Are we heading towards a civil war?

[Mr Penguin]

I found this quite interesting. Dr David Betz, Professor of War Studies at King's College London and specialising in civil wars thinks yes, and that we are a few years past the point where it can be prevented.

Looking at his points, I think we would all say we have most of the conditions and warning signs below and perhaps some foothills of conflict e.g. the riots in 2011/2024, killings of two MPs, Birmingham police struggling to keep a lid on protests against Maccabi Tel-Aviv or the grooming gangs.

Conditions for civil war, from looking at many civil wars:

• Polar factionalisation, moving beyond debating specific issues but a more tribal approach where the identity comes first and the policy position comes second
• The majority/indigenous population fearing replacement - whites are 82% of the UK population but 73% of U18s, so the effective population change will arrive sooner than someone saying whites will be a minority in the late 21st century
• Loss of faith in peaceful change - parties promises on migration since 1945 were very different to what they actually did, the "uniparty", young people increasingly thinking it is OK to commit violence to further your political aims
• Collapse of institutional trust - politicians, lawyers, police, doctors, the clergy etc are all trusted less than previously and he compares this lack of trust to a lack of financial capital in an economic collapse
• Expectation gaps - home ownership, the promise of working hard and going to uni leading to you being better off but leaving people with a choice (at best) to have a high wage in London where most of it goes on housing or travel costs or a low wage elsewhere
• Elite fracture and incompetence - political elites (Trump, Farage, le Pen) are defecting to the masses' causes but also the aspiring elites leaving uni and finding no graduate jobs to absorb them into the elite system, incompetence in the sense that we cannot fix potholes or build a railway due to an overly complex and expensive system (in our case, bats)
• A state transitioning between stable democracy and stable autocracy and lacking the democratic problem-solving and autocratic control, although the UK is going the other way to most places that end up in civil wars

On top of this, he sees these warning signs:

• Flags to mark territory - Britain is becoming very similar to Northern Ireland and you wouldn't/couldn't put a British flag on a lamppost in certain parts of Bradford or Wolverhampton or a Palestine flag in an area full of British or English flags.
• Icon destruction - things like pulling down the Colston statue in Bristol, vandalising the Cenotaph, probably burning Qurans outside mosques are a sign of symbolically destroying a culture
• Ethnic political parties - he referred to the Gaza independents but you could possibly add the Greens and Reform as well
• Self-segregation - the Balkans were quite well integrated until they weren't, and war came about quite quickly. Northern Ireland also wasn't always so segregated but happened in waves from the 1900s to the 1970s. We see this now with heavily segregated Muslim areas and white flight.
• Cultural polarisation - he sees the dividing line between people who say "we want our country back" against those who think countries do not matter any more or that England has no culture

It would have two overlapping conflicts:

• The blob vs the street - postnational political and institutional elite versus the people who feel betrayed by decades of policy enacted against their wishes
• Indigenous vs immigrant populations, with some exceptions like Hindus probably people on the indigenous side and some white people (the hard left) being on the other side

And it would be fought like the Troubles or Latin American conflicts with paramilitaries doing assassinations, kidnappings, beatings, infrastructural sabotage rather than pitched battles like the English or American civil wars. Apparently you could immobilise a city like Bradford by destroying just 25 petrol stations.
He says the country would have three zones:

• Zone A - non-native urban enclaves, mostly in the Midlands and the North, acting as islands
• Zone B - contiguous area of native-dominated smaller towns and rural space around those islands (probably where most here live)
• Zone C - small areas like inner London where the government retains authority

Well worth a watch/read:


https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/c...
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/c...

[FWIW]

Interesting times…

[Countdown]

No we’re not.

The vast majority of people are decent law abiding citizens . There is a small minority of vile hate-filled individuals who secretly wish it would all kick off so they can kill and deport people they don’t like but as I said they’re only a small minority.

[bloomen]

On Twitter, absolutely.

Mainly between bots and worker bees based in the third world.

In the actual country, erm, maybe a few hundred or thousand people having it out on Ilkley Moor?

Everyone else will be getting on with daily life.

In the entirety of my life I've never heard a real person say anything that dominates the lives of the terminally online.

