In the last few years we have all witnessed the odd trend whereby it has become almost ‘cool’ to be a conservative.
Johnny Rotten (from the Sex Pistols!) backing Trump. Conservatives, including Trump himself, repeatedly banned by the corporate giants of Big Tech. The fact that the left ‘can’t meme’, etc.
And yet, can a conservative really be a rebel?
I have found myself pondering this apparent paradox due to the almost comically perfect contrast between me — a right wing nutcase off the telly — and a friend of mine, a good person but pretty much the poster boy for the metropolitan liberal elite.
My friend works for one of our most august institutions. It would perhaps be ungallant to mention which one, but I can say that their purpose and usefulness has been under question a lot of late, and that they hate Boris Johnson. Luckily that does not narrow it down at all.
He has worked at this same institution ever since graduating from university. He has three children (which is the new two children, signalling you have slightly more money than your parents did). He was head boy at school, and captain of the football team. He has never suffered mental health problems beyond mild road rage. He also likes Mumford & Sons (except, presumably, the wayward Winston, who recently had to leave the band for reading a book).
In other words, he is normal to a fault. Normal McNormington, king of the Normies.
He also happens to be radically left wing.
Now, he would deny that, which itself is a textbook characteristic of what we might call ‘The New Normie’.
While the hardcore Owen Jones type is proud of being an absolutely massive lefty, the New Normie would maintain that they are simply a reasonable and sensible chap. Competence is their watchword. A belief in any set of ideas — Christianity, Marxism, classical liberalism — is dismissed as the stuff of ‘space cadets’.
Yet get them talking on the subject of Black Lives Matter, or even violent clandestine dweebs Antifa, and they will suddenly become irrationally defensive and angry. For now you have trespassed into their own belief system, which doesn’t even recognise itself as such, because what you are witnessing is simply unthinking conformity. It’s just that this conformity now happens to be pretty ruddy left wing (or at least exceedingly woke, and we won’t go down the rabbit hole of that distinction here).
The Normie has somehow gradually shifted to the far left, at least on certain social and cultural issues, while maintaining a veneer of civility around things like the economy.
The same people who, for example, after 9/11 were strongly suggesting we stop and search anyone of vaguely Muslim appearance (because that was the current thing) now support the burning down of cities because of the unfortunate death of American criminal George Floyd.
Where these people would have once had disdain for the far left, as well as the ‘Tories’, their beliefs are now a bizarre concoction of neoliberalism and revolutionary communism. They believe in the single market and also in torching small businesses in places like Seattle, where they will never go.
If you find yourself opposed to this lot on virtually every issue, congratulations, you are now what I am calling a conservative rebel. A despised figure who has sympathy with the Brexit vote, doesn’t think GB News is inherently evil, and finds Donald Trump to be at the very least ‘quite funny’.
(Whether Brexit, GB News, or Trump are actually conservative goes beyond the scope of this piece, but broadly the answers are ‘Probably’, ‘No’, and ‘It depends’).
The rebel part of the equation is simple enough — you like all the naughty things that the mainstream culture tells you are bad. But when you pair it with conservative, things start to get weird.
As a conservative rebel, one arrives at the truly bizarre predicament of attempting to defend western culture on behalf of its most upstanding, and most privileged, beneficiaries. Most of whom are getting a lot more than you out of the very tradition that they are intent on trashing.
Much like my friend, who makes good money, has a decent-sized house in London, drinks approved ales in moderation, and speaks to people in the clipped, slightly impatient tone of one who is responsible for important things that you couldn’t possibly understand.
I on the other hand drifted most of my early life, then pursued stand-up comedy for 10 years, before making a living giving my opinion on various alternative media platforms. I have an extensive knowledge of alt-country music, have seen many harrowing art films with subtitles, and have read an extraordinary amount of postmodernist fiction. I have no children, and could probably not keep a dog alive more than a week (my ex-girlfriend gave me a bonsai tree once, apparently the most easy to maintain plant of all — it perished in what felt like minutes).
In other words, my friend should be the conservative. In many ways is the conservative. Yet he has a rainbow flag as his profile pic, wouldn’t be caught dead in a church except for his middle class conventional wedding day, and his only conception of the Devil is some dastardly combination of Trump, Boris Johnson, and backbench MP Steve Baker.
While here I am, living in a small flat by myself with no real social ties — a textbook dispossessed loner, who is for some reason hellbent on preserving classical English liberalism and the family against the ravages of… English liberals with families.
As a frequently unemployed, melancholy misfit, I don’t feel I especially reap the benefits of our great culture, at least not to the degree of the professional class Normatons, and I have no genetic legacy to concern myself with. Yet I am terrified of my nephews and niece being brainwashed into woke garbage (possibly even befuddled into thinking they are trans) while their Normie parents walk obliviously into this leftist carnage, rainbow flags aloft.
My sister-in-law recently told me she didn’t want her kids to receive any Christian teaching as part of their education, in case they become indoctrinated against their will. I pointed out (very politely and conservatively) that at a secular state school they will certainly be indoctrinated, but it will be in the latest woke drivel, and that it seemed rather a risk to deny them the Christian basics we learnt as children, as, aside from, for example, the beauty of hymns and the nativity story, we simply have no idea what happens when all that good stuff is briskly removed.
