#102 - David Betz - Tribes At War: The Sectarian Battle For Britain's Future & Its Grim Reality

David Betz is Professor of War in the Department of War Studies at King's College London where he heads the MA War Studies programme. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Prof. Betz's most recent book, The Guarded Age: Fortification in the 21st Century, is published by Polity.

In this episode, David and I think out loud about the role of political institutions in civil conflict, the impact of demographics on politics & how the election of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City and continued election of Sadiq Khan for the Mayor of London are instructive about the future of Anglophone countries, whether the white British are displaying an anger and spiritedness following suppression and dismissal of their national identity, what Britain looks and feels like if it descends into inter-tribal civil conflict, how the elites have betrayed the British people, why Britain’s youth are discontented, the rival visions and consequences for Britain’s future, and what David has changed his mind on and much, much more.

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Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast exploring the cultural, historical, and moral forces shaping England, Britain, and the wider Western world.

Hosted by John Gillam, the show features serious conversations with historians, academics, and independent thinkers.

Thinking Class is concerned with discovering long-term patterns over headlines and hot-takes. Expect historically-grounded analysis on matters of national character, institutions, demography, belief, and political legitimacy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Professor David Betts. David is Professor of War in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where he heads the Master of Arts War Studies program. He is also a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and Professor Betts' most recent book, The Guarded Age, Fortification in the Twenty First Century, is published by Polity. In this episode, David and I think out loud about the role of political institutions in civil conflict, either causing or preventing it, the impact of demographics on politics, and how the election of Zoran Mamdani in New York City and the continued election of Sadiq Khan in London are instructive about the future of Anglophone countries' political futures. Whether the white British are displaying a thumos and anger and spiritedness following suppression and dismissal of their national identity, what Britain looks and feels like if it descends into intertribal civil conflict, how the elites have betrayed the British people, why Britain's youth are discontented, the rival visions and consequences for Britain's future, and what David has changed his mind on during the course of his life, and much, much more. This is a continuation almost of several podcasts that David has appeared on, Louise Parry's Maiden Mother Matriarch, New Culture Forum, and many more, where he shares his expertise about war to make some pretty grim predictions for the future of Britain and indeed European nations with regards to the likelihood of them going through civil war. So we begin with a scene set and then we get into what the practical reality looks like should we actually go down that route or some way toward it. It is a very dark conversation at times, but this is because there is no reality in which these conflicts are not grim. That said, do enjoy the show, classmates, and as ever, like, subscribe, follow and share Thinking Class on your podcast platform of choice, YouTube and Substack. David Betts, welcome to Thinking Class. Thanks so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Well, the pleasure's all mine. I think people who have found themselves on this page or listen to this podcast may have become familiar with you by now. I think you've been a busy chap over the last six months doing the podcast rounds, which started when you appeared on Louise Perry's podcast talking about the statistical probability that the United Kingdom is likely headed towards civil war at some point in the future for various reasons. So I'll do a quick summary and you can tell me whether it's a fair assessment before we we move on to other topics. So your your position is that government policy over previous decades of fuel tensions. We've seen the downgrading of the status of the majority, so the native population, through a combination of things, asymmetric multiculturalism, people would say, so subversion or suppression of dominant culture and the promotion of others. You've seen it in the job market through DEI and various other measures. You also say things like the elites have uh lost competence and they've drifted away from the people and not on the side of the majority, and that we see signs of civil unrest that are already there. So I suppose you've got the response to the Axel Rudicabana Southport killings last year, and then you could say on the flip side of things, you've got a very large terror watch list with the MI5 showing that there are quite a few people relatively recently arrived in British history terms that want to cause havoc on the country. And furthermore, police and the army won't be able to meaningfully intervene. So what we're headed towards is probably something like a dirty war that gets worse as the population changes with changing demographics. Is that a fair assessment? Is there anything you would add to that change or correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Uh that that's a fair assessment, I think. I mean, I'd said most of those things in mostly that manner. I'd put it in slightly different order for purpose of clarity. I think there are three big reasons why uh one should be concerned with the prospect of civil war in the UK. And uh we must also uh acknowledge that this isn't exclusively a UK problem. In fact, it's a very generalized problem throughout the Western world, has slightly different causes, I think, in the United States, but that is also a country which is in uh fairly significant peril of domestic turmoil. Uh actually that's understating it. It's in fairly significant peril of civil conflict, uh as is the UK uh and other countries, but perhaps for slightly American reasons in an American context. The three main causes are uh factionalism, particularly polar factionalism, which is uh uh a uh form of factionalism which uh occurs when people are under con uh when people are frightened for their security. Uh and uh that uh fear makes them um essentially look to what are the consensus views of their tribe, and they tend to adopt those views. Um so that kind of factionalism is is um particularly uh when one sees that that's a particularly alarming sign. Downgrading, you've mentioned, I don't need to go further on that, except to say that downgrading is the academic term. The the your the term in in common uh parlance in normal uh discourse is replacement or the great replacement, drawing on the the thesis of the French philosopher Raina Camus. Uh but uh they are fundamentally the same ideas. Academics simply use a different uh a different term, uh somewhat more generic and less politically loaded than uh replacement, but fundamentally they mean the same thing. The third uh major kind of indicative um uh factor uh for civil war is the loss of faith in the functioning of politics as a as a viable solution to collective action