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[Clip: Scourby, “Behold now behemoth …”]
That’s the fine sonorous voice of Alexander Scourby reading the King James Bible, Book of Job, Chapter 40, verse 15. I just wanted to be sure I got the right pronunciation of “behemoth.” It’s not a word I use very often.
It’s a curious thing that the two big Anglo-Saxon cousin nations, America and Britain, are both facing very similar political crises. And in both nations there is a huge entrenched political behemoth—in the U.S.A., an immense multi-trillion dollar diplomatic and military establishment. In both nations there is a widespread public dissatisfaction with this monstrous beast and its preferences—especially its preferences for unlimited immigration and everlasting missionary wars. In both nations this dissatisfaction has tried to express itself through proper democratic channels. And in both nations it has been thwarted.
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” I have been unable to find the origin of this saying. The usual attribution is to Mark Twain. You can actually buy a coffee mug with him saying it. Any kind of smart-alecky witticism gets attributed to Twain, though, unless it’s already had Winston Churchill’s name stuck on it. The fact-checkers tell us Twain never said it, but they don’t tell us who did.
It’s surely appropriate to our times, though. I think those words return an echo from the bosom of any Trump voter in America or any Brexit voter in Britain.
We voted for secure borders and an end to the stupid wars and defunct Cold War alliances; Brits voted to get out of the European superstate. The underlying impulse in both cases was for a restoration of national sovereignty: a wish that our national affairs be conducted in a way that puts our own citizens ahead of foreigners.
Yet here we are three, three and a half years after those votes. Foreigners are pouring across our borders in numbers unseen since New Year’s Eve of 406 A.D., when barbarian hordes crossed the frozen river Rhine into the Roman Empire. The United Nations continues to settle tens of thousands of bogus “refugees” in our towns. Our corporations, eagerly assisted by bought-and-sold politicians, favor cheap computer programmers from India over our own college graduates. The war in Afghanistan enters its nineteenth year.
Across the pond, Brexit has just been postponed for the umpety-umpth time, to January 31st next year. Meanwhile, trucks full of illegal aliens pour in across the English Channel because the British government thinks it’s too much trouble to check their contents.
The failure of conventional democratic processes to make any difference, to penetrate the hide of behemoth, to move his mighty bulk even one inch from where it squats, suffocating our liberties and our sovereignty, the failure has causes both similar and different on the two sides of the Atlantic.
The similarity of causes is in the close to fifty-fifty splits in each of our populations between blues and reds, or whatever more sophisticated vocabulary you want to use to distinguish the two sides: globalists and nationalists, cosmopolitans and communitarians, metropolitans and provincials—between the feeders and supporters of behemoth on one side, and on the other, those of us who seek to slay it—or at least, put it on a very serious and intensive weight-loss program.
Voting in the 2016 Brexit referendum split 52-48 in favor of leaving Europe. In the American Presidential election that same year the popular vote was actually 51-49 in favor of Mrs. Clinton over Trump. Trump is President because of careful safeguards built in to our Constitution to give some regional equity to our national decisions.
This is the Cold Civil War I keep telling you about: one half—on those numbers it’s almost precisely half—of us fiercely, dogmatically opposed to the other half.
It works fine for behemoth: one half of the population is defending him. Not just that, either—our nations’ centers of wealth, power, and cultural influence are massively over-represented in the half that is defending him.
But here are differences as well as similarities—mainly in matters of leadership. It’s harder for outsiders to get to the top of the greasy pole in Britain’s parliamentary system. That’s why the Brexit effort has had to be led by insiders—people whose most natural sympathies are, paradoxically, with globalist liberalism.
Theresa May and Boris Johnson are both of this type. It’s hard to believe they really have their hearts in a full restoration of British sovereignty. The deals they have worked out with the EU bureaucrats are soft compromises, leaving the Eurocrats still in charge over quite significant parts of British life.
Here in America we did get a real outsider into power. Unfortunately the outsider we got was a political babe in the woods. He has been easily buffaloed by the guardians of behemoth, as we saw in those disastrous televised White House events in January and February 2018—you know, those events where we came away with the rather strong impression that Trump, in a room full of political professionals, agrees with the last person who spoke.
