Over the weekend, your correspondent was in London at the Battle of Ideas festival (a slimmed down version of which Gript Media will be helping to bring to Dublin in the coming months) to discuss a fairly hefty topic: Integration into what – Immigration and multiculturalism.
That is a big topic – perhaps the most pressing facing western society right now, as immigration soars to the top of the political agenda in dozens of western nations. I was, in truth, somewhat daunted about what to say, and I hadn’t prepared remarks at all by late on Saturday night, being due to speak on Sunday.
And then, walking into the venue – in Westminster – on Sunday morning, I spied, on the wall, a photograph of Charles III, in his official portrait, in the full dress uniform of a Field Marshal of the British Army, and it hit me: When it comes down to it, being British is about being on the King’s side on a field of battle, should it ever come to that. That’s why he’s pictured in military uniform, rather than a coat and tails. That’s why he’s on the wall – it’s not because Charles, bless him, is a snappy dresser.
In Ireland, we obviously owe Charles no loyalty (a point I firmly made in my speech, lest any of you doubt me) but we have totems of loyalty of our own. A person making an application for naturalized citizenship must swear the following oath (emphasis mine): “I (name) having applied to the Minister for Justice for a certificate of naturalisation, hereby solemnly declare my fidelity to the Irish nation and my loyalty to the State. I undertake to faithfully observe the laws of the State and to respect its democratic values.”
This question of national loyalty isn’t something that we talk about much in the west, in part because in most western societies the governing classes are overtly uncomfortable with displays of patriotism. Patriotism – and certainly self-identifying as a patriot – are widely disdained by our alleged intellectual betters as low-status activities. The globalist world is a post-nationalist one.
The oath an Irish applicant is asked to take is interesting and instructive: Note the words, “fidelity” to the nation, and “loyalty” to the state. Loyalty is clearly the stronger word, and it is directed at the state – the institutions – more than it is directed at the nation. The state is directed by the elected Government, and you are asked to give it your loyalty. This matters – and it is right and proper.
The only reason that we have states, and nations, in the first place, is because the people living within them share common bonds of kinship and culture that lead them to establish a state for the purpose of their own protection. The Irish nation always existed – there was no war ever fought to establish it. Our war of independence was a war to establish a state of our own, not a nation. We had the nation already and would keep one tomorrow even if the institutions of the state were transformed into something else entirely.
In the debate about multiculturalism, it seems to me that the question of loyalty is often omitted, and it’s a big question: Can two completely different cultures be truly loyal to the same thing? We should know the answer to this more than perhaps any state on earth, since the northern six counties is perhaps the best example of a bi-cultural state anywhere else in the world, and the resounding answer in Northern Ireland is that those two cultures, at least, cannot and do not share a common loyalty to the state. This is the very thing that makes Northern Ireland dysfunctional, is it not?
In recent months, London in particular, and to a lesser extent Dublin, have been convulsed by mass protests about the Middle East. The following observation is not a commentary on the correctness or incorrectness of those protests, but on their makeup: In the UK, while there are people of all backgrounds who hold strong views on the middle east, the demographic makeup of the protest movement has been overwhelmingly representative of one migrant culture, or group of cultures: Middle Eastern Muslims. It has also been true in the Dublin protests that while middle eastern Muslims are not the majority, they are disproportionately represented.
There is no doubt that a great many migrants to western countries of middle eastern descent share strong feelings of kinship and commonality with Palestinians, and that – on the visual evidence – these feelings are disproportionately stronger than those of most of the people they share the country with.
This is not the only example. At the weekend, it was reported that Gardai seized in Ireland – though without making any arrests – €100,000 in cash that they reportedly believe may have been destined for Islamist extremists overseas. Though no charges have been laid against anybody at this point in time, it is clearly the case that somebody residing here – especially if they have taken an oath of loyalty to the state – who is raising money for armed groups overseas does not owe their primary loyalty to the Irish state.
Nor are these questions, of course, limited to Muslims, and though both examples above cite Muslims, this article should not be read as singling them out. In the UK for example we have seen occasional violence break out in places like Leicester between Muslims and Hindus – often with Hindus as the alleged aggressor – which are related to the ongoing territorial dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
If second and third generation migrants to the UK are fighting in the streets over whether India or Pakistan should rule Kashmir, are either truly loyal – first and foremost – to their King?
These questions may not matter in the short term, but they go to the heart of why states were invented and sustained and why statehood became the model for organising societies. For a state to be functional, it is generally necessary for almost all the people in that state to feel as if they owe the state – and therefore each other – ties of common loyalty. Loyalty to the state and its flags and emblems are simulacra for our common loyalty to each other. My political opponent and I may disagree passionately over something, but at the end of the day we share a common loyalty and would die together in the trench for the same flag. This is the basic glue that keeps us all together and should, in theory, prevent civil war and societal unrest.
Yet loyalty appears – our oath aside – to be a dirty word. I would argue it is the most important word, for we can not all live together if we do not share some common bond of ultimate loyalty.
Of course, in the west, we tend to do something very strange: We invite tens of thousands of foreigners to come to our country, and then we talk it down: British schools and universities, and their Irish counterparts, teach whole courses which are often founded on the idea that British and Irish society is institutionally racist, or historically racist, and that migrants are trampled and that their countries were exploited.
It’s a strange thing to do, when you think about it: Bring a lot of people to your country who do not share, on a fundamental tribal level, an instinctive loyalty to your country. And then to tell them all via your education system that your country is horrible to them.
Anyway, this is the gist of what I said to the Battle of Ideas on Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure there’s a conclusion here – I’m just not sure it’s something we think about enough.