PREVIEW： Realpolitik #21 ｜ How to Fix Britain With Northern Variant
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Summary
In this episode of RealPolitik, I am joined by Peter North, a Northern Vevolutionist and a regular contributor to the right-wing media, to discuss the differences between ethno-nationalism and civic nationalism.
Transcript
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Hello, welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Maldad. I'm joined today
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by a very special guest, Peter North, Northern Variant. You all know him on X, you all follow
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him. One of the most astute commentators on British politics on the right, and always
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very, very realistic, to the extent that he upsets some people by being too realistic.
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And that's why I thought it's very important to hear from him, understand his perspective,
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learn from him, and see what he has to say. Pete, thank you so much for joining me.
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My pleasure. My pleasure. Tell me a little bit more about you. You don't exactly fit as
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an ethno-nationalist, and you don't exactly fit as a civic nationalist. Tell me a little
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bit about the evolution on your thinking on the question of nationality. Because I know
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at some point you were closer to the civic nationalist position.
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Yes. But you are also not a pure blood and soil ethno-nationalist. You're somewhere
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in the middle. Help me understand this, please.
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I'm not 100% sure I do understand it myself. This is part of the self-analysis that I've put
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myself under for the last couple of years. The thinking I was doing was along the lines of
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what is the actual difference between ethno-nationalism and civic nationalism in policy terms. Now,
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take civic nationalism. This is predicated on some notion of civic identity and these
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British values. Well, who defines what those British values are? And assuming we could have that debate and
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agree on something, well, these British values are going to be contemporary. They're going to be
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liberal. And so then if you take it upon yourself to define these values as the basis of your society,
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then it requires two things from you on a policy basis. You have to demand certain sacrifices of
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incomers that they buy into your civic identity and that you defend those values robustly.
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And these are the two things that the multicultural state is not willing to do.
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And so in order to enforce these kinds of things, you say, if you're coming in from
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the third world, you leave your third world cultural practices at the door. No, you can't wear a hijab.
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No, you can't eat halal. No, you can't do... You set what you believe in because, you know,
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British contemporary mindset is we don't like animal cruelty. We want our women to have the same rights
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and freedoms as the rest of us. We want gays to be able to live their own lives according to
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their own needs and desires within the law. This is the basis of our modern liberal society. But of
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course, though Britain is predicated on these liberal values, liberalism is dying. So you then
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get a situation where the civic identity based on these liberal ideas is a gulf away from where the
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people actually are. And in fact, we're already there. There is already a massive gulf between what
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ordinary working class voters think and where the progressive liberal Blairite Labour Party is.
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And the two now actively despise each other. And so there's no basis for a civic contract there.
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And so I then started thinking about how you would further enforce this civic nationalism.
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You would have to shutter the mosques that are preaching radical Islam, which is rather a lot of
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them. You would have to expel the 40,000 or so on the terror watch list. You know, ban halal,
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do all these inherently authoritarian things, which would be authoritarian in the defense of liberalism.
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Um, and when you actually look at, uh, remigration strategies, um, put forth by the ethno-right,
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um, the, the two are remarkably similar. They are 95% the same. Now, so what, where I start veering
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towards the ethno-right is when, uh, when civic nationalism was being mooted, it was, uh, around
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2003 as a replacement to, um, multiculturalism because it was, the debate was very much around
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multiculturalism has failed even then. And it brought about authors like, uh, Melanie Phillips
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and her Londonistan book. And, um, quite a lot of the commentators at the time were all saying
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multiculturalism has failed. We need a replacement for it. And at the time the BNP was rising and this
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was the politics that was beyond the pale. So we, we needed a, a mechanism that people, ordinary people
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could buy into and see the logic of. And civic nationalism in its own right is one that seeks
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to be fair to the outsider, to bring them in, to call them part of our family, uh, uh, our national
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collective and to creative framework where everybody's operating on the same page. And superficially,
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uh, that's fair and that's right. And that's where I'd like to be. That's Britain's character
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in terms of our generosity. But, uh, there comes a point where the, the, the scales start to tip
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where, um, you have third world migrants arriving in this country. They move to the cities where the
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economic opportunities are, where there are people who speak their language and practice their faith.
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So they integrate in with their own, their offspring, go to schools where their children
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are not immersed in British culture, um, because they're not, they're not among British people. Yes.