This is the paradox of being the conservative rebel, the cautious outsider.
What I’m not certain about is whether this is a new phenomenon, or in fact the standard fate of the conservative. Roger Scruton talks about being effectively hounded out of the leftist-ridden universities, and how ‘conservative intellectual’ has long been considered an oxymoron.
Perhaps to be a true conservative was always an oddity. Conservatism comes as the result of thought and observation — two qualities that are rather rare. My assumption, observing the gradual radicalisation of my friend and his ilk over time, is that when the structures of society itself were more conservative, one may have been a natural conservative without any effort, just as now one is a natural BLM enthusiast.
Or it may simply be that the past, by its nature, always appears more conservative (except where revolutionary movements have temporarily sprung up and suddenly disappeared — we may even be in one of the latter at present). Yet maybe within those seemingly conservative societies there were always people of a purer than average conservative temperament, equally disgusted by what they saw as the knee-jerk liberal decadence of the times.
It is very hard for me to know any of this for sure, because I have not received a proper education. Which may also be the nature of the new conservative rebel. I heard it said somewhere recently that conservatism has moved from the upper class, to the middle class, and now finally, in the post Brexit world, to the working class. I am perhaps more accurately located in the lower middle, but the point still stands.
At any rate, whether it is class, temperament, or just the historical fate of the conservative, I am clearly not the same as the north London middle class woke types I happen to live amongst.
And yet, dear reader, I will keep trying to save them from themselves. A thankless task, but one which the God they definitely don’t believe in, but which I most certainly do, seems to have bestowed upon me.
Nick Dixon is a regular panellist on GB News. He will shortly be hosting the Weekly Sceptic, our new podcast.
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Very well written Nick
Yep, great piece, thanks for that Nick.
It is indeed a well written piece. I do not hold back with my views when faced with people like the author’s friend but I try to use some comedy, keep it unaggressive but continuously using facts – unfortunately, with the friend he descibes, their eyes glaze over and appear to have absolutely no understanding of graphs and statistics which, of course, makes me more determined.
In my view, the lack of a Christian faith does give them a jaundiced view of the world and their fellow human beings. Their values are skewed as Nick points out.
I do have conncerns about the young people who I know (or I hope) will change radically as they age , as I and most people did in the 1960s. I had a discussion this week with a seemingly intelligent 21 year old chap in my local golf club in the NE Scotland. He thought that it was OK to ‘live and let live’ all the thinking and actions of the trans gender minority who have very loud voices. I tried to ‘educate’ him but he floored me, momentarily, when he said that it was possible for a ‘man’ to give birth to a baby. He read it ‘on the Internet’ and how could I know as I was not a biologist – in fact an ex dairy farmer – so I should not be rubbishing the alphabet groups (LGBT+) – my words. I am still aghast at this conversation but have printed off some simple instructions on life to give him next week,
I do like the line about the person who has benefited most out of western values appearing to hate them. We seem to have a self-loathing streak among the elites at the moment and they are causing quite a few problems for the rest of us who just want to get by – climate alarmism comes to mind.
For me I see it like this; There are decent people, irrespective of political leanings, and then there are the others. Anyone who tells you that you are a ‘bad person’ because you disagree with them about the latest fad, isn’t a decent person. Now, I have my red lines. I would find it very difficult to be friends with somebody who was extremely pro-IRA or thinks five year old should choose their gender, but on the whole I don’t try to push my opinions on others and am quite happy to receive the same courtesy.
I think the root cause is probably this fad for intersectionality. The same people who talk about ‘diversity, equality and tolerance’ are the same people dividing everyone up into groups and then fostering a sense of victimhood and envy towards anyone considered more ‘privileged’. I just hope that more people start to see through this charade for what it is.
I think in most cases the apparent self-loathing is not genuine – it’s an act, either subconscious or conscious, to make the person appear virtuous and/or give them a stick with which to beat the plebs they dislike/want to manipulate.
The sly little dig at “the unfortunate death of criminal George Floyd” belittles what is otherwise a very good (and true) piece.
He was a criminal, and his death was unfortunate……I’m not sure what the problem you have with this?
My suggestion would be that someone has been convicted of murder because of it. This conviction may or may not be appropriate. I have no more knowledge about the details than MSM headlines as that was a topic (and still is) a topic I don’t really care about. But murder is a crime and the victims of it are not usually considered to have died unfortunately, ie, essentially, by accident. Someone who wants to make a case that he wasn’t murdered ought to do so, instead of implying this in a useless barb in an ancilliary sentence.
The defence did make the case in court and the evidence clearly showed there was overwhelmingly reasonable doubt it was murder.
However no jury could withstand the pressure and the angry mob to convict if they valued the rest of their lives.
