Putin will be over the moon. Caves in Iraq will echo with the laughter of whatever remains of ISIS. For a new poll has found that a measly six per cent of Britons would take up arms if we faced an ‘imminent invasion’. Armies of mad Islamists could be amassing on our beaches and just one in 17 of us would ask for a gun. ‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be’, said Churchill. Not anymore, we won’t.
The YouGov survey is a sobering read. And a scary one. There were 2,300 respondents. Just six per cent said they would volunteer to fend off a looming foe. Fifty-two per cent said they can’t fight because of age or disability. No doubt this includes many folk who really are too old for war. But I bet it also includes silver-spoon twats who’ve been convinced by TikTok that they have ADHD or some other bullshit malady.
Fourteen per cent said they would serve if they were called up. That’s good to know – they won’t volunteer to defend our sceptred isle but they’ll give it a whirl if the alternative is jail. But 17 per cent said they wouldn’t fight for Blighty even if ordered to do so. What a testament to our nation’s decay: more people would rather rot in the stagnant security of a jail cell than risk a hair on their head in a battle for Britain’s future.
Think about how insane these stats are. As a writer for the Spectator points out, around six per cent of Brits think we should be allowed to eat dogs. So fighting for your country is now as batty and eccentric a notion as chowing down on dog meat. A couple of years ago, a poll found that nine per cent of Brits aged 18 to 24 had a ‘favourable’ view of Hamas. God help us if Hamas should ever land on our shores: more young Brits would be fanboying over the Islamofascist invaders than trying to fend them off.
As with all surveys, caveats are called for. It’s possible that if an invasion really were imminent – if we could see warships at Dover – then minds would be sharpened and guns reached for. Hell, even some of our ‘neurodivergent’ youths might crewcut their blue hair and peel themselves away from Warhammer to prep for real war. An invasion isn’t imminent. Russia isn’t on our doorstep. There’s no Luftwaffe overhead.
And yet, it would be suicidal folly to not take seriously a poll like this one. For it points to a cavernous spiritual decay in our once great nation. Indeed, what is the point of a nation whose own people would not fight for it? If a country isn’t worth fighting for in the eyes of its own young, then surely it has surrendered its right to exist? The nation that cannot summon the spirit of its citizens to defend it against foreign foes is dead already – it’s just waiting for a strong enough military breeze to put it out of its misery
Here’s the frightening thing: I know where the pre-emptive draft-dodgers are coming from. My initial horror at the thought of Britain becoming a defenceless realm, our young more interested in figuring out their gender identity than fighting for the land of their forebears, swiftly gave way to understanding. I get it. Why would people fight for this Britain? What would they be fighting for?
Who would lay down their life for a land of vape shops and fried chicken and c**ts on buses playing their music out loud? Why would anyone take up arms for a country where the high street stinks and litter piles up and you can’t go 10 metres without seeing a woman in a medieval cloak from the 7th century? Who would risk life and limb for a nation where illegal immigrants are setting up tent cities and the authorities do damn-all about it? The other day, I walked past one such encampment in Warren Street and one of the inebriated inhabitants showed me his anus. His literal @r$ehole. Surely, as a freeborn Briton, I deserve the liberty to traverse my capital city without being exposed to the rectal opening of a foreign panhandler?
Indeed, given the virtual erasure of our borders by rich officials who crave cheap labour from overseas to make their coffee and wipe their @r$es, where even is this nation we’d be expected to defend? If people have got the idea that our borders aren’t worth manning, can you blame them? After all, almost every day hundreds of young men from God knows where spill on to our shores and we’re called racist scum if we complain about it. Are you sure we wouldn’t also be called racist if we tried to fend off a literal army of gun-toting Koran bashers?
What would Brits be called upon to defend, exactly? A glorified airport lounge that was once a kingdom? A supposedly Christian country where Christians are arrested if their preaching offends ‘queers’ or Muslims? The birthplace of religious liberty where now mothers are publicly shamed by mobs of bearded men if their kid scuffs a page of the Koran? This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England where you can’t even fly the goddamn national flag lest it upset plummy leftists and their asylum-seeker au pairs?
Then there has been the wilful decommissioning of patriotic feeling. A core crusade of the anti-working-class intelligentsia has been the borderline criminalisation of national pride. Britain, they tell us, is a nation born from the sin of colonialism, a nation morally scarred by its historic crimes. Popular culture is awash with the self-regarding self-loathing of a cultural elite that hates its own country and the oiks who inhabit it. Little wonder that a survey of Gen Z last year found that half think Britain is a ‘racist country’. Who’s going to fight for a racist country? Let it die, no?