problems. Essentially, that's what politics is. If we if we're to look for a basic definition of politics or uh a way of solving collective action problems is a pretty reasonable um functional definition of what it is supposed to be. Uh and the fact of the matter is that uh people have lost faith in the ability of normal politics to solve problems. Uh this is uh can be observed in a whole range of um manners, you know, through polling uh uh particularly of people's trust in institutions, specifically political institutions, um, but also anecdotally and just sort of reading the discourse and people's frustration with their uh with with politics and their increasing apprehensions about the viable functioning of our political system. So when you know, when the majority political attitude in the country is neither left nor right, but in fact that voting doesn't matter because uh elections are performative and there's just one party that uh then that's a very significant sign of uh of a loss of of a loss of faith or a loss of legitimacy of that system. It's very um that's um uh as illnesses go, that's a that's or as symptoms go, that's a very powerful symptom of a very ill uh political system. There are three things, moreover, that that tend to mitigate against the potential potential of civil war. Um and people, I think, tend to tend to know these things um uh or they feel them in their bones. One of them is wealth, right? So, you know, generally people understand civil war to be a thing which uh affects hot and dusty places abroad where people are poor uh and live closer to the edge and not people who live in fairly high degrees of material comfort as do most people uh in uh in the West, amongst the golden billion, as it's been put. Uh but that uh assumption, uh and that is that is a valid, perfectly valid reason to uh uh that is a perfectly good reason to to think that civil wars might not generally occur, uh, except that I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that uh the wet the West is in a signific in a period of significant economic downturn, uh which is structural in its in its nature and is manifest particularly in the emergence of expectation gaps in the youth population. Um without going into detail, I see you nodding along. People are familiar with this uh basic problem. Um they may not be completely familiar with, though I think people are are guessing the truth also is that governments are now so indebted uh that they're running out of room to um to be able to borrow more. Uh, but also their debt calculations are a bit skewed because there are much greater obligations than uh on on governments than appear in um uh debt-to-GDP ratio figures. So for example for example, governments have promised to pay people um pensions uh that it's not entirely clear they can make good uh on these uh obligations. So there are expectation gaps uh very obviously uh amongst youth, uh, but there are probably likely to be strong expectation gaps too amongst uh the uh the uh older people who will find that their conditions, the expected condition of retirement also uh doesn't materialize. So wealth is a big factor, but it's diminishing, uh, and there's reason for concern there. The second is there's a civil war is uh, or a second big barrier to the outbreak of civil war is a kind of culture of obedience, uh which for a long time most Western countries have had, some to a greater degree than others. Britain particularly is a country which is uh noted for its its phlegmatism, its general social reluctance to uh revolt um relative to its neighbors. Um but that but the basically the the social basis of that culture of obedience is also diminishing um in line with the with the um uh migration that you've already mentioned, as well as other factors which are essentially exhausting people's patience. In the case of the UK, people over the last 30 years have uh uh essentially performed the most extraordinary feat of tolerance in modern political history. Um and they're mostly fed up uh with that. So the culture of obedience is diminishing. The last one you kind of hinted at, and but I think it's really important to draw out, and that is the quality of the elite. Usually, if you have a unified and competent elite, then they're able to manage matters, and that's a pretty strong bulwark again against civil war. Now, I don't think again it's terribly controversial to suggest that our elite is not terribly competent. Um so I won't go further on that matter, but I would say uh a thing to point out is they're also uh not very unified. And so we are already seeing elite defections at the highest level, figures like Trump, Macron, uh not Macron, uh Maureen, basically any a number of rising populist figures who are essentially withdrawing publicly withdrawing from elite consensus. Um throughout the throughout the society, moreover, whether it's in the military or in the institutions, you also have people who are quietly withdrawing from elite consensus. Uh sometimes that's called um quiet quitting, for example. Uh sometimes it's more overt, uh, although often we see that in when people have retired, they suddenly become more vocal about the situation. Uh a few years ago, uh a group of retired French generals wrote an open letter warning of looming civil war in that country. That's pretty typical. Uh but uh also throughout the throughout society, in addition to quiet quitting, you have increasing amounts of obstructive compliance, uh where people basically uh go along uh with the rules, um, but the rules themselves are uh maniac and contradictory. So uh in as they uh as the managerial class essentially degrades, managers uh cease to exercise their judgment, uh um and that's why uh the system uh clutches up in the way it has done. So we don't have uh we don't there are three good reasons to expect why it's coming, three good reasons, three reasons to think that we might be resistant, but all of those are diminishing.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Picking on a few strands from your response there, uh loss of institutional faith. So in the British context, we have seen uh a rapid rise of dissent uh against what has been referred to as the Uni Party. Uh, the playwright consensus, you could probably argue it started before then, but let's stick with that for simplicity. And we see reform riding high in the polls, and it seems that they're picking up people from all sorts of different backgrounds. We've got uh the alliance of Posh and Bosch, I think James Orr referred to it as you've got private school kids who uh are coming out actually uh on top for reform or Labour, which usually one of the two, and then you've got the former parts of the red wall that are effectively saying we're all going to reform as well. Do you think that reform, even though starting to look a little bit more comfortable than those uh rear benches in parliament and uh certainly gaining a lot of exposure and it doesn't seem to be dampening enthusiasm for them? Do you think in some ways the discourse you can find on the internet, which is saying reform don't understand the pressure that they're under to try to actually properly reform the system and show that things can be changed to get things back on track? Otherwise, if it's a failure, all hell will break loose because that's the everyone's pinning their hopes on that being institutional change. Do you think that is really how severe it is, or do you think it's not just about a government, it's something else?

