Why the Right Want What Israel Has

Why we must abandon the limits of liberalism for an alliance of patriotic nations

My essay ‘Israel, Churchill, and Why We’re Still Obsessed with WW2’ debuted on

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

’s new platform, Courage.Media this week.

The essay was inspired by the discourse generated around Tucker Carlson’s interview with history podcast host Darryl Cooper. My friends and contemporaries Douglas Murray and Konstantin Kissin contributed scathing takes.

Historians Andrew Roberts and Victor Davis Hanson catalogued the factual errors in Cooper’s account. Commentators like Konstantin Kisin then accused Carlson of “Woke Rightism”: adopting contrarian opinions and White identity politics as a defensive posture against the progressive attack on the history, culture, and statehood of European peoples. Sir Niall Ferguson said, by platforming Cooper, that Carlson has become “an enabler of fascists”.

Indeed, Cooper’s revisionism prompted a Pavlovian response from those tired of seeing their heritage subject to slander, all while Hitler’s translated speeches are going viral on TikTok. Their concern is understandable: nobody right-minded wants to see a Fourth Reich emerge. But l, without inferring the motives of Cooper & Carlson, would wager the fault line here runs deeper than mere Nazi apologia.

I don’t know what is in Cooper’s head and heart, and so hesitate to attribute an insidious, evil motive to his inaccuracies. But the entire discourse was downstream of the fact that our politics is still caught in the orbit of the events of the Second World War.

This has become particularly salient since October 7th, when the avatar of Never Again, the nation of Israel, was attacked by Hamas. Under Elon Musk’s less-censorious stewardship, X has since become a theatre for debates about Israel’s response. This is because the characters and symbols of the post-War order are becoming targets for criticisms of its shortcomings.

Churchill is collateral damage in this attempt to rid ourselves of institutions well past their expiration date. The fault line for the Right is fast becoming post-War liberalism. Without recognizing and dispensing with its limits, the Right will not survive.

Such shortcomings are embodied by institutions which Europe, and Britain in particular, are constrained by, despite being well past their expiration date.

Carlson and Cooper lament how London, no longer majority English, has lost its parochial identity. I have lived here for a quarter-century, and can attest to how unpleasant my city has become. This is due to unprecedented demographic change: with 1.2 million migrants moving to a country the size of New York state every year. When a criminal foreign national is due to be deported, human rights lawyers frustrate the process with appeals to Article 8 of the ECHR. This same statute was cited in an ECHR ruling which compels all signatories to take costly climate action because hot weather violates the rights of pensioners who want to take “longer holidays”. The rights enshrined in different political and technological conditions have been strained beyond credulity, and that’s without mentioning the Soviet meddling with the UN’s Declaration. As David Starkey states, they exist now not to protect individuals, but to enable aggrieved ‘minorities’ to attack ‘majorities’. There exists a painful contradiction between the story Brits tell themselves: victors of the Second World War, but penalized by costly immigration and cultural degradation. Any complaint is met with accusations of being “Far Right”, a racist, and a Nazi.

Churchill is not the monocausal culprit of this state of affairs. But his legacy is complicated by his involvement in establishing institutions and treaties that have outlived their purpose. Some are captured entities: like the UN’s Human Rights Council, counting China, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar among its members. Others are antiquated, with the definition of “refugee” stretched to encompass billions living below Western economic standards, and Muslims who, since October 7th, have broadcast genocidal intent toward the very Jews these laws were written to protect.

The moral argument for granting to displaced European Jews their homeland is compelling; but it came at the cost of the British Empire. The funds secured by sacrificing the Mandate for Palestine founded the new state religion: the NHS. Those who use the service least pay the most into it, and were forced to sacrifice their careers and social lives to “protect” it during the COVID pandemic. Whereas Britain’s Empire lasted three hundred years and ended the transatlantic slave trade in the single most expensive humanitarian venture in history, America’s subsequent attempt to play world-police has been less successful. Failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria are within living memory for Millennials and Gen Z. It should surprise nobody that those for whom the Second World War presses less on their conscience are most inclined to question the shortcomings of its resulting consensus.