When will the ruling classes learn that their moral dereliction is having the most dreadful consequences? That it is making everyday life more sh*t and our future more perilous? That it is weakening the national spirit and emboldening those who hate us? I hate that my fellow citizens think our nation is not worth fighting for. I hate even more that I fully understand why.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
Fourteen per cent said they would serve if they were called up. That’s good to know – they won’t volunteer to defend our sceptred isle but they’ll give it a whirl if the alternative is jail. But 17 per cent said they wouldn’t fight for Blighty even if ordered to do so. What a testament to our nation’s decay: more people would rather rot in the stagnant security of a jail cell than risk a hair on their head in a battle for Britain’s future.
Think about how insane these stats are. As a writer for the Spectator points out, around six per cent of Brits think we should be allowed to eat dogs. So fighting for your country is now as batty and eccentric a notion as chowing down on dog meat. A couple of years ago, a poll found that nine per cent of Brits aged 18 to 24 had a ‘favourable’ view of Hamas. God help us if Hamas should ever land on our shores: more young Brits would be fanboying over the Islamofascist invaders than trying to fend them off.
As with all surveys, caveats are called for. It’s possible that if an invasion really were imminent – if we could see warships at Dover – then minds would be sharpened and guns reached for. Hell, even some of our ‘neurodivergent’ youths might crewcut their blue hair and peel themselves away from Warhammer to prep for real war. An invasion isn’t imminent. Russia isn’t on our doorstep. There’s no Luftwaffe overhead.
And yet, it would be suicidal folly to not take seriously a poll like this one. For it points to a cavernous spiritual decay in our once great nation. Indeed, what is the point of a nation whose own people would not fight for it? If a country isn’t worth fighting for in the eyes of its own young, then surely it has surrendered its right to exist? The nation that cannot summon the spirit of its citizens to defend it against foreign foes is dead already – it’s just waiting for a strong enough military breeze to put it out of its misery
Here’s the frightening thing: I know where the pre-emptive draft-dodgers are coming from. My initial horror at the thought of Britain becoming a defenceless realm, our young more interested in figuring out their gender identity than fighting for the land of their forebears, swiftly gave way to understanding. I get it. Why would people fight for this Britain? What would they be fighting for?
Who would lay down their life for a land of vape shops and fried chicken and c**ts on buses playing their music out loud? Why would anyone take up arms for a country where the high street stinks and litter piles up and you can’t go 10 metres without seeing a woman in a medieval cloak from the 7th century? Who would risk life and limb for a nation where illegal immigrants are setting up tent cities and the authorities do damn-all about it? The other day, I walked past one such encampment in Warren Street and one of the inebriated inhabitants showed me his anus. His literal @r$ehole. Surely, as a freeborn Briton, I deserve the liberty to traverse my capital city without being exposed to the rectal opening of a foreign panhandler?
Indeed, given the virtual erasure of our borders by rich officials who crave cheap labour from overseas to make their coffee and wipe their @r$es, where even is this nation we’d be expected to defend? If people have got the idea that our borders aren’t worth manning, can you blame them? After all, almost every day hundreds of young men from God knows where spill on to our shores and we’re called racist scum if we complain about it. Are you sure we wouldn’t also be called racist if we tried to fend off a literal army of gun-toting Koran bashers?
What would Brits be called upon to defend, exactly? A glorified airport lounge that was once a kingdom? A supposedly Christian country where Christians are arrested if their preaching offends ‘queers’ or Muslims? The birthplace of religious liberty where now mothers are publicly shamed by mobs of bearded men if their kid scuffs a page of the Koran? This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England where you can’t even fly the goddamn national flag lest it upset plummy leftists and their asylum-seeker au pairs?
Then there has been the wilful decommissioning of patriotic feeling. A core crusade of the anti-working-class intelligentsia has been the borderline criminalisation of national pride. Britain, they tell us, is a nation born from the sin of colonialism, a nation morally scarred by its historic crimes. Popular culture is awash with the self-regarding self-loathing of a cultural elite that hates its own country and the oiks who inhabit it. Little wonder that a survey of Gen Z last year found that half think Britain is a ‘racist country’. Who’s going to fight for a racist country? Let it die, no?
When will the ruling classes learn that their moral dereliction is having the most dreadful consequences? That it is making everyday life more sh*t and our future more perilous? That it is weakening the national spirit and emboldening those who hate us? I hate that my fellow citizens think our nation is not worth fighting for. I hate even more that I fully understand why.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
14 comments:
Of course people won't fight for Britain. What you failed to recognize is that Britain no longer has boarders and so is no longer a country. Britain has already been invaded and there is nothing left to fight for.
