I never cease to be amazed at how the great British experts of social commentary continue to lag at least 10 years behind the obvious. They have now discovered the cause of Islamic and ethnic extremism, identity. Young Muslims and immigrants are searching for meaning, for an identity. This is the theme of various articles attempting to analyse why such people are rejecting 'the British way' and are leaving to join Isis and other such groups.
This is first year secondary school sociology, it is basic and blindingly obvious, but of course the great and the good never read sociology because all sociologists are unrepentant Marxists, anti-establishment and unpatriotic. So, we can all happily ignore sociology and go home! Beginning in 1979, the reactionary elements in Britain launched a war against the entire concept of Britain and sought to remodel the nation in their own image. They were very successful. Britain today is almost unrecognisable from the Britain I grew up in. Their great achievement was the election of Margaret Thatcher who immediately set about destroying the society that was Britain at that time. The Thatcher experiment was all about destroying the collective culture, destroying the community, its norms and values and the engine of the British way of life, the welfare state. Thatcher initiated the great move to individualism, to an aggressive 'me' culture with its roots in greed and acquisitiveness as typified by her now famous 'there is no such thing as society'. The British value system was scrapped and replaced by one single value, monetary success. Economic criteria was the fundamental judge of every action, every policy and every outcome. If it made money it was good, if it didn't it was bad, simples. Most importantly, Thatcher determined to initiate a massive transference of wealth and power into the hands of a selective elite, those people Thatcher described as 'one of us'. Thatcher and her disciples, and this includes the modern Labour Party, quite deliberately erected a social structure that is ferociously exclusive, in that it excludes all those who do not share the Thatcher vision or who pose a threat to the dominance of her ideology, the neoliberal free market.
Emile Durkheim showed us, over 100 years ago, how events such as those initiated by Thatcher inevitably produce what he called Anomie. This is a condition of normlessness, of a loss of our social, collective and personal identity. Destroy a society's norms and values, debase its culture, and you will have rootlessness, a sense of loss and belonging, a crisis of identity that affects society both individually and collectively. There is nothing difficult about providing an explanation as to the problems we face today, what is difficult is accepting that this has been done deliberately, with malice and is our own fault because we, the British, embraced the greed, the 'f..k everyone else' approach and have voted for it consistently since 1979. Britain is a country obsessed with hatred and driven by a scapegoat mentality. We were swamped by a ceaseless propaganda of hatred, hatred of the collective nature of society that was continually categorised as 'socialist', hatred of trades unions, of the unemployed of immigrants, of the disabled, people on social security etc. As a result we applauded the destruction of the unions, of local government, the dismantling of the nationalised industries and the health service. We supported selling off our local and national assets to foreign companies whilst fuelling a pathological hatred of foreigners. We applauded the demonization of the poor and the disabled, we supported the welfare cuts and therefore we supported the dismantling of a civilised society and its replacement with barbarism. If you want to know why Muslims are embracing Isis, ask Durkheim, if you want to know why the Scots are embracing independence, ask Durkheim. If you want to know whose fault it is, look no further than Westminster and the right-wing press. When Blair went to war in Iraq he was simply following the logic of Thatcherism and the dominant ideological concept of Western ethnic, social and economic superiority.
I see no redemption for Britain. If I want to understand the problems facing us I consult people like Durkheim, like Marx, like David Hume and Adam Smith. The Westminster elite look for inspiration from Tony Soprano and Nucky Thomson. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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