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Uh I think the issues are chronic and long term and therefore very deep. Uh and none of these are easy to fix. This isn't a parliament to fix. Um it's uh it's it's a kind of perfect storm, uh, in fact. And I perfectly understand people's um the way in which people are attaching, or a large number of people are attaching uh great hope to reform because they want change uh and they feel things have gone seriously wrong. Um but I am quite um I am quite unsure that reform can deliver uh for various reasons. I'm I'm quite unsure that reform can actually get elected. I'm quite unsure that reform in fact knows what to do and is willing to do it uh at this at the speed and with the competence it would require. Uh I'm quite certain that reform if it manages to form a government uh with a majority, that it will be subverted by the bureaucracy, uh which has uh significant legal uh means to resist ministers as a result of a very a series of blairite reforms, um, and has shown uh a willingness, moreover, on occasion to use extra-legal um means to uh subvert and otherwise obstruct uh policy that they don't like. So reform, even if it gets elected in 2029, which is quite a long way uh away considering the pace at which uh things are developing, i.e., getting worse, uh, will probably get obstructed in their first parliament, no in more or less exactly the same manner that Trump was uh obstructed in his first term. Uh and that will increase uh increase tensions. The delta between people's expectations of what can and should be done and what can be delivered even by the reformist uh movement will increase. Uh so you know I I I understand where people are coming from. I hope it works out, but I'm uh I'm not inclined to put uh a lot of um faith in it personally.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Okay, okay. Uh and and one other strands to pull on is you referenced um downgrading or replacement theory, uh, Renu Camus style. And I I I wanted to get your uh view on recent events in America since you you brought it up. So uh Azoran Mamdani was just elected as the mayor in New York City in his acceptance speech. He said this is a victory for, and he went on and listed lots of different nationalities and ethnicities that work in working class jobs and all the rest of it. And critics have jumped on to say this seems to be driven by a kind of um ethnic preference for non-whites ultimately, and um, I suppose what is being argued here is what we're seeing is the demographics is destiny with regards to the replacement of political function and over time the population. Um, without being too loaded a question, do you think that is indeed the case? Or uh and and that is an example of it, and we can expect more of that through the West, or is this more of a flash in the pan, uh almost like a a reaction, an elite defection, as you refer to it as from the initial consensus, or or is it driven by the ethnic replacement ideas?

SPEAKER_00 21:09

I'm I'm I'm a little reluctant to comment um in detail on US politics. I'm I'm not in America, let alone in in New York. It's not a political environment that I'm embedded in and don't feel really expert um in that. Um but I would respond to uh you know some aspects of your question, I think. Uh one you you said, does this mean demographics is destiny? Um and um we can separate the the issue of the mayoral uh uh election from New York from the validity of that statement. And I would say that I I think that is a perfectly valid statement. Demographics Is destiny. Um it's a hugely important factor. Um it's probably the most most important factor. If you don't reproduce, then your culture will not be re reproduced. It seems a fairly obvious logical syllogism. So uh I'm I'm I'm very on board uh with that with that idea. And I suspect that I suspect for what it is worth that um that what we've just seen in New York is an example of that. But we don't need to look, we Britons don't need to look to New York for an example of that because we have the same situation, or we have a a similar situation in the case of London, where uh we have a mayor who uh he could be the mayor for life if he wants. There's no, you know, there's he he has an electoral um uh coalition, uh voting, a voting block that will put him over the edge in London. Um for as long as he wants. Um for as long as the non-native um fraction of the population of London uh votes as a block for uh uh uh in um for the non-native, for the overtly non-native um um uh uh candidate, they will win. That's simply that's simply how things work mat arithmetically. Uh it is a a city which is now m majority uh or a uh majority non-native. And so I don't see uh I I don't see that um really as um a very controversial statement, a simple uh acknowledgement of electoral reality when uh you get groups voting as blocs and they vote in uh in a factional uh manner. Uh and particularly in this case, what is alarming is in a manner which is uh essentially hostile to the formerly uh dominant native majority, then that uh inevitably produces uh huge tension uh because the rest of the country begins to look at its major cities as essentially parasitic on the nation, uh as being under a kind of foreign occupation. Uh and the the quite obviously those are very powerful, very powerful uh um motivators to conflict. These are very emotional um uh things that uh uh clearly lead to almost always lead to some kind of counteraction, whether it were whether it works or not. The last thing I'd say is uh this isn't my own original thought, but something I read this morning about the New York uh election, which sounded to me um quite sensible, which was that also this is a bit of a protest vote on the part of youth of all um of all groups who are essentially saying to the establishment, put it that way, uh, that if you don't think if you don't sort things out economically, we're going to blow things up. Um we'll vote for we will vote for uh we'll vote for national suicide. We will vote for the most divisive thing if you don't sort it out. So I I thought that was a pretty um uh uh intriguing uh comment and it kind of rang true to me with uh with uh uh what I understand to be the mood of the younger population, which is increasingly obstreperous, uh increasingly desperate to take to have their the conditions of their life um better sorted out because they're getting a very raw deal and they know it, and we know it, everyone knows it.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Well, let's let's linger on this for a moment with regards to reaction. So we talked about the youth feeling like they've been cut adrift from economic opportunities and prosperity and thinking the system's rigged against them, or recognizing the system is uh certainly against them. Uh let's get back to this point about the downgrading um the replacement of a native majority. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the concept of thumos, an ancient Greek philosophical term, which means a spiritedness and it's it's a seat of energy which can um be particularly associated with anger, particularly when a man's um honour has been violated. And uh I think the substacker who's now part of the Trump administration, NS Lyons, uh, wrote about this when he was commenting on R.R. Reno's return of the strong gods, that ultimately what we're seeing is the um the rising um uh national consciousness uh within the West that has been suppressed for so long, and people are trying in various ways to be heard, whether it was Brexit or Trump 1 and Trump 2, and whether it's reform. But as we've also heard, we've got more and more people that are talking worrying about the demographic trends and wondering whether um history is going to be rewritten or the people is going to be um um totally um have the system arraigned against it uh in perpetuity. Uh, I suppose my my question is is given that there seems to be rising protest votes in various directions, but particularly for um candidates that you would say are more nationalist in bent, whether it's Le Pen or Farage or the AFD, um let's stick with Britain. Do you believe that the that the British are experiencing a return of the thumos having seen it repressed for so long? And um I suppose you know what does the healthy version and the unhealthy version look like?

