The following could be called ‘interpretive notes.’ I will stay close to what Betz says, but sometimes put things my own way, and insert comments and examples he might not endorse.
Professor Betz sees Britain headed for civil war. Early on in his talk, he mentions Karl Popper’s observation that unlimited toleration leads to the destruction of toleration. It’s true and I’ve said it myself many times. Betz then states that Britain today is the condition Samuel Francis referred to as “anarcho-tyranny.” And what might that be? Francis explains:
. . . “anarcho-tyranny,” is essentially a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety. And, it is characteristic of anarcho-tyranny that it not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent.
There are plenty of recent state-side examples of this anarcho-tyranny that I needn’t rehearse if you follow current events. (Exercise for the reader: mention some of them in the comments below.)
Back to Britain. it’s “broken,” Betz notes, because of ‘factionalization,’ a condition of society in which the titular group (nation, tribe, etc.) splits into subgroups that battle one another and work to advance their own interests to the detriment of the common good. Betz proposes a spectrum of factionalization. I see it like this, using his terms.
Normal politics –> contentious politics –> issue factionalism –> polar factionalism –> militancy –> civil war.
Normal politics is the state in which the government in power is recognized as legitimate. USA politics is not normal by this criterion: Hillary Clinton, among others, has questioned the legitimacy of the Trump administration. Continuing with the USA as an example, we are well beyond normalcy (broadly recognized legitimacy of the government in power) and deeply embroiled in bitter contention over particular issues (Second Amendment rights, abortion, death penalty, etc.) — this is issue factionalism — and involved as well in polar factionalism. The latter takes the form, in Betz’s words, of “symbolic identity cleavages.” This is what I have referred to as tribalism and identity politics: whites versus blacks; Muslims versus Jews; etc. Militancy too has reared its ugly head here and in Britain. Assassinations would be booked under this head.
Next stop civil war.
According to Betz, Britain is at the polar stage. Many of ‘the people,’ as opposed to the elites, accept the Great Replacement theory, according to which elites aim to replace the white population with ‘persons of color.’ The British people’s grievances are mainly two: two-tiered justice and media bias. We too complain about those two. Responses include a peasant revolt against the elites, increasing ethnic Balkanization, and white flight.
If civil war erupts, it will lead to a siege of ethnically Balkanized urban areas in the form of attacks by paramilitary forces on the infrastructure in non-native enclaves. The political object would be to compel the non-natives to leave. The strategy would be to make make conditions intolerable for the non-natives. The tactics would involve the use of simple tools such as angle grinders, sledge hammers, and acetylene torches. The central premise: the instability of modern urban conditions.
Targets would include fuel distribution systems. Gas stations, for example, being flammable, are easy to attack and destroy and difficult to rebuild, especially since in a state of civil war insurance funds would not be available. What’s more, an attack on fuel distribution is also an attack on food distribution. Cutting off the enemy’s food supply is traditional siege craft.
Britain is a powder keg waiting to explode. Either Britain will, thanks to ever-increasing Balkanization, cease to exist as “a coherent cultural entity” but continue to limp along; or it will succumb to hot civil war. The three main belligerents are the armed forces, the elite-run government, and the people. When push comes to shove, and shove comes to shoot, will the military stick with the government or side with the people? If the armed forces support the elite-run government, then the elites prevail over the people. If, on the other hand, the military sides with street over the elite, then the elite go to Madame Guillotine.
A third possibility is that the military remain neutral as between the elite and the street.
Betz rightly points out that Balkanization, made inevitable by wide-open immigration, was an elite choice, a very unwise one that went against the will of the people. Re: immigration, the elite beat the street into the dirt.
We here in the States have a good chance of evading Britain’s fate because of one man, and one man only: Donald J. Trump.
Does Britain even have a military now? Thanks to recent events in the Middle East we know the British Navy, for practical purposes, has no ships. It’d be hard to believe that the British Army is in any better condition.
Not so long ago, the sun never set on the British Empire. No ships? Wikipedia reports that they have at the moment 63 commissioned ships. How sea-and battle-worthy is a separate question.
As for the British Army, Wikipedia reports: >>As of 1 January 2025, the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Gurkhas, 25,742 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 “other personnel”, for a total of 108,413.[7]<<
Not so long ago, the sun never set on the British Empire. No ships? Wikipedia reports that they have at the moment 63 commissioned ships. How sea-and battle-worthy is a separate question.
As for the British Army, Wikipedia reports: >>As of 1 January 2025, the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Gurkhas, 25,742 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,697 “other personnel”, for a total of 108,413.[7]<<
Michael,
You are right. It is not “in any better condition.”