The fact that he was a convicted criminal is irrelevant to the argument and I fail to see how being choked to death by a policeman over a 9-minute period can in any way be described a “unfortunate”. I repeat, I thought the piece was good and true and if that sentence were removed, it would not alter it in any way. We are supposed to be sceptics, not vicious lefty woke warriors spouting bile at our “enemies”, our arguments should be courteous.
I second thefoostybadger’s response. What exactly is your problem with the statement?
See above
I appreciated the dig at the hypocrisy and double standards of the woketards who unthinkingly flocked to the blm banner.
I don’t see it as necessary. The argument was well put without that line.
It is simply a matter of people having their opinions controlled by saturation lying and deceit, and failing to notice it.
The larger and possibly more soluble problem is the woolly middle who have been hoodwinked into going along with increasingly extreme positions out of a desire to seem like good people and general intellectual laziness, go along to get along type mentality. Like covid. Better to try and turn those people around than the zealots. But it’s probably too late for that too.
They’re just too comfortable, Nick. No critical thinking. No scepticism. Probably very little knowledge of history. In short, a product of the nonsense of “education”.
But they’re being boiled, slowly…
Great article. I feel I am socially liberal but a Tory in the fiscal sense. So, no “party” suits me.
Let’s keep the good ideas alive, so that when all the others fail (as they will) our ideas are left lying around to be picked up (Milton Friedman).
Libertarianism is the old liberalism, and proper conservatism.
The current liberalism and conservatism are nothing but fascism.
Fascism is – by design – neither international nor geared towards domination by businesses (especially not international businesses). That’s pretty much at the core of things fascists desire to get rid of (both). It’s not just about being an authoritative or autocratic system of government, these have existed since times immemorial. And it’s also not just a smear term which can readily applied to whomever one happens to disagree with most.
What currently (currently in the US) calls itself liberal is only liberal in a very restricted sense, namely, someone who’s of the opinion that certain things so-called conservatives usually want to prohibit (like abortion) or disagree with (like same-sex sex relationships) ought to be allowed or celebrated. Someone who’s in favour of liberal use of censorship can never be a liberal.
Correct. I describe myself as a libertarian-conservative. Basically I believe in a small State; low taxes; freedom of speech; “live and let live;” self-reliance, but with a safety net for those who really can’t provide/look after themselves.
Today’s Conservative Party is not conservative and the vast majority of its MPs are not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word.
Really good piece, Nick, insightful and well written.
Maybe your lack of a ‘proper education’ is more of an advantage than you realise.
What a load of twaddle. ” Dr, please help my friend, he is crazy, he thinks he is an orange” Dr, “Yes of course, where is he?” “I have him here, in my pocket”. So basically you can ascribe any old drivel about “my friend” then assassinate the same “friend”. The left are all blah blah blah.., the right are all blah blah blah…., this is sloppy drivel. People of the left, or right, have views that may “belong, to one side or the other. This, “tar them all with the same brush” approach does not shed light on anything. The “left”, does not exist any more, they were bought out by the corrupt people (oligarchs or technocrats, take your pick) who want to control our lives, and cover up the massive financial fraud that has been going on for the last century or so. This is just playing their game.
Heh, triggered!
Looks like touched a nerve.
What a good article! I very much look forward to Nick Dixon hosting a Weekly Sceptic podcast – I hope we get notified when it starts.
Very insightful and well written piece. As a boomer the thing that most scares me about my daughter’s generation is the widespread determination to prevent their children learning anything about Christianity. Hence perhaps the epidemic of uncontrollable bad mannered kids? As a recent returnee to the Catholic church I have been struck by the fact that it is immigrants of colour who are predominant in the younger parts of the congregation. It is these people who, thank God, are upholding the faith and maybe preventing the slide to wholesale moral chaos. Looking forward to the new podcast if this gentleman is running it.
It seems few people in western societies have the confidence to question everything but that’s the only way democracies can survive. Too many people rely on groupthink and are afraid to be different. Looking forward to your podcasts. Maybe you could talk to Rob Henderson sometime about his ideas about “luxury beliefs” – interesting Triggernometry interview last week.
Peter Hitchens wrote the following in 2003 and it is as true now as then. It may well be that only the destruction of the Tory Party can now save conservatism.
“There are many voters, currently unable to vote Tory even while holding their noses, who long for a party that speaks for them and the country. Such a party cannot begin to grow until the Tory delusion is dispelled and this movement, whose time is gone, splits and disappears. Let it be soon”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-198627/Why-I-despair-Tory-Party.html
Great article – thank you. Seems we’re not alone, even if in a minority.
I am not sure we are a minority.
As an example.
I attended a meeting just prior to the Brexit vote where we listened to a speech by a remain Conservative MP.
He then asked for a show of hands for a remain vote. It was about half of the room. Then for a leave vote a few hands went up including mine.
His response “I will let Dave know we will be getting a remain outcome” or words to that effect.
I stood up and said “I wouldn’t be too sure. 50% of this room is leave or no opinion given. I am happy to put my head above the parapet but a lot of leavers I know (many in this room) won’t say in public as we are trashed by remainers in the press and in person”.
He laughed at me.
Now, let’s look back at the outcome and what can happen in the privacy of the polling booth.