There will of course be no shortage of fringe tossers flaring up here and there.

Edited by bloomen on Saturday 7th February 00:27

[vaud]

No, because it would get in the way of a nice cup of tea.

[Mr Penguin]

Countdown said:

No we re not.

The vast majority of people are decent law abiding citizens . There is a small minority of vile hate-filled individuals who secretly wish it would all kick off so they can kill and deport people they don t like but as I said they re only a small minority.

This was my thought too, however he says that it only needs 1-2% of people to be active to have a good chance of winning and at 4% the army would be completely unable to cope.
For context, from a population of 1.5 million, the IRA had less than 10k, the loyalists had a few more but overall less than 50k (so 3% of the population of a small part of the UK).

I think it is quite easy to turn people if you have the right conditions and a specific trigger to kick it all off.

[Rumdoodle]

How different is the UK to many other European countries, using those criteria?

Academic finds way to get people more interested in his subject - is he getting a bit high on his own supply here?

[brake fader]

yes England is for the English and apparently we are to white we are now being flushed out of the countryside backed into a corner there will be no other choice but to fight a civil war the sooner the better.

[darreni]

vaud said:

No, because it would get in the way of a nice cup of tea.

And the pub. We are inherently lazy. As long as it’s all over by 5 o clock(or 3 on a Friday), then all is well.
And definitely not if England are playing.

[bloomen]

Mr Penguin said:

This was my thought too, however he says that it only needs 1-2% of people to be active to have a good chance of winning

Can't be arsed to watch the vid.

What does a 'win' mean?

If I'm going to Waitrose followed by a nice stroll, I'm going to come across burning road blocks and unattractive bald caucasians telling me it's a new world order?

What does that mean for my stroll?

[ATG]

Enoch Powell Mk II ... and wrong for the same reasons that Enoch Powell Mk I was demonstratively wrong.

[Hippea]

I think people forget how divided and tough times were in the past, I would argue the 70s and 80s were far more turbulent in the UK than we are seeing now

[Olivera]

In my lifetime probably not, but we have (especially since Covid) entered a period of political and economic dysfunctionality.

[brake fader]

Hippea said:

I think people forget how divided and tough times were in the past, I would argue the 70s and 80s were far more turbulent in the UK than we are seeing now

bks

[Ridgemont]

Crazy stuff. The equivalence’s with Northern Ireland are way off.
The issue with Northern Ireland were twofold.
Firstly a civil rights disparity driven by institutions that actively were prejudiced against catholics. I’m not sure you could say the same in the UK currently.
Secondly the same disparity, while leaving say 10,000 lunatics able to wreak havoc, was based on a populace made up of 50% catholics. That led to a deep sectarian rift and residual sympathy which if not blatant was an underlying issue.


The UK has none of that. No matter the composition of the population the following is true:
There is no significant part of the population willing to go the armalite route
There is no residual populace who would support it.

Why this stuff bubbles up every now and then is beyond me though I suspect US nonsense has something to do with it.

[ATG]

It's predicated on a belief that ethnic division is inevitable. The fact that it clearly isn't inevitable is ignored.

[Ridgemont]

I suspect the U.S. may genuinely have an issue in the next decade or so.

[Ridgemont]

ATG said:

It's predicated on a belief that ethnic division is inevitable. The fact that it clearly isn't inevitable is ignored.

Indeed. Not only not inevitable but on the things I’d take to Ladbrokes probably on the edge scenario of 1000 to 1.

ststirring nonsense.

[anonymoususer]

Countdown said:

No we re not.

The vast majority of people are decent law abiding citizens . There is a small minority of vile hate-filled individuals who secretly wish it would all kick off so they can kill and deport people they don t like but as I said they re only a small minority.

As above NO
We are through building resentment by a growing number to what they see as being unequally treated.

There are now areas where a lot of folk won't go because they are seen as dangerous, intimidating etc.

[Ridgemont]

anonymoususer said:

As above NO
We are through building resentment by a growing number to what they see as being unequally treated.

There are now areas where a lot of folk won't go because they are seen as dangerous, intimidating etc.

You’re not talking about the Lake District are you?