The riots have unleashed a torrent of class hatred

After the despicable acts of violence came the deplorable response. Although the criminality that followed the atrocity in Southport last month has been rightly denounced, much less called for has been the supercilious moralising and callous invective that has come with this.

Few have tried to explain the riots, as was the case in 1981 and 2011, or put them into context with what has been taking place in Britain in recent years and decades. No one seems interested in understanding why a small number of far-right activists could have had such an undue influence on a large number of people not motivated by ideology, but chiefly by crude grievance. Instead, there has only been base reproach and vilification. It’s a reaction epitomised by the otherwise sensible Trevor Phillips who, in The Times on Monday, dismissed the complaints of the ‘thickos and sickos’ as unworthy of discussion.

Those issuing only lordly condemnation have not covered themselves in glory. If the recent talk of ‘fascism’ and ‘Nazis’, often issued by otherwise intelligent people, sounds grotesquely inflated, that’s because it has been precisely that. With each person on X seeking to prove themselves more righteous than the next, the use of language has necessarily become more exaggerated.

At the same time, the scope of targets for denunciation has extended far beyond those linked to any criminality. At the weekend, people descended on the streets in their droves, waving Socialist Worker placards adorned with juvenile hyperbole. One group decided to mob football fans outside a Manchester Wetherspoons. Others protested outside the headquarters of Reform UK, a populist party that speaks to mainstream concerns about immigration levels.

Still, who cares about facts? As long as belligerent voices of feel-good self-righteousness let it be known that they disapprove of things they deem ‘far right’ (bad), ‘fascist’ (really bad) or ‘Nazi’ (like, totally bad). It has been a grim, familiar spectacle of grandstanding, sanctimony and competitive caring. Don’t bother to find a solution. That would spoil this ongoing festival of Saturnalia.

This festival of bellicose moralising will only feed a sense of grievance and rancour. Poor white males in this country already feel exhausted from being constantly told that they possess original sin and privilege on account of their skin colour, and are inherently toxic thanks to their chromosomes. The drip-drip effect is relentless – the same message is sent in education, in social policy, in recruitment practice, in public institutions, in museums, on TV.

The likes of David Goodhart, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Embery have been writing in recent years about one of the most profound social upheavals of the past 50 years, which has become even more acute and obvious of late – namely, the alienation of the white working classes from the better-off who profess to care for them. For many, the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the class hatred that abounded in its aftermath, confirmed many of their suspicions – that middle-class liberals regard the lower orders as ignorant, low-information scum.

Yes, we must condemn those guilty of acts of criminality and acts that make ethnic-minority people feel fearful. But don’t pretend that imperious disdain and naked contempt for the white working class in general, which may serve to boost your ego and earn you peer approval, will make matters better. It might just make them worse.

We forget Freud at our peril

For most of the 20th century, the teachings of Sigmund Freud were accepted wholesale among many philosophers, social scientists and therapists. That was until the eruption of the so-called ‘Freud wars’ of the 1990s, in which his conception of human nature came under severe scrutiny. At the heart of these wars was the literary critic and essayist, Frederick Crews, who died this June at age 91. He was the author of a devastating assault on the psychotherapist, Freud: The Making of an Illusion.

‘Crews’s Freud’, notes his obituary in The Times, ‘was a ruthless plagiarist, self-promoter and megalomaniac’. ‘Freud lied about his discoveries and slandered his rivals, and his “crackpot” ideas, which bordered on mysticism, were often conflicting’, it adds. They were conflicting, argued Crews, in that Freud wasn’t consistent as to whether childhood neurosis was the fault of the parents or the result of the infant’s own Oedipal complex. Crews was particularly scathing about the Freudian concept of ‘recovered memory therapy’.

Scepticism about Freudianism has subsequently become mainstream. For this we should thank Crews. But, his dubious theories on the Oedipal complex and the origins of neurosis notwithstanding, Freud should not be dismissed wholesale. His later, non-psychoanalytic works, on which he expanded on the nature of man as a whole, are well worth reading. Notably, The Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilisation and Its Discontents (1930).

In the latter, Freud expanded on his theory that people are driven by hostile, unconscious impulses. He concludes that the whole point of civilisation is to temper these malevolent drives:

‘Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked… A powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment… Civilised society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.’

Freud was no believer in Rousseau’s noble savage. We need civilisation, he wrote. It makes us discontent only because it prevents us from satisfying lustful, violent and sadistic urges. Civilisation acts upon people much as the superego acts upon the ego – to repress destructive, savage instincts.

In a time when we still often read ‘civilisation’ with those snide inverted commas, it’s worth keeping in mind Freud’s wise conclusions.

Educated evil

In his new book, Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich, the historian Richard J Evans challenges a popular misconception that the leading Nazis were ignorant barbarians. Or, as Churchill put it, a criminal ‘gang’. The opposite was true. Joseph Goebbels wrote a doctoral thesis on romantic drama. Nazi theorist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg also held a doctorate. The leader of the stormtroopers, Ernst Röhm, was a Wagner enthusiast and accomplished pianist. Foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop had a passion for both the violin and the French language. Meanwhile, Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the notorious Der Stürmer newspaper, painted watercolours and wrote articles about Nordic fairytales.

One lesson to draw from this phenomenon: being more educated, learned and cultured than the low-information masses doesn’t make you better qualified to decide a country’s destiny. Nor does it make you a morally superior person.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.