Professor David Betz, who teaches at King’s College London and has served as an advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence and intelligence services, recently warned in a podcast that British society is nearing a breaking point, "explosively configured" for mass unrest. Betz argues that the crisis began with the breech of the social contract when the political establishment tried to subvert the Brexit vote.
Subsequent years have brought about a “destruction of legitimacy” as a result of successive governments’ open border policy and their inability to protect children from grooming gangs, in addition to the emergence of a hypocritical, highly politicized judiciary.
If you want to create domestic turmoil in a society, then what the British government has been doing is almost textbook exactly what you would do,
said the professor.
According to Betz, the situation is "too far gone", and that within half a decade the UK is likely to experience a national eruption far more severe than last summer’s riots. He describes modern Britain as a fractured nation, deeply divided, with certain individuals and groups fueling the polarization.
The professor explains that highly heterogeneous societies (those comprised of many different social, cultural and ethnic groups) in which there is no single dominant cohort are not especially prone to civil war. That is because no group has enough power or status to co-ordinate a widespread revolt. Similarly, highly homogeneous, or ‘unfactionated’, societies are not particularly susceptible either, as it is generally easy to arrive at consensus positions.
The danger area, Betz asserts, is in the middle – societies that are becoming more heterogeneous and in which a previously dominant social majority fears that it is losing its place. In such societies, a nativist sentiment manifests in a narrative of what Betz calls 'downgrading' and 'displacement' – the most powerful causes of civil conflict. Throw in long-term structural economic decline and the apparent inability of the government to offer 'bread and circuses', and the sense of dispossession deepens.
He also addresses the phenomenon of "asymmetric multiculturalism" in which "in-group preference, ethnic pride, and group solidarity – notably in voting – are acceptable for all groups except whites, for whom such things are considered to represent supremacist attitudes that are anathematic to social order". This "provides an argument for revolt on the part of the white majority (or large minority) that is rooted in stirring language of justice".
Cover photo: Illustration (Photo: AFP)
