David Betz, Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, caused a stir in 2023 when he went public with the idea that civil war could be imminent in several European countries. It came as something of a shock even then, but now, three years later, it already seems more plausible.
Last Monday, he made a brief appearance on a weekly podcast from Middle East Forum, where he first gave a twenty-minute introductory talk and then answered questions for half an hour.
A key focus of the discussion was Islam in the UK, where Betz identifies three key actors and two driving forces in the tension between them. The actors are the native population, the post-national elite and the non-native parallel societies that wield political power – in other words, Islam.
This gives rise to a dynamic which, in Betz’s view, creates the conditions for civil war, with the native population caught in the crossfire. The professor is razor-sharp:
Islam features in this analysis as a serious and, in my view, intractable problem when it comes to compatibility on issues such as legislation, the status of non-believers, gender and what is permissible to say. But it is not the driving force.
The driving force is the post-national elite, which has sought to bring about rapid demographic change contrary to the historical population’s consistent preference, whilst at the same time denying that this preference was legitimate.
Immigration is here the primary source of friction between what David Goodhart has termed anywheres and somewheres. The non-native population groups are involved in the ensuing conflict, but I do not really regard them as the instigators of this conflict.
The conflict I am describing has two driving forces. One is what I would describe as a ‘peasant revolt’ of the 21st century, in which large sections of the native population are rebelling against a post-national elite whom they perceive as having broken the social contract. […]
The other driving force behind the conflict is intertribal, between indigenous majorities and parallel societies that have attained sufficient density and organisation to function as distinct political actors within the same sovereign territory.
This dreadful cocktail is destroying social harmony:
These two driving forces reinforce one another. The elite’s failure to address social unrest leads to the indigenous population becoming radicalised against both the parallel societies and the authorities that allowed them to emerge. [… ]
Under sufficient pressure, the centre becomes the least stable position to occupy. That is why many people probably find it increasingly difficult to adopt a middle ground. And that is because neutrality becomes costly.
The result is political tribalisation: people feel compelled to choose a group and stick with it. Betz identifies a number of factors that pull in that direction.
The first of these is the formation of factions. Ordinary political disagreement has solidified into identity-driven polarisation in a number of countries, but particularly so here in the UK. The riots of summer 2024 showed how quickly the remaining social restraint can break down. More enduring here, I believe, is the emergence of explicitly community-based political organisation and bloc voting. In a significant number of constituencies in the UK, Muslim votes are now decisive for Labour, giving them an influence that far exceeds their share of the population – particularly in London.
Tower Hamlets is, in practice, Bangladeshi, notes Betz, who emphasises that the emergence of parallel societies took place extremely rapidly.
Tensions are escalating for several reasons, one of which is that the native population feels it is being displaced and is becoming less prosperous and secure.
The fact is that large sections of the long-established population have experienced a steady loss of security and familiar territory. The exodus of white people from city centres can be gauged by the housing markets in provincial towns – for example, anywhere with good rail links to London. The sudden influx of large numbers of immigrant men into villages and small towns that have explicitly stated they cannot accommodate them has further heightened tensions and transformed what had been a statistical trend increasingly into a daily experience of powerlessness.
A symbolically significant case, such as that of the teachers in Batley who were forced to go into hiding after showing their class a caricature of Muhammad, brings the conflict between two groups to a head: Whilst the native-born population feels aggrieved on the teacher’s behalf, the elite believe the problem is ‘Islamophobia’.
Betz exonerates the term used by the power elite to denigrate people:
Barbara Walters’ term for this is downgrading. By this she means a situation in which a formerly dominant group loses political influence and demographic weight, and this is not a temporary loss. It is a permanent loss. The French philosopher Renaud Camus called the same process ‘the great replacement’. Both the academic term and the popular expression describe one and the same change. In practice, they describe the same thing. The reluctance I imagine some listeners feel when they hear the expression ‘the Great Replacement’ is self-censorship. That is not analysis.
In the UK, moreover, the state has lost its legitimacy, the professor observes:
Laws are enforced – or not – depending on the identity of the perpetrator. Statements are monitored when they are indigenous and uncomfortable, and tolerated when they are not. Inquiries are announced into scandals that state institutions have for years refused to mention or investigate. In fact, in some cases they were complicit and subsequently failed to count the victims or take them seriously.
People vote in elections, but the decisions taken after the elections are, in any case, contrary to the people’s wishes. This is how democracy itself is delegitimised. Now, several politicians with a parliamentary majority want to reverse Brexit, which was approved by a majority of the people.
Those in power also display shocking double standards:
Proposals are circulating to require identity verification in order to post on social media, whilst at the same time the requirement for identity verification to vote in elections is being removed.
Economic factors also point towards a higher level of conflict:
Particularly amongst young people, who feel that their economic and social ambitions are being thwarted by, for example, an inability to own a home, with consequent knock-on effects on their ability to start a family, maintain stable relationships and so on. Remember that the French Revolution was driven by rising expectations amongst the bourgeoisie against a backdrop of aristocratic contempt, not by the very poorest.
Similarly, the willingness to obey the authorities has waned. From there, it can be a short step to doing things the authorities forbid, or at least speaking out in favour of them:
Recently, Major-General Julian Thompson – who is undoubtedly the finest British general since the Second World War, and who commanded the Third Commando Brigade in the Falklands War – told an interviewer that the boats in the Channel could be stopped tomorrow if we really had the courage – to quote him exactly – to shoot, and he made it clear that he meant shooting at the vessels, and that if the government did not stop them, there would be, and I quote: a revolution. The public reaction to this has so far largely been one of acquiescence. You know, a sort of collective ‘yes, of course’.
Ultimately, the elite consists of incompetent people who merely recite a script, Betz asserts.
The modern elite is a complex political, business, cultural and administrative entity. That is how one must understand it. For it is, after all, very large, isn’t it? It is not a small group, but most of its members are stewards of a script rather than the authors of that script. The script itself is post-national in its ideological outlook. It is postmodern in its distrust of inherited loyalty, and it is neoliberal in its treatment of the population as, in practice, mobile factors of production.
Some members of this elite stand firmly by the script, whilst others are already planning to flee, says Betz.
These factors do not trigger the Battle of Gettysburg, he emphasises, but they are conditions under which a civil war could be triggered.
The programme host touches on where a civil war might break out first, and then perhaps spread to other countries. Betz mentions the UK, Ireland and France as possible candidates.
No one can look at recent events in France and think: ‘Well, this is all going just fine.’ That is quite obvious, to put it mildly.
As far as the UK is concerned, Betz believes it is uncertain where the army’s loyalties will lie, and that these may be divided between the elite and the people. He also believes that the alliance between Islam and the ‘woke’ left is doomed to fail.
Betz does not venture to predict how things will end, but mentions balkanisation as one of several possible scenarios. Nor does he dismiss JD Vance’s prediction that the UK could become an Islamist state with nuclear weapons.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a Norwegian professor were to offer similarly unfiltered analyses, for example on NRK?
