WHILST leftist organisations like to appear ‘progressive’ and ‘forward-thinking,’ those on the far right can often be reactionary to the point of self-parody. In England, for example, where right-wing organisations frequently lack the ideological sophistication of their Continental counterparts, there has always been a lurid succession of delusional factions who celebrate the period immediately prior to the 1960s and the so-called ‘age of permissiveness’ (which, predictably, they blame for everything). What they completely fail to understand, however, is that by attempting to revive a period in which one totters down to the seaside with a picnic hamper, patterned tablecloth and obligatory frisbee – invariably presented as a utopia of racial exclusivity, family values and fluttering Union flags – they completely miss the point.

Although G.K. Chesterton once observed that “he who says we can’t turn back the clock clearly knows nothing about clocks,” by idealising the 1950s the hapless British imperialist forgets that the rot had already set in and that returning the country to a bygone age will not prevent the unforgiving course of modern history from ensuring that the same thing happens all over again. Life before the 1960s was already steeped in the financial greed, wide-eyed consumerism and bourgeois hypocrisy that has led to our present dilemma, and there are valuable lessons here for those who think that Russia or China represent some kind of socio-economic alternative to Western degeneracy.

With Pandora’s Box having been well and truly prised apart several centuries ago, those who long for a better world need to realise that modern civilisation is like an unstoppable train and that our only realistic hope is to derail it. The past always seems preferable to the chaos and calamity of twenty-first century existence, as do the more ‘backward’ or ‘dissident’ nations of this world, but seeking to return to the days of buttered scones and royalist street parties will not prevent the underlying factors from sweeping it away time and time again. These are the real matters that need to be taken care of, the worthless media circus that so many people follow so avidly will take care of itself.