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Um I think it's a very compelling way to put it. It it I'm uh you know, I'm I'm I'm not a philosopher or let alone uh so uh let alone a theologian, um, and I I'm a bit I'm a bit off my like native ground, uh as it were. Uh but I I find uh I find what you've said and and the works that you refer to to be very compelling. Um I I think there is something there. In my own specific field, which is uh war studies, I would observe that there is um there is something there is a kind of parallel to this uh this story. And what happened is that essentially after the Cold War, the West particularly developed a mode of warfare which came to be described as post-heroic warfare. Post-heroic warfare. Post-heroic warfare was was um or is characterized by a high degree of casualty sensitivity, particularly of one's own casualties, but not not only of one's own casualties. A tendency to uh use standoff weapons, i.e. so therefore to kind of avoid close quarter engagements, uh essentially as a as a means of risk reduction, so uh, you know, a tendency to remote uh to remote warfare. Anyway, so this idea of post-heroic warfare, uh, which was elabor um which is a term coined by uh an American uh scholar named Edward Lutbach, came into currency in the late 1990s as a description of a particularly passionless kind of Western warfare which was highly technologically dominated and which was conducted in a way that made the least possible demands on society generally and soldiers to it specifically for sacrifice for uh for sacrifice fundamentally. And the fact of the matter is that it didn't that if one looks at it from a strategic point of view, that didn't work out. That was a terrible idea. Uh what happened in st was that instead of getting a bunch of wars that were fun because they were fast, easy, uh, they were quick to conduct, they were easy to win, and they were cheap, we got a permanent state of war in which uh the most materially powerful uh country armies of the world were essentially beaten down uh by guys in flip-flops with AK-47s and badly aimed rockets and IEDs and all of the other things with which uh we've become familiar over the last 25 years since the announcement of the existence of the so-called war on terror. Um what's uh uh how might we explain this outcome? And I think a very good ex explanation, in my view, one I've written extensively about um, is that if you if you are fighting on behalf uh or if if a society which no longer believes in the utility of war comes up against a society which believes intensely in the utility of war, i.e., they are able they they see the logic of how their actions in this world connect up to their uh outcomes in the next world. Uh they are able to sacrifice and they are able to internally explain uh their sacrifice, that makes up for that that that imbalance of the spirit to load use a loaded term, but a valuable one, or that imbalance of uh thumos makes up for a huge amount of material imbalance. So uh in in short, from the perspective of a war studies scholar, rather than as a political philosopher or a more generic philosopher, I'd say yes, you know, we we took honor, spirit, what have you, thumos, out of the equation. We kept doing war, uh, and we lost them because despite having all the guns, we didn't have the guts. And you know, so now we're at a moment where the consequences have arrived. And either you buck up, you admit your mistake, and you rebuild that thing that you've lost, or you lose permanently and you exit history. Uh which I don't think people want to do. So the I I I hope, I believe, and I hope that the pendulum will swing back.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Well, let's um let's delve a little bit into British specific context again. So um let's begin, I suppose, with civil war, the group, the rival groups. I know you've you've explained this elsewhere. I think the different slant I would like to bring onto it, and I'm sure you will have seen it, is that there are various strands of the political right online that will say, uh, and Renault Camus, indeed, is one of them, will say, ah, well, the civil war that we're headed for will not really be a civil war because what we're talking about is the war between different peoples. Whereas in the past, uh you had the American Civil War, which is British descended Americans, or you had in England the roundheads and the cavaliers fights between Englishmen. Uh to what extent is that just a game of semantics that doesn't really matter? Really, the point you're getting across is simply there's going to be quite serious conflict on the streets of Britain and other Western nations. Does it does it matter so much? Or is it just semantics or is there something there?

