{"id":214439,"date":"2020-10-03T06:20:31","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T06:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214439"},"modified":"2020-10-06T07:08:42","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T07:08:42","slug":"an-immigrant-speaks-truth-about-britains-loss-of-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=214439","title":{"rendered":"An Immigrant Speaks Truth About Britain\u2019s Loss of Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

How can there be a culture war in the UK when the only culture it has to speak of is copied from the US?<\/h2>\n

Nirpal Dhaliwal<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 RT Oct 1, 2020<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s Stockholm Syndrome mimicry of America is at the heart of nearly everything it does, and points to a country that now has no discernible identity of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

This week Boris Johnson threatened to appoint<\/a><\/strong><\/span> right-wing journalist Charles Moore as chairman of the BBC, to fight the Tories\u2019 phantom battle against \u2018wokeness\u2019 and in defence of Britain\u2019s traditions and history, under the deluded impression that the corporation \u2013 rather than Netflix, YouTube, Amazon or Facebook \u2013 is still the decisive broadcaster in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

This denialism protects Britain from a sad truth, which is that all the current noise about \u2018cancel culture\u2019 and \u2018deplatforming\u2019, as well as the continual arguments about race and gender, have never been about any great struggle to subvert or protect the nation\u2019s identity \u2013 which has always been wafer-thin at best \u2013 but are merely the latest examples of this country\u2019s dreary Stockholm Syndrome mimicry of America.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every major cultural shift in Britain is only a delayed and much less interesting repetition of something that happens in the US. For instance, it was very apparent to me that the UK\u2019s version of the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum only after its American forebear was already established as a global news headline, subsiding immediately as it left the front pages. The racial injustices that exist in Britain \u2013 and there are many \u2013 are of less relevance to activists than emulating what takes place on the other side of the Atlantic. Britain\u2019s inequalities have not disappeared, but protesters take to the streets only once the American signal has been given.<\/span><\/p>\n

This Stockholm Syndrome response applies at every point along the political spectrum, and the \u2018Woke War\u2019 taking place on UK Twitter and in public institutions \u2013 passionately contesting such marginal issues as gender pronouns or the removal of statues \u2013 is not a battle for the nation\u2019s soul. It\u2019s just a listless attempt by the British to feel still alive and of significance in the world by copying what is essentially a campus sideshow in the US.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s culture war is the organic expression of an immigrant society whose young people continually experiment with self-invention. The British version, however, has no role other than to sustain some fantasy of an \u2018Anglosphere\u2019 in which the two countries share equivalence: a pantomime that looks ever sadder and more ridiculous as America continues its transformation into a post-Anglo, Asia-focused power.<\/span><\/p>\n

While cultural conflicts in the US are distant adjuncts to the true issues that preoccupy a great power of technological, military and economic prowess, in Britain, this nonsense is the main event. Would the boring online contretemps between a children\u2019s author and a few vitriolic transgender activists \u2013 as has happened with JK Rowling \u2013 ever become the leading topic of discussion in the US? Of course not.<\/span><\/p>\n

With their media, economy and capital city wholly dominated by foreigners, the British are now a colonised people, trudging exhaustedly towards a globalised extinction, boxing with shadows to distract themselves along the way. This is not a great tragedy, but merely the gentle and thankfully bloodless return to historical normality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before they fluked their way into an empire \u2013 having never fought anything like the wars the Romans, Turks and most others had to wage to gain theirs \u2013 the British were nobodies, and that nothingness is the natural state to which they always had to return now that they no longer have millions of colonial subjects to expend as coolies and cannon-fodder on their behalf.<\/span><\/p>\n

With only their native talents and resources to depend on, a dull but comfortable mediocrity, safely cocooned within the wider Western world, was always the best that was on offer to them \u2013 becoming another Belgium, of sorts, but with a less interesting range of beers, albeit a livelier indie-rock scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s loud but entirely phony culture war fulfils Britain\u2019s desperate need for excitement, giving the lives of those on the Left and Right a hallucinatory sense of urgency \u2013 saving them from the depression, alcoholism and suicide that would otherwise consume many. Both sides pretend to be on the frontline in a struggle for human emancipation and free expression, when, in truth, any outcome will be decided over coffee in a faculty somewhere on America\u2019s East Coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever changes Charles Moore might bring to the BBC can only have a fraction of the influence on Britain as the latest Kim Kardashian post on Instagram. The UK’s so-called culture war was lost long before it ever got started.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nirpal Dhaliwal<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Haaretz, and India Today. His novel, Tourism, published by Vintage Books, is available\u00a0here<\/a>. Follow him on Twitter @nirpaldhaliwal<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With their media, economy and capital city wholly dominated by foreigners, the British are now a colonised people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214439"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214442,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214439\/revisions\/214442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}