Not only is this the ideology embedded in Europe’s laws and institutions, but it also governs both its left- and right-wing political parties.

Jewish-American academic Yoram Hazony charts how William F. Buckley Jr. and Frank Meyer brought free-market liberals, Christian conservatives, and foreign policy hawks into coalition against Soviet communism. Fusionism, the movement which delivered Ronald Reagan the presidency, was ideologically liberal. As was its British counterpart, Thatcherism: borrowing heavily from Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Having fled Austria in 1932, Hayek warned “it is Germany whose fate we [in Europe] are in some danger of repeating”. Anxiety around the return of Nazism, as the apex predator of collectivism, animated conservative anti-communism more than a desire to conserve a given national culture. Hence why Thatcher once said, “There is no such thing as society” — only free floating atoms with competing self-interests, bound together by the coincidence of geography.

This abstinence from cultural preference comes from the antagonistic relationship between nature and culture in classical liberalism. Both Thatcherism and Fusionism shared an anthropology of man’s natural state being a free rational actor, with any limit on his autonomous choices equated with oppression. Just as the state exists as an uneasy compromise to secure private property, Patrick Deneen points out that culture is treated as a deterioration from man’s egalitarian source. The enterprise of liberalism becomes divining universal values to overcome cultural differences, and resolve all conflicts. It aimed to spread the self-evident truth of these values through economic prosperity. The “Golden Arches Theory” promised free-market capitalism could avert another World War. Both Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall lent legitimacy to Francis Fukuyama’s claim that liberal democracy had brought us to the End of History.

The ideologies that followed — neoconservatism in the US, and neoliberalism in the UK — share these premises. Emily Finley explains how Leo Strauss, patron intellectual of neoconservatives, sought to “transcend the actual” of culture, custom, and tradition with universally applicable values. Matthew Goodwin establishes the ideological connective tissue between Thatcher’s fiscal libertarianism and Tony Blair’s social liberalism in Values, Voice and Virtue. Hence why Thatcher named Blair as the element of her legacy she was proudest of. All shared the view that human nature is subject to economic and educational circumstances.

This has resulted in a political and social climate that refuses to draw distinctions between peoples, cultures, and religions. Post-War liberalism, adopted to prohibit the horrors of Nazi racism from being repeated, has now become an auto-immune disorder: immobilising the traditions which prompted the Allies to fight Hitler against imported indigestible hostile subcultures — such as anti-white racism and Islam.

Post-War liberalism unilaterally disarmed Europe of the right to exercise an in-group preference for respective countries’ cultures, histories, and peoples. It compelled us to treat everyone with the false anthropology of the Blank Slate: as if all cultural, geographical, and biological differences are inconsequential, and easily remedied by technocrats turning the dials of education and economic opportunity. Liberalism is recalcitrant to recognise how involuntary factors — like ethnic and cultural heritage — may influence one’s likelihood of buying into a civilization’s story. It has, paradoxically, placed upon Europe the burden of unique, non-expungable guilt for past atrocities, thinning out its history to a list of grievances requiring recompense. Such optimism is the furthest thing from Nazi racial determinism; but sacrifices the ability to stake a claim in any one conception of the good. Liberalism is, as James Burnham said, “the ideology of Western suicide”.

The solution? To abandon this Blank Slate, culture-blind liberalism, in favour of a national tribalism — akin to that practiced by Israel. Despite condemnation from international institutions, captured by its enemies, Israel has chosen to wage war on the terrorists who perpetrated October 7th, and secure the safety of its people in the future.

Israel also has lots of traits that we on the traditionalist right in the West have come to admire — and even envy.

This, too, is a source of tension within the Right. There is a perception that the prosperity of Israel comes at the expense of Europe and America. Like Churchill, it has become an avatar of the prices paid for the post-War order. As demographer Paul Morland notes, though Israel is surrounded by enemies on all sides, its high levels of religiosity, above-replacement birth rate, strong ethnic and cultural cohesion, and competitive GDP-per-capita are all enviable. Essentially, we want what Israel has. Unease comes from a feeling of not being allowed to have it; particularly when the writings of some Jews are taken to represent all Jews.