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And so you can have your confected rituals of teaching your pupils how to sing all verses of
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Jerusalem and sing, God save the King in assemblies. Um, but to be truly integrated, um, and we did have
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integration. I remember growing up in Bradford, um, I would say about 10 to 15% were Asian students,
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uh, um, pupils, um, there'd be Muslims, there'd be Hindus, uh, Indians, um, and they would become
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our friends. They didn't have a choice because they were outnumbered and they had to adopt,
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uh, our slang. Uh, they had to watch the same television programs. Um, not least cause there
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were only four channels, but, uh, they were being immersed in British culture, not just the, uh,
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not just the bureaucratic definition of British values, teaching, uh, teaching Britishness as a,
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uh, as a module in a, uh, an education curriculum. You really have to be, uh, around British people
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to understand it. And, uh, that was possible, um, around, you know, 1990 to the year 2000 at that
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particular rate of immigration. Cause I think the 91 census still has us about 95% white, uh, that
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starts to radically change. And as I say, kids, kids from migrant families are growing up with very
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little exposure. The only actual white British person, uh, that they'll meet are the four or
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five remaining kids who, uh, who go to that school either because their parents don't particularly care
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enough to get them out of there, uh, or they're too poor to move. Um, because generally as a rule,
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anyone who can get away does this explains white flight. And this isn't, um, this is just human
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nature. People seek out their own kind. We, uh, uh, uh, we are gradually abandoning our cities,
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moving to the shires. You're seeing the population of North Yorkshire expanding because it's people
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moving away from Bradford and Leeds because they're seeking the safety and the familiarity of their own
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people. Same as foreigners coming into this country will go to the cities where they can find
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their own people. So you're getting to the point where there's nothing left to integrate with.
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And as such, the integration process that was happening is now in reverse. Yes. And you're now
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starting to see, um, that there was a time when the Pakistanis was starting to integrate into Bradford.
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They would drop their Punjabi, Punjabi shop signs and you'd see an Anglicization of Pakistani culture
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in Bradford. And you believed it was possible on a long enough timeline, but now that's not happening.
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They're reverting to wearing the ethnic garb of their home country, speaking and actually campaigning
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in, uh, at general elections. And I noticed this, I was at a new, I think I was speaking, uh, or attending
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a new culture forum meeting in Newcastle. I thought I'll make a day of it. So I went up, uh, and had a
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drive through, um, Sunderland on the way cause never been thought of being nice to take a look. And this was
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just before the general election. And what I expected to see in Sunderland was rows and rows of,
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uh, labor posters in windows. Cause it's a traditional labor stronghold working class area.
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Um, sorry, what year was this? Uh, last year, um, uh, last election. Yeah. Uh, and I would have
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expected even in its current state, I would have expected to see the odd labor poster or billboard
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here and there. Um, or maybe reform even, but actually the reality, no outward sign there was
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even an election happening at all. But you drive the great, drive down the Great Horton Road in Bradford
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and it's a sea of electioneering and it's all, every single poster, billboard has got a candidate,
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um, and something about Gaza and the Palestine flag. And this is this alien politics that's growing
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up in our cities. And so this is the beginnings of, uh, ulsterization. Yes. We are seeing the
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fragmentation, this great melting pot that we were promised by Tony Blair, um, and a little bit
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before that all the dogmas about, you know, we all, we're all essentially British. We're not.
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And this is, uh, uh, all of this was based on a conceit and it was a conceit that we went along
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with out of politeness because it is in our nature to be generous. Yes. And we still want to be that
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way. We still want, but we can't be because you start bumping into the reality that not only are
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they not integrating, they don't want to, and even if they did want to, they couldn't. So, um, this puts
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me outside of the realms of civic nationalism because I no longer believe that a viable civic
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identity can be established that everyone will buy into because it will demand of white English people
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that they give up something of their own identity in order to accommodate foreigners. But that would
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only work if foreigners were also willing to give up something of their religious and ethnic identity
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in order to form this, this, uh, mythical, uh, melting pot, melting pot utopia. It hasn't happened.
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It's not going to happen. And so you are seeing manifested in the politics. Increasingly, you see
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ethnic minority enclaves electing, uh, people on an ethnic basis to do with issues in Gaza or their
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home countries. And they come to parliament to lobby for things in their own ethnic interest. They
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come to parliament to lobby for a new airport in the backhills of Pakistan. Uh, and so my parliament,
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our parliament has become this internationalist arena for, uh, ethnic grievances, gripes, and agendas.
