Lately there has been a series of disturbing noises about the idea of conscripting British citizens into a potential war with Russia.
First, General Sir Patrick Sanders said Britain should “train and equip a citizen Army”. Then former British NATO commander General Sir Richard Shirreff claimed “it is the time to start thinking the unthinkable and really having to think quite carefully about conscription if we’re to deliver the numbers needed.”
The PM was then forced to rule out conscription, perhaps implying these claims were just the wet dreams of posh old blokes gutted they haven’t had the chance to get stuck into a jolly good old shooting match lately.
Maybe this is just the Ministry of Defence trying to drum up some funding by highlighting our threadbare defences. Or maybe we are headed for actual war with Russia.
If so, all indications are that reluctance to sign up would be near-universal.
The trouble with finding people to fight an old fashioned war against the baddies is that we’ve been told for some time now that we are the baddies.
As Tim Stanly puts it in The Spectator today:
I would happily sign up should my country be directly attacked, to defend Britain’s territory, history and people. Soldiers rarely fight for abstractions; they do it for ‘home’.
But the 21st century elite is sold on an ideological project – hyper liberalism – of which many of us feel absolutely no part and would not be inclined to spill a single drop of blood. How should we define this war against Russia, China, Iran, Equatorial Guinea and any other government who wants a piece?
A war for freedom? I’m not sure we’re into that anymore: Britain is a country of bureaucracy gone mad, where speech is policed and small businessmen are sent to jail by the post office.
A last stand for Western civilisation? What civilisation? Do you think the average conscript would have a clue who Plato was? Could name that Beethoven tune, recite the Lord’s Prayer or distinguish between a Michelangelo and a Monet? Our culture has degraded into American pap, and even our curators and professors tell us it is morally rotten – built on the backs of slaves, intrinsically racist, probably homophobic.
I actually do know who Plato was, can recite the Lord’s Prayer, and would back myself on Michelangelo vs Monet (might struggle a little on the Beethoven). Still, I am probably not the “average conscript”.
But the rest is all very hard to argue with.
The ultra-individuated liberal ‘anywhere’ man, as coined by David Goodhart, is a concept antithetical to the patriotic collectivist effort required for war.
Or perhaps more accurately, the collective we are being asked to identify with is so vast—whether it be the ‘citizen of Europe’ cited by so many post-Brexit Twitter bios, or the Globalist, who sees the whole world as one big trading blob—that we simply cannot feel any sentimental attachment to it.
We are atomised, disinterested parties in the corporate monstrosity—the work experience kid expected to care whether McDonald’s or Coca-Cola increase their profits that quarter.
But it is worse than that because, as Stanley implies in reference to the post office, the corporation is actively attacking us. It is a point also well made by Carl Benjamin on X:
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