Ed West on his Substack page “Wrong Side of History” has written a searing criticism of the modern obsession with ‘values’ and the ephemera of popular culture as the supposed foundation of British identity. Such tweeness is an ersatz substitute for the things that really bind a people together, he says.
British Twee is the patriotism of the soft-Left. While consciously anti-nationalist, this kind of tweeness is obsessed with defining British national character and values. This reaches its peak with pride about Britain’s universal healthcare, something enjoyed by literally every developed country except the United States.
And what does define national character and ‘British values’? Queuing, gin, tea, Harry Potter, and fish and chips (with the tedious proviso that, ackshuaally, fish and chips was brought over by immigrants.)
It’s twee to define a country by any values, especially such ephemeral matters as what beverage it prefers. Values don’t actually matter to a nation; what makes a land pleasant to live in is a shared sense of identity and history, creating social capital which allows prosocial norms to flourish. That’s how you get to Denmark.
The real purpose of a sense of patriotism is posterity — you care about your ancestors because you care about your descendants, and the descendants of your family and friends. A national obsession with the fripperies of British identity is the reverse; it’s cringe, the same cringe unleashed in the 1960s during the satire boom but which has become the national vibe.
This will be an unpopular view but ‘Keep calm and carry on’, the never-used Second World War poster, was in my opinion a good example of British Twee, a slogan that grew in popularity with the growing problem of terrorism. Just as much twee is cynicism and despair masked as irony, this was the pretence of Victorian-Churchillian stoicism covering up what was really learned helplessness. There are an estimated 20,000 or more potential jihadis in Britain — this is not a joke, and it’s not going to go away by laughing it off. ‘Carrying on’ is what got us into this mess.
The same goes for the other deep-rooted problems affecting a country that can’t afford complacency. To put it bluntly, we’re now quite poor, and we’re going to get poorer. Public services are collapsing, crime is on the rise, everyone I know below the age of 35 wants to leave. Immigration, the main reason we hamstrung our economy to leave the EU, is now running at record levels; the Tories promised to get it down to five figures, and instead it’s pushing seven. Housing costs are running at astronomical levels and family formation — the ultimate register of cultural optimism — has collapsed.
And the cultural leaders who like to think of Britain as forward thinking and global and all those good things can only see their national identity through the prism of recent pop culture; this is not ‘patriotism’, it’s the sad spectacle of a person trapped in middle-age misery wallowing in childhood nostalgia.
Tweeness is the mark of a people who know deep down that it’s right and healthy to honour the gods of their ancestors, but don’t believe in them anymore. They can only be treated ironically, as parodies, while things that should be laughed at are treated with reverence and even fear.
Worth reading in full.
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I wonder if Will and Ed woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Values aren’t important, only blood and soil? Hmm.
NHS might be a value if it wasn’t a lie. It is a crappy system, and reflexive pride in it is sad and probably leads to its downfall. In the much maligned US, there is a lot of quite good health care, and excellent care if you are discerning, and you can almost always get it with no cash upfront. Pay right away if you can and you get a discount as if you were an insurance company. If you can’t, you can negotiate write offs after the fact. Insurance, unless it is gifted by your job, has been largely ruined by Obamacare causing unreasonable price increases, but self-insurance is totally feasible. Do you really think you save money with a middleman?
You are poor, you say (whine?)? Living off an empire is nice, but there’s a limit, friends. You gave back a lot to your colonies, too. But colonialism is over. You may have to live more like the rest of the world. (But not too much, I expect.)
Values ARE important and Britain should take care your values don’t get too twisted by pink haired folk and especially child chasers. But all in all: Keep calm and carry on.
To save on words I will keep it simple – a country is defined by its history, in the interpretation of that history and a firm belief in itself as a nation of like-minded souls.
If a country is defined by history and its interpretation, a firm belief in itself is a belief in its history and interpretation. Necessary, I’d say, but not sufficient. American VALUEs are the center of its self image, leading to the current split, but still essential. It is necessary to believe in who you are TODAY.
As T.S.Eliot reportedly once put it: “Reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it” — no amount of disbelief in a wall will enable someone to pass through it unhindered. Hence, it’s not necessary to believe in who you are today as that’s part of the present reality.
NB: This is a disingenious argument as it utilizes believe as if it had only one meaning while it acutally has two (in this context) and the other was meant. But as that’s the same you did, it should be OK.
I guess we are talking about different values. Belief is simply a word I am using for adherence to a set of values, though, as you point out, it has other senses. I think I used it consistently in this sense
I don’t care about shallow values, Harry Potter or whatever. But when Huxley says like-minded souls, to me values are what those souls are like minded about. For example, freedom is a value, is it not? Certainly readers of DS think that is an important value.
Just because idiots adopt shallow performative values doesn’t mean we should deny values. As an American I think the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the most import shared values, Every public office requires an oath to them and I believe applying for citizenship does too. If people don’t support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights I think we have every right to deposit them in some sh**hole country that doesn’t have them or similar.
I agree. It is important that that history is reinforced in the home and school but the problem may lie in poorly trained teachers with a left bias and in the home where apathy and lack of interest in our history is worsening the situation.
It is extremely difficult to celebrate a nation’s true history, culture and national character when it has been so strongly diluted by the importation of millions who don’t share it.
When the Establishment has deliberately imposed a policy of suppressing (or traducing) it in order to turn us into a multi-faith/multi-cultural society, it becomes an impossibility.
I have a pretty good grasp of our history, since I have been interested in it since childhood. I am largely self-taught. My adult sons have some knowledge, but much less than me. Their children (if they ever produce any) will only know what the Establishment and “teaching profession” want them to know. And it certainly won’t be a real understanding of our history, culture and national character.
According to the ONS in 2019, ethnic minorities made up 14.4% of the population. When the generation aged 70+ pass on, the proportion of ethnic minorities will more than double. And when the 50+ generation die off, a majority will be from the former ethnic minorities.
Our history, culture and national character is being eradicated before our eyes, which is precisely what the Globalists intended.