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The only sort of United nations instead of a British. Yes. Yeah, essentially. And where we're getting
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to now is everybody, uh, I noticed, um, I don't know her name, but, uh, just a couple of weeks ago,
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uh, uh, a black Caribbean MP sitting there in her ethnic garb standing up talking about reparations.
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And it's like, I'm just thinking, oh, we're on the hook again, uh, another immigrant community
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with a handout. And then I look at this and think, well, who is the ethnicity, uh, that is not
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represented in this parliament? And of course it's the white English people, because you've got the
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Lib Dems who will always go to bat for foreigners. White English people are at the absolute bottom of the
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list of any priority, um, for labor Lib Dems and to a large extent, the Tories. And I, I just kind of
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think, um, uh, uh, we, for some reason, this is permissible for ethnic minorities to form their own
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ethnic voting blocks, their own, uh, enclaves, their own power bases, their own agendas, their own
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lobbying bases. So we get foreign funding coming in, uh, to places like, uh, Tower Hamlets and Bradford
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funding certain international agendas. Um, we need to be alert to this. This is national security threat
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kind of thing. Uh, and yet this is permissible and it's all part of diversity and multiculturalism.
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And we're supposed to welcome all of this. It's a bit of diversity upon, but of course,
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it's subordinates our own politics and our own ethnic interests and subverts them.
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Yeah. Yes. Um, I never wanted, uh, yeah, I've always been suspicious of blood and soil ethno
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nationalism because it is the gateway to a darker politics. And, um, if I'm in a room full of ethno
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nationalists, um, not all of them are bad people, not all of them have got ugly politics. Um,
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just people who have arrived at that position through the same logical process I have.
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But if you walk into that room, you're, you know, you're in the company of some dark politics and
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places that you wouldn't necessarily want to go. I've certainly noticed there's a,
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a, uh, a seam of quite vicious antisemitism that just, it just creeps me out to the extent that I,
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um, the more right wing and doctrinally pure the ethno right gets, the less I want to have
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anything to do with it. But I don't see anything intellectually coherent about the current civic
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nationalism. So I occupy the space in between that doesn't actually have a definition.
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And I think it's just the sensible center and forgive you for interrupting you.
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For, for somebody from the Middle East, what does being British mean? It means somebody who's
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It means somebody with British ancestry. What does somebody Chinese mean? Somebody who
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looks Chinese, speaks Chinese, is Chinese. And these things to the rest of the world are extremely
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self-evident. Um, you, you look at East Asia, the level of racism within East Asia towards other
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East Asians is off the charts. Uh, you look at the religious nationalism of India or Pakistan,
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and again, it's completely off the charts. These are peoples that have very clear definitions of who they
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are. And they are in a, in a very real way, the universal norm. The West has adopted Americanism
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to a very large extent as a sort of melting pot, as a sort of come from wherever.
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Yes. But that Western countries are built on immigration and which of course, which is
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absolutely nonsense, which is absolutely factually nonsense. Uh, but that Americanism was primarily
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aimed at white Europeans. If you were a white European Christian seeking, and Christian played
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an important part of it, uh, although Jewish was also part of it as well. Um, if you were a European
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Christian, you were welcome to leave the baggage of Europe's wars and come to America, but I don't
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think it included shrines to Vishnu or Krishna or anything of that sort. Um, it was predicated on a
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shared system of beliefs that, okay, we have our ethnic and language differences, but the moral framework
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is Christian. Well, America of course is built on, um, uh, philosophy. Uh, there's an, there is an underlying
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philosophy that everybody bought into. And part of that goes, uh, it is, you know, free markets and
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commerce, the land of opportunity, freedom. It's built on this idea of freedom. So, um, that civic
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identity is, uh, it's wrapped up in the dollar sign. Everybody coming to, uh, find their own part of
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America and, you know, put their stake in the ground and build something around it. And of course,
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it's a country that's big enough for that to happen. And so you did have, um, you did have like
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Amish settlements and you could even have an Indian settlement somewhere in the, because it's big,
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vast country with, um, it's interesting how, uh, um, exclusively American sports events are still
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called the world series. Um, or, uh, you know, the world championship of a sport that's only played in
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America because America in itself is a contained world. And, uh, it's one of the reasons, uh,
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America doesn't really play by the same trade rules, trade FTAs as Europe does, because America
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is a country that sitting on so much of its own reserves of everything from oil through to minerals,
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its own talents, uh, its intellectual resources. It does not need trade in the same way that a little
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island moored off the, uh, coast of Europe does. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from
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