KAFFEEHAUS

In Britain at least, the Victorian era has often been revered as a time of imperial and industrial advancement, when the nation’s influence (for better or for worse) spread round the grateful globe to the sound of shiny, marching boots and patriotic anthems, while at home there was increasing prosperity and social harmony. People went to church regularly, wore their dresses long and their corsets tight, doffed their caps and top hats to their betters, paid their bills, disciplined and raised their many children right , abhorred divorce, adultery and any other deviance, politely tolerated foreigners as long as they spoke English and stayed in their own benighted countries, worshipped God and the Queen Empress in equal measure and generally knew their place. 

Beneath this façade, however, the reality was somewhat different. The vast fortunes of the industrial revolution were amassed at the expense of slaves or cheap labour in unsafe factories not unlike the slums inhabited by the uneducated, unprotected workers. The degradation, disease and barbarity of the Crimean War may have produced the saintly Florence Nightingale, but it would be another century before a new, secular age created a universal health service for the nation. Many marriages were a stifling sham with women forced to bear children almost yearly – at the risk of their own and the child’s life – while the birch-wielding paterfamilias amused himself with mistresses or prostitutes, not infrequently importing venereal disease into the marital bed. Capital and corporal punishment were the order of the day, as were the workhouse, the poorhouse and debtors’ prison. But appearances were rigorously maintained; unalloyed and visible virtue reigned supreme. 

It is well over a century since Queen Victoria died, but the spirit of her long, strictured reign is once again at large. A new breed of Victorians is vociferously setting the tone via social and other media, casting a suffocating blanket of boundaries, regulations and glittering perfection over society. These virgins of the second millennium strive to police every aspect of daily life, both public and private: conversation, vocabulary, dress, relationships, education, finance, food, transport, energy and reproduction – the list is endless. Bathroom, bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, school, workplace, bar and high street are all subjected to their self-righteous gaze. Not content with controlling our outward behaviour, they also demand to regulate our thoughts; to bring them into line with their own. No deviation is permitted; their vision of perfection is homogeneity on their terms. In California, one of their High Places where speaking your truth is an obligatory fashion, zealous female consultants now dictate how sex scenes are scripted and filmed, while grammatical lexicons impose rules about every word, phrase and tone of voice. Failure to observe these apparently liberal constraints results in calling out, cancellation, media storms and death threats; they have reintroduced capital punishment for the slightest breach of their black and white Code. 

The quest for perfection has always existed and brings many positive advances – when tempered with self-knowledge. But self-knowledge is something the New Victorians lack. They claim to be perfect, or ‘correct’, in every aspect of their lives: emotions, ecological and cultural awareness, relationships, diet, dress, opinions – this last in particular. It is compulsory to think correctly. And they demand that we lesser beings should be equally perfect. 

There is one significant area where they closely resemble the original Victorians: hypocrisy. Despite their strident claims to virtue, they themselves fall far short. And in one vital way this is where they also differ fundamentally from Victoria’s subjects. As Christians (often inwardly as well as outwardly), the people of Victorian Britain were often painfully aware that they were hypocrites in many parts of their lives. Sometimes they tried to put this right, but mostly they contented themselves with preserving a respectable appearance. 

Being ignorant of any religion except their own, be it one of the Feminisms, Me Too, BLM, Wokeism or a constantly growing number of other sects,  the New Victorians see only the faults of others, never their own. 

Every human being is unique. Each of us has specific characteristics, qualities, shortcomings and life experiences that make us who we are: an individual and important part of the vast tableau of humanity. We all have a role to play, however humble, and in our different ways, often subconsciously, we are all striving to be divine. 

Beyond our uniqueness, however, yet inextricably entwined with it, we all belong to a diverse collection of communities. We are part of a family, a tribe, a city, town or village; we are citizens of a country, state and region, an inhabitant of a continent. We are daughters, sons, brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and cousins. We are part of an ethnic group, a social strata, a caste, a culture; a speaker of a language or group of languages; we belong to a profession, vocation, trade, religion, faith community or other organisation; we are a member of a race, a majority or minority, our skin is a certain colour, we have at least one gender or none, at least one sexual orientation or none; we are a friend, a colleague, a partner, wife, husband or confidant; a competitor, a collaborator, a helper, an enemy; we are part of the problem or part of the solution. The list of groupings and associations to which we belong, and where we intersect with others is almost endless. This is what makes up our identity; it is what creates our connections to other living beings and the rest of the world, perhaps even the universe. 

But the bridges that connect us to other people, places and cultures are being torn down. Boundaries and barriers – walls – are being built. Our individual uniqueness is being increasingly used to separate us from others, to set us apart from those who are ‘not like us’; to make enemies, not friends. 

Identity is fast becoming a weapon. It is frequently a political allegiance, an act of faith or ethnicity; or membership of a cult such as Woke. We are ordered to define ourselves as members of a particular and separate grouping or sub-set, not part of wider society or humanity as a whole. To be different. 

The theory of intersectionality has contributed to this situation. It explores in detail the many ways in which it is possible to discriminate against someone on the basis of one or more elements of their identity, thus drawing attention to hitherto concealed forms of prejudice. Although enlightening, this has also helped set in motion a politics of identity that has seized control of public discourse, especially in the West. It is a mindset which, far from celebrating and cultivating our natural uniqueness as a gift, perverts it into a means of sowing discord; of taking offence at other people’s difference, accusing them of being ‘not one of us’. While justifiably attacking the social, hierarchical, racial, gender and class prejudice of the past (which still exist, albeit to a lesser degree), it seeks to replace them with new forms of discrimination and victimhood. 

Identity politics is inherently destructive and divisive. Like the populist demagogues who it reviles, it creates, invents and encourages difference, incites suspicion and loathing, sees enemies everywhere, turns away love, kindness and friendship. It is demolishing the bridges that connect us to one another, the creative, inspiring uniqueness of each and every one of us, and replacing them with a new, Iron Curtain of hatred.