So the restoration of national sovereignty is in the hands of, in Britain, a globalist opportunist of doubtful reliability, and in America, a guy with some genuinely nationalist instincts but zero political skills.
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” Print it on a T-shirt, embroider it on a throw cushion. It perfectly encapsulates the state of our democracies.
So what, actually, is up with Brexit?
The drop-dead date has been moved forward yet again, to January 31st. In the meantime, there is to be a general election on December 12th.
Trying to call the probable results of this election has seasoned British pollsters slitting their wrists and leaping from high windows. There are too many unknowns.
Nationwide there are four main parties in play.
- The Tory Party, led by current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, carrying the banner of a “soft” Brexit—one with all sorts of concessions to the EU bureaucrats.
- Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, demanding a “hard” Brexit, with no concessions.
- The Labour Party, led by far-left radical Jeremy Corbyn, divided between metropolitan-progressive Social Justice types and legacy working-class nationalists.
In recent years the legacy proles have been aging and dwindling in numbers; the Social Justice Warriors have been coming in at the other end of the age pyramid—just as in America. The party is pretty much theirs now; but there are key parliamentary seats where the old legacy-prole vote is still critical, so Corbyn has a tough circle to square. The latest pronouncement I can find of his that isn’t totally opaque is from a speech this week in which he said that if elected Prime Minister he will, quote, “open negotiations with the EU about a sensible relationship with Europe.”
- The Liberal Democrats—solid, undiluted globalist social-justice anti-Brexit tree-huggers.
The thing that’s hard to call is how much strategic voting there will be. Since both Boris Johnson’s Tories and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party want to get the country out of the EU, if they both put up candidates everywhere, the Leave vote could be split, letting in an alliance of Labour and the Lib Dems, which would be a victory for Remain.
Some kind of alliance or understanding between Johnson and Farage seems to be called for. But Farage thinks the deal Johnson has negotiated with the EU, the deal Johnson is going to the electorate with, is simply terrible—just BINO, Brexit In Name Only.
Confusing the matter even further are regional issues. Scotland and Northern Ireland are both part of the U.K., with members in the London parliament. The Scottish National Party, which is heavily anti-Brexit, is polling well.
Northern Ireland is a really hard circle to square. The biggest party there, the DUP, has as its biggest issue the union with Britain. Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU weakens that union, keeping Northern Ireland under some EU rules that won’t apply to Britain. On the other hand, a Farage-type No Deal Brexit would mean border checks between the North and the Irish Republic, nullifying the 1998 agreement that ended the Troubles.
So the North’s Unionist majority can’t support either Johnson or Farage. So they should go with Labour, right?—assuming they can figure out what kind of “sensible relationship with Europe” Jeremy Corbyn has in mind.
Going with Labour, though, would be a complete repudiation of Unionist history. Boris Johnson’s Tory Party is actually, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, and has been for over a hundred years. Jeremy Corbyn is an old friend of Gerry Adams, former leader of Sinn Féin and sworn enemy of Unionism. [ Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams backs ‘outstanding’ Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister, by Greg Heffer, SkyNews, February 4, 2018]
With his usual great instincts and hopeless execution, Trump has just praised Johnson after telling Farage, in an interview on Farage’s radio show, that Johnson’s deal would preclude a U.S.-UK trade deal. [Trump: Johnson and Farage should ‘come together’ for general election, Edward Helmore, The Guardian, November 4, 2019.]
In my sweetest dreams the leavers vote strategically en masse for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, killing off the Tory Party for good.
That might encourage Americans to do the same to the Republican Party, which likewise needs euthanizing.
Do I think that’s likely to happen? No, but I can dream.
John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
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Euthanize the Democrat party first, please.
Then the Republicans.
It is doubtful that Americans will have the presence of mind to euthanize the Republican Party next year. But Jeffrey Epstein did not commit suicide.
The Irish border will have to be closed. The events of recent days have shown that Ireland is going to turn into another Italy and Greece: blithely waving the migrants along because they’re just passing through on their way to becoming somebody else’s problem.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
― Emma Goldman
Daily Mail readers, who’re a good representative of traditionalist British opinion, seem to be having doubts about Boris’ Brexit (too many similarities to May’s formula) – and they’re turning towards Farage. There are comments like “We have always voted Tory, but only Farage and the Brexit Party can get us out of the EU”.