In order to do this, Europeans and Anglosphere countries must be allowed to abandon liberalism, and to dismantle institutions and treaties which have become unfit for purpose.

Europeans should not be cajoled into dissolving their distinct identities in a multicultural melting pot. These European host majorities are the most likely to accommodate friendly Jewish minorities. These bonds of friendship between tribes are what protect them — not nebulous liberal values. These European majorities should be allowed to abandon the captured institutions of the post-War order. Nor should they be expected to accommodate Gazans displaced by Israel’s war with Hamas. But they should also give guarantees to allied minorities, to soothe (mercifully needless) anxieties that a Fourth Reich lurks just around the corner.

By understanding that it is allied tribes — friendly host majorities — rather than a set of abstract liberal principles which protect Jewish minorities, then a guarantee may be given to those who fear an unapologetic consciousness of a people as a people that they will not ineluctably mutate into Nazis.

You can read the full essay here, on Courage.Media.

I also discussed this topic with Benjamin Boyce last month.

Liberalism can't defend against those exact kind of resentful tribal minorities because it assumes it has — as the apotheosis of Enlightenment philosophy — an ineluctable power to digest those indigestible elements.

The problem is, at the moment, that it's trying to hit blend on on the Multicultural blender, and it it make a sludge that it tells you is really healthy, but the least liberal element has the most bitter aftertaste which is overpowering everything.

We discussed why the term “Woke Right” doesn’t apply to the groups or figures that yesterday’s liberals are attempting to gatekeep out of conversations on the conservative wing of politics. (Expect an article in The Critic on that topic soon.)

Woke, according to Eric Kaufmann, means making “sacred totems [out] of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identity groups.” Its means of doing so, as literal communist Ash Sarkar said, is “the redistribution of power, wealth, and land along race, gender, and class lines.” (Somewhat of a tautology, as Sarkar redefined “working class” to mean “diverse” students.) Essentially, Woke is LGBT Race Communism — downstream of the both Marxist and liberal belief that all human beings are born free and equal, and the inequalities of capitalism and culture have pried us away from that utopian state of nature. As such Wokeness is a way of discriminating against majority populations in favour of resentful minorities, in order to achieve absolute equality. The shared premises of Enlightenment philosophies is why liberals frequently cave to Woke demands. Therefore, if the only bulwark against Wokeness is the particular traditions of peoples situated in a time and place, and Christianity (as the only religion they hate, for not placing the power to remake Heaven on Earth in the hands of men), then nobody on the traditionalist Christian right can be “Woke”.

I was also interviewed about this topic by Ralphh Schoellhammer for Brussels Signal — bringing the topics covered in my Courage Media essay to a European audience.

During the conversation, Ralph used

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

as the example of an immigrant who has not only integrated into Europe and the US (abiding by their laws, and contributing to their economies) but also assimilated completely: renouncing her previous citizenship, joining the heritage of the host population by marrying and having children with a native, and venerating their culture and religion.

However, Ayaan’s admirable example is a rare one. In multicultural Europe, new arrivals are actively discouraged from adopting the ideals and identity of their new home. Instead, they are encouraged to recreate the conditions of the failed states that they fled, while also demanding resources be redistributed to them by the host population. In effect, they live at odds with the host culture, while relying on that same culture being practiced by the natives in order to provide them subsistence.

This lucrative extortion racket now has an international scope. As I discussed with Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV this week, fifteen Caribbean countries are demanding between £206 billion and £19 trillion in reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Bear in mind: Britain spent 17,000 lives, and more between 1807-1867 than it received in profits between 1767 - 1807, on freeing 150,000 African slaves. It was the single most expensive foreign aid venture in history — with historians estimating it cost British taxpayers a minimum of £250,000 per annum – which equates to £1.367–1.74 billion, or 9.1–11.5 per cent of the UK’s expenditure on development aid (circa 2019).

No calls are made for reparations from sub-Saharan Africa, who sold >24 million of their countrymen into slavery; nor from Arabic countries, whose slave trade sold 11 to 17 million slaves — and is still going on today.

No attention is paid to the concentration camps run by Barbados and Mauritius' partner, China, either.

