Yesterday, Britain handed Labour a historic win after fourteen years of “conservative” government. Does this have meaning or is it just random political ping-ponging?
Here is what it means to the history of this era in world history: the last chapter in the War for Enlightenment is beginning.
Britain began the current rightward drift in world politics about a decade ago, when David Cameron caved into demands from his right flank to put EU membership on the chopping block. He started the process and in June 2016 the British people foolishly let their disgruntlement over their economic lot—caused in large part by “conservative” government aided by liberal fecklessness—impel them to vote for Brexit. After the vote, many people said they only voted for Brexit to make a statement. They never thought it could pass.
In 2020, long after the British people began to see that they were going to suffer for that temper tantrum, the final break with the EU was negotiated. And the country immediately began its downward spiral. It’s always a mistake to go with “conservatives.” Life contains far too much change for “conservatives” to deal with. Their insistence on the status quo that benefits them amounts to a refusal to meet the change that is always all around us. If you go down the “conservative” path, it’s only a matter of time until everything breaks down because adaptation to change isn’t happening. Be careful what you vote for.
The British tilt to the right boosted the Trumpists in the US. No one seriously thought Trump could beat Hillary Clinton—not even Trump himself. But the Brexit vote gave “conservative” troglodytes the feeling—and that is more important and determinative for mass human action than reason—that they were “winning.” This bump from Britain was a much under-reported reason for the surge of uneducated white voters in 2016 that put Trump just over the threshold in enough states to win the electoral college. (Educated white voters went for Clinton 55%-38%, whereas uneducated white voters went for Trump 64% to 28%.)
If America swings far enough to install a right-wing crank, then surely right-wing cranks everywhere can feel emboldened. And that’s just what happened. Now it looks like the erstwhile coalition of enlightenment democracies is toppling. Not just in Hungary and Austria, which have never quite given up on autocracy, but even in Germany, France, and Israel.
This swing of democracies toward autocracy has ignited the final battle in the war for the Enlightenment. And Britain’s leftward shift is now signaling the final phase of that battle.
In a way, it was a sucker’s bet. The emboldenment of the autocratic right was a way of enticing it into the open. Autocrats almost always hide in the shadows of decency until they know they have the majority on their side, either by deceiving them or by bullying them. But the Brexit vote gave the right confidence that they could come out in the open after decades of having to couch their anti-democratic vileness in democratic terms. So letting their inner autocrats out just revealed them for who they really are—and decent people don’t like what they are seeing.
In America, for instance, the right wing got the confidence to put out Project 2025, which describes in greater detail than ever the horrific changes they will impose on America if they get the chance. Ever since Reagan, decent Americans have been warning that “conservatives” are not just slight more fearful liberals. They are, for the most part, impelled by fear to dominate everything We decent Americans always knew that, given the chance, “conservatives” would easily morph into autocrats and then into Nazis. Project 2025 takes the mask off “conservatism” and shows the horror it has been hiding behind its self-righteous religiosity and fanatical devotion to “freedom”—that is, to their Satan-given right to tyrannize over everyone else.
Project 2025 is couched mostly in bureaucratic language which, as George Orwell pointed out, is perfectly suited to express the most inhumane viciousness in bland, bloodless verbiage. But the ends of its bureaucratic edicts are clearer than “conservatives” have ever dared to express in public. Project 2025 envisions a “Christian” theocracy of the white supremacist variety, which will use all the powers of government to force its perverted and demonic notion of religion down the throats of the majority. Everything flows from that first principle. Since they believe they are God’s elect, they expressly want to reinterpret “the pursuit of happiness” as “the pursuit of blessedness.” And blessedness is what they say God says it is. Their monstrous vision of blessedness includes criminalizing abortion and everything associated with it, outlawing IVF, gutting the Department of Education so that only Christian-nationalist religious beliefs can be taught in schools, letting guns litter the world without restraint, putting a stop to all efforts to reverse global warming, unleashing the president to become an unbridled monarch, and many more equally debased and tyrannical notions.
It turns out that the vast majority of Americans do not want these “reforms.” They poll very badly. When Project 2025 begins to become better known, it cannot help but increase the weight of the millstone that the Republicans have already hung around their own necks by glomming onto Trump.
Of course, given the opportunity to win the battle decisively, Democrats are doing everything they can to fight badly. But I don’t think it will matter this time. As polling about Biden’s alarming showing at the “debate” rolls in, it’s becoming clear that Biden’s performance didn’t advantage Trump. Biden’s numbers seemed to go down, but Trump’s didn’t go up. This means that most voters are thinking, “No matter how many senior moments Biden has, he’s still better than a raving autocratic lunatic.” That’s certainly the way I feel. And Biden has, and will, surround himself with people who can use the 25th Amendment well if they must.
But Britain’s shift presages what is going to happen in the American elections this fall. Americans have figured out that they made a terrible mistake in 2016 and they are not going to repeat it. After Trump loses again, the worst will be over. The Republican party will be gutted, since the fracture between the right-wing crazies and the normal regressive Republicans will never be healed, each side blaming the other for losing the best chance to cement minority rule they will ever have. The demographics will continue turning against “conservatives,” as groups such as black people, women, young people, immigrants, and everyone else who does not benefit from white-supremacist control increasingly outnumber bigoted, resentful white people. Once this last battle is won, the war will wind down.
Seeing the defeat of the right wing in Britain and America, the nations that have flirted with autocracy since 2016 will turn back to join the coalition of Enlightenment nations in democratic solidarity. Finally, the OG autocracies like Russia, China, and North Korea will be so boxed in by the success of the world’s democracies that they will have to give in, slowly or speedily, to the triumph of progress over regress.
So that is what yesterday’s election in Britain means in world history. It is the beginning of the end of “conservatism” as a political force. Yes, it will take time. It will not happen overnight. But just as slavery was over in America after the Civil War, so too will “conservatism” be over after November’s election.
I know that this seems unlikely. Won’t there always be people of “conservative” bent? Yes, but “conservatism” as a fake excuse for the real motives of those people will be gone. It will have been shown to be what it always was—a concocted “ism” intended from the beginning to justify the fear, greed, and power-addiction of the worst among us. That will be gone, and the worse among us will have to spend some time coming up with another deception to hide their real motives.
In that interim, a swift blow to the neck of “conservatism” must be dealt by Democrats in America.
And that is why I’m preparing a list of things that must happen to rid the world of the scourge of “conservatism,” the autocracy it prefers, and the tyranny it all ends in.
Stay tuned.