SPEAKER_00 36:09

No, it's not just semantics. Uh and I have seen this um this argument uh from Camus, uh, who's made this point both on X and in interviews of his, which I've read. Uh, but certainly I've encountered the idea, and I don't disagree with him. I I I I think this is a absolutely valid point, and I I don't dispute it at all. I think he's he's he um and so why do I use the term civil war? If I if I uh if I accept that uh that this is uh a war between uh uh communities to use uh actually a terribly overused uh phrase. But I don't want to use the word communities, a war between peoples, between tribes uh that have been uh pushed together into the same territory, same uh political space in a way that almost certainly they ought not have been, um that's that's not so much a war between brothers as just a you know a war between um between tribes. Uh okay, I accept I accept that. I use the term uh I use the term civil war, however, in uh a sense which I think is the most uh commonly accepted in the academic literature, uh which is a kind of which essentially says a civil war is we we define a civil war as a war between belligerents who were under the same sovereign authority at the outset of the conflict. Um and that'll that's that's quite a wide definition and one that does encompass this uh situation. These tribes, uh which I've mentioned or uh uh um are under the same sovereign uh authority at the current juncture. The other aspect I would say is so there is I I what I want to tell people is that there are two vectors of the coming civil war, I call them. One of them is intertribal, uh, which really isn't a war between brothers, as uh Camus and others uh would describe uh a civil war, but is an intertribal conflict within uh an existing polity. But the second is between the uh the street and the elite, or the blob versus mob. And that is internal. That's that's more of the nature of a peasant revolt, uh, which relates to the first in the sense that one of the reasons that the peasants are revolting, I'm not using the term disparagingly, by the way, referring to the mask. One of the reasons that they are revolting is because they see their own elite, uh, which is of their primarily of their own ethnicity, but not entirely. They see their own elite as having betrayed them through um pushing mass migration on them, which is a which is actually a fair uh a fair conclusion if one looks at the post-war manifestos of the labor and conservative parties. They've always promised to manage migration sensibly and not to do mass migration. Uh, but they both delivered net migration of 200,000 plus each for about almost 20 years. Uh so people are right to conclude that uh that they've been lied to uh by their by successive governments of both major parties, uh, and they're angry about that. And I think they're now just about angry enough to to revolt. Um and that that will be more of the nature, I think, of a civil war of a type that Camus also would describe as uh as civil war in nature, uh, although you know you should ask him uh how he he feels about that. But essentially there are two vectors, one horizontal, you might say, between tribes, and one vertical between uh elite and street that rel and these these interact. I use the term civil war because it can encompass both of those things, but I freely acknowledge uh the criticism that there are aspects of the character of both of the of each of these that are quite that are quite different.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Okay, well, that's really helpful uh to uh unpack that and uh and let's talk a little bit about the types of conflict that could kick off with regards to the intertribal aspect to it. So it will have escaped nobody's attention if they go and look at immigration statistics. That besides the rubbing up against of the native population with any new groups, is that lots of these new groups or groups that have been settled here since the 50s, 60s, also have their own uh interests and rivalries with one another. And we've seen this on the streets of our large cities, we've seen Hindus and uh Muslims going after each other in various places uh following cricket matches. I suppose we've also seen um the targeting um within the grooming gang scandal of Sikhs and not just native uh British uh people uh by um Muslim grooming gangs and um Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, they are all coming from, to greater or lesser extent, the the kind of cradle of the subcontinent of uh the Indian subcontinent. And so is there is there a chance that we might actually see uh civil conflict initially kick off with these groups um rather than with the native Britons? I mean, I suppose the easy answer to that is yes, of course. Maybe where I'm going with it is uh could it be that we're focusing on the British population losing it first when actually that it might come about through different intertribal warfare? Um, and if so, what the consequences of that might be for the the politics, I suppose, um, with it being a wake-up call or a recognition that things must change because people typically don't want to hear it uh when people who are talking about there being issues with the native Britons and new groups, they say, no, no, this is just a fantasy of the right. So a bit of a here's what I reckon, what do you reckon question, David. So good luck unpacking that one.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Um okay. So I've I've referred to uh native and non native for um um just for ease, uh, but what you're asking me to do. is to uh uh unpack the non-native. And that's a very good question. I'm glad you you've asked, because of course uh that category of of non-native is also highly uh fract is all also highly fractured. That's not a that's not a homogeneous monolithic group. Um actually for that matter the the there are uh fractures within the native but look if we just stick with the non-native group for uh for the time being yes there are some obvious fractures there and if we think of if we we are looking for warning signs of uh what I've uh been describing uh as our um looming future um we might look to the uh the the intertribal conflicts that occurred in Leicester in the summer of uh 2023 or 22 if I can't I might have mistaken the year but essentially this was heavily armed um with hand weapons uh right heavily armed in the British context for American listeners that means they weren't on the street with guns uh but guys on the street with machetes clubs pitchforks what have you um fighting it out over uh sectarian issues uh but those were both South Asian groups who's uh Indian Hindu basically Hindus and Muslims uh fighting it out within uh Leicester. Leicester is a particularly highly multicultural um city in the UK once described as as a triumphant example of the success uh of uh multiculturalism now it's it's um the primary example of the curdling of the whole idea of multiculturalism so there is a high degree of fractionation within the non-native category ultimately and therefore there are and if one uh accepts that uh pretty obvious thing to accept then there are a number of implications uh uh from this uh uh firstly one has to consider then which are the from the native perspective which are the ones that are um most likely uh belligerent or one of the which are the most difficult ultimately I think that comes down to the Muslim population when it when and that's because of it it it comes down to the level the the cohesiveness of the Muslim community of its its ambition um its own the the strength of its own internal self-identity uh and its unwillingness to um to uh to integrate or actually its inability to integrate with the post-Christian West it probably could integrate more easily with the Christian West actually but a post-Christian West is I think very very difficult for uh a Muslim population to find uh a kind of workable compromise with um so the it it that's the major I think um kind of irre like point of um irresolvability in this the second uh the second thing I'd remark on on this is that given that the uh the non-native side is itself fractured if one thinks then in a war context as a strategist which I like to think myself to be or a strategic thinker then this means that outsiders can use that fracture to get people to fight each other um right it's it's a pretty obvious technique uh it it uh to you know divide your opposition uh and encourage them to fight each other uh which um weakens weakens both and makes the ultimate contest that much uh easier I believe actually this is already uh we see a couple of signs of this already happening um there was an incident um not really it it it wasn't reported on any of the uh normal news but it was an incident occurred in I think it was in Birmingham if I recall correctly in which a uh group of uh masked men uh were beating up a um uh supposedly beating up a Muslim guy uh but the masked men were uh you know pretending to be or supposed to be uh Indian Hindus. Actually it felt rather staged. If you look at the videos of it it felt rather staged and not terribly competent uh a bit suspicious everybody was in masks it felt a bit overacted uh and honestly my sense was that this was this was somebody or some group sort of independently thinking or probably independently thinking um we can create uh further tensions within within this group through essentially information operation what what in my field we would call an information operation just a bit of physical propaganda designed to produce uh uh produce a given effect in this case to heighten the conflict between factions in the non-native category uh there's so much potential for this to be done i i was not at all surprised to see uh this occurring even in a very amateurish way um and I would expect there to be considerably more of it because it's just a time honored and very effective technique of dealing with um uh opponents uh uh that have these uh the potential factions you just split them up and set them against each other and there's high potential to do that it's not very complicated.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

