewish shops. It is Rupert Lowe only ever talking about black rapists. It is Jeremy Corbyn blaming the supermarket for rises in the cost of living. And it is Matt Goodwin or David Betz carefully curating facts to make out that every social problem in Britain - housing costs, school discipline, declining high streets, shoplifting - is the result of mass migration. And that unless something tough and hard and stern is done society will collapse.
And so our free society would end. They use arguments about collapse to push for the end of liberty. They are our enemies.
“So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don’t understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.” Niall Ferguson.