The British reluctance to have national pride or buy into the warrior cult is a positive thing but it does leave many young men with nothing to latch onto and revere which is why so many youths end up looking to football hooliganism, gangsta culture or jihadis for their inspiration.
I remember when I was a boy in the 80's there was nothing cool or tough about British identity.
..Also many of our enemies and our self hating citizens see our lack of national pride, apologetic approach to our successful military history and our reluctance to defend ourselves or lionise those who do defend us as proof positive that Britain is doomed.
Their is nothing cool about being fair and honest, that does not make it wrong. However how many youths go into football hooliganism, gangsta culture or seek jihadis for inspiration. There are always people who live on the fringe of society, they are the only ones to which you refer. At least this society is not made up of the fringe culture in its totality like some other countries. It manages to contain them, so the rest can get on with their peaceful, non-interfering, daily lives.
So as you believe one of the worst, or at least not one of the best, which countries do you feel are better (outside of Scandinavia)?
As positive as it is that we are not a bunch of foaming at the mouth flag waving nationalists ready to form a lynch mob at the slightest insult to the Queen, I think we have gone too far in the other direction.
Through our collective unspoken agreement to denounce our history, our national pride and the lionisation of warriors we have lost our survival instinct.
Our unanimous condemnation of any act of violence which isn't couched in the terms of identity politics or a minority struggling against oppression has effectively made us a nation of pacifists when it comes to defending ourselves. If you are not a minority you have no right to assert or defend yourself.
What do we fight for if we are not a minority, what do we unite behind?
Community?
History?
Culture?
We have no glue to hold us together, nothing to latch onto and to try to find that national glue is sure to get people denouncing you as a xenophobic bigot
Through the housing market, social mobility (funded by credit) and the expansion of higher education our communities have split as the majority of us have become upwardly mobile mortgage paying middle class individuals.
We now worry about our property not our community as it's only a matter of time until we move to a bigger pile and greener pastures, so there are very few real communities left. For the most part we are transient or cocooned away.
As I have already said on the whole we have denounced our history as basically a string of crimes from colonialism to the trans-Atlantic slave trade nothing to be proud of guilty yes, proud NO. We should hang our heads in shame.
As for culture once again we have elevated other peoples cultures and poo pooed our own to such an extent that none of us identify with our Britishness in any real way unless we are BNP tossers. To unite behind British culture or heritage is to glorify the Raj and become a Nazi.
So the thugs are in the minority but it's the self hating, culturally hobbled, apologetic, self depreciating, degenerate middle class majority who really make the UK feel like it's lost.
These thugs could be easily dealt with we just need to stop wringing our hands and going on about police brutality and human rights. If your a thug and you get beaten up by the passengers on a bus for trying to rob someone or you get a police baton round the chops so fucking what! You reap what you sow.
We have lost our solidarity and the by product is we lose our ability to protect ourselves. So it doesn't matter that thugs are in the minority because they go unchallenged so essentially the minority rules.
You can be a white thug in Essex, a Bangladeshi street thug in Mile End or a West Indian villain in Harlesden and attack someone openly on the street and everyone will turn away and quiver in fear.
Why? Because we are bought up to believe that any violence, even in self defense is something we should seek to avoid.
Through thirty years of anti racist, anti authoritarian politics and human rights legislation we realise that the authorities might come down heavily on someone who stands up to an Essex thug and the idea of the majority banding together to deal with a bully from a minority has too many overtones of racist lynch mobs in America.
So we are cowed into being quiet individuals and saving our own skins.
Better that someone else gets stabbed than I get stabbed as well or god forbid we all stand up and become a mob. Surely then we are no better than the teenage thug on the bus!!
I have witnessed two black guys bravely standing up to a gang of teenage thugs on a bus and looking to all of the white passengers for solidarity only to have everyone turn away like a bunch of cowards.
You know what I'm ashamed and honest enough to say I was one of those scared individuals who turned away because I knew it was most likely to end up being ten against three because us white Brits have no solidarity and no fight left in us.
We have stripped ourselves of it because we are wracked with white guilt and bought up to believe we have caused all the pain in the world. Better we stay quiet and look after number one as we all know what happens when white people group together and assert themselves don't we.......
So you are right thugs are in the minority but our politically correct police force, our lack of solidarity and the sheer terror of being accused of brutality or racism has put the majority population into paralysis.
Our inability to stand united against violence and intimidation has given the minority of thugs (whether they are Stone Island clad white men or Khaffiyah wearing Islamist bullies) their escape velocity and made our streets feel decidedly scary.
I have traveled extensively and I live abroad and I can tell you now Britain is one of the only countries in the world where it's population wont stand up for themselves. You try mugging people on the streets of Delhi or Bangkok and see what happens.
The populations of these countries are on the whole tolerant and welcoming but whether they are Thai or Indian streets an Englishman or native who walks around beating people up and robbing them will quickly find himself either surrounded by an angry mob or dealt with by a very unsympathetic police force. No one will shed a tear..
So I think we have always had problems with hooligans accept we had a defence mechanism that came from solidarity. Now we don't.
As for a country that I think is better than the UK, well I think the problems that I have explained above apply in someway in most Western European countries. Since WW2 and the preceding years of peace and prosperity Western culture in Europe has suffered an acute crisis of confidence.
Also the strange truth of reality is you can be both right and wrong at the same time. There are three sides too every coin, I'm just showing my interpretation of one side of the coin. There are other sides and other interpretations. Britain is violent and unwelcoming as much as it is welcoming, free and tolerant. Both are true.
I would struggle to objectively say which countries are better as most countries have their pros and cons. The countries which fare best in UN statistics on crime, poverty, child mortality and violent crime are not necessarily the happiest and healthiest in other ways.
You mention Scandinavia, most Scandinavian countries statistically are the healthiest on the planet but their populations suffer from a high rate of depression and suicide.
Anecdotaly my experience of a poverty stricken Asia is that I have never met people or been to a place which is more friendly and at ease with itself.
I feel ill at ease and disconnected in London in a way that makes me depressed and on the stats I should be happier living in the capital of the United Kingdom than in a poverty stricken Asian town but I'm not.
Where I live my quality of life is infinitely better, the people are connected to eachother, they are open and welcoming to strangers in a way that the British could only dream about. It has warm weather, strong communities, great culture of which they are rightfully proud.
Street violence is minimal and you can go most places without fear of intimidation, beatings or robbery.
Paradoxically the wonderful close sense of community also means that individuality is stifled, they have no welfare system and the poverty is tangible, they are unapologetically racist, the police are brutal and corrupt and they have a monarchy that cannot be questioned or insulted unless you want to be punished severely and ostracised from society.
The simple fact that I have omitted the name of the country is because I have mentioned the monarchy and any perceived criticism could land me in hot water. So freedom of speech isn't one of their strong points.
So I have yet to find utopia
I will tell you when I do....
Topic: Maryam Namazie, Anjem Choudary, Majid Nawaz on BBC's The Big Question