Apparently Farage’s party will put forward a candidate for every seat, and they could also pick up Labour votes since Corbyn came out for a second referendum.
The UK has the Brexit Party option but I can’t see any traditionalist alternative in the US to the Republican Party.
Even the same slogans both sides of the pond
Photo of UK pro-Brexit protesters … ‘Drain the Swamp’ sign re their own Parliament
Agreed, the migrant container deaths have proved that Irish criminals are hugely linked to the people smuggling industry and that the Irish Republic is going to be a huge problem for post-Brexit Britain, keeping the border open with the Irish Republic would be utterly disastrous because the Irish Republic is a country that on an ideological level is very anti-British and its own organised crime groups already have proven links to people smuggling into the UK. The “Garda” and Irish politicians would do nothing to stop migrants getting into the UK and would more likely assist them and Irish criminal gangs in doing so.
Most British people naively assume that the Irish are easygoing, law abiding types and are utterly oblivious to the extent of Irish organised crime, they have among the largest organised crime networks in Europe but most British people are totally oblivious to it so it allows them to operate with relative impunity.
I’ve heard that the only reason the EU included Article 50 in the Lisbon Ukase was the need to expel Austria ( or some other minor country) in the event Jorg Haider came to close to power. It just didn’t occur to the Eurocrats that a major member state would ever seek to withdraw. Having made the mistake of providing an Article 50 escape clause they are unable to intone with Lincolnesque finality that ‘the Union is Indissoluble’ because it was the only excuse Lincoln had to wage war on 11 former states.
So now the Eurocrats are reduced to Deep State machinations of the Comey/Brennan/Clinton variety to obstruct Brexit having failed to provide themselves with armed forces to simply crush Brexiteers and throw Nigel Farage in prison alongside Julian Assange and Tommy Robinson.
If nothing else this should show the leadership of the EU is not fit for purpose and is not a serious government of the type needed to run an empire.
Long read historical perspective on history repeating itself by the brilliant historian Brendan Simms
Totally absolutely brilliant article. But concerning British political infighting, I could only say “who cares about British poodle.” Britain is so yesterday.
I notice a lot of snarky anti-Britishness from Russians, I’m surprised anyone thinks a backward, crime infested, degenerate shithole like Russia is likely to amount to anything. Your hero Putin is also determined to flood the country with Muslims.
I believe both Brexit and Trump may both be consequences of Mandman Merkel’s 2015-to-2016 drive to destroy Europe during a doubt of manic insanity.
For Brexit this is more obvious, but I believe it may have put both over the top.
I think it is more a case of the northern Irish border being a weak point that has traditionally been turned a blind eye to because of the massive diesel smuggling rackets that are main industry for whole towns. If the Irish want to keep that arrangement their doing the EU’s bidding is a funny way of showing it.
At Dover there are heartbeat monitors, CO2 detectors ect but Purfleet where the container came in does not have them. One of the dead had been deported just a few days before.
The tories and republicans need to be given a golden watch, for their service to their countries, and then a silver bullet, for treason. Applies to democrats too tbh.
Svevlad:
Capitol Idea and as done in China make the traitorous Tories, Republicans and Democrats pay for their own execution bullets!
Yes, there has been long time discontent in the U.K. over the EU going back decades, but the 2015 migrant crisis was the final straw.
A clear majority of Irish and Scots are Remainers. A clear majority of English are Brexiters. That is actually quite revealing. The Irish and the Scots view the foreign occupation of EU as lite and its material benefits outwaying its loss of sovereignty. Their occupiers, the English, can’t take a mild dose of their own medicine, having not experienced occupation since the Normans. I am being facetous. If England does go alone and Scotland and Ireland now united stay in EU, this will be a splendid reversal of British history since the early Middle Ages. I think leaving EU is madness. There is the issue of freedom of speech and third world immigration. But these days, U.K. doesn’t seem much better. Both EU and UK are ruled ultimately by same masters. The safety culture in the era of social media won’t make a scrap of difference whether under German Gestapo or U.K. Gestapo. In case you don’t get my point, Winston Churchill in election 1945 called social workers Gestapo and was scorned for it.
The organisation the British joined all those years ago was a small free trade area of prosperous West European states. It stopped being that a long time ago.