Briefly, the history of the British army since the end of the Cold War is one of intentional managed decline. With regard to manpower, the regular/full time trained cadres of the army (excluding reserves) fell from 156,000 in 1990; to 109,600 in 2000, a number around which it fluctuated for about fifteen years; 80-85,000 in the mid 2010s; and to between 70-74,000 today. The decay of the UK’s armored forces is even more dramatic, with these falling from some 900 main battle tanks (MBTs) in the early 1990s, when powerful tank units served with the British Army of the Rhine and with the 1st Armored Division that participated in Desert Storm, to just 288 MBTs today. All of these reductions were mandated by a series of strategic defense and security reviews (especially those of 2010, 2015, and 2021). In addition, declining recruitment and retention rates have resulted in manpower shortages of trained personnel, a core vulnerability.
Vito
P.S. If we leave aside the question of the army’s warfighting prowess, it is evident that its numbers even today, when complemented by those of the reserves, would be a potent state force in a civil war, assuming, for course, that it could be relied upon to follow orders to commit violence against citizens and not foreign enemies. This is a large subject, but it brings to mind the times in the past when ordinary troops have broken ranks with their leadership in moments of civil upheaval.
Vito
You seem to be using ‘cadre’ to refer a single fighter. Is that a legitimate use of ‘cadre’? Just asking. How many legitimate uses of ‘cadre’ do you know of?
I expect you are familiar with Frank S. Meyer, THE MOULDING OF COMMUNISTS: THE TRAINING OF THE COMMUNIST CADRE. Meyer uses ‘cadre’ to refer to “formal card-holding members of the Communist Party.” (p. 13)
‘Cadre’ has different uses, but if I am not mistaken it can only be used to refer to a group, not to an individual.
Bill,
Here is Merriam-Webster Dictionary on “cadre.” I am using it to refer to the individual members of a group, as in number 3 below:
cadre
noun
1
: a nucleus or core group especially of trained personnel able to assume control and to train others
broadly : a group of people having some unifying relationship
a cadre of lawyers
a cadre of technicians
2
: a cell of indoctrinated leaders active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party
3
: a member of a cadre
Collins, the British dictionary follows this use in its American, but not British, definition of the term, as in number 4 below:
cadre in American English
noun
1. Military
the key group of officers and enlisted personnel necessary to establish and train a new military unit
2. a group of trained or otherwise qualified personnel capable of forming, training, or leading an expanded organization, as a religious or political faction, or a skilled work force
They hoped to form a cadre of veteran party members
3. (esp in Communist countries)
a cell of trained and devoted workers
4. a member of a cadre; a person qualified to serve in a cadre
5. a framework, outline, or scheme
Vito
Vito,
I stand corrected. Thank you. Good dictionaries record the empirical facts of actual usage of words, and those facts are what they are. I myself would never use ‘cadre’ to refer to an individual member of a group because such a use blurs the important logical distinction between individual and group. And so, from my somewhat ‘prescriptivist’ POV, the #4 use is suboptimal. But of course the facts are what they are whether they ought to be or not. This is a very general point that applies across the board and prompts a slew of philosophical questions.
Vito,
Do you agree with Betz that Britain is at the polar stage (as he calls it) and is only a couple of steps away from civil war?
He also claims that the first country in the UK where civil war is likely to break out is Ireland, and that if it breaks out in one country it is likely to spread to other adjoining countries.
Finally, in your judgment, how far away is the USA from hot civil war (as opposed to the cold civil war now in progress)?
Bill,
Yes, I agree that Britain is in the polar stage.
I also agree that given its history and recent events—the many anti-immigrant demonstrations at resettlement centers, including 38 arson attacks; the anti-immigrant riots set off by sexual assaults on young girls (Ballymena in N. Ireland and the Citywest/Saggart in the Republic); the recent massive farmers’ protests; and the Irish-first, nationwide tri-color flag waving campaign—Ireland is probably most ripe for civil war.
I am less sure that a civil war in one nation would likely spread to other nations.
As for the U.S., I do not think that a hot war is possible in the near future, but if the Left regains national power and (1) engages in anti-constitutional policies, such as destroying the Supreme Court as an independent branch, abolishing the electoral college by adopting the NPVIC and thus ensuring one-party rule, (2) violates the constitution and rule of law by conducting a massive repression of its political enemies, and (3) reopens the border so as to swamp the country with millions of more illegals then such a conflict is conceivable. If civil war occurs, it will the Left that causes it by making life intolerable for those who oppose its politics and world view. I always expect worst of the Left–especially this Left–so what is not conceivable now, might well occur in the next decade.
