General Debate 03 August 2024
Guest Post: Cultural Revolution in the West
A guest post by Peter Lynn:
Over time, a technocratic ruling elite has established in Western countries. By the 21stcentury, their influence has become substantial. Members of this elite are overwhelmingly city based, generally university educated, and have become to an extent hereditary by family connections, shared culture and institutional preferences.
Like all ruling elites, over time they have used their influence to advantage themselves, in this case by increasing the size and power of the public sector and boosting its wages and conditions. To this end, they strongly support larger government and more regulation- in common cause with parties of the Left. In New Zealand for example, the capital, where many public servants, consultants and law makers reside, has the most disproportionate electorates in the country, overwhelmingly voting Left and far Left (for reference, NZ has recently voted in a Right of centre government).
During the last few decades, these ruling elites have diverged from the majority populations in their world view and are now attempting to establish these views as law and custom- and to convert the majority populations to them. This is not without historical precedent but has usually been religious in character- Constantine’s conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the 4th century for example.
This time it’s not technically religious- although these new beliefs are being pushed with a fervour reminiscent of religious crusades and their advocates quickly turn to personal attack and intimidation (‘cancel culture’ for example) when they encounter resistance.
A useful way the elites’ new-found world views can be characterised is as ‘luxury beliefs’- that is, beliefs that only those who have personal security and wealth can afford to have.
There’s an entire suite of these luxury beliefs, some are fashionable causes like cycleways instead of roads, antipathy towards businesses, opposition to mining, and fossil fuels as the great Satan (never minding that elites sit atop the carbon footprint totem pole). Others come under the ‘cultural Marxism’ banner.
Unfortunately, most policies developed from these beliefs fail because of either wishful thinking or ideological blindness.
Removing consequences for criminals (which has increased crime) and trying to make every child a winner (causing educational standards to fall), are examples of the first.
As is ‘Nett zero by 2050’ using wind and solar but no nuclear. This is an article of faith for Western ruling elites. It won’t save the planet because China alone has generated most of the 34% increase in global emissions and 48% increase in coal use since 2003, while Western emissions are just 23% of the world’s total and static or falling. What it is doing is seriously damaging Western economies and standing in the way of more useful responses to a warming planet.
The beliefs the elites have taken from cultural Marxism are of the second type. These deny enlightenment values that have provided their own wealth and security and have so vastly improved life expectancy and social justice. Perhaps most pernicious is their overturning of the central enlightenment precepts that there is such a thing as objective truth and that rewards and status should be founded on competence and work, not on race, class or gender. In this retrograde new world, ‘Identity’ rather than ‘character’ (in the Martin Luther King sense) is widely used to define a person’s worth.
Western urban elite doctrine that differences in outcome can only be the result of discrimination cause people to be selected, hired and promoted not because of competence or hard work but because of their ethnicity, gender or religion. This is immensely destructive. Passing over the most able in favour of ‘diversity hires’ is economically (and socially) damaging. It was by promoting his officers on merit that Napoleon almost won the world– a lesson that his enemies were quick to adopt, but that our current ruling elites have abandoned.
Having spread from universities, far Left parties, public service, and media to the management structure of larger businesses, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) and ESG (Equity, Social, Governance) policies are now doing significant damage to Western democracies and paradoxically, to the very minority groups they purport to advantage.
Most dangerous is that by forcing the focus on to identity, they will sooner or later cause majorities to assert their identities. History is unequivocal about this, it’s a path to genocide.
This is a cultural revolution in progress, the root cause of increasing polarisation in every western country.
On one side there’s an urban elite, arrogantly sure of their right to rule, and living in an echo chamber where beliefs that don’t withstand reasoned debate become unquestionable doctrine. Having captured the universities and government departments, and with a complaisant media, they’re using law and bullying at personal and national scale to advance their various causes.
On the other side, there’s an incipient peasant’s revolt, populist and somewhat incoherent. Exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ (‘ferals’ in NZ), they have been mostly concerned with their own struggles until recently. There are inconsistencies in what they want, but they don’t want what they’re getting. Held in contempt by the elites, historically such people are slow to get roused but unstoppable when they are- as the French aristocracy found out in 1789.
The peasants don’t want cycleways instead of roads and parking places.
They want to own cars and resent being told it must be an EV.
They want doctors selected for skill, not for ethnicity or gender identity
They do not like having their every action regulated by a nanny state.
They know that borrowing has to stop someday.
They very much don’t like being labelled as racist.
They view much of the media as the elite’s propaganda organ, don’t trust it.
They are supportive of climate responses- until their standard of living is affected.
They know what a woman is and don’t think men should go into women’s toilets.
They’re scornful of those who demand ‘pronouns’.
They want dangerous people to be locked up.
They don’t want their towns taken over by migrants who make no attempt to assimilate.
They have strong views- which they often now hide.
Most of all, they will never accept being ruled by a minority- racial or tribal.
Some of their views are conservative reactionary and will change with time but majority populations remain much more grounded than the urban elites, and they are pushing back.
The Trump phenomenon in the US is an expression of this, the rise of AfD in Germany and Le Pen in France are others. Opposition to the elites is also growing in the rest of Europe, and in the UK, Australia, Canada and NZ. In the UK, Europe and the USA, migration is the dominant issue. For Canada it’s Ottawa and urbanites versus the provinces. In Australia the elite’s strongholds are in Melbourne, Canberra and to a lesser extent Sydney, with resistance from the mining states.
In NZ, a focus of the cultural revolution is the urban elite’s ‘white guilt’ driven obsession with structural racism and colonialism as original sin. The ordained penance is to replace ‘one person one vote’ with some level of minority indigenous control and culture. There is growing resistance, but indigenous expectations now seem too high for peaceful unwinding. If it is carried through, history does not provide much hope- countries with privileged racial minorities have a bleak outlook. Not good either way.
There are indications that the elites’ ascendancy may be on the wane:
One is support for Trump in the US. Possibly one of the most unpleasant candidates ever to stand for the presidency, imagine what level of support there would be if the ‘deplorables’ had an even half decent champion?
Another is that young voters in Europe and America are shifting sharply to the Right. This is unprecedented. Accepted wisdom is that the young always vote Left, and that our political compass gradually swings Right with age and experience. Extreme Left movements are traditionally supported by the young (Mao’s Red Guards and Extinction Rebellion for example). Maybe young people are just more inclined to support change – and that this has generally come from the Left. Until now.
A counter revolution is not assured, not least because over the last few decades, Western Left leaning governments have established a client base of beneficiaries. These are voters whose loyalty to the Left derives from their dependency on the state. This will not be easy to surmount, especially in the UK and Europe (immigrants) and in NZ, where the ‘right not to work’ (while being supported by the state) has become a lifestyle choice for many.
But economic mismanagement which Western elites are directly responsible for contains the seeds of their destruction:
Identity politics mismatching jobs and talents.
The dead weight of ever more regulations.
Energy transitions that have doubled costs already and are barely started.
Larger and larger state sectors doing less and less.
Out of control borrowing: US national debt rising by US$1 trillion every 100 days.
Poor people (which we all soon be if this continues) don’t have luxury beliefs, because they can’t afford them.
Our ruling urban elites need to have a hard think about themselves before it’s too late.
Otherwise, they’ll be remembered as just another of the irrationalities that periodically roil human society- like tulip mania and witch trials.
And for the destruction they’ve caused.If it’s not already too late.