14th April 2023.
People complain about the world’s problems for more reasons than what might be understood at surface value. In today’s age of ephemeral grandstanding, people write whinging words that they know will make no contribution to any solution. They make no real effort to come up with anything practical. They merely add their voice to the choir; chuck their two cents into the fountain. Which begs the question: why bother to say anything at all? The reason is simple: perpetual protest is advantageous for their own self-image.
The problem’s very existence gives the protestor an opportunity to portray themselves a certain way. If the problem goes away, they lose the character they’ve created. Therefore, it makes sense for them to protest in the most feeble way possible, without taking any steps to ameliorate the situation.
On some level, this applies to what many have deemed the “virtue-signalling left.” You know the type. However, the virtue-signalling left do far more than write “oh rats” on Twitter. They lead shame campaigns against celebrities and businessmen. They expose addresses online. They get normal people fired. They take no prisoners. As reprehensible as they are, they cannot be accused of being meek.
I cannot say the same of their so-called combatants: institutional conservatives. Institutional conservatives venerate Britain’s “pillars” — the crown, the church, the military, the En Haich Ess, even Parliament provided the ruling party is sufficiently Reasonable. From personal experience, they make up a surprising proportion of young Tory activists, think tankers and talking heads. As adults, they are vicars, academics, management consultants and lawyers. They’ve all read Tom Holland’s Dominion. What unites institutional conservatives is an image of themselves as loyal servants of the crown — the joyful Cavaliers of old. They far prefer style over substance. And the style has to be as lush and grand as possible. In short, they grasp frantically at an affected nobility that they will never have by birthright.
When you understand this, you understand why they protest so feebly against woke culture. They seize every chance to defend the old from the new, the ornate from the austere, the “British way” from the “American import.” But at the same time, they can’t push back too hard. They need a steady stream of bullshit about Meghan Markle and Oxford classics curricula and the National Trust. Here they charge, paper knights on paper horses! Here to pen worthless, timidly-written op-eds that their opponents will call racist anyway. Piers Morgan only stands out from the pack because he’s intelligent enough to use foul language for clicks.
Institutional conservatives like to pretend that the only problems we have are woke culture (shameful), some inflation (expected, given the Cost of Covid), and Vladimir bloody Putin (a stand in for Hitler). Prod them about fifteen-minute cities, or some suspicious excess deaths, and they go silent. It’s partially because they’ve never had to think about these issues, but even presented the evidence they will never say a word in protest against them.
The reason for this goes to the very root of why there is no organised dissident-right movement in Britain. Protesting for bodily autonomy and domestic freedom of movement forces you to re-evaluate your relationship with the establishment. You can’t be a shining knight of the realm once you realise the royals at court are cooking up plots around the round table that harm you. Institutional conservatives abhor any aesthetic that paints them as an unruly peasant. The perpetual protest against woke culture stays in vogue because conservatives are led to believe that their elites are under assault alongside them, fighting “the lefty mob” together. By contrast, protests against globalism will always be deemed “low status” because these conservatives are desperate to be petted on the head by their betters.
Every faction has their own self-conception. Many hippie dissidents have committed themselves to a French Resistance fantasy. Ironically, so have the much of the woke left. BAP-ists look up to Homeric pirates, white Rhodesians, and tropical warlords. But the institutional conservative’s delusions of grandeur are the most challenging hurdle to any productive discourse in this country. Their starting premise is that of fidelity rather than truth, or social cohesion, or even power. What will it take to break them loose?
