“Legitimacy is perishable, anger is rational, consequences are unavoidable”
Professor David Betz has rapidly risen to prominence for his predictions of civil war in the West within five years. Betz, a Canadian academic at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, first came to public attention early this year when he began appearing on podcasts outlining the warnings he had raised in a 2023 report for Military Strategy Magazine.
Titled Civil War Comes To The West, Betz’s report was largely concerned with the causal factors leading the West towards civil conflict. Drawing on his professional knowledge, Betz applied his academic learnings of civil conflict towards the Western state. The results were not optimistic. The report thus dealt with the “reasons why civil war is likely to dominate the military and strategic affairs of the West in the coming years” and “the strategic logic which shall underpin such wars”.
This was followed by a second report released earlier this year in which Betz described the West’s coming civil conflicts in greater detail and suggested possible mitigating solutions, expounding “on the likely shape that civil war will take and the strategies that might be employed to minimise and mitigate the damage that will entail.”
This has now been followed by a newly released third report titled Reflection On Homeland Insecurity: The Strategic Anatomy Of Civil Wars To Come, which Betz has co-authored with M.L.R Smith, an Australia-based analyst at the Centre for Future Defence and National Security in Canberra, and has been followed by Elon Musk stating amid an orgy of migrant violence in the UK this week that “civil war in Britain is inevitable”.
This latest effort repeats and reinforces many of the themes of Betz’s previous works, yet it also aims to “extend the angle of vision” on the West’s civil tensions and further elucidate what the writers describe as the “mounting pressures that are pushing advanced societies towards rupture”.
These pressures, the authors add, have been “building in plain sight” for decades; but for reasons ranging from political expediency to rank cowardice these pressures have been deliberately “ignored in mainstream commentary” or “distorted by hyperbole” by parts of the press.
Yet, primarily through the efforts of Betz, thoughts of civil war in the West are now widespread. The idea of impending civil clashes is no longer a fringe concern. Given such, the authors further seek to situate the West’s current civil tensions “within a longer trajectory”; to highlight any trends or evidence that may have been overlooked; and to “draw out the strategic implications” of the West’s civil tensions.
Yet it is important to note that this drift towards civil war is not a speculative nor a distant event. As the authors confirm, what they are writing about is a crisis that is “already in motion”. As they note, “Western societies are not experiencing passing turbulence but entering the long twilight of civil war”; with the “contours” of civic conflict “not speculative… [but]…already visible”.
The causes of this conflict are inevitably multifaceted and complex, yet the authors reduce them to two key converging dynamics.
The first is what they dub “the externalisation of insurgency through global terror networks”. What is meant by this is the domestic “blowback” felt in Western countries in the wake of wars in foreign theatres such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
As Smith and Betz write, “the insurgencies [these wars] spawned were never geographically containable. Globalised communications and diasporic flows ensured that these conflicts reverberated into Western homelands”, and once these wars had begun it was essentially unavoidable that the “political and social impacts of these expeditionary campaigns [would] inevitably [be] spilled back into the domestic realm”.
The second factor is simply a lack of legitimacy. As the authors write, Western states are now disintegrating via a “corrosion of legitimacy from within”, primarily due to Western elites deliberately ignoring the demands and desires of their people.
This can be seen in events such as the 2016 Brexit referendum in which the will of the British public was deliberately obstructed by the country’s elite; with the British parliament, media and civil service all openly conspiring “to resist, delay and dilute the outcome”.
The authors further cite the European Union (EU) as another example, noting instances in which EU elites have engaged in anti-democratic activities such as “rerunning referendums” until the “correct” answer is given in order to thwart the popular will.
As the report notes, such instances confirm the fact that Western political elites will “simply set aside the principle of popular sovereignty” when the wishes of the electorate run counter to their own aims.
The end result of this, of course, is a complete collapse in trust in the political system. As the authors write, an increasing number of Westerners have abandoned their old conviction that “voting matters” in any real way. Indeed, many have formed the view that “democratic choice is irrelevant” and that “politics itself is theatre, with real decisions scripted, beyond scrutiny or correction”.
