In 1975 and 1976, the French philosopher Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures titled Society Must Be Defended. In one lecture, he spoke about what is known as Foucault’s boomerang, “It should never be forgotten that while colonisation, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonisation, or an internal colonisation, on itself.”
Colonialism and imperialism are boomerangs. They always come home.
It has been clear for some time that Britain is colonising itself. You could go back to the sixteenth century, as Foucault did, or you could discuss the exploitation of the working classes during the British industrial revolution, or you could interrogate the reasons for Margaret Thatcher’s cruelty, or you could assess Brexit-era Britain, with all its deluded empire-nostalgia and empty English nationalism.
But I think we can move beyond the very obvious indicators of self-colonisation (maintaining and oppressing a “lower” class as a substitute for the colonial “other”, as well as exploiting a country’s resources so that a very small stratum of wealthy people benefit) and realise that what is being made visible now is an under-examined characteristic of colonialism: chaos.
Just because dragging a country into the gutter may not be a goal of this radical Tory era in Britain, doesn’t mean it won’t be an outcome
Colonies were often not just locations of exploitation, but jurisdictions of experimentation, territories where turmoil was created by incompetent parachuted administrators, and where abhorrent ideas and systems were trialled without any care for consequence, human suffering, or economic fallout.
Like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss is an agent of chaos. In December 2018, the UK Green Party politician, Zack Polanski, wrote about a conversation he overheard Truss having in a restaurant. In speaking about Theresa May, Truss reportedly said, “She’s such a pacifist whereas I embrace the chaos. I’m a thrill-seeker.”
Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s insane economic policies — not so much handbrake turns as joyriding doughnuts in the car park — are a chaotic experiment. You can talk all the guff you want at home. You can spoof and divert and hide, and pretend things are working when they are so obviously failing. But just as the delusional Brexiteer rhetoric succeeded at home but collapsed when it encountered the real world, last week’s market freakout was merely what happens when Tory chaosonomics meets reality. Brexit-era nonsense can float along all it wants in the British bubble, but reality is an index finger held aloft, popping it at every juncture.
Apathy pre-emptively dismantles the tools of resistance. If this trajectory continues, social unrest in Britain is inevitable
Just because dragging a country into the gutter may not be a goal of this radical Tory era in Britain, doesn’t mean it won’t be an outcome. Just because it may be happening through sheer incompetence rather than strategy, doesn’t mean the chaos and dysfunction aren’t the same. Often, incompetence is much more damaging than strategy, because incompetence is nebulous, whereas strategy is defined. Which do you think is easier to target and tear down? The thing seemingly without logic or form, or the clearly outlined plan?
Dismissing Truss’ performance on regional radio stations last week as just a “car-crash” is dangerous, because what occurred on air was a series of totalitarian gestures. As political philosopher and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1971 essay Lying in Politics, “The deceivers started with self-deception.” Truss had to dissemble because the mistakes of the “mini-budget” were so grave. Now, does she mean to mislead as a strategy for rolling out some grand totalitarian plan?
Probably not. She is, above all, incompetent, something which was fully known within the Conservative Party who nevertheless selected her as Prime Minister, just as they did Johnson. But her doubling and tripling down, acting in bad faith, and attempting to politicise basic sums in an ideological drive against maths, can begin as stupidity, and end up somewhere much more sinister.
Did Truss really damage herself during these interviews? Or did she inadvertently create another low point against which Britain will now measure itself? The only hope is ordinary people taking it upon themselves to stop this rot. Foucault said society must be defended. Thatcher said it didn’t exist. Arendt wrote that a key ingredient for totalitarianism was loneliness.
Apathy, obedience, cynicism, individualism, all contribute to the rise of totalitarianism, and while they are reactions to terrible leadership and governance, they grow to become contributing factors in its continuation. If you want a radical, vicious plan to succeed, you don’t necessarily have to convince everyone to buy into it. A much better technique is to embed apathy. Apathy pre-emptively dismantles the tools of resistance. If this trajectory continues, social unrest in Britain is inevitable.
Unfortunately, the most serious consequence of Britain leaving the EU wasn’t queues at Dover, or migrant worker shortages. What Brexit also did was remove EU oversight regarding human rights in Britain. The arrests of peaceful protesters during the ridiculous pageantry following Queen Elizabeth II’s death suggest that Britain is now in a phase of attacking personal freedoms and dissent — another part of the self-colonisation process.