The point of this article for New Zealand is that we also are being taken over by racial radicals and, like the British government, our government has not stopped that. In both cases it is perfectly doable, but they just won't do it and I don't know why.
"Why would people fight for this Britain? What would they be fighting for? " Exactly - as a 3rd generation veteran of the UK armed forces I wonder why we ever bothered.
I am rather curious about the representativeness of this poll. Fifty-two percent claiming ineligibility to fight owing to age or disability suggests that the sample was seriously skewed.
With apologies to those who are well up on sampling theory, allow me to point out why this is important. You ask a thousand people whether they prefer spuds, pasta or rice as a staple and get a certain response distribution. But in order to be reasonably sure that the same distribution would arise should you ask everyone living in that country, say 50 million, you would need to ensure that your sample of a thousand was not in any way biased towards or against certain groups (the term 'biased' in this context has no 'moral' connotation). This is actually a very tall order, as any stats analyst will tell you.
I would like to know not how many 'citizens' but how many ethnic Anglo-Saxons and Celts took part and what their views were. Believe it or not, but there are parts of the UK now where ethnic Brits are in a minority - e.g. 37% in London City and 43% in Birmingham. Here's a wager on my part: I'll bet you a pound to a peanut all-'ethnic' Brit samples would give you very different figures including a much higher willingness to fight.
Aw shucks, that's 'racist', we can't do that. So we'll just have to see what was once the centre of the greatest empire the world has ever seen sinking lower and lower as the invasion continues and the autogenocidalists (not a word in the dictionary, but should be) continue with their task of rooting out and destroying all ethnic pride of the British (Celtic and Anglo-Saxon) people.
They have Burnham now...more fiscal permutations to hand out money, support the anti-Russia war and Banderites, pander to voters in Muslim-strong areas, get back votes from the fake Greens and maybe the LibDems who do not know what a woman is and hanker for visa-free Remain days in the EU's increasingly autocratic uniparty morass.
Hi Barrie D. 8.30 am. When you said boarders I think you meant borders. Whilst the UK no longer has the latter, it has many, many more than enough of the former.
......... but what do you call a boarder whom you pay to sojourn with you?
Not only free rent and tucker but also health care, education and pocket money.
We'll just have to invent a new name for them.
Sorry about that, I really must get a dikshunry. A further similarity occurred to me.
Obviously, the reason why migrants are going to Britain rather than staying in France is because of the accommodation and benefits. If they stop that, the boats will stop.
Similarly, here, the more people complain, the more stuff they get. If we stop giving stuff to people just because they complain, they will stop complaining and we will save unnecessary costs.
Our governments need to use the sticks and carrots of population management. Of course the woke will complain, but it is fair and reasonable.
I have read quite extensively about WW2. The willingness of Brits to place life at great risk for the country was remarkable. Most aircrew were volunteers yet loss rate was near 100 % unless flying in active areas was interrupted. The worst aspects of Nazism were nor initially common knowledge. Nowadays Hitler could likely have sold the prospect of being a near partner fellow Anglo Saxon in the control of Europe and Russia. Schoolchildren were brought up on loyaty to the nation. All knew of the Pompeii soldier who stayed at his post. And of the boy at Jutland who stayed and died (pointlessly) by his gun.The prospect of fighting to preserve effective maori domination of NZ would not inspire me or descendants. Some might welcome the order and industry of the Chinese. when they decide to invade.
Imagine if you lived in a country where you were both indigenous and a despised piece of white sh*t and a second class citizen. Why would you fight for this?
I imagine it's much the same as living in a country where you are not indigenous but a despised piece of white sh*t and a second-class citizen.
But I get your point.
Oh come on everyone, if Britain is invaded the Govt could ask the invading army to do it on a Saturday and have them interrupt a Soccer/Football Game which "should get the armies on the terraces" rocked up in anger, that their beloved game is interrupted, thus they need to deal with said invader.
Yup having visions of an Arsenal vs Tot Hot Spurs game being the target and both ends of the pitch erupt.
Sorry, have someone looking over my shoulder, reading my comment and saying - "Dream on".
Mike Tyson said it best 'until someone punches you in the face you don't know what you will do'! The British would rally around their country. Look at how Canadians have reacted to the Trump threats and learn! Trump has done a great job of uniting Canadians.
Anon @ 6:06 and Barry @ 6:46
You make me feel right at home here. I fit your profiles perfectly.
"Putin will be over the moon."
Oh, you Poms! In virtue of what would you think that any Russians give a tinker's toss about you? You're simply not important at all, not worth the effort.
I have family in the UK. They can't explain their Russophobia, either. The culmination of many years of propaganda, by the looks.
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