What We Are

Ben Wildsmith

The toxic nationalism that has gripped world politics in recent years is very much concerned with what the populations of nations believe themselves not to be.

In a UK context, flag enthusiasts are keen to emphasise that their country is not ‘woke’, not Islamic, and not European.

They are less confident when asked to define their patriotism in positive terms.

Had their pitch been that all religions were unscientific, then a case could have been made for a United Kingdom that emphasised its contribution to the rational awakening of the Enlightenment.

For some reason, however, you rarely hear Stephen Yaxley-Lennon or Katie Hopkins championing the humane atheism of Bertrand Russell on their X accounts. Instead, they are boxed into unconvincing espousals of spirituality in a ‘my God is better than your God’ take on Christian Nationalism that owes more to the Ku Klux Klan than any genuine UK tradition.

Ersatz AI mash-ups of union flags, lions, crusaders, and creepy, blonde children clog up the timelines of this new religion’s devotees alongside dire warnings of imminent replacement by the forces of Islam.

None of this speaks of a healthy self-image for whatever these people imagine their nation to be. Cheap, backward-looking nostalgia combined with aggressive hostility and ignorance aren’t, traditionally, indicators of a new dawn in any society. A last gasp seems nearer the mark.

British culture has always sat more comfortably on a tea towel than in a concert hall or between the pages of a book.

Unlike the astonishing riches on offer from its constituent nations and regions, Britain provides little more culturally than boorish, jingoistic cover for the crimes of empire.

From the sentimental twaddle of Rudyard Kipling to Geri Halliwell’s dress via Rule Britannia and The Great British (fill-in whatever tripe the BBC are knocking out this week) ‘Britishness’ is the dull, conformist, acquiescent reflex action of cap-doffing serfs and lickspittle sycophants who confuse proximity to royalty with the kiss of the divine.

It scours the native brilliance of these islands’ inhabitants and sells the leaden product to bemused tourists as Lloyd-Webber musicals and commemorative fudge.

Rage

Now that lamp post flags are sodden with rain and stained by impotent rage, I suggest that the people of these islands start standing up for the aspects of our cultures that actually mean something beyond the symbolic and desperate projection of empty pride.

Last year, Adam Price MS managed to extract a commitment from the government for his suggestion that lying in politics become an offence. This, even as a vague ambition, is a unique proposition, particular to Wales.

It seems to me that alongside our music, literature, art, and social achievements, that this commitment could form a central plank of how we in Wales imagine ourselves in a confusing new age.

AI, venal politicians, and the warping effect of social media echo chambers all pose threats to the concept of truth in public life. Everything from the conduct of wars to the level of welfare benefits is subject to overt misrepresentation by elected officials from the White House to your local council.

Demonstrative whoppers that would have seen you sent to bed with no tea as a child are now reflexively trotted out by world leaders without fear of censure. The deterioration of democracy into tribal grunting has been facilitated by the willingness of politicians to persuade with outrage rather than reason.

Moral authority

Could Wales, tiny as we are, be the voice that objects? Imagine the moral authority that would accrue to a nation that prosecuted its politicians for dishonesty. Imagine a nation that identified itself as the stubborn defenders of rectitude in public life, as democracy’s awkward squad.

Would Wales become dishonesty-free? No, of course it wouldn’t, people are people and politicians, typically, are worse even than that.

The benefit would lie in the striving, the idea that we want to be different from a world that is abandoning objective truth as an ideal.

In such an idea we could imagine ourselves heroic and forge a new sort of national pride that relies on what we are, rather than what we imagine we are not.