The Naton State

Modern Heretics

12 June 201930 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi.*

When the New York Times recently published a prominent ~~hit piece~~ article entitled The Making of a Youtube Radical, it featured a collage of hate-filled internet bigots as its front splash. Dangerous demagogues like Jewish Nazi Ben Shapiro and openly gay (also Jewish) erstwhile Young Turk Dave Rubin were finally exposed to the light of civilised society. Other illuminati of the Intellectual Dark Web included such shadowy and menacing figures as gun toting Bill Whittle and the clearly deranged Stefan Molyneux, who earned himself no fewer than three mugshots in that montage. Now we know who the mainstream media really fears.

As the New York Times watches its bottom line swirling round the same drain that swallowed its reputation in 2016, it has been reduced to the kind of childish finger pointing and false equivalence which is rightly derided across the serious debating chambers of cyberspace. This desperate attempt to mix dissenters of every stripe into a synthetic moral panic around some sinister and imminent Alt Right threat (cue evil laugh) is a glaring admission of their own failure to engage and persuade. The once mighty media establishment has been reduced to the status of a young Dave Lister, who describes everything he sees as crypto fascist, despite not having the first clue as to what that obscure phrase even means.

Brexit

It’s Class Consciousness, Jim, but not as we know it!

27 May 201930 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

The earth has heaved and the landscape can never return to its previous contours. Maps must be redrawn and a new language for navigation established following the seismic results of the European elections. Today the world looks different across the continent, not just in Britain.

The stunning success of the Brexit Party here in the UK is clearly driven by a deep seated resentment at the shameless shenanigans of our political class over the last three years. However, this uniquely British problem alone does not explain the triumph of Le Pen’s National Rally, Salvini’s Le ga or Kaczyński’s Law and Jus tice party to name but a few.

There can be no denying it any longer. National identity, Euroscepticism and populism are on the rise across the continent in a way that transcends language, custom and cultural differences. Whilst Farage’s Brexit Party shares some similarities with other Eurosceptic movements, there are also many differences between them. What binds them together in opposition to the centrist dominance of past decades is what Marxists would recognise as a growing sense of class consciousness.

It’s so much bigger than just Brexit. Here in Britain, what began as a poorly defined sense of alienation has developed into a clear realisation that a large percentage of the population are viewed as little more than dangerously ignorant tax fodder by the established political class. As a result of this realisation, the Brexiteers’ trust in political and cultural institutions has collapsed, to be replaced by an understanding that organisation and confrontation are the only viable methods to achieve their broader political and cultural goals.

My Favourite Memetic Movies

Fight Club (1999)

20 May 201930 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

“It was right in everyone’s face, Tyler and I just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue, Tyler and I just gave it a name.”

That incredibly prescient line from the multi-faceted Fight Club (1999) succinctly captures an embryonic cultural revolt which had already been gestating for years by the time Brad Pitt and Edward Norton took to the screen. The brilliance of Jim Uhls’ far-sighted scripting lies in the way it captures an underlying idea which was not fully formed at the turn of the millennium. Whether wittingly or otherwise, his dramatisation of a fictional revolt against every aspect of our pearl clutching cultural norms gave us a glimpse over the horizon and into the 21st century. Indeed, the fundamental cultural questions Fight Club explores are still far from settled, although we now at least have some idea of what the future might look like.

If Fight Club had simply been a movie about a bunch of guys being blokeish and hiding from society’s disapproving gaze, then it still would’ve been pretty entertaining. However, what elevates this film to a near mythical and certainly memetic category is how the fighting is merely one expression of a far deeper, over-arching and more profound existential rebellion. Throughout the movie, that insurgency grows into a philosophy or creed of sorts as the instigators of Project Mayhem take revenge on a society which sees the servicing of consumer debt as sufficient reason for a man’s existence.

Brexit

Theresa’s Going Nowhere

5 May 20191 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

It should surprise nobody that our airwaves are abuzz with analyses of this week’s local election results. With over 1,300 Conservative councillors suddenly separated from their expense accounts, it’s inevitable that more than a couple of columnists have noticed that the Tories have returned their worst local election results since the rout of John Major in 1995. We all know what happened a couple of years later when New Labour swept all before them.

While this is a useful yardstick to measure the scale of the catastrophe, the simple arithmetic glosses over a deeper and more fundamental connection those two electoral nightmares. This is a case where superficial differences hide a deeper and more fundamental thread of continuity.

That thread is, of course, the European Union and Britain’s perennially uneasy place inside it.

It’s worth noting that Margaret Thatcher survived the miners’ strike, the Falklands gamble and even the Poll Tax fiasco, but it was her steadfast opposition to the Maastricht Treaty and the creation of the European Union that finally galvanised her own party to wield the knife. Pundits can wax lyrical about Michael Heseltine’s principled stance on the Westland issue, but it’s no coincidence that he’s now uttering his ermine-collared judgements on the horrors of Brexit from the safety of the upper chamber. That a senior frontbencher would knowingly weaken his own party in order to remove a major obstacle to European integration should tell you much about the true loyalties of the Tory grandees.

Politics

A Tale of Two Idealogues

15 April 20191 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

Whisper it, but there’s an alarming degree of similarity between the leaders of our two biggest political parties right now.

It’s a matter of some conjecture as to whether this situation is pure happenstance, or the inevitable result of party machine politics backed by big donors and special interests. I’ve written extensively on how the dual pressures of Brexit specifically and rising populism generally have forced many special interests to finally show us their true colours. In some ways the results have been entirely predictable, although probably a lot worse than many of us would’ve liked to guess. Perhaps one of the biggest scandals emerging from this whole situation is the startling similarity between the two party leaders, who claim to be implacable enemies.

Jeremy Corbyn’s distaste for the modern capitalist West is well documented, so there’s no reason to regurgitate the rap sheet in this column. Suffice to say that whenever there’s a conflict of interests, his gut instincts always align with those who wish to do his native country harm. Support for a controversial cause like Irish republicanism could be excused as principled if it were a one-off, but when it’s part of a decades-old pattern of behaviour, we must conclude that some overarching world view is informing Corbyn’s thinking. In short, the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition believes that 21st-century Britain is somehow an enemy of freedom and a threat to the rest of the world.