Vito
One consolation, however, is that we are old men, despite this country’s already being no country for old men. My ‘problem,’ and perhaps yours, is that we take very good care of ourselves and may be looking at a another 10-15 years during which the pace of change will increase, not arthmetically, and not geometrically, but exponentially. (I am thinking of AI and advanced robotics.)
Far worse than the Great Replacement of whites by colored will be the Great Replacement of humans by robots.
Hi Bill,
Betz is very good, and I think people (especially comfortable types of our generation, who lived during an extraordinary “interglacial” of stability and prosperity) still don’t realize how fragile complex societies are — how hard it is to grow them, and how easy to ruin them.
I’ve been brooding about civil war for a long time now, and you and I have also dug deeply into Carl Schmitt’s assertion that the “friend-enemy distinction” is always latent as a path to conflict.
I first heard of Betz about a year ago, courtesy of John Derbyshire. What’s happened to the UK in our brief lifetimes is just astonishing. I’m glad that my mother and father, who both grew up over there, aren’t around to see the place being overrun by invaders, and British subjects being arrested for grumbling about it.
I am not sanguine about the prospects. The British people are now irreligious, disarmed, deracinated, and culturally and spiritually exhausted. One can only hope that the nation described in Kipling’s poem “The Beginnings” still has a flicker of life in it.
Hi Bill,
Betz is very good, and I think people (especially comfortable types of our generation, who lived during an extraordinary “interglacial” of stability and prosperity) still don’t realize how fragile complex societies are — how hard it is to grow them, and how easy to ruin them.
I’ve been brooding about civil war for a long time now, and you and I have also dug deeply into Carl Schmitt’s assertion that the “friend-enemy distinction” is always latent as a path to conflict.
I first heard of Betz about a year ago, courtesy of John Derbyshire. What’s happened to the UK in our brief lifetimes is just astonishing. I’m glad that my mother and father, who both grew up over there, aren’t around to see the place being overrun by invaders, and British subjects being arrested for grumbling about it.
I am not sanguine about the prospects. The British people are now irreligious, disarmed, deracinated, and culturally and spiritually exhausted. One can only hope that the nation described in Kipling’s poem “The Beginnings” still has a flicker of life in it.
Malcolm,
I just re-read your 2020 Amer. Greatness article. Phenomenally good! You hit upon some nifty formulations and skillfully exploit analogies from physics (singularity, event horizon, acceleration), social psychology (time preference), medicine (stenosis) as when you speak of ‘historical stenosis,’ and the philosophy of time (presentism).
The tripartite schema — secessionism, successionism, and supersessionism — is very useful. The first is the political equivalent of marital divorce, and, like you, I cannot see how it could be made to work. The second does not apply to our current situation. The third is where the action is. Here is Obama’s “fundamental transformation.” The Left hates America as she was founded to be and wants to replace it with something like communism.
So, in the words of Lenin, “What is to be done?” While no one is his right mind could want hot civil war, we should prepare for it by stockpiling all the essentials for its prosecution, and training ourselves in their use. My hope is that we can win by intimidation. A very slender hope, I admit.
We cannot expect respect from the Left for us, our ideas, or the past achievements of civilization, as you well bring out. But although leftists cannot or will not show respect or reverence, they can be made to fear us, and in this way, kept at bay, while we work at defeating them politically as opposed to extra-politically.
But if it comes to hot civil war, the shedding of blood may have a redemptive effect. A very dark thought, this, but it has a couple of suggestive antecedents. In the Christian narrative, God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, shed his blood for man’s redemption. And in our (so-called) Civil War, an ocean of blood was shed to redeem us from the sin of slavery.
Political theology. Move over, Carl Schmitt.
And thanks for this, Malcolm: https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/NationalQuestion/ukcivilwar.html
Hi Bill, and thanks for the kind words.
Political theology is certainly nothing new for the United States. Arguably the entire Progressive movement that became the Great Awokening is a direct descendant of the Puritans’ “shining city on a hill” with God gradually leached away.
There’s a wonderful book – The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, by Richard Gamble – that describes in fascinating detail the runup to World War I as a gradual assumption by the United States that it must play the role of Christ among the nations of the world, shedding its blood to redeem them (a movement led by the Protestant churches, who originally were very anti-war, but then decided, in a spasm of messianic fervor, that America must accept the bitter cup). You could say at this point, 400 years since the Pilgrims arrived here in Wellfleet, that Massachusetts has gradually conquered the Western world.
Sorry, by the way, about double-posting that comment because of the unclosed tag. Please feel free to delete the first one!