This unresponsiveness by Western elites and the intentional overriding of the supposedly sacrosanct principle of popular sovereignty have caused the West’s current crisis of legitimacy and impelled parts of the public to engage in violence as an alternate form of “political contestation”.
In further support, the report cites Northern Ireland’s Troubles and Italy’s Years of Lead as examples of the “kind of chronic instability that arises once legitimacy has collapsed and violence seeps into the political bloodstream” – a situation the authors argue that the West is slipping into.
Even more starkly, the authors note that the civil turmoil seen across the West is not a “contingent” event stemming from miscalculation or misjudgement, but an “organic”occurrence that arises because “structural instability makes conflict inevitable”. The current state of the West is thus akin to Europe in early 1914, with a “powder keg of alliances, mobilisation and demographic pressures” signalling that “violence is not so much a possibility as a foreordained outcome”.
What is even more remarkable is that the obvious signs of Western civil decline – from an explosion in petty crime to routine stabbings to regular terror events – has been ignored by the Western mainstream. This is mainly attributable to the cordon sanitaire placed around these areas by Western elites due to the ostensibly “extremist” leanings of those calling attention to such issues.
As the authors note, long-standing warnings from so-called dissident sources about impending civil upheaval – such as Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints or a “disturbingly accurate” 2011 monograph titled Our Muslim Troubles by the pseudonymous El Ingles – have been “invariably dismissed” by academia and other established institutions due to their perceived associations with the “far right”.
Although this stance may be comprehensible in not wanting to enflame communal tensions, it has nevertheless produced the current farcical state of Western countries in which daily instances of social dysfunction are ignored or dismissed by elites as somehow imaginary or extreme.
As the authors rightly note, our present “paradox is that what polite society brands as ‘extreme’ is increasingly felt in popular sentiments to be obvious”. Indeed, the article adds that “when middle-aged, middle class mothers…report a ‘gut feeling’ that their society is sliding towards civil war, it is not extremism speaking but the intuition of the centre ground”.
The obvious implication is that some form of civil conflict is now inevitable, despite the deliberate denials and obfuscations of elites. As such, Smith and Betz devote much of the rest of their report to exploring how this conflict is likely to play out.
One area of note is that contrary to classic civil wars in more homogenous societies, in which “compatriots turned against one another”, the West’s coming conflict is likely to be characterised by three varied yet interrelated trends. These are: “elite-popular estrangement”, demographic “sundering”, and insurgency.
Elite-popular estrangement is simply the modern-day term for an olden-day peasant revolt. As the authors observe, this will take the form of a mass uprising by the public against what they perceive is an out-of-touch and illegitimate elite; with the report citing English writer David Goodhart’s taxonomy of provincial Somewheres and cosmopolitan Anywhere’ as a case in point.
The second factor of demographic sundering (refers to the West’s impending “inter-ethnic and inter-tribal” conflicts. This sundering will primarily devolve into Western natives on one side and migrant groups on the other. Tensions will arise as the former see their political and economic influence decline alongside their demography; while the latter experience the opposite as they “grow in size, cohesion and confidence”.
Smith and Betz add that this demographic dissolution will see Western states fragment into three types of zone. Zone A will be “urban enclaves where non-native populations dominate”. Zone B will be a “mixed region” of natives and non-natives, where “instability will be fiercest”. Zone C will be one of “largely contiguous native-dominated areas” akin to the right-leaning regions of rural France.
Reiterating parts of Betz’s previous two pieces, the authors add that coming conflicts will fuel further migratory flows and “assortative segregation”, with White flight occurring as Western natives flee the cities for the regions while migrant communities consolidate in urban enclaves.
The report further notes that all this will occur in conjunction with the formation of militias and groups of insurgents as well as infrastructure sabotage. These events, as Betz has previously noted, will see the West’s urban centres descend into anarchic states known as “feral cities”.
Interestingly, the writers observe that the state itself will be little more than a “reactive and brittle actor”. Western states, having squandered their ability to “mobilise through patriotism or collective tradition”, will have to rely on “whatever fragments of the armed forces and security apparatus they can pay or persuade” as officials are ensconced in a few remaining “Green Zones” as the wider polity unravels.