The people running the EU also don’t appear to be very intelligent. This doesn’t inspire confidence in the future of the organisation. The euro crisis, the Ukraine crisis, the migrant crisis. In each case, the EU leadership class made stupid errors that resulted in chaos.
The basic problem is that the people who originally set up the EU are no longer around, and their heirs and successors no longer know WTF they’re supposed to be doing and trying to accomplish.
Unwashed masses are always retarded. I do mean at least 100 years back from reality.
I still cannot find out why British government did go along with referendum.
It certainly did not work out right.
Maybe as you say that Russia is a shithole and I do not have a reason not to go along.
But I do have only one exception. Russia is a rich shithole and have enough power and weapons to defend its rich shithole.
Madman Merkel’s activities in that period also gave birth to the AfD (in current form).
A major, defacto ethnonationalist party in Germany — with seats in every state legislature, competitive with the CDU in most and with more seats than the CDU in some — was unthinkable in mid 2015, but was achieved by mid 2016. The same time as Brexit and as peak MAGA. We’re all in it together.
Derbyshire did not really highlight this in the column, instead writing
Much gets written about Brexit and WhateverGate-HateTrumpGate, and they have taken on lives of their own, with dramatic twists/turns that have long since gotten tiresome.
But the two occurring at the same time is not a curious thing, for me. They have a clear common origin dating, in an immediate sense anyway, to 2015 and the large, glimmering blade suddenly thrust in the European Man’s back, in 2015, by Angela Merkel — Something so shocking and offensive that it led many millions to the sudden realization that we are being ushered towards the exits of history, ushered by our own leadership class. It was enough to provoke a wave of populist-nationalist reactions across the West.
As British are the enemy , what you expect from him. /Putin/?
Tsunami afrorabs ,together with millions of superrichs ,on the British. He is very succefull at that.
“Unwashed masses are always retarded”? So how about the “Elite Masters are always mass murderers”?– you think those running things are somehow brighter than those under their boot? Just thugs actually in better clothes…
IMO they’re not errors. The EU has undergone a silent coup, the same as the US, and is now run by corporate/globalist deep statists who very much want open frontiers, cheap Asian labour, and who hate nationalism (a threat to their power).
Their policy is dissimulated with “values” talk.
For example:
One tiny correction: Hillary did NOT win a 51-49 popular vote majority. She did achieve a PLURALITY of the popular vote.
I can’t see Ireland and Scotland uniting to form one nation, a large part of the reason for the conflict in Ireland is because the Irish Catholic “natives” resent the presence of Protestant settlers of largely Scottish descent.
The only circumstance I could see such a union happening is if immigrants of Irish Catholic descent in Scotland displace the native Scots to such an extent that they become the political elite and possibly majority of the population. I don’t know if Scotland is near that point yet, although I know that the percentage of people of Irish Catholic descent is quite high in Scotland, so much so that sectarianism in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland mirrors that of NI.
Good point, DCN.
Here is a good way to present the results:
_____________
— Nov. 2016 US Presidential election results —
White-Christian vote (67% of voters; includes all of White-Christian ancestry)
– Trump: 60%
– Hillary: 35%
– Other: 5%
Nonwhite vote (33% of voters; Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Other Race, Jews)
– Trump: 21.5%
– Hillary: 73%
– Other: 5.5%
_____________
Total popular vote (100% of voters)
– Trump: 46%
– Hillary: 48%
– Other: 5%
(based on NYT Exit Poll ; vote totals corroborated by actual, counted votes)
Of interest on monitoring the D Team,
Surprisingly, or not, the D’s have so far favored moderate Joe, not their in-house crazies:
D Nomination – RealClearPolitics rolling average of polls (Nov. 5)
– Biden 30% – steady
– Warren 21% – down from her early Oct. peak (reached 27%; equalled Biden)
– Sanders 18% – steady
– Buttigieg 7% – first displaced Harris Sept. 20, has held fourth place most days since
– Harris 4% – way down from early July peak (15%; third place)
– Yang, Klobuchar – 3% each
– Booker, Gabbard, Beto [dropped out] – 2% each
Despite Biden’s consistent lead and Warren fading, betting markets still favor Warren:
Current Betting Odds to Win Dem Nomination (RCP average) (Nov. 5)
– 37% Warren
– 23% Biden
– 16% Buttigieg
– 14% Sanders
– 7% Hillary Clinton
– 5% Yang
– 2% each: Harris, Gabbard, Klobuchar
– 1% Oprah Winfrey
Where did you get that from his post? The Irish and Scots under no circumstances want to be ruled by each other. A union of the two countries has never been considered. Their respective nationalists want full independence from the U.K., not a new union with select parts of it.