Well I I'll ask you the penultimate question before I ask the question I ask all of my guests and I'll let you go because I know we're we're close to time uh is let's let's start thinking about future of Britain then we'll do so in the context of I suppose some rival visions for for future for for Britain um but also within the context of some of your other work you wrote a great book called The Guarded Age which is what you can learn from the fortifications in and around uh cities and nations and indeed buildings I suppose just for the viewer there are a few examples that we can see having changed even the streets of our major cities so uh bridges often have uh barriers now to stop people driving into other people uh same with our uh high street thoroughfares and all the rest of it or when you have the American embassy being built on the banks of the Thames it is so set back from roads and access points so people can't drive up to it with bombs and they've got big barriers and it's impenetrable effectively. And I suppose um what are the rival visions? Well I speak to some people who say look we're we are where we are demographically the best thing to do is to try to go on some um forceful political integration where the option is we just say everyone behind the flag give up your diasporic um background full civic nationalism and let's all subscribe to the same project and those people who don't well we need to find a way of getting them out. There are others who say look we're in an issue here it wasn't really a democratic consent. We're seeing ethnic rivalry religious rivalry on the streets we're headed towards many of the things that you're pointing out David it's actually better the more humane thing to do is to embark on some kind of re migration and some people in Britain have started to look at that to a greater or lesser extent and so I suppose the question I'm putting to you David is besides uh you know if we don't deal do any of those things or or whatever the other options are we'll see lower social cohesion perhaps we see uh the fall of the welfare state if the finances don't get to it before first but then what what does it look like? What are the physical consequences for the country um with this competing ethnic blocks which are now so big in various cities you can see it on ONS charts with regards to the the density of the population of particular ethnic groups and religions and all the rest of it are we looking at a a dissolution of England and then Britain and ruled by separate leaders a bit like the Dane law back in the days of Alfred the Great um are are we looking at um cities cut off from one another what what if if nothing is done uh successfully whatever that is what what do you think the future looks like I'm glad you asked the question um because I really I'm glad you read uh you you read the book um and because a lot of the ideas uh I've talked about are kind of embedded in in in that book um the gist of it though is that architecture is a kind of language you know arc uh the what what a given society builds at any time reflects what's going on in that society at that time it reflects that society's apprehensions its ambitions it it tells you what that society is scared of or what it wants or what it glorifies or what it abhors and all of those uh and all of those things um just as you know other cultural artifacts do art literature so on but uh architecture also does this like other art and architecture is also very durable so uh it tends to you know stick around so you can uh yeah and gets built upon and changed and so on so it architecture has is a kind of language that uh reflects a kind of society's mood but it's one where we're just constantly writing over the same text which make makes it kind of complicated uh uh and kind of in and and but also very interesting and and telling you mentioned of course some of the obvious ones you can guess what are the apprehensions of this society from just getting on go you know getting on an airplane and observing how many armored gates you pass through to get to uh to get to the seat on your plane or if you're if you're uh once you get into the habit of seeing the matrix as it were of seeing the um invisible fortifications which are now very typical in our society just walk your own streets and and ask why is that wall there or why is that bench there?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Is that a bench why would anybody sit in that particular place? As often as not these are not places to sit or uh ditches for carrying water or these are barriers that are designed to look like something else. And we've spent many many many many billions uh on on this over the last uh well in the actually in the UK over the last 50 years because of uh we got a head start on this on account of the contribution of the IRA to our national security life um but other countries have have caught up pretty quickly so um where are we going uh with with this I think that um um let me address your your issue about civic versus ethnic nationalism I think that you know I I'm I'm of a generation and of an inclination that puts me very solidly in the civic uh nationalist camp uh I am a I am a nation-minded person I think in terms of the nation state but I like to think that uh for really important personal reasons I won't go into I like to think that that doesn't depend on the color of one's skin um I dread to say though that I don't think that the civic nationalists have a very good argument uh it's not going it's not good in the sense of that it's not durable it's not going to be durable once people start killing each other um once you get to the situation where people are kidnapping each other's children and drilling their kneecaps out um you will revert we will revert to um uh much more obvious uh uniforms and you know uh I I can only imagine that you and many of your listeners um experience a sinking feeling uh hearing that and you should uh but that's where but that's where we are when I say it's not a good argument it's not one that's not a reflection of my uh position on it is just uh from uh that is just a realistic assessment of what happens when a society churns up an a large enough fraction of people uh who want to fight uh and once that happens things escalate and accelerate and most of the things that people believed before the lapse pre-lapsarian beliefs and post-lapsarian beliefs are very very different just go ask any any former Yugoslav who uh lived through the Balkans of the 1990s okay so physically what's going to happen I'd like to go to to draw on the idea of um another analyst uh it's not my own original idea uh but this is uh some uh is an idea of the coming civil war particularly in the UK context that has been thought through um uh by a fellow named L. Ingles who's um English presumably uh but writes pseudonym pseudonymously um I have no idea who this person is but they wrote uh they've written a number of very thoughtful analytical pieces of future war uh civil war futurology in the UK if you put it that way and he describes the the country breaking down into three zones to which he uh he uh applies uh quite memorable moniker the zones are a b and c or crown crescent and pitchfork crown a crescent b pitchfork c okay in terms your listener i'm sure most of your listeners will get