Another reason given for our impending social unrest is the so-called “expectation gap” and the associated idea of elite overproduction. Essentially, this refers to the evident deterioration of the urban and social conditions of Western states, and the related trend of declining life-prospects and expectations for Western citizens, especially among the young.
Allied to this is the sense that Western political systems have no answers to any of these problems and that all they have on offer is decay. As the report notes, for younger generations in the West the problem that looms largest is not the lack of legitimacy, but “the diminishing belief that politics can deliver tangible improvements in material and social conditions”.
As the authors observe, Western governments are no longer seen “as engines of progress” but as “managers of decline”. This is witnessed in “falling living standards and narrowing horizons of hope” and further evidenced in declining levels of health, income and home-ownership. A situation that “nudges populations towards extra-political alternatives, and gives civil conflict its unsettling tenability”.
Women and girls will be especially affected by this civil unrest. The report notes that once-common events like running in a park or attending a festival are already “fraught with risk” for Western females. Citing Britain as an example, the authors note that rape offences in that country have doubled over the last decade to “their highest recorded level”, while related statistics show a “sixfold increase in ‘stranger rape’”.
Indeed, such increases in sexual assault and an overall social decline form what the authors see as a seemingly decentralised but ultimately interrelated series of events. Recent disturbances such as Australia’s pro-Palestine protests are one ripple in a “wave of civic unrest” that is “multiplying across Western cities …whether in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Melbourne”. Other examples include France’s Yellow Vests, the Dutch farmers’ rebellions and Britain’s Southport riots. All of which, the authors note, is evidence of a deeper trend across the Western world toward more frequent multi-city revolts that is “no longer theoretical”.
The authors end the report by emphasising what they see as the three main “forces of instability” tearing Western states apart. These are: digital networks, mass immigration and the collapse of social capital.
The digital realm has plainly become central to modern life. And as the authors state, civil conflict is no different. As the report observes, social media and associated electronic networks now form an integral part of civil conflict and coordination. Among the many roles that digital networks now play, they help movements draw in supporters, mobilise resources and frame narratives.
That is not all. Digital networks provide groups with passive supporters who like, click, and repost their content, thus propagating the group’s ideas at a minimal cost. At a deeper level, digital networks provide movements with real-world adherents. Such people form a “disciplined minority” who are prepared to engage in kinetic actions such as sabotage and street violence in order to further their movement’s aims.
However, the authors also note that while social media “catalyses mobilisation among passive and active supporters, it simultaneously impedes the clandestine coordination of the adherents who ultimately drive violent action”, as “state surveillance excels in monitoring the online domain”.
Yet the prime reason for the West’s slide into civil anarchy is mass immigration. As Betz and Smith write, large-scale immigration is the “most potent source” of our current civil tensions, standing as it does “at the centre of both elite policy and popular resistance”.
As the authors state, the effects of mass immigration have been both tangible and widespread. Among the many maladies brought to the West by mass migration, the authors note that it has led to: “wage suppression, inflated housing demand, strains on welfare and public services, heightened crime…and increasingly overt acts of cultural iconoclasm.”
In addition, this is occurring alongside increasing public angst over the top-down nature of the mass-migration project. For Western publics, mass immigration has been an unwanted and elite-led imposition which they have had no control over, have repeatedly voted against, and which represents “not adaptation but displacement”. So important has the issue become, the authors note that even left-wing leaders like British PM Keir Starmer have been force to echo older right-wing figures like Enoch Powell in noting that Westerners now feel like “strangers in their own lands”.
Indeed, the West’s decades-long experiment in mass migration has descended into a state the authors describe as “political dynamite”. Central to this is the simple fact of control over land or territorial possession. As Betz and Smith observe, “territorial affinity is not some abstract principle, but the core of many, if not most, people’s sense of identity”.
For Westerners, therefore, ceding their historical territory and severing this tie is a “shattering” event that may “become a call for revolt”. In fact, this is already happening, with the authors noting that the “emotional potent narrative” of dispossession – or The Great Replacement – has already taken hold across the West.