Scottish Catholics, most of whom are of Irish descent, make up about 1/6 of the population, mostly concentrated around Glasgow.
Where are Welsh?
Welsh, Irish, and Scots are of Celtic descent.
Anglos, and Saxons are of German descents.
I guess Normans did assimilate into all those five nations.
ulation.
REPLYAGREE/DISAGREE/ETC. MORE…
David ‘The Diversity Mastermind’ Lammey says:
November 7, 2019 at 1:57 pm GMT • 200 Words
Gather round, children. I have a question for all my Yankee friends over there.
Here in Gross Cuckstain, the 2 Deep State industries with the most highly concentrated vermin infestation – Advertising & perma Home Office – have got together to make a piece of repulsive, pozzed out lying cr…. I mean Public Service Broadcast at the expense of the WM taxpayer.
Still concentrating, my friends across the Atlantic? Good. Now here comes the Qs:
In this po… Advert is a warning against bad driving.
Now assign the demographic (in letters) to the character (in numbers):
A – A White Man
B – A dindu Man
C – A White girl
D – A black Boy
1 – the victim of a car accident
2 – a passenger in a car
3 – an obnoxious, angry, incompetent driver who causes an accident
4 – a passenger of a car
Just listed 4 ARSE lies. There are around 6 million of them but prolly illegal to list then all
“Irish criminals”
The lorry deaths driver stated his nationality as ‘British’ in court.
So do I
Simpletons are as much to blame for voting for these shabbos goys.
At least Russia owns its doomsday weapons.
Brits lease their vanguard class submarines with Trident missiles from the Empire Inc. Military Industry Complex. Thankfully for all concerned this arrangement will probably cease when inbred Pakistanis like Sadiq Khan and Anjem Choundry takeover the country.
Scottish nationalists look to Scandinavia, not and never Ireland.
Irish-heritage people in Scotland are not a political faction with a strong and separate ethnic sense of consciousness, neither do they have any money – there’s just some fairly superficial cultural institutions such as Celtic Football Club and other Plastic Paddy-ism
Normans were just a small, conquering ruling-class, no mass migration. As such, the natives at that time cleaved to their ways, rather than assimilating a mass of immigrant Normans into their native culture. The more complicated/technical terminology in English mostly derives from French (Normans).
Wales and the Welsh are prob generally more integrated into England than Scotland and Ireland – for instance Wales has the same legal system as England, whereas Scotland does not. Scotland has a lot more recent history as an entity that existed independently from England.
Correction:
“If voting changed anything, we’d make it illegal.”
― Emma Goldman
Actually, the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement would only be in danger if Ireland backs out. The Agreement, registered with and recognized by, the UN is an agreement between the UK and Ireland. The EU, while mentioned, are not a party to the Agreement, and therefore can only resort to blackmail against the Republic to keep it in line, which may be problematic. The Agreement provides the NI Assembly, through the Joint Council with the Republic, a great deal of autonomy on border issues.
As for how Scotland and NI voted in Brexit, it is dangerous to assume intent. While both voted strongly to remain, that does not necessarily translate into separation. That question was not on the ballot. Similarly, the dumbass Nicola Sturgeon goes down the road of thinking that the separation vote, if successful, would translate into a “join the EU” vote. The opposition would easily point out that having obtained independence is all very well and good, but why give it up again by joining the EU? Others could also say that the regions that vote “no” to independence have a right to stay in the UK. How far down that rabbit hole do people want to go?
Brexit, and Pr. Trump are only marginally connected.
Pr. Trump made himself in NYC doing Construction projects,,,,,nother more challenging in the world,,,,and construction requires steadfast persistence, which does not always look like progress. But you finish the job….that is the focus of successful contractores,,,,,,’finish the job’
You will just have to wait..