uh where these are but if we go if we describe them a bit more precisely crown is your current establishment the current government that kind of uniparty the state as it were with all of the attributes that go with the state so they control the intelligence and security services the police the judges uh the military uh crown is an important uh an important player but crown is also the smallest uh player uh it has lots of tools but doesn't have it's quite brittle and doesn't have much ability to escalate in fact most of its tools will diminish in their in their importance as the uh conflict uh progresses B or crescent is pretty obviously the non-native uh uh population and specifically the Muslim population uh which already exists in places in the country in sufficient dense density that they are able to physically control that uh that those areas producing what are usually called uh no go zones uh people get upset by that term no go zone uh you have to be precise that this doesn't mean that the British Army or the British police literally cannot enter these places should they wish uh it just means they generally do not do so uh and when they do they tend to negotiate so better to describe them as essentially areas of negotiated sovereignty um and a number of these places already exist C or pitchfork is the native uh native population now if you look at these this on a map of the UK it's pretty obvious where these uh are located or the concentrations to predict uh you basically have a uh a big um uh hot point uh in southern England which is London within the M25 and a couple of islands outside of that think of places like Slough for example or Luton um then you have uh a strip running east-west across the north of the country roughly from the Humber River across through to um Manchester Birmingham where there are a number of other hot spots by hot spots I mean essentially crescent concentrations there will be a period of assortive movement we are all are already in that period of assorted movement in fact uh it's just loosely observed but basically people moving from places that they think are unsafe or uncomfortable unsafe unsafe is actually the correct word to places they think are more safe uh there's often you know popularly this is referred to as white flight uh but actually it's not necessarily racial it goes in all uh directions so you've got migrants concentrating in certain places and others so this is you will have a period of assortive movement which will accelerate once violence uh or as violence also accelerates um so then what you'll have if you look at the again if you look at the map so imagine the UK uh in in your mind and you with these hot spots which uh get hotter but also smaller as they turn into enclaves uh and these enclaves will be uh the the important thing about the enclaves i e crescent enclaves or zone b is they are non-contiguous basically they don't join up they're they're they're like islands uh in uh uh in an archipelago so if you look at that from a from a from a uh military point of view uh from a strategic point of view as a problem set how do you deal with these hotspots with these islands then um you the time honored solution is the siege you lay siege to these things you don't necessarily fight the easiest way to deal with uh with a um a city which you wish to subdue or to exterminate is to lay Siege to it. In the old days, if you were Julius Caesar and you were going to lay siege, you would dig a big ditch around the city, and you would get your army to surround that city. And you would have another army basically looking outward to prevent anybody else coming in to help. You would basically physically encircle that thing with a fortification of a kind, a field fortification, and a large number of troops. In the 21st century, I don't think we're going to do it that way. Because it's unnecessary. And it's unnecessary because cities are already intrinsically unstable places. Urban geographers have been talking about this for half a century at least already. The modern city is really an astonishing balancing act. People are not designed to live in cities. Actually, kind of natively, it's not a thing that humans are really designed to do. And we in order to live in cities, we have to have a whole bunch of uh of quite difficult artificial uh things happening. Water, food obviously, has to come in. In contemporary times, that also means electricity, gas, um uh communications of all kinds have to come in and out. If they don't, then the city doesn't work. It doesn't work as a as a place of enterprise, of wealth creation, right? So it the city has to receive all of these inputs, in fact, to simply function under normal circumstances. And geographers have have been long concerned about basically keeping up that balancing act under normal conditions. So if you want to, if you want, if you perceive a given urban area to be hostile, um to be under a kind of occupation, and you want to force the people in that who are now concentrated in there to leave, the obvious thing is to attack infrastructure. Um and for that, you don't you don't need big armies, you need fairly small uh numbers of um paramilitaries who are prepared to to use um uh sabotage of food distribution networks, of fuel distribution networks, um uh electricity, uh, electric electrical pylons, all kinds of things like that, um, in a sensible way. Uh the the again, I'm sure your listeners will feel some alarm, or they should feel some alarm. In a normally functioning society, nobody thinks about protecting that kind of stuff. Because why would anybody attack it? Uh but that puts a lot of of um importance on those words normally functioning, normal. An abnormally functioning society of a Western type in the 21st century is highly vulnerable to this tactic uh of what's called system disruption. So I think that's going to be the main um operational technique deployed in the intertribal uh conflict. What this will look like uh physically then will be a kind of uh I think you'll see something like you know, uh Belfast or Ulster, um uh Baghdad circa 2008-10, um uh Lebanon, for example, where you have largely urban areas where people essentially uh fortify their neighborhoods um for kind of neighborhood level um protection. So though you some of this will be highly organized, and you know, you might look and see things like uh the peace walls in in Northern Ireland, for example, which were constructed uh some of them uh 50 years ago now, almost sorry, almost 50 years ago, um, you know, still uh still in existence. These are permanent, almost permanent additions to the landscape, and they're more or less, you know, they may be more or less ugly, but they're more or less permanent. They're uh um but it could also be, you know, much more jury-rigged and ad hoc um barricade style uh things, of course, uh is a potential. But the bottom line is that it will be uh a conflict that is characterized by an urban versus rural dimension with an operational technique called uh systems disruption, which is aimed, which is essentially uh a war between crescent and pitchfork, in which uh crescent uh is attempting to remain, and pitchfork is trying to get to create conditions of life in crescent enclaves that are so intolerable that people leave.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