It's because hostile tribal minorities in the West, and failed former-colonial states know they can play on the White guilt of liberal politicians to extort resources with claims of oppression that won't work elsewhere.

Speaking of Israel and tribal ethnic minorities…

The Conservative Party leadership election is ongoing. I wrote about it, in the context of Conservative Party Conference, for

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

’s Restoration Bulletin two weeks ago.

Would the Last Person Please Turn the Lights Off?

The essay is now available to read on Courage.Media, too.

As the leadership ballots go out, members have been vocal about being persuaded by Kemi Badenoch’s pitch. However, on Tomlinson Talks this week, I explained why what she’s offering with talk of boilerplate “British Values” is too thin a conception of national identity to deal with the challenges posed by mass immigration.

Herself a self-identified first-generation immigrant, who ran as “a Nigerian”, on a ticket of Nigerian interests, for Parliament in 2010, Badenoch has explained the need for an “integration strategy” in an article for the Telegraph.

But what is her definition of “British Values”?

there is a feeling amongst politicians from all parties that talking about immigration in terms of culture as opposed to economics is controversial. The fear of being labelled xenophobic or “culture warriors” leads many to say “People don’t mind immigration as long as it is legal and those who come here work hard and stay out of trouble”. This is a very low bar for deciding who comes into our country.’ […]

You cannot police, plan or provide public services if you don’t know how many people are in your nation or due to come. There’s a reason that infrastructure seems to be creaking – despite the amount we’ve spent. It’s because demand has shot up faster. A migrant can arrive with their possessions and their skills but can’t bring a new home, hospital bed or school place.

What they can bring is their culture.

Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It’s also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnichostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here.

I have no strong feelings on Israel. I’ve never been there. I have Jewish friends who would like to see its security guaranteed, and so I’m happy with that — so long as it doesn't come at Britain’s expense. I’ve explained above, in my essay, about how Israel may be a model for a rejuvenation of British ethnic, religious, and cultural identity.

But the benchmark for whether or not someone is or isn’t British is not loyalty to another country — even if that country is a symbol of our involvement in the Second World War, and particularly not as it has come to represent the shortcomings of that post-War order.

Kemi clearly thinks of it in the latter respect, because, when questioned about this by Laura Kuenessberg, she summed up “British Values” as:

the things that we talked about freedom, equal rights, personal responsibility, not discriminating people because of their sexual orientation. There are some cultures that do that. I don't think that a culture that thinks gay people should be stoned is as valid as ours.

None of those things are objectionable. I have gay friends, and work to ensure their wellbeing. However, Britain was Britain before the state of Israel came to be, and gay marriage was passed into law; and it will still be Britain if those things were to go away.

British values are nothing more than the beliefs held by British people — which may change over time, while the people remain the same.

As I wrote in an earlier article:

Despite the geographically-particular prefix, those values are universal, liberal, pluralistic, tolerant, multicultural, and embodied by the institutions which espouse them. They are not the property or invention of a particular people. One need only buy into “British values” to be British. […]

So, a man who has lived in Lagos all his life, but believes in freedom of private practice of religion and common law, is now more English than King John: born in England, but who required Magna Carta to constrain his tyrannical rule. This is absurd. We can recognise the Nigerian chap may well make a better neighbour, but that he is not because of this more “British” than someone whose ancestors were born here. Nor is this observation a moral judgement of our Nigerian friend.

And note that none of these things are particular to Britain. It’s no wonder that Kemi cannot articulate a particular defence of Britain, when she defines conservatism as maintaining liberalism:

Asked to define conservatism, she says: “Conservatism, for me, is about personal responsibility, a belief in individuals, in families, to have more control and freedom over their lives, rather than the government making all of the decisions for them.

Again, Cold-War-era liberal platitudes, which are insufficient for our internal clash of civilisations, caused by the mass immigration that Kemi Badenoch personally lobbied to conduct.

Both the Conservative Party, and the West (Europe and the Anglosphere) more broadly must abandon the post-War order, rediscover their particular national traditions, and pick friends to form tribal alliances against their barbaric, Woke, and Islamic enemies. Else the remains of what we have inherited will be pillaged and burned by the revolutionaries the liberal paradigm has made possible.