Relatedly, these demographic shifts have led to a collapse in social capital. Citing Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone fame, Smith and Betz note that diversity is simply disastrous for civil cohesion. As they note, “large-scale ethnic diversity corrodes [social] capital”. Indeed, despite the daily paeans to diversity by Western elites, the reality of diverse communities is that they “display diminished trust, weaker voluntary associations, higher levels of crime and heightened alienation”.
Indeed, these three trends of digital networks, mass immigration and shrinking social capital form what the authors describe as a “reinforcing triad of instability”, summarised as “digital platforms amplify the spread of grievance; immigration provides its content; and diversity corrodes the cohesion required to absorb shocks”.
Sadly but not unsurprisingly, the authors also note that instead of confronting this triad of instability, Western political elites have tended to rely on censorship and repression instead of addressing the root causes or changing tack.
Nevertheless, all these decisions have brought us to the current impasse. That is, to what the authors describe as the “decisive fracture” in Western politics: namely, “the breaking of the social contract”. Citing Edmund Burke’s famed expression that a society is a covenant “between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”, the authors note that institutional trust has been destroyed by the “cumulative decisions and ideological turns” of Western elites.
Chief among these turns has been the naïve insistence by Western elites to ground their decisions in the realm of economics. As the authors note, Western states have been subject to the “colonisation of governance by economic orthodoxy”. Indeed, outside of Hungary and one or two others, almost all Western states have abandoned any Burkean or natural criteria for their decisions as they run their countries via a stifling economism in which “nations are no longer imagined as communities bound by history or mutual obligation, but as balance sheets to be managed”.
This has plainly involved the denigration of prior concepts of citizenship – such as ethnic, natal or religious ties – and the installation of economics as the summum bonum of Western politics. As the authors note, Westerners are “increasingly treated as tax units” in possession of technocratic documents like passports which “function less as civic markers than as financial locators”.
This is not a coincidence, and is due to the ascendancy of financial technocrats within Western hierarchies. The rise of the moneyman is no accident as “today’s ruling class is drawn not from the ranks of statesman but from high finance”, the authors state. As proof, the report cites political leaders with financial pedigrees like ex-British PM Rishi Sunak or current Canadian PM Mark Carney. For this class of men, the authors rightly observe, “government is less the art of statesmanship than the arithmetic of accountancy”.
Yet the most decisive act in severing the Western social contract has been the introduction of multiculturalism. Together with its twin, mass immigration, multiculturalism has decisively fractured what were – until recently – highly coherent countries. As Betz himself wrote in his first report, mass migration and multiculturalism have helped destroy what were “to a large degree cohesive nations”.
Noting the adoption of multiculturalism by Tony Blair’s Labour government in Britain – and their plan “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” – the authors write that the “deliberate reshaping of the demographic and cultural fabric” of the country was an utter failure. Citing a 2007 study by the Institute of Race Relations, the authors note that Blair left Britain “more divided – by race, class and status – than he found it”.
Can anything be done about this division and decay? Smith and Betz are sceptical. They end their report on an attempted note of optimism with 12 policy “signposts” or suggestions, but they see little hope of a peaceful resolution.
As they write, any reversal of the West’s presently suicidal trajectory would require “political imagination, institutional courage and social cohesion at the very moment when Western societies, especially in Europe, are least capable of summoning them”.
Ultimately, the authors conclude that the forces unleashed by Western elites have foreclosed any possibility of a peaceful settlement, especially under the current liberal-democratic conditions.
“There is no credible off-ramp within existing political rules; the system has rendered its own renewal impossible”, they write.
The report ends ominously:
“The academic consensus on civil war causation is not obscure; it is, in truth, little more than the plain sense of political theory that Europe’s ruling elites ignore or pretend not to understand.
Thomas Hobbes himself spelled it out in Leviathan: ‘The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them’. When rulers cannot protect, they cannot command obedience. It is that simple—and that deadly.
Yet today’s elites, convinced of their own permanence, behave as though exempt from the oldest rule in politics: lose legitimacy, lose everything. Academics can rehearse the point in 10,000 words or 100,000; reality requires far fewer: legitimacy is perishable, anger is rational, consequences are unavoidable.”
Header image: Masked Muslim counter-protesters in London this week (X).
The post ‘Instability triad’ of immigration, diversity and digital platforms leading to Western civil war first appeared on The Noticer.
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