Well, there's a crystal ball I'm sure lots of people don't want to look into, and as you have uh pointed out, uh perhaps um is to do with uh the the lack of thumos over the year, the lack of guts, the lack of realizing how human nature works, and having um, I suppose kidded ourselves into thinking that whatever settlement we were living in, that that liberal settlement um was eternal and universal. Uh David, I've kept you long enough, and so I'm gonna ask you the question I ask all my guests, and you can answer it as briefly as you like, um, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Perhaps it was something you thought was an absolute, maybe it was something day-to-day, but it felt consequential or significant for having changed your mind, and and what made you think differently?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:03

Uh yeah, okay, good question. I like that. You've got you've got lots of good questions. Um I have uh I've changed my mind on lots of things. Um I'm I'm very proud of that actually. Um, I like to think of myself as a person who is objective uh and listens to evidence and uh who is prepared to change his mind when the facts change, to use the cliche. Uh so you know, in a sense, I've changed my mind a hundred times just today. Um and but really your question is is not not about that. It's what have I changed my mind on that's big. And I'd say for myself, I changed my mind on God fundamentally. Um I uh I I I grew up in a Christian household that for reasons I never quite understood, my parents um uh changed their mind somewhere through my childhood. We ceased going to church. Um I think I was um probably atheistic or sort of strongly uh uh um ambivalent about strongly agnostic uh for much of my uh youth and early adult life. Uh and then I um I changed my mind about that. I became much more I I reverted, I think is probably the term uh uh the the the the term uh the term for it. What caused it? Uh probably fatherhood. Fatherhood, that was what uh caused it uh for me, uh primarily. Um but I think also it was uh I think there's good in I I think I have good intellectual reasons also for how for why I believe the things I I I do uh about uh the nature of life. Um but a big chunk of it also is just simply um a change in my emotional life that came from becoming a father. Um I also on a less grand scale I changed my opinion about the nation-state. Uh like uh like almost everyone else of my age in the Western world, I was educated to understand that the nation-state was kind of a suspicious thing, that uh it was okay to be patriotic, but not too much. And the nation-state was responsible, as was God apparently, for a great deal of horror in the 20th century, and it would really rather be better if we got past it and moved to uh something else. I've come to realize that there is no something else that is better. Um and the that actually the moving away, that the nation state, uh, which is a fairly recent idea historically, was actually a great idea. It comes with it comes with problems, obviously. Um, but there isn't a better system for getting large numbers of people to feel genuine affinity and responsibility uh for uh for each other, uh beyond what the normal beyond the normal limits of the Dunbar number. So I've changed my mind on the nation state too.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:02

Well, David, the two well, firstly, thank you for such a deeply personal response, and uh not everyone wants to share uh their coming to faith moments, and uh they it's it is a deeply personal thing. And uh I think what strikes me the older I get and having been through something similar, but for for different reasons, and the more people I ask that question, just how many people respond in in such a way um and for for unique reasons, and um it is fascinating having grown up in a heavily atheistic and nihilistic culture to find just how many people um come across faith uh for either intellectual or uh transformative conversion experience reasons. Um, but the nation state also very interesting and something I meditate on most days for much of what we've spoken about, which is what is its future, particularly in the West when we've imported so many competing uh groups. How do you get that to cohere? But I hope this conversation goes some way to explain the big, real, daunting, quite scary challenges that are ahead of us. And um, before I let you go, David, where can people find you in the darker corners of the internet? And what can we expect from you next with regards to what you're working on?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:29

Um, well, I'm easy to find if you just Google my name. I am on um X in a personal capacity, I should uh uh point out. I mean, I if you want to hear the views of Professor David Betts, then you should enroll in the master's program in war studies uh at King's College London. If you want to hear the musings of this random guy, also known as David Betts, you can just go on X and get it for free. Um but uh I just underlining that I do have an online uh um uh presence, but I speak in a personal capacity uh uh there. Um and what's next is uh well I'll I'll I'll continue to write on this subject. I do have a book that will uh come out on it um sometime in 26, uh hopefully before it just becomes completely obvious uh to everyone everyone. Um and uh once that's out, hopefully I'll be uh finishing uh a much larger um uh book on the relationship of uh war and uh cities uh through history from basically earliest times to uh to the present. Um but no ETA uh on that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:58

Okay, well, David, I deeply appreciate your work. I'm deeply grateful that you've come on the show. And um for the work we do know when it's going to drop, I shall keep an eye out and hopefully we can rekindle the conversation next year. But thanks again for coming on the show and keep fighting the good fight, no matter how uh horrible it looks to other people.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

Okay, uh, thank you very much. Uh, I appreciate uh